Too Funny

What to do if you are a heartless employer in tough times?  Why, lay them off, of course! Especially if they are unionized. That’s the usual complaint we are bombarded with by the media. Funny how they are not reporting on this one. The latest “heartless employer”?

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

“How do you spell hypocrisy? SEIU!”

That was the chant today in front of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The SEIU “broke their union contract,” and laid off 75 unionized staff members. Those workers picketed the union today with slogans like “EFCA’s First Violator Who? SEIU” and “Stop Union Busting.”

So the union laid off the union workers it employed? This is not, apparently, news as far as the media is concerned? The cone of silence has descended.

HuffnPuff Cheerfully Distorting The Truth

The Huffington Post with a positively breathless report on the “locker room” exchange between Chuck (Not my favorite Senator) Grassley and Kent Conrad during a budget session:

Marking up budget legislation can be a brutal affair, often beginning early and lasting long into the night.

But buried within the hours of debate in the Senate on Thursday is an exchange you’d be more likely to hear in a locker room than a congressional hearing.

Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) was on the receiving end of this one, after telling Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), “Oh, you are good.”

“Well, your wife said the same thing,” Grassley responded.

Sounds positively adolescent the way HuffnPuff’s Ryan Grim reports it, doesn’t it? Turns out he is relying on creative editing cutting off the capper to the exchange:

The exchange has been picked up all around, depicted – and scolded – as cheesy, sex-laced banter, during discussions about rather weighty issues like, uh, the deficits. But what’s missing from the takes at other Web sites – even though the follow-up line alludes to what’s going on between the two – is indeed the context.

Senator Grassley’s comeback and the ending line close the loop. Senator Conrad responded: “She did, she said you were the biggest hit of all the speakers at the event.”

The event, we’re told, was the 20th Annual Legislative and U.S. Government Policy Seminar on Wednesday at noontime, when Mr. Grassley spoke. Senator Conrad’s wife, Lucy Calautti, attended and did indeed compliment the Iowa senator’s presentation.

I am not surprised at all that the HuffnPuff Post is factually challenged. I am surprised that the revelation of their false reporting comes from the New York Times. Kudos to Kate Phillips. And an agitprop award to the HuffnPuff and their slanted coverage of pretty much everything.

No, make that everything.

Via Memeorandum.

Barack Obama, Media Hound

Yahoo! asks if Barack Obama has reached media saturation yet.

It’s obvious the camera loves President Barack Obama. But are American audiences growing tired of his seemingly ubiquitous TV appearances?

This week alone, the president was on “60 Minutes,” held a prime-time press conference (networks reluctantly bumped “American Idol” and “The Biggest Loser” to make room for it), and answered viewer questions at his first-ever online town hall meeting. And all this is in addition to ESPN’s sporadic updates on how his NCAA bracket is doing.

The New York Times columnist Gail Collins put it this way:

“…there appear to be only two constants in our ever-changing world. One is that Barack Obama is going to be on television every day forever. No venue is too strange. Soon, he’ll be on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ (’And now, doing the Health Care, Energy and Education tango …’) or delivering the weather report. (’Here we see a wave of systemic change, moving across the nation …’)”

Others criticize President Obama, known for his fiery orations, for “being boring” and “dull”. LA Times blogger Andrew Malcolm likened Obama’s Tuesday night primetime presser to a lackluster college lecture:

All that plus inappropriate affect.  Maybe Barry will appear on American Idol next, singing Money for Nothing or What a Wonderful World it Would Be (if my scam budget passes). Super Genius Little Timmy Geithner could harmonize on the first one.

I’m not a good judge of whether Obama is overexposed. I got tired of his sonorous vapidity early on in the endless primary campaign from hell. But his polls are down (to 56% approval by Rasmussen).

If his primetime media hounding is contributing to people getting tired of him, I’m all for it!

I have a call in to the folks at American Idol.

Old Man Winter Just Won’t Die This Year

Oklahoma is bracing for a potentially life-threatening blizzard. The governor of the state is warning people to stay home.

“To all Oklahomans, I would urge you to not get out and travel. If you must, make sure you have provisions with you,” Henry said during a Friday afternoon news conference.

Henry said significant travel problems are expected, and forecasters agree. Chief meteorologist Rick Mitchell said during a 2 p.m. weather briefing that road conditions could be worse in the metro area than initially expected. However, the primary concern is west and north of the Oklahoma City metro area.

Snow has already started to fall in northwest Oklahoma with up to 6 inches already reported in the panhandle. KOCO meteorologists say sleet is possible for the drive home Friday in Oklahoma City.

A blizzard warning is in effect for far northwestern Oklahoma, including the panhandle, while much of central and north-central Oklahoma is under a winter storm warning. However, the National Weather Service updated its winter storm warning for west-central and north-central Oklahoma for the possibility of treacherously icy roads and widespread power outages.

The Red River has reached a record flood stage at Fargo, North Dakota – 40.57 feet. It has not yet crested. Flood stage is 18 feet. It is currently 18° F and snowing there. Just what they need, more water.  The sandbagging effort has essentially stopped at this point, as I understand it from the radio report I heard coming home. But they have not given up:

“We do not want to give up yet. We want to go down swinging if we go down,” Walaker said. “Does that put fear in everybody’s heart? I hope it doesn’t. We have to do everything possible to be successful. And I think that’s what everybody is committed to.”

Keep them in your thoughts.

Well, I guess the old saying is true about March: In like a lion, out like a rabid wolverine.

A Lesson

Via The Wall Street Journal, a little lesson from the Wisconsin state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to the politicians demanding witch rich hunts. Responding to a letter ”suggesting” state attorneys investigate corporations from Chuck Grassley, Van Hollen wrote back:

“However, I will not be initiating investigations through press releases, nor will I treat all corporate executive expenditures as presumptively wrongful. Wisconsin law certainly does not. Financial institutions (and other businesses) on the verge of insolvency are ill-advised to make unnecessary expenditures, whether to executives or otherwise. At the same time, contractual obligations are generally to be fulfilled, work should earn compensation, and there is no law in Wisconsin making a contract illegal simply because someone is well compensated. Absent specific information indicating a transaction is fraudulent as opposed to foolish, I will not use my office to threaten litigation in an attempt to micromanage Wisconsin’s businesses. Corporate governance is generally a matter for shareholders, not public officeholders.” 

Bravo.  

Here’s the real problem:

Another bit of data that recently became public is a partial list of AIG’s counterparties – including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and European financial institutions. Why can’t those companies take “haircuts” and accept some losses? Instead, U.S. taxpayers are being forced to bankroll this effort to the tune of over $170 billion, so far, even as their own 401(k)s shrink and home values slide.

Unfortunately, the collective temperament of most Washington politicians – call them the Bailout Party, a term that includes Democrats and Republicans – includes a fondness for crony capitalism that dates back to the 1998 bailout of the hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management. Not only is AIG likely to receive more handouts from the U.S. Treasury, but so are other firms that have yet to fail. ….

…….The consequences of these repeated bailouts are immense and historic. As of last month, the U.S. government has risked $9.7 trillion on bailouts, not counting the Treasury Department’s new toxic asset-buying plan. To put that in perspective, the IRS collects only $1.36 trillion a year in individual income tax revenue. (Emphasis added)

Got that? Congress is outspending total income tax revenue by close to a factor of ten. On bailouts alone. It is not a crime for corporations to fulfill legally binding contracts, regardless of how sound their judgment was in signing the contracts. It ought to be a crime when our elected officials are this irresponsible with our money.

Not their money. Our money.