Jun 03 2010
The End Of The Obama Era
I really hate to see things end horribly. Yes, some people sow what they seed, and in the case of our naive and arrogant President he has no one to fault but himself (and maybe those voters who put him in this spot). But you hate to see what was a moment of hope and success end in scandal and ruin.
Like I said many times, I did not want to see this President fail. I wanted to see him grasp the seriousness of his challenges and learn and grow into the job. Â All first term Presidents have this test to face. But this President is surrounded by power trippers who are also young and naive, and the combined inexperience made surviving this test improbable.
What has me so sure this presidency is over? Was it the endless economic mess and the concurrent joblessness? Was it the destruction of our nation’s premier health care system? Was it his shining incompetence with the Gulf Oil spill? Yes and no. All these things led up to the final straw. The kicker is going to be the felony bribes his administration made to Representative Sestek (PA) and State House Speaker Romanoff (CO) to leave senate primaries.
As I noted previously, the White House excuse floated last Friday on the Sestak incident is simply a signed confession of guilt:
Here is a key passage from the WH memo containing two clear sentences:
[1] The White House Chief of Staff enlisted the support of former President Bill Clinton who agreed to raise with Congressman Sestak options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board. [2] Congressman Sestak declined the suggested alternatives, remaining committed to his Senate candidacy.
In legal matters clarity is everything, and this one paragraph says it all. In sentence [1] we have the admission that Rahm Emanuel ‘enlisted‘ (voluntarily and knowingly) former Bill Clinton to raise ‘options of service‘ (job offers – plural) related to panels only the President can nominate a member to (Rahm can’t, Clinton can’t). That is the offer of the bribe.
The admission this was a bribe requiring a quid pro quo is found in the second sentence. The WH clearly stated Rep ‘declined the suggested alternatives‘, with the result being Sestak remained committed to his Senate candidacy. So therefore, if the WH offers had been accepted, Sestak would not have remained in the Senate race. QED: Bribe offered and declined, according to White House Council.
Ed Morrissey notes that it has come to light there was no board Sestak could serve on as a sitting Congressman, therefore even this formal excuse from White House Counsel is really just a poorly crafted lie.
Quite obviously, the stories offered by everyone don’t add up. The notion that anyone would insult the intelligence of a retired Admiral and sitting House member by offering them an unpaid job that would require their retirement from politics in order to give up a Senate bid is nothing but pure fantasy. This administration couldn’t even build a cover story that works and get its fibs straight.
Worse news broke last night, the Sestak bribe was not the only incident.
Administration officials dangled the possibility of a job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forgo a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, administration officials said Wednesday, just days after the White House admitted orchestrating a similar job offer in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
These officials declined to specify the job that was floated or the name of the administration official who approached Romanoff, and said no formal offer was ever made. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not cleared to discuss private conversations.
More details here. I am curious as to how these ‘administration officials’ think leaking another incident of bribery will help with this growing scandal? Are these people fed up and jumping ship or  or are they awkwardly floating trial balloons? The law does not have a discriminator on ‘formal offers‘ – whatever that means. In the Romanoff incident the former state Speaker was quite clear about where his paying job offer was (USAID), so there is no ‘unpaid advisory panel’ spin that can work in this case.
Update: This article is even more damning on the Romanoff deal, with even dumber spin from the White House:
Romanoff said in a statement Wednesday night that he was contacted by Messina last fall and told that the White House would support Bennet in the primary. When he said he would seek the nomination anyway, Messina “suggested three positions that might be available to me were I not pursuing the Senate race,” Romanoff said. “He added that he could not guarantee my appointment to any of these positions.”
Romanoff added: “At no time was I promised a job, nor did I request Mr. Messina’s assistance in obtaining one.”
…
Messina sent Romanoff job descriptions for three positions: an administrator for Latin America and Caribbean; the chief of the Office of Democracy and Governance; and the director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
Yeah, no job offer here! – end update:
When you have two independent incidents of the same clumsy and illegal act there is no getting around the conclusion. The Obama administration is so inept they can’t even do sleazy politics right. Which will be their undoing.
