For a Guy Who Walks on Water This is Pretty Clumsy

Good grief. If we keep track of every witless remark the Messiah makes we’ll sound like those Bush-deranged Berkeleyites with the “Somewhere in Texas there’s a village missing its idiot” bumper stickers on their Priuses.

Except that we won’t be exaggerating.

The first appearance by a sitting president on “The Tonight Show” may well end up being the last.

President Obama, in his taping with Jay Leno Thursday afternoon, attempted to yuk it up with the funnyman, and ended up insulting the disabled.

Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he’s gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

He bowled a 129, the president said.

“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.

It’s “like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.

It’s maybe at least the last time he goes on TV without his security blanket.

Update:

Priceless. (And I updated the “security blanket” link, above.)

Not Everybody Obama Throws Under the Bus

necessarily belongs there.

The handful of souls who championed the firm’s now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president.

“They’ve chosen to throw us under the bus,” said a Financial Products executive, one of several who spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals. “They have vilified us.”

Read the whole thing before you get your undies in a twist over those “bonus” payments, too.

They say what is missing from this week’s hysteria is perspective. The very handsome retention payments they received over the past week were set in motion early last year when the firm’s former president, Joe Cassano, was on his way out the door. Financial Products was already running into trouble on its risky credit bets, and the year ahead looked grim. People were weighing offers from other firms, and AIG executives feared that too many departures could lead to disaster.

So AIG stepped in with an offer to employees of Financial Products. Work through all of 2008, and you’d get a lump payment in March 2009. Stick around through 2009, and you’ll get paid through 2010. Almost all other forms of compensation — bonuses, deferred payments and the like — have vanished.

“People are trying to do the right thing,” the same Financial Products executive said. “Guys have worked their [tails] off to try to get value for the taxpayer. This isn’t money that’s being advanced to us. People have performed the work and done it exactly as we asked them to do.”

Not that there aren’t heads which should roll for this mess. I could think of a couple to start with. And we all know where the buck stops.

OK, cut the laughing.

Outrage OTD

The Pentagon’s worst wounds are self-inflicted ones. Like giving a citation to Congressman John Murtha. What in the name of Sulphorous Hell were they thinking?

John Murtha deserves no such award. He has routinely and deliberately undermined the United States military, slandered servicemen serving in combat, and caused irreparable damage to our international reputation. While serving as a Representative from Pennsylvania, Murtha called Marines from 3d Battalion, 1st Marines “cold blooded killers” who “murdered innocent civilians.” Before an investigation into the Haditha incident was even conducted, Murtha went on numerous television news programs and announced that the Marines “went into houses and killed women and children.” He said, “There’s no question in my mind about what happened here. There was no gunfire, they killed four people in a taxi…24 people were killed.” When asked specifically if he claimed that innocent civilians were intentionally executed by Marines, he said, “That’s exactly what happened.” Not content to slander those Marines directly involved, he went on to claim that if these Marines were not punished, “other Marines would say well I’ll do the same thing.” Murtha then continued to use this incident to lobby for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, citing it as evidence that our military was incapable of winning the war.

You can sign a petition to urge the Navy to correct this error.

To “Tacky” we can confidently add “Clueless”

Except that Clueless wasn’t one of the movies.

Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.
The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen. Although he mournfully had to put the popcorn away, he is unlikely to jeopardise the special relationship – or “special partnership”, as we are now supposed to call it – by registering a complaint.

Let’s just keep asking: What would the press have done if Bush had pulled such a gaffe?

Update:

Mark Steyn has a great idea.

When the President and his Teleprompter visit London for the G20 summit in a couple of weeks, it would be a tragedy were Barack Oprompta to rise for his big speech to find nothing but the words “Wrong Region” flashing on his screen (although I’m sure the Queen would be very polite and string along and make all the swells stand up and join the toast to “Ron Region”, whoever he is).

What Pelosi Knows and Won’t Admit

While Pelosi, Obama, and just about every other Washington low-life complains about “business jets”, Pelosi likes them just fine as long as the taxpayer is footing the bill.

Bill Garvey wrote an op ed for the NYT, explaining why private airplanes are a good idea, that was severely edited for space. Here’s the whole magilla.

Here’s a reality check: Envision a rectangle 11 feet long by four feet, nine inches across. Now, stand in the center, scrunching down so the top of your head is no more than 57.5 inches from the bottom of your heels. That’s the cabin area of those riding in a Citation CJ1, which together with its predecessors, comprise the most populous model — by far — of business jet in the world.

The part that The One misses is how much he is talking down an American industrial success story.

And here’s the thing: The aircraft and their systems are, for the most part, made here in the U.S. of A., by union and non-union workers, in places like Wichita, Cedar Rapids, Savannah, Phoenix, Indianapolis and Cincinnati. And they’re prized throughout the world. In 2007, half the business jets delivered by U.S. manufacturers went to foreign buyers who paid more than $3 billion for them. Manufacturers elsewhere, including in Japan and Germany, have tried to compete, but they were so utterly trounced by American ingenuity and craftsmanship that they simply gave up.

There are foreign-made business aircraft to be sure; for example, Falcon Jets made in France by Dassault are highly regarded. But even those are stuffed with American-made avionics, engines, subsystems and interiors. Indeed, Dassault’s largest facility in the world is in Little Rock, Ark., where 2,285 people work completing Falcon interiors and readying them for delivery. In further acknowledgment of America’s business aviation leadership, Brazil’s Embraer is right now building a business jet production plant in Florida, and Honda another in North Carolina.