(Red Green can be found on satellite tv if you look for it lol)

P.S. Where else but in the far north can you enjoy such great comedy as the Red Green Show? Here in the south nobody’s ever heard of it.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A failure to prosecute the “villains” responsible for the financial crisis that brought the United States to its knees will leave the country without the moral compass needed to avert future crises, a Wall Street luminary said.
Pioneer hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt is angry that the bailout of America is eroding the nation’s capitalist ethos while those whose deeds crippled the U.S. economy suffer scant opprobrium, their names still untarnished.
“Something really went wrong here. We’re about to enter a period where our budget deficit will dwarf anything we’ve seen before,” Steinhardt told the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York.
“What we really needed a long time ago was a recognition that there were villains apace. The evils of the financial system should have been recognized long before this,” said Steinhardt, who no longer manages billions of dollars but whose counsel is sought on Wall Street and among select politicians.
While scornful of the financial executives who should have known better, he also belittled Washington for its lack of leadership and for not spelling out what the future beholds.
The current and former Federal Reserve chairmen have proved ill-prepared for the job, said Steinhardt, a former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, where he helped promote the career of Bill Clinton before he became president.
Of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, often criticized for keeping interest rates so low that they sparked the housing bubble, Steinhardt said he may have been stupid for a long time, “but he wasn’t pernicious.”
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Of Course those who blackmailed uh, held hostage uh, encouraged mortage companies to make 100+% loans had nothing to do with it. It was the low interest rates. I’m sorry but am I the only one who thinks this guy is an idiot???

The U.S. Senate will let President-elect Barack Obama sign up to a U.N. pact to fight global warming in late 2009 even if U.S. climate laws are not yet in place, U.S. Senator John Kerry predicted on Thursday.
But Kerry, designated head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Poland that China, India and Russia would also have to promise to cut greenhouse gas emissions to win Senate blessing of any pact.
“It will be like the difference between night and day,” Kerry, of Massachusetts, said of Obama’s enthusiasm for action against climate change after what he said were eight years of inaction under President George W. Bush.
He told Reuters support in the United States for climate action was strong enough to let Obama sign up for emissions cuts under a U.N. pact to be agreed in Copenhagen in late 2009 even if the Senate had not by then agreed matching U.S. climate laws.
“We can have commenced the (domestic) legislative process, we don’t have to have completed it,” before agreeing to cuts under a U.N. treaty, he said.
President Bill Clinton agreed in 1997 to the U.N.’s existing Kyoto Protocol for cutting greenhouse gases until 2012 but never tried to get the pact ratified by a hostile Senate.

With President Bush it is “inaction” but with Clinton it was a “hostile” Senate.

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are appearing in Italian nativity scenes this year, alongside the baby Jesus and wise men, according to Naples craftsmen selling figurines in the run-up to Christmas.
The production of handmade figurines for nativity scenes is big business in this southern Italian city and has been for centuries.
But beyond the thousands of angel, sheep, Mary and Joseph figures filling market stalls before Christmas, craftsmen say Obama has become a top seller.
“The ones we are selling the most of are those of Barack Obama, America’s new president, along with his wife Michelle,” said craftsman Genny Di Virgilio.

Really are any of us surprised by this?? I’m surprised we haven’t seen the Obama Christmas tree topper, wrapping paper and Carbon credits gift card.

Durham police to discuss officers’ MySpace comments

Durham, N.C. — Durham police commanders said they would release the findings Friday of an internal investigation into whether officers posted offensive comments on the Internet after the presidential election.

An unknown number of officers were accused of posting derogatory comments on their personal MySpace pages shortly after President-elect Barack Obama’s win Nov. 4.

Police leaders were expected to release a copy of the MySpace pages so the public can decide if there were inappropriate postings.

The Durham chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has demanded more information, charging that public trust in the department has been hurt.

“Everybody is trying to say there is an inference, but we don’t know what that inference is,” Durham NAACP president Fred Foster said…..

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/4126512/

Of course the people of Durham are the best at making decisions. After all, they elected Nifong. But I imagine similar happenings all across America that aren’t being reported. Thus the cleansing begins.

Republicans stand a better chance of converting Lieberman into a Republican (like that’ll ever happen) than they do of presenting a united front to the Democrats. And regardless of how and by whom the bailout plan was defeated, Republicans will take the blame.

They likely would get to serve anyway.

From the LA Times:

Senate’s authority to reject potential Blagojevich appointee unclear

The Supreme Court has ruled similar rejections unconstitutional in the past. But experts say senators may consider whether an appointment was valid and lawful.

By David G. Savage

Senate Democrats threatened this week to refuse to seat any new Illinois senator chosen by embattled Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, but it is not clear the senators have the legal authority to reject a fully qualified appointee.

In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that the House of Representatives could not refuse to seat Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., a New York Democrat who was accused of putting his wife on the payroll and misusing travel funds to vacation in the Caribbean. Despite those charges, he had been reelected by his constituents in Harlem.

“The Constitution does not vest in the Congress a discretionary power to deny membership by majority vote,” wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren. Congress may “judge only the qualifications set forth in the Constitution,” he said.

The qualifications are minimal. A senator must be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen and “an inhabitant” of the state.

The ruling in the Powell case served as a precedent in 1995 when the Supreme Court struck down term limits for members of Congress. The justices said that states may not add extra qualifications for serving in Congress, including restricting the years of service.

Warren said in his opinion that the Senate’s power over its members “is identical” to that of the House.

The court referred to an elected representative; its opinion did not address whether an appointed senator would have the same standing.

But legal experts say the Senate does have the right to look into whether a senator’s election or appointment was valid and lawful.