Obama’s reputation is in tatters. It is now going to be every politician for themselves. Democrats have careers and dreams to salvage from this mess. The administration has run out of political capitol. No successful pol who can escape the coming Obama implosion in public opinion is going sit around and be sucked under. Maybe if the President had some successes behind him the he could fight his way through the job-bribe scandals. But he is too damaged to make it through this kind of scandal.
It really is sad to see endings like this.
Update: As I predicted, the Dems are jumping ship:
They toppled Hillary Clinton, crushed John McCain and managed to get the first black man elected president of the United States.
But now a series of recent missteps just keeps getting worse for Barack Obama’s political operation, already under fire from inside the party for losing its golden touch.
The second-guessing of the White House political shop — which is coming in part from top House Democrats — was sparked anew late Wednesday by news that the White House tried and failed to coax another Democratic Senate candidate out of making his race by dangling administration jobs in front of him.
…
Taken together, Sestak and Romanoff cases suggest a White House team that is one part Dick Daley, one part Barney Fife.
Read more:Â http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38067.html#ixzz0pmyYKvwk
No surprise at all. You only get so many chances before people finally walk away.
One thing to consider is how Obama will react. A major contribution to Nixon’s downfall was not only the events that occurred but his increasing erratic behavior as things began go implode. Obama seems to be even more unstable then Nixon, all things considered. He is a man who has never faced serious opposition or failure and has been shielded against any criticism his whole life. I think as things begin to get worse, as WWS rightly predicts, we will see Obama’s behavior become increasingly erratic and disturbing, causing more to abandon him and his policies and they maybe even turn against him. We heard second hand of this strange behavior at his most recent meeting with the republicans.
I do not think that a majority of blacks will ever turn against him and if he does fail and the dems toss him under the bus there will be a major rift in the democratic party as blacks leave it in droves. They will not becoming to our side but just leaving it will be enough.
Oneal: “You guys are getting your hopes up. Your reading articles that reinforce your inner wishes. This is not going to amount to much. If the Republicns get too hot over this it will boomarang.
Time will tell.”
I think it’s vindication satisfying our predictions…more than hopes. And there is a problem with the Republicans getting too hot over this, especially those in Congress and those that have been incumbents for far too long…who on the civilian side will trust them once the Congressional Republicans gain back their majorities?
Both parties have proved themselves to us of their inability to manage the budget, rein in bad spending habits, eliminate waste, and prevent from creating or expanding new and existing agencies.
But the Democratic party has demonstrated to us that they spend far more than the Republicans and so on. They are far worse than the Republican Party.
Will I be excited if the Republican Party wins in November? I would be excited that this forces the Democratic party as a minority party but the Republican Party has to prove to us that they will push for limited government and so on or they will go by the way of the Whig party.
WWS, I think you’re right about the economy situation. Especially when Obama’s spending 5B EACH DAY!!!
That is outrageously unsustainable already and Obama WANTS to spend more.
Oh yeah, Obama said yesterday that he will damn find those votes to pass Cap n Trade this summer.
Oh, good grief! Give me a break!
WWS: “Lurker, there is no way the economy holds together that long with out sinking into the second half of this double dip recession – let’s be honest and call it a second great depression, since that is in fact what it is.
In the month just concluded, May 2010, new mortgage applications dropped by 40%.
40%!!!!!!!
That *guarantees* that the housing industry goes into a nosedive by labor day (applications have got about a 2 – 3 month lead time over closed sales) Remember in 2008 – the housing market began to crash that summer, and the markets and the financial system crashed in September.
We will not make it to the end of this year without this economic system crashing and burning – and the desperation at seeing that fate coming may, and probably will, bring about actions of desperation that will make the final conflagration even worse.”
Wow! Mortgage Applications dropping 40 percent. That’s drastic. And I’m guessing that the first time buyer credit has ended.
And Obama and Congress want to raise taxes on 50 percent of us???? And that VAT???? Wow!
