IG-Gate: The Sacramento Sex Scandal Obama and MSM Want You to Ignore

Yeah, this kind of stuff could get embarrassing:

About 11:00 p.m., Mr. Johnson arrived at St. Hope and instructed [her] to gather her things and come with him. Mr. Johnson drove to [her] apartment, which is managed by St. Hope Development and houses its AmeriCorps members, purportedly so that they could review the students' grades. While in [her] apartment, in which another AmeriCorps member had a separate bedroom, Mr. Johnson laid down on [her] bed. [The woman] sat on the edge of the bed to show him the grades, at which time Mr. Johnson "layed [sic] down behind me, cupping his body around mine like the letter C. After about 2-3 minutes or so, I felt his hand on my left side where my hip bone is."

That's from WorldNetDaily, digging up more gold from the motherlode Grassley-Issa report (PDF) on the firing of AmeriCorps IG Gerald Walpin. The Democratic mayor of Sacramento seemed to think he could use the federally-funded St. HOPE program the way Eliot Spitzer used the Emperor's Club VIP call-girl agency.

Kevin Johnson's fiancee -- who just happens to be the boss of D.C. public schools -- tried to sweet-talk Walpin out of blowing the whistle on her sweetie and, when Walpin wouldn't play ball for Obama's buddies, the White House fired Walpin and lied about it. And then there are those magic words: "Hush money."

All of which adds up to one heckuva sex scandal, but you're not seeing much about this in the MSM, are you? The New York Times buried the story inside Saturday's paper with the bland headline, "G.O.P. Report Connects Official to Fiancé’s Case."

If Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee weren't Democrats, the New York Times would be running 72-point headlines on Page One: REPUBLICANS ROCKED BY TEEN SEX 'HUSH MONEY' CHARGES!

But like Professor Glenn Reynolds says, "When the press can ignore a sex scandal, you know it's covering for politicians, not covering them."

More at Memeorandum and the IG-Gate blog.

Booze-blogging?

Stephen Green of VodkaPundit is widely hailed as the inventor of drunk-blogging -- i.e., live-blogging an event while under the influence. I had the opportunity during the 2008 Democratic National Convention to actually watch the master at work, and attest that the man can, as the late poet Ronnie Van Zant once said, "drink enough whiskey to float a battleship around."

I've never tried drunk-blogging myself, at least not on purpose, although there may have been occasions -- including Election Night at the Hotel Saranac -- when the deadline pressure required me to self-medicate to counteract the effects of my massive coffee intake.

All of that, however, is prelude to a discussion of booze-blogging, which is blogging about booze. Given that this site is the originator of Rule 5 Sunday -- the weekly babe-blogging roundup -- you might suppose that the natural booze-and-broads pairing would replicate itself on the 'sphere. Yet until this morning, I didn't even know there was such a thing as booze-blogging.

Then I got an e-mail from Doug Winship of the Pegu Blog, who informed me that he found "How to Get a Million Hits" inspirational. Doug wanted to pass along the news that, just as political bloggers are encroaching on the Old Media's turf, so it is that booze-bloggers are exposing booze bias among the snobs:

Unless you spend a lot of time in wine chat rooms, you may have missed the recent controversies involving critic Robert Parker. The short version: Parker's publication, the Wine Advocate, was found to be violating its own strictures against freebies and fraternizing with wine importers, and a contributor he hired gave a high rating to a wine based on a sample that seemed to bear little resemblance to what was available on retail shelves. The back-to-back scandals . . . came to light via several wine Web sites, including Parker's own online discussion board. The Internet angle is actually the most significant aspect of this story, for it underscores how profoundly technology is changing the relationship between wine critics and consumers -- the relationship between you and me.

Personally, I avoid wine just like I avoid whiskey (ever since Jack Daniel and I had a bad night at Ralph and Millie's Christmas party a few years ago). Above all, however, I avoid snobbery.

Beer snobs get on my nerves. It pains me to see these poseurs pestering a bartender in quest of some obscure imported premium ale -- dark as sin, with the flavor and texture of a peat bog -- just so their friends won't see them drinking a Bud.

