Tag: Politics

Shorebank helped by friends

President Barack Obama and Senior Advisor vale...
Valerie Jarrett with highly placed Chicago friend

Shorebank saved:

The bailout has been controversial. Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett served on a Chicago civic organization with a director of the bank, and President Obama himself has singled out the bank for praise in lending to low-income communities.

But the bank has made its share of bad bets, and some of the Wall Street firms that have given money have said they’ve received political pressure to contribute to the bailout of a business that under normal circumstances would have been left to fail

Can this be crony capitalism?

Superior folks talk down

James Taranto at Wall St. Jnl Best of the Web notes that “the liberal elite” puts itrs “ugly attitudes . . . on display” at moments like this, when erstwhile White Houser James Carville says publicly that “there are a lot of stupid people out there” who think Obama is a muslim.  It’s a pattern, says T., noting that the Pew Center considered the matter worth polling.

Thus, at a time when the vast majority of voters oppose the president’s policies for any number of legitimate reasons, the media’s self-superior dwelling on “stupid” or “kooky” Obama critics tends to marginalize Obama, not his opponents. Obama’s presidency is being consumed in a bonfire of liberal vanities.

That’s very good, that bonfire stuff.  Will have to read Tom Wolfe’s book.

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The lady’s not for ignoring

Gov. Sarah Palin has breakfast and visits with...
Image via Wikipedia

Obama the orator has become the TelePrompter-in-Chief, though some still cling to his reputation as orator. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is a speaker who can manage with reminders that fit on her hand. NY Sun, conceding Obama as orator, has this about Palin addressing the Ground Zero Mosque question via Facebook:

Not only does Mrs. Palin manage, in a polite but firm way, to speak more forthrightly than the president and to draw finer distinctions than the president but she also manages to articulate a practical line more in keeping with a harmonious outcome.

In other words she does the leadership thing in what she says, which, come presidential choice time in a year or so, will matter for her and us more than ever.

Flunking govt test ain’t necessarily bad

Wheeling Jesuit U. is not alone in flunking the government’s “financial-responsibity” test, as was reported yesterday. Some of the others are knocking down the feds’ argument:

The test is founded on a business model, and nonprofits dont really operate in the same way, Daniel Anderson, who since 1981 has served as president of Appalachian Bible College near Beckley said.

Because the test rewards schools that have a large amount of liquid assets, a school thats expanding and spending money on new facilities will score lower, Anderson said.

. . . theres a fallacy in the formula the Department of Ed uses, and Ive been saying that for many years, he said. A school like ours isnt going to just build up cash. When we get money, we want to put it into use.

Another days it’s old news:

At Ohio Valley University in Wood County, the news, well, wasnt news. I still dont understand all the excitement about OVU being on the (Education) Departments list, Steve Morgan, the schools executive vice president, said in a news release.

Morgan, who previously served as the schools chief fiscal officer, said Ohio Valley has been on the list for a decade as it purchased land and made other upgrades to become a full baccalaureate program.

The Education Departments tool to measure financial strength depends heavily on a comparison of a schools debt to its assets, Morgan said. By that definition, he said, Ohio Valley University has continued to score poorly despite growing enrollment, a top ranking in US News & World Report and other indicators of strength.

Anyhow, Ohio Valley U. is staying on the flunk list: Its a fact of life here and will continue to be so for years to come, said Morgan. The OVU president, E. Keith Stotts also demurred:

What I regret is the implication that Ohio Valley University is teetering at deaths door, he said. . . . . Just because the school shows up on the governments list doesnt mean the school is struggling, Stotts said. OVU is a true success story, the Departments list not withstanding, Stotts argues. Lord willing, our university will continue its mission of transforming lives for many years to come.

Besides Wheeling Jesuit, two other West Virginia institutions were cited: Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi; and Davis & Elkins College in Elkins.

I like the spirit the first two show.

