Anyone who has been a staff person for a high-level elected official - governor, congressman, senator, president - knows the nightmare: Doing something that makes you or your boss look like a doofus.
And because I had one or two such moments over the years, I can sympathize with the person in the White House press office who put together the credential pictured here for the President's just-completed trip.
As you can see from the list of cities on the credential, the President visited the states of Washington, California and Colorado. The staffer who designed the credential decided to illustrate this by highlighting the three states in white.
The problem? They highlighted Wyoming, not Colorado. Next time, double-check the atlas before you okay that printer's proof.
Demonstrating once again that there is no "added value" in an Ivy League education, the President showed up on the Kentucky-Ohio border the other day and informed the crowd that America was the nation that built the "intercontinental railroad." (See a transcript here.)
Really? We built a railroad that runs from one continent to another? Was that the one between North America and Europe, or between North America and Asia?
It's just another sign that Barry isn't that bright a guy. We've enjoyed the other examples, noted here, here,here, here and here, that reinforce the notion that not only is he not the brightest guy in America, he probably isn't nearly as smart as Dan Quayle.
But at least some of the mistakes - the "Austrian" language, the inability to pronounce the word "corpsman" - could be written off as one-time gaffes. It turns out, however, that this was at least the fifth incidence of his using the "intercontinental railroad" phrase, (see examples here) which means the folks in his speechwriting shop aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer either.
Think there's any chance you'll read about this in the New York Times, Washington Post or Star-Tribune? Doesn't seem likely, because it would interfere with their already-established narrative of Mr. Hope-and-Change being a brainiac, although a quick glance at the nation's economic statistics would seem to tell you otherwise.
Actually, two new blogs. As many of you know, I work part-time for the Wild, and one of the things I do is prepare a set of game notes before each home game. These are distributed to the Guest Services and Security staff, along with some others, before each game. They provide the staff with a little background info, some historical notes, standings, etc., in part so that they can have a little extra insight when they talk hockey with the patrons.
Anyway, this year I've decided to put those notes up on a separate blog, so that staff can read them before they get to the arena, and so that they also have a place to direct some of the fans who have learned about the notes and often request a copy. So before each home game, you'll be able to find the notes at www.wildgamenotes.com. I anticipate that I'll also share some post-game observations and maybe a little discussion will take place.
The second blog belongs to my oldest son, Travis, who is a very shrewd observer of both the Wild and the entire NHL. He has started a new blog at:
I'm not normally a big Jay Leno fan - his humor seems stuck in 1992 - but tonight he got off a really terrific line about the President: "After saying the jobs bill is paid for, President Obama now says that it will be paid for by raising taxes over 10 years. I can’t figure out if he’s the kind of guy who makes infomercials, or the kind of guy who falls for infomercials."
It was said back in the '70s that people really knew Nixon was in trouble when Johnny Carson started making fun of him. I think it still holds true, and probably even more so for a Democrat: When Hollywood lefties like Leno think you're a buffoon, you're probably in big trouble.
The White House predicated much of its economic recovery plan on the idea of "green jobs." The idea is built on the fantasy that there is some sort of available technology - solar, wind, biomass, whatever - that can be cheaper and more effective than our current energy sources.
That fact is that if such technology existed and could be properly harnessed, the private sector would be doing it. But liberals love to believe the fantasy that we can all slap a solar panel on our roof and a windmill in our backyard and fulfill all our energy needs without any byproducts.
It's a pipe dream, but it's a harmless one - until they start spending your money trying to fulfill it.
Which is where Solyndra comes in. Solyndra was a California start-up company whose founders claimed they could create thousands of jobs manufacturing solar panels, if only they could get a little help from the government.
And help they got. The company applied for a $535 million loan guarantee through a Dept. of Energy program. The application was being reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which had a number of concerns about the project, and one OMB staffer even said that according to the business model, the company would "run out of money by September, 2011." That warning turned out to be prescient.
But the White House was undeterred. E-mails released this week by congressional investigators show an unrelenting pressure from the Obama administration to approve the loan guarantees. OMB finally bowed to that pressure, allowing the president to travel to California (see the NBC clip below) to boast about all of the "green jobs" he was producing.
Except, of course, it was just another liberal pipe dream. Solyndra burned through half a billion dollars, then filed for bankruptcy and laid off all 1,100 workers. The FBI has raided the business, and the Treasury Department has launched a fraud investigation.
So why would Obama push so hard for this project? Well, as Deep Throat said in "All The President's Men," "follow the money."
It turns out that a foundation belonging to billionaire George Kaiser was a big investor in Solyndra. Who is George Kaiser? He's an Oklahoma business man who:
-- Personally donated more than $53,000 to Obama's 2008 campaign -- Raised and "bundled" between $50,000 and $100,000 for that campaign -- Encouraged Solyndra executives and board members to donate another $87,050 to that campaign -- Was a visitor to the White House on 16 occasions
The House held two days of hearings this week on the scandal, which is explained well in the NBC report below. You'll be hearing a LOT more about this story in the coming weeks.
His Holiness, Obama the First (and soon to be last) actually said that to a crowd in North Carolina on Wednesday, reported here by AFP.
So that's what it's come to, eh? His popularity plummeting, his policies ruining the economy and his fellow Democrats deserting him (see that story here) Obama is down to the only card he thinks he has left: The cult of personality.
It got him to the Oval Office, where his inexperience and ineptitude have been exposed. It won't get his flawed jobs program passed, and it won't get him re-elected.
Everyone is writing about their memories of 9/11/01, and being a bit of a contrarian, I wasn't planning to write anything special, since my experience was quite similar to that of millions of other people. Shock, disbelief, anger, etc.
But today I found a story worth sharing. It involves a pilot named Heather Penney, who was a Lieutenant on 9/11, stationed at Andrews Air Force base outside of Washington. You can read the entire account here, but the story in a nutshell is this:
On duty as a newly-minted Air Force pilot, Heather and her commanding officer learned of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks much like everyone else. Then came the news that a fourth plane was in the air, and believed to be heading for Washington. The two of them were told to get in their jets and stop the airliner.
The kicker to the story is that there was no time to put ammunition or missiles on their planes. The two of them went up in the air, prepared to fly their planes directly into the airliner, sacrificing their own lives to bring down the plane.
Read the story for all of the details, but it's a remarkable story of heroism that Lt. Penney - now a Major - has not talked publicly about until now.
I remember being with some friends a week or two after 9/11, and we talked about how encouraging it was to see people flying the flag, singing "God Bless America" and the general sense of patriotism that was becoming part of more people's daily lives. I said that while it was uplifting to see people reacting that way, I wanted others to know that some of us felt that same way on Sept. 10, and that we didn't need to be attacked to understand how much we loved America.
Heather Penney loved America as well, and was prepared to give up her life in a war that none of us even understood we were fighting at that point. She went on to fly two tours in Iraq, and still flies for the National Guard. As long as America continues to produce men and women with her kind of courage, we'll continue to be the land of the free.