The Internet revolutionizes everything it touches, from poker to politics to porn. The 'Net has also apparently revolutionized snobbery, enabling status-seekers to go online and find highfalutin stuff with which to impress their peers -- including pricey call girls. But a whore is a whore is a whore, and a beer is a beer is a beer, and all these Veblenian status-displays don't change the basic facts.

Fortunately, Doug Winship appears to strive against such bibulous pretensiousness, although he hasn't gotten down in the gutter with Valu-Rite vodka, the favorite swill of hobo-killers.

You've got to admire the populism of a guy who writes about drinking at Disney World. No cork-sniffing epicurean would admit such a thing, lest he be shunned by sommeliers.

Community Organizer in Chief & Sidekick Muttley Doing Fine

by Smitty (h/t Melanie Morgan)

Protests against the steaming pile of health care legislation were conducted in such diverse places as:

• Houston (doctors)
• Philadelphia
• Las Vegas

(interestingly, news.google.com returns 0 of these links--thanks, comatose media sycophants!)

And that was just the vote to squeeze that loaf on the Senate floor to admire its scatalogical splendor.

Now, Muttley the Attorney General is facing blowback from New York City about the KSM trial.

The 9/11 Never Forget Coalition, a diverse group of 9/11 victims, family members, first responders, active and reserve members of the military, veterans, and concerned Americans, is holding a November 24th press conference to discuss the details of their December 5th rally protesting the plan to bring the 9/11 terrorist conspirators to trial in New York City.

The Coalition formed to fight the decision of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to try the 9/11 co-conspirators in New York City’s federal court, effectively giving war criminals the same rights as American citizens while endangering the safety of all New Yorkers.

It's almost as if the actual people of New York want the KSM trial as badly as the actual people of Chicago wanted the 2016 Olympics. Don't they know that there will be copious economic stimulus involved? Lots of billable hours, bread and legal circus for all?

I voted for Ross Perot, the outsider, in '92. Looking back, I've often wondered if his blunt style would have ground things to a halt, had we the tubey-webs at the time to amplify the support for un-b0rking our country.

Now, we have a slick, cerebral, well-connected POTUS who is managing to grind things to a halt through serial asshattery. One views the thought of 36 more months of this tripe with an emotion somewhere between academic interest and morbid curiousity. What bogosity will next week bring?

One sincerely prays for BHO's physical safety, and that of his family. He must live to see every false, un-American aspect of his thought fully repudiated. However, his political demise cannot arrive soon enough. The BigHollywood.com dumpster dive isn't likely to deliver anything substantial. BHO's sidekick Muttley, was enamored of the veterinarian's daughter and sings a fine soprano. He lacks the sack to do his godforsaken job. He irresponsibly misinterprets the Law of War for political purposes, while paying ACORN scant heed.

You could not have sold a script for the events of 2009 to a Hollywood studio. It would have seemed too outlandish. Really bad reality TV is fine for its fans, but there is too much at stake for the country. I've no memory of there ever being a protest against bringing legislation to the floor of the Senate. Also, I've never heard of this kind of a planned protest for a trial. We need a real administration.

ACORN Banana (stuff for which I should be slapped, installment #517)

by Smitty (h/t Little Miss Attila)

I must admit to both glee at the dumpster diving episode and Fischersville Mike envy, with the parodies. Doesn't dumpster diving make you think of another Barry?

ACORN Banana

Her name was Hanah, posed as a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
And while she tried to be madame, Jimmie had the pocket cam
In an office dive, they worked from 9 till 5
They were young and they had each other
Who could film this live?

At ACORNa, ACORN gone bananas
They didn't quite make it to Atlanta
At ACORNa, ACORN banana
Tax evasion, illicit passion were always the fashion
At ACORNa....they plotted crime

(ACORNa, ACORNa banana)

Its name was RICO, it was a statute
It was a mother of a law, convicts take it on the jaw
And when it's finished, ACORN is over
But Rico goes a bit too far, Holder's frightened of the law
And when indictments fly and pols get blackened eye
There's blood on the tracks
But only Dylan knows why!