Protecting assets

Incorporate, advises commenter Benjamin, at Carpe Diem, where the talk is the Americans With Disabilities Act, now 20 years old, as foolish, expensive, and dictatorial, thanks, says Benjamin, to judges and lawyers with “no concept [of] costs, or the costs they are imposing on society”:

[Y]ou can almost always avoid any personal liability by forming a corporation. The corporate shield is a marvelous fiction, and ensconced behind it, you are nearly impervious. Just keep few assets in the corporation, and declare bankruptcy if met with untoward judgments.

A word to the wise, to be sure.

(HT News Alert)

Eighty and out, says Big O.

Get outta here, Charlie!

President Barack Obama has kept mum on the fate of Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) for days — but he tells CBS News that it’s time for the embattled 80-year-old former Ways and Means Chairman to end his career “with dignity.”

Why, besides “troubling” allegations?

 [H]e’s somebody who’s at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I’m sure that– what he wants is to be able to– end his career with dignity. And my hope is that– it happens. “

What the hell, what is he a one-man death panel?

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Kenneth Howell back at work

Alliance Defense Fund, one.  Hate speech, nothing.

An adjunct religion instructor barred from teaching by the University of Illinois after defending the Roman Catholic stance on homosexuality has been invited back to teach this fall.

Adjunct associate professor Kenneth Howell was reinstated on Thursday — a day after the deadline when his lawyers said they would sue the university for violating his academic freedom if administrators failed to reinstate him.

Faculty investigators soldier on.

But the reinstatement is temporary. It does not affect an ongoing faculty review, which has been investigating whether Howell’s immediate removal violated his academic freedom or right to due process.

Another faculty committee appointed to examine the circumstances of Howell’s compensation concluded that the university’s relationship with St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, the Catholic ministry on campus, was improper.

Though Howell taught Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought in university classrooms, he served on the payroll of the Newman Center funded by the Diocese of Peoria — an agreement that remained in place despite scholars’ objections when a religious studies program was established in 1971.

Longstanding objections, therefore?  Reported at the time?  Known by how many even now?  Chi Trib’s Brachear is slipping something in here: It’s what interests her.

Question: Any names to go with the Howell decision to reinstate?  Passive voice irritates: “has been invited . . . was reinstated.”  By whom?  Weak reportage, I fear, all that’s available for now maybe.

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The king of trite

We pick on Obama for his statist policies, but do we pick on him for his regular use of bromides and nostrums?  We should.  Just today on The View, where a gaggle of admirers were joined by their usual conservative Hasselbeck, he came up with these that flash across his TelePrompter mind:

So why did Obama decide to go on the daytime chatfest? “I was trying to find a show that [First Lady] Michelle [Obama] actually watched,” the President said on the show.

Here’s a case of playing to the expected, or expecting.  It’s what the old boy says deprecatingly of the lady of the house, you know, accompanied by boyish grin.  He has the moves, yes.

. . . he talks about the economy, the oil spill and a “whole host of other issues.” He says the economy has started to stabilize and grow again.

Passing over what he says the economy is doing, how about that “whole host” business? 

“Politics is a contact sport,” says Obama. But he says “We shouldn’t be campaigning all the time.”

Passing over the second part, at which coming from him many would gag, “contact sport” is sure telling.

Told (by Hasselbeck) we’re “very divided,” he said,

“My hope is that I try to set a tone” that we can disagree without being disaggreable. He says the media loves conflict, and doesn’t report on agreements.

Can’t say enough for this trifecta of “my hope is” (vs. “I hope”), “disagree without” etc., and media as loving conflict.  At least he didn’t blame it on Bush.

That’s all for now.  more more more to come . . .

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Barack, we hardly knew you . . .

Two Dem pollsters in WSJ:

During the election campaign, Barack Obama sought to appeal to the best instincts of the electorate, to a post-partisan sentiment that he said would reinvigorate our democracy. He ran on a platform of reconciliation—of getting beyond “old labels” of right and left, red and blue states, and forging compromises based on shared values.

He lied!

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