With the oil industry in the Gulf about to shut down because of many bad decisions (many employees being shitfed elsewhere by Halliburton and Baker/Huges) and NASA being greatly reduced, things aren’t looking good down here.
I wouldn’t be surprised if GOOOH manages to get very close to its goal by replacing as many House Representatives as they can.
Reihl just posted about Bush’s comment about waterboarding KSM. He says that at this rate, we’ll be missing King frickin’ George at this rate.
LOL!
And PowerLineBlog reports that 58 percent of the Americans no longer support birthright citizenship.
Make that 59 percent after adding my vote to the poll. No more anchor babies. Don’t see the need for a new amnesty bill put on by the Democrats.
I think what many find insulting is in calling him the first black president, it ignores the fact that he is half white — does that not count for anything or do we need to look past that “character flaw”. Nor does he identify with the “black experience” in America — what challenges has he overcome that mainstream blacks can relate to. I see a man who is confused as to who he is — not a good trait to have in the POTUS.
[…] The Obama administration is so inept they can’t even do sleazy politics right. […]
Incompetence is not an impeachable crime – conspiracy to commit crimes, complicity in commission of climes and attempts to use executive to cover-up crimes ARE impeachable.
The Laws of our land are intended to be blind to ethnicity, skin color, creed, and political party. We’ll soon see if this is true – it appears that this conspiracy spans the legislative and executive branches of our government.
Should the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of US Government fail to investigate, or worse impede investigation of, the commission of Federal Crimes we should all recognize this as empirical evidence that our entire political system is broken and places our national security at risk.
Use your votes wisely in November to fix it – regardless of party.
Alert:
I think you are right.
lurker:
I miss Bush. Every day. He was a leader and I have never been naive enough to believe that I would agree with any President on every issue. But I always thought of Bush as a decent man who loved his family and his country.
I am not so sure I can say that about Obama. Big difference.
As for anchor babies, I don’t know. I understand how people feel about it, but then again..it is a good thing it is not retroactive or many of us would not be citizens today.
I know that Reagan would not support getting rid of the birthright citizenship, but then again he was really pretty moderate on immigration issues, more so than George Bush even.
Of course, times change and political realities change with them.
The housing market is not recovering – the problems have simply been papered over with the massive amounts of money that TARP and the Fed have been throwing at it over the last 18 months.
But all of that money -well over a Trillion dollars now – has done nothing to fix the system, and instead has just allowed us to make things look good while the problems continue to eat away the heart of the system like a cancer.
The NYT had a very good article the other day on how “strategic defaults” are becoming more and more widespread – this is when someone has the financial ability to pay a mortgage, but since the house is worth hundreds of thousands less than they owe they simply choose to walk away. Hundreds of thousands of people are doing this now. What’s worse is that the flood of non-payment is so vast that many people have realized that banks no longer want to foreclose, and because of that a clever homeowner can in some instances stay in their house for as long as *3 Years!* without making *any* payments at all! And when the bank finally does get around to foreclosing, then they just move and rent – FHA rules allow someone to get a new loan and buy again within as little as 3 years after a foreclosure.
It’s free money – it’s the people who are still paying their mortgages who are the chumps now. But there’s an even bigger problem than the moral hazard, as socalbubble points out in it’s latest post:
“If this trend (of walking away) continues, then the banking system is probably insolventâ€
http://www.socalbubble.com/
Think about that for a minute – if this is how things play out over the next few months, then we are right back to 1931. Except that we’ve got debt already piled so high on top of us that we can’t borrow our way out of our problems anymore.
As Sarah Connor noted at the close of the first “Terminator” film, There’s a Storm Coming. It’s not far off now – best spend what little time we have left getting ready for it.
I think that in the long run, defaulting on your mortgage will be a Very Bad Move.
Because I suspect the banks will take a very hard line on not loaning to you again. It’s one thing to default because you cannot pay…it is quite another to do so because you find it inconvenient. You just proved your word is worthless.