At ACORNa, ACORN gone bananas
They didn't quite make it to Atlanta
At ACORNa, ACORNa banana
Tax evasion, illicit passion were always the fashion
At ACORNa....she gets no love

At ACORNa, ACORN gone bananas
They didn't quite make it to Atlanta
At ACORNa, ACORNa banana
Tax evasion, illicit passion were always the fashion

Her name is Hanah, she was a showgirl
But that was 30 months ago, when they started up the show
It's dead as disco, but not for Hanah
Still in the dress she used to wear, faded feathers in her hair
She sits there so refined, and thinks the media blind
She and Jimmie outed ACORN
But not in Olbermann's mind!

At ACORNa, ACORN gone bananas
They didn't quite make it to Atlanta
At ACORNa, ACORNa banana
Tax evasion, illicit passion were always the fashion
At ACORNa....she gets no love

ACORNa...don't fall in love
ACORNacabana
ACORNacabana

That sound you just heard . . .

. . . was my head exploding:

On June 27, 2008, Michelle Rhee, head of the Washington, D.C., school system, paid a visit to Gerald Walpin, who was inspector general of the government volunteer organization AmeriCorps. . . .
Rhee, who later became engaged to marry Johnson, had been on St. Hope’s board of directors before taking over as chief of the District of Columbia system. Her apparent goal, as she visited Walpin, was to vouch for Johnson.
"The basic point of her meeting with me was to tell me what a great guy he was," Walpin recalls, "and what wonderful work he has done, and that maybe he had made mistakes administratively, but that she thought I should give as much consideration as possible to his good work in deciding what to do."

OK, my head exploded not merely because Byron York scooped me again -- he's a good reporter -- but because the sex-scandal angle in the IG-Gate story is being ignored by the MSM.

Here you've got Johnson, accused of sexual misconduct by three different St. HOPE students, and one of the St. HOPE board members -- who also happens to be Johnson's fiancee -- is trying to get the Inspector General to drop his investigation, in the middle of Johnson's 2008 campaign for mayor. The accused sexual predador is a close friend of the president, and Little Miss Predator-Enabler is the head of D.C. public schools?

On what planet is this not front-page news?

IG-Gate: White House Walpin Spin Game BUMPED: Grassley-Issa Report Added UPDATE: Sex Scandal + 'Hush Money' = Not News?

UPDATE 9:20 p.m.: My report at the American Spectator:

Sexual abuse accusations by St. HOPE Academy students against Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson were apparently covered up, possibly with "hush money," according to a 61-page report issued by congressional investigators. . . .
The Grassley-Issa report says that agents of the inspector's general office who investigated the St. HOPE sex-abuse charges "immediately recognized what appeared to be improper handling of this allegation . . . and unethical conduct by Mr. Johnson's attorney," Kevin Hiestand, who was also the mayor's business partner.

And at the Hot Air Green Room:

What makes this so amazing to me is how the MSM’s political bias apparently trumps their basic news judgment.
Teenage girls? Sex abuse? Powerful politicians? "Hush money"? Dude, if that story’s not front-page news, I don’t know is.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notices that the MSM is missing in action on the IG-Gate story, and Hot Air's Ed Morrissey says:

Will the national media finally take some interest in the story now? The White House not only deliberately misled Congress on Walpin’s firing, they also withheld these new documents until after Grassley and Issa made their initial report on the investigation on Friday. As Byron York notes, that takes the traditional Friday-night document dump to a whole new level. It also completely refutes any claim on transparency and openness from this administration.

The joint report of House and Senate Republican investigative staff is here (PDF).

PREVIOUSLY (11:46 a.m.): Byron York has a report today on the way the Obama White House played "hide the facts" about the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Good work, Byron.

Eric Holder is in deep doo-doo. This is classic "Culture of Corruption" stuff that Michelle Malkin has relentlessly exposed.

