A message from PEER
Posted: December 15, 2008 Filed under: A My Pet Goat Moment, Action Memo, Environmental Protection, No Obama, president teleprompter jesus, Team Obama, U.S. Economy | Tags: bad obama appointments, Lisa Jackson, obama bad for the EPA, Obama EPA appointment is bad for environment and public, PEER 1 Comment
As a public employee, I found myself frequently in the position of watching higher-ups do things that were not ethical, responsible or mindful of the public welfare. I have less problems with that now that I work for a University as a prof endowed with intellectual freedom. Other agency employees don’t have that same protection. I have worked for ‘other’ agencies. There was also very little I could do about it. One of the groups I support is PEER. This is a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. It was formed, in part, because of the incredible suppression of scientific evidence that has occurred recently to further business interests.
I’d like to bring this latest action memo to your attention as I think you’ll agree, it’s an interesting one.
As word of President-elect Obama’s environmental team was being authoritatively leaked around town, one name jumped out at us – Lisa Jackson, until recently head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, was tapped to head EPA.
Anguished DEP employees (and a few who had resigned in disgust) urged us to put the word out about Jackson, including her –
- Failure to tell parents or workers at the Kiddie Kollege day-care center for three months about mercury contamination in the former thermometer factory it was located in (kid you not);
- Efforts that set water quality standards so low that aquatic life in the state’s rivers and lakes would be poisoned – and that was according to the Bush administration, which also had to intervene to rescue New Jersey’s crippled Superfund program; and
- Suppression of science, politicized decision-making, and an embrace of secrecy (even invoking “executive privilege” to shield her meeting calendars from public view).
In short, her former staff at DEP would be the last to nominate her for promotion. The stories from DEP workers are eerily reminiscent of what we have been hearing from dispirited EPA staff during the Bush years.
As one might imagine, our note of dissent on the Jackson pick is being drowned out by a chorus of happy talk. We will be urging the Senate and anyone else who seriously want to evaluate Ms. Jackson’s record to talk to the parents of the Kiddie Kollege toddlers.
As one might imagine, I have a feeling that in the coming years, more than ever, PEER will be called upon to tell inconvenient truths.
Does this offend you NOW?
Posted: December 6, 2008 Filed under: No Obama, president teleprompter jesus, Uncategorized, Women's Rights | Tags: Obama Chief Speech Writer Jon Favreau, Obama Speech writers 6 Comments Obama Chief Speech Writer Jon Favreau 
in yet another one of those ‘innocent’ frat boy moments for Team Obama.
What does it take to get men to understand that acting out rape fantasies is not funny? Swanspirit did a little photoshop with the offending facebook photo and I want you to play a little infinite regress … will it offend you now? Start putting the heads of your mothers, your daughters, and other women you know in the shot and ask yourself is this offensive?
Riverdaughter’s been on roll about this and I suggest you check it out.
update: Oh, jon’s a busy boy …
Does it offend you now? 
UPDATE: oh, no, they struck again … and yet again!


Postscript: We think we’ve identified the entire Obama speech writing team:
Adam Frankel … kissy guy on the right
Sarah Hurwitz in the back left
Ben Rhodes in the back right
Howls from the The Progressive Wilderness
Posted: December 2, 2008 Filed under: Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us, No Obama, PUMA, U.S. Economy | Tags: Team Obama 2 Comments
I continue to be amazed by the number of progressive bloggers that are rationalizing their votes for Obama while experiencing one jaw-dropping Obama appointment after another. Today, I read David Sirota’s addendum to the latest progressive hissy-fit. That is, it must be we haven’t had enough hissy-fits because the one is obviously not listening to us. Read it all here.
Did Obama really run on a progressive agenda? If you’ve read any of us Cassandras on The Confluence or other Puma places, you’ll see that we’ve been saying he’s not a progressive for a long time. My favorite description of the one is opportunistic chameleon. Let’s face it progressives, ever since you were had on FISA, the one realized it wasn’t his platform but his hopey changey say nothing of substance speeches that would get him elected. Why would you think that would change now?
This is the Obama voter gene pool …
Posted: November 18, 2008 Filed under: John McCain, Main Stream Media, No Obama, The Media SUCKS | Tags: Main Stream Media, Obama voters 12 CommentsOne of the best laughs I got all year was watching a Howard Stern video on youtube that got a ton of voters to agree with basically everything John McCain had said and done–including the choice of Sarah Palin for VP–simply by ascribing it to Barack Obama. The video I posted below is along that vein but isn’t meant for humor. It shows the level of knowledge present in many Obama voters. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Several times during the last few weeks, I had a very dear friend of mine send me this list of what they considered ‘notable’ things so that I would just suddenly realize that none of the problems that I had with obama were based on anything but my refusal to admit I’m a closet bigot. The first time I read it, I thought it was a joke, much the way that I thought the Howard Stern thing was a joke. When I got it the second time with the question that I really hadn’t pondered Sarah Palin’s qualifications for vp in all my blogging threads, I realized it wasn’t a joke. I had a difficult time coming up with a response because, again, my first reaction was you’ve got to be kidding me.
So, tell me I’m not the only one that thinks that having your family up on stage with you, including your pregnant unwed daughter is no big deal. Why is it considered ‘parading’–an obviously prejorative word? All candidates appear on stage with their family. What difference would it make if it were Obama instead of Palin? The list just gets nuttier and nuttier. Who cares if you make a living being a beer distributer? Running illegal booze during prohibition certainly didn’t hurt the Kennedy family. People get addictions to all kinds of things all the time … that knows no racial boundaries? Many past first ladies had problems with alcohol and drugs. Why would it make any difference to me if it were Cindy or Michelle? Goodness no!
I really laughed hard at the Keating Five thing since I will still point out to the THREE advisors (including Pritzker) on the Obama board that were major players in this current financial crisis. If the Keating five thing disqualified McKain, then the current problems of FNMA, Freddie Mac, and the investment banks should’ve disqualified Obama. Let’s not even go into the Rezko thing and his two ‘religious advisors’: Wright and Pflager.
The Obama supporters I know felt Palin to be completely unqualified to be VP but never addressed my issue of why they think Obama was qualified to be president? I always hear the Harvard thing, but he was a legacy, just like Dubya. Since we never have seen any of his transcripts or scores, it’s difficult to say he did anything more than graduate. Even George Bush managed to graduate from Harvard. It has a longstanding reputation as the hardest school to flunk out of and you know that if you’ve ever been privvy to university jokes.
So I finally sent my response back to my long time friend saying I found this list of things to ponder pretty ridiculous. I also felt that it came from some one suffering from severe holier-than-thou syndrome that is typical of the delusionally religious. I was not interested in folks divorces, addictions, and bad boy behavior in college. Finally, the charismatic, eloquent speaker thing only happens when there’s a teleprompter around, in case you hadn’t noticed.
But then it occured to me, how could any of these folks actually notice any of this? I’d bet none of them read papers and magazines other than maybe USA Today and People. They probably get what little news the read from the AP wire in their local newspapers and the same feed to their local news stations. So, when they get all haughty about Palin, ask them what they read? Ask them if they know who controls congress, who is the speaker of the house and the senate majority leader? Ask them what they think of the Bush Doctrine? My guess is that unless they’re out here in blog land with a few of us, you’d better switch to asking football questions if you really want answers.
Ponder the following:
What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?
What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review?
What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?
What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?
What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident, when she no longer measured up to his standards?
What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?
What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?
What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?
What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)
What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?
What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing seven planes?
What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?
What if Michelle Obama’s family had made their money from beer distribution?
What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?
You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?
This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference.






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