And it will NEVER be accepted again. The only way you’ll buy anything is cash & carry. Which will throw a hell of a crimp in your lifestyle.
Mike:
I was a farmer during the farm crisis. I remember all sorts of people going broke. People seem to think that if you are forclosed on you don’t still owe the money, but you do. You can walk away, but they can and will come after you.
Terrye,
In many states, if you have a purchase money mortgage on your principal residence, the lender cannot go after you for a ‘deficiency’ – the difference between the amount of the loan and the net amount realized in a foreclosure sale. Anti-deficiency statues vary widely, usually don’t cover refinancings and second mortgages, and some states don’t have them at all, but they’re a factor that makes it different from many of the farm bankruptcies (since farms are operated as a business and rarely have just purchase money debt).
Obama has done this on other occasions. Remember when he took a popular Republican governor out of politics for a while by giving him the ambassadorship to China? Great way to “park” someone offshore and keep their mouth shut. He won’t criticizing Obama from his position of US Ambassador.
Utah Governor Jon Huntsman … considered one of the “up and coming” younger Republicans. If Obama had not parked him in China, he might be making speeches and stuff here in the US.
I just read something from Stratfor and a post from HotAir about Israel. Its future doesn’t look good unless God intervenes.
What’s the latest on the Gulf Oil Spill?
These are all the mortgage walkaway trustee sale states, meaning they are non-judicial foreclosure states.
In these states, generally, when they foreclose on you, they cannot pursue you for their financial losses.
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
District of Columbia (Washington DC)
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana (as long as non-judicial foreclosure is used)
Nevada – note that the lender CAN get a deficiency judgment
New Hampshire
Oregon
Tennessee
Texas (but even in a non-judicial foreclosure, the lender can pursue a deficiency judgment)
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
These are states that also allow non-judicial foreclosure, and/or where non-judicial foreclosure is more common and deficiency judgments can be obtained more easily:
Michigan
Minnesota
North Carolina
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Utah
Wyoming
And check out the economic reports out this morning – private employement growth, which had finally begun to look decent in April, has now fallen off a cliff again.
In May, 95% of all the new jobs that were created were created by the government. And the vast majority were just temporary census jobs that will vanish by this fall.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/95-5-of-payroll-growth-is-census-hiring/
maybe then we can borrow another trillion dollars and hire all these people to dig ditches and fill them back in again. Oh, just skip the pointless work – lets just hand out free money by the wheelbarrow full.
Any surprise that the stock market is crashing again today? As I’ve been saying, we are in the endgame now. We’ve gone over the top of the rollercoaster, and it’s all downhill from here.
The scary part is that we still have a hell of a long ways to fall. And although I am going to enjoy this November, economically the stress as a divided government becomes completely dysfunctional for 2 full years will only accelerate the economic chaos that’s coming.
WWS, No, I am not. I hate to recognize that we may face one and only one option to restore our own country after prolonging the implementation of the right solutions to fix the existing problems. That one and only one option is to let it fall all the way, let it go 100 percent bankrupt, let it crash all the way.
Then we can start from ground zero with the right solutions.
I don’t like it and would prefer strong actions to fix these problems but we may not have a choice.
I just cannot see how Obama can continue to hire more people after several months but the US Census Bureau provided us the answer to fake these numbers.
In today’s Chron, I read a few comments about the “devout Keynesians” still harping that our government still had not done “enough”…still needing to spend more and borrow more, etc., before things start to look good. The article did throw in that Japan is still trying to come out of its two-decade long economic problems.
When will these guys ever learn? I guess they never will. It is the fundamental human nature in all of us to seek something close to the utopian society????
“private employement growth, which had finally begun to look decent in April”
And most of that was recovery for horrible spring weather and were basically hires in April that should have happened in February/March but didn’t because of bad spring weather. Hard to build a house in a blizzard.
‘Hard to build a house in a blizzard.’
The Deuce you say! We were told that Blizzards were a thing of the Past! Next you’ll say that those Pacific Islands are really growing, not shrinking!