Communications Breakdown

This afternoon, I fell asleep while reading Craig Shirley's new book, Rendezvous With Destiny: Ronald Reagan and the Campaign That Changed America.

When I woke up, Glenn Beck was on TV, talking about this New York Times story that I blogged about yesterday. In his opening monologue, Beck explained that a key part of this story -- about the massive interest payments required by federal deficit spending -- was actually in his own Common Sense book, published five months ago.

Think about that. Today's front-page news for the New York Times was reported five months ago by a radio/TV talk-show host. Meanwhile, we're discovering that scientists have fudged the global warming data. And Florida Gov. Charlie Closet Crist is calling Marco Rubio a liar? Does Charlie's beard wife know about this?

"Communication Breakdown, it's always the same . . ."

Sheer evil genius

by Smitty

<sarcasm>
Guys, I've got this one. You may have seen the trapped-in-brain story, and wondered how having the government run health care is possibly going to deal with such.

Consider this: when combined with the legal drift described at Overcriminalized.com society can attain Die Endlösung:

Outlaw illness!

The idea is awesome in its bloody-minded simplicity. Just slip a few more pages into the next multi-ream excretion with some inverted title like "Federal Universal Coverage Knowledge-base: Young, Old, Undecided."

This thing of beauty would convert hospitals to jails and use treatment scarcity as a means of capital punishment on these newly minted criminals. We can sculpt the perfect society like clay. Like clay, I tell you.

The economic stimulus for undertakers alone will appease even the Chinese. Mwahahahaha.
</sarcasm>

ObamaCare pussy and the tough call

by Smitty (h/t Miss Celania)

Oh, just bury it in legislation. Four reams or so is the new standard.

The Dennis Moore lesson

A successful Kansas Democrat has decided not to seek re-election, opening a seat in a "purple" District that is attracting several Republican hopefuls:

All [of the potential GOP candidates] told The Kansas City Star that they believed Moore . . . was in trouble because of his support for many of President Barack Obama’s initiatives, including the stimulus package and health care reform.
"He's very vulnerable," O'Hara said. "He's become a voting machine for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party."

What is happening to Moore in KS3 now is part of a nationwide phenomenon that will become more apparent going into the 2010 mid-terms.

Middle-class voters perceive that the ascent of Obama to the White House has resulted in a political imbalance that in turn produced bad economic policies. Even many of those who voted for "Hope and Change" now want to elect Republicans to Congress to restore balance in Washington. In suburban and rural districts where Bush won in 2004 but Democrats currently hold congressional seats, the anti-Bush backlash that dominated in 2006 and 2008 has ended.

The combination of unprecedented deficit spending and high unemployment constitutes a toxic burden to Democrats going into 2010. The stimulus-and-bailout agenda was never popular among middle-class voters. It is not merely the economic failure of that agenda, but the way it contradicts basic bourgeois beliefs about financial prudence, which make it such a political liability. Any Democrat in a middle-class district who voted for that agenda can expect to be pounded relentlessly by attack ads.

And expect to see a lot of Not-A-Politician candidates emerge as the GOP challengers in these districts. This isn't just about "populism," it's about Republicans understanding the current political terrain.

Endangered Democratic incumbents would like nothing better than to face a Republican opponent who is already a state senator or a long-serving county commissioner -- someone with a political record that can be used in opposition research. Therefore, GOP activists will be seeking out squeaky-clean Solid Citizen types, "outsiders" who bring no political baggage into the campaign -- school teachers, small business owners, housewives, etc.

The media will try to portray this as a "peasants with pitchforks" phenomenon, but it's really just smart politics.

I hope to be as smart as Rick Moran someday

by Smitty

Why didn't you think of the celery stalk analogy, Mr. Moran? Look at your blog: you're from a nuthouse:

But Palinites are universal resenters. I don't think I'd go quite so far as Taibbi and bring race into the picture, but clearly these are "traditional Americans" who see the country changing politically, demographically, ethnically and are very uncomfortable about it. Palin, by speaking to their fears on a gut level, offers a refuge of sorts from the storm; reassuring those who need it that they are not alone, that there are others who share their fears.