“It’s true the Senate cannot add qualifications, but it has to recognize an election or a selection as valid,” said Trevor Potter, a Washington lawyer and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. “If it has questions about that, such as after a contested election and a recount, the senators can delay a decision on seating and defer the issue to a committee.”

After the 1974 election, the Senate refused to seat Louis C. Wyman, a Republican from New Hampshire who won in a second recount by two votes. His Democratic rival, John Durkin, objected. He had won the first recount by 10 votes. The Senate voted to send the matter to the rules committee. It too was deadlocked, and the candidates agreed to a special election, which Durkin won.

In Wednesday’s letter to Blagojevich, the Senate Democrats warned the governor against choosing a new senator, but they did not flatly refuse to seat such an appointee.

“Please understand that should you decide to ignore [our] request . . . we would be forced to exercise our constitutional authority under Article I, Section 5, to determine whether such a person should be seated,” the letter said.

This provision is the one the Supreme Court described in 1969 as having a narrow scope. It says: “Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....4027.story

Nice to see the Democrats have been practicing electoral manipulation since at least 1974.

Not like they have to do anything but feign outrage in this case:

If Blagojevich were to select someone to fill the Illinois Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama, the senators could send the matter to the rules committee to judge the candidate’s qualifications. And the appointee, if rejected by the Senate, could go to court and challenge the decision as unconstitutional.

Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that the Democrats in Congress would rather see that sideshow play out than risk a Republican winning an emergency election?

Obama gets a crisis ‘test run’

The president-elect’s third response to the Blagojevich corruption scandal may have been the charm.

By Peter Nicholas

It took three tries in as many days for President-elect Barack Obama to roll out a strategy for defusing the crisis over Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s alleged attempt to put his old Senate seat up for sale.

In his initial reaction, Obama said he was saddened by the episode, that he hadn’t talked about the Senate seat with Blagojevich and that he wouldn’t discuss an ongoing investigation. On day two, he added his name to the avalanche of public officials calling for Blagojevich’s resignation, but questions mounted about which members of Obama’s staff might have discussed Obama’s Senate seat with Blagojevich.

Finally, in a news conference Thursday, Obama pledged to ferret out more facts. He also struck an emotional chord that had been absent. He said he was appalled by the scandal and would quickly release all contacts that his staff had with the Democratic governor, who is accused of seeking favors from the president-elect in exchange for elevating a preferred candidate to the Senate.

Obama’s evolving response was the first test of his team’s capacity to cope with a fast-moving political scandal while staying true to his promise to run a transparent shop with a minimum of secrets.

“This may be an early test run for his administration,” said Scott McClellan, a former White House press secretary for President Bush. McClellan is the author of a book saying the Bush White House was not forthcoming with the public.

“This is how he might handle a scandal within his own administration, even though this may only tangentially involve members of his team,” McClellan said.

“Initially, I don’t think he quite had his footing. . . . Today, he certainly had his footing under him and is making the right moves in terms of addressing the scandal.”

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said: “The first answer — I don’t have any comment on an ongoing investigation — sounded exactly like the comments we’ve gotten from President Bush. And I don’t think that’s much of an answer. The answer that he’ll [make public] the complete list is finally the right answer.”

After basing his campaign for president on a promise to transform Washington, Obama is obliged to set the highest ethical standards, some government watchdog groups say. His transition co-chair, John Podesta, further raised expectations when he vowed last month to run the most open transition in history.

The complaint filed against Blagojevich said he wanted to talk to one of Obama’s aides and ask for help raising up to $15 million for a nonprofit group the governor wanted to create.

Yet top aides to the president-elect, including Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who has political ties to Blagojevich, have not been made available to reporters.

Emanuel has accompanied Obama to some of his news conferences in Chicago over the last month, standing off to the side with other aides. But since the Blagojevich story broke, he has largely kept out of public view. He was not seen at Obama’s latest news conference.

On Thursday, Obama sought to address criticism that he was too tepid in his early reaction to the political scandal that has riveted much of the nation.

“Let me say that I was as appalled and disappointed as anybody by the revelations earlier this week,” Obama said.

He sought to reassure people that he had no dealings on the matter with Blagojevich, and that his staff played no part in horse-trading over the Senate seat.

He said: “What I’m absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat. That, I’m absolutely certain of. And that is — that would be a violation of everything that this campaign has been about, and that’s not how we do business.” …

http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....3974.story

The article continues:

But in proclaiming that he was not involved, Obama may have made a tactical mistake, some veterans of past White House crises said.

In his initial comments, Obama said he was “not aware of anything that was happening.” If that turns out to be premature, it could prove damaging to Obama’s credibility given the expectations surrounding his presidency, the former officials said.

Mark Fabiani, a lawyer who represented the White House under President Clinton, said, “When the president-elect says he didn’t talk to the governor and didn’t know what was going on, that’s drawing a line in the sand that you’d better be able to defend.

“It’s hard for anyone who’s at the top of a sprawling organization like a transition to know everything that’s going on. And it’s something that may turn out to be 100% true, but it’s a red flag that has been raised up. And everybody now is shooting at the red flag: the media, the Republicans.”

But who does the LA Times dredge up to offer a comment?

John W. Dean, a former White House counsel who went to jail in the Watergate scandal, said it was understandable that Obama might have needed a few days to find his voice.

“This sort of thing catches you out of left field,” Dean said, “particularly during a transition, which is an incredibly busy time. They’re in mild crisis mode all the time anyway trying to get a new government together.”

Nice.

See with Dean and McClellan they can say they got the Republican view of events as well.