Let's work on the list:

• Politically - Progressives have legislated their way around the Constitution for a century. If you've noticed, and maybe you have not, there has been a 12 TRILLION DOLLAR BILL racked up. It's theft. Should we 'resent' evil? Should we say 'two tears in a bucket' and play through, hoping we die of old age before the crash? Should we write air-headed blog posts decrying the locution of someone, anyone, who happens to command the political capital to DO SOMETHING about it, potentially?
• Demographically - I can't even hazard a guess what you might mean here, Mr. Moran. But you've deployed an important sounding word, so I guess that makes you important. The people who seem freaked out about the demographics, if we mean the census next year, appear to be the left. They understand that an honest read of people fleeing confiscatory taxation in blue states are going to diminish the power of CA and NY, for example. Hence the need to position the books near the microwave, for easy cooking, so to speak.
• Ethnically - Is this a stealth race card play? The starboard blogosphere supports the gamut of genetic expression, AFAICT. Is this your way of slipping in a little hint of non-falsifiability, so that you can continue to write cheesy little posts about how the best of others falls short of your 'good enough'?

"speaking to their fears on a gut level"

How convenient of you to dismiss legitimate concerns as "fears". We have observed US politics as pure circus in the 111th Congress. Fine, argue that this is business as usual, but the fact is that the people are now paying attention. You can argue that the people have been asleep at the switch for a century. I'll give you that. However, the Congress works for the people, not the reverse. Labeling the popular dismay at the litany of un-representative moves undertaken by the Congress and Administration "their fears" seems, cheap, condescending, and in keeping with your usual style, Mr. Moran. Why are you such an apologist for what would likely be a full-on tyranny, had it greater competence?

Back you your post, Mr. Moran:

They will tell you it's all about "socialism" but these same folks didn't seem to mind much when Bush pushed the prescription drug benefit, or the huge federal interference in education represented by the No Child Left Behind legislation. If Bush had gotten half the resistance on NCLB as these folks are giving the Democrats on health care, the education monstrosity would have died in committee.

Does history exist for you prior to Bush43, Mr. Moran? At the age of 40, I can tell you that I was too busy being a squid, supporting and defending the Constitution, and placing excessive faith in my elected leadership until about age 35. Since then, after getting online and paying more attention to politics, and especially after the watershed event of Liberal Fascism, I've been studying the history of the decline of the three-branch, three-tier system of government in this country.

Fine, throw Bush43 under the bus, and Bush41 with him. But will you please apply your intellect to the deleterious effect of all of the legislation--entitlements, Community Reinvestment Act, etc., going back to the 16th Amendment, that short-circuit our Constitutional system? We've bought a momentary, unsustainable societal buzz at the expense of crushing debt, debased institutions, and the modern equivalent of aristocracy.

And you, Mr. Moran, seem to be strangely comfortable with this, posting superficially critical pieces, and supporting various GOP apparatchiks who are going to make appealing noises, while feeding the Federal beast. The problem isn't Democrat, Republican, Barack Obama or George W. Bush. The problem is the century of Progressive panem et circenses that must be rejected at all costs. Your calls for moderation are tantamount to a heroin addict confining the injections to the hours of noon to midnight. We need to get off the junk or just enjoy blowing the top of our collectivist head off. To tweak Nietzsche, socialism is the opiate of the bureaucracy, but addiction lacks middle ground.

Ho-hum: Another day, another 'Doug Hoffman, far-right extremist' spin

Yesterday at Hot Air, I pushed back against this misrepresentation of the Hoffman campaign. And now we see the same misguided claim being promoted by a writer for the Raleigh (N.C.) newspaper:

The N.C. Republican Party has been channeling its inner Jesse Helms lately, and not just because a portrait of the late conservative icon was unveiled last week.
At a GOP banquet Saturday night in North Raleigh, one of the main speakers was to have been Doug Hoffman, the New York conservative congressional candidate who was the favorite of Glenn Beck & Co . . .

Doug Hoffman's stated political positions place him squarely in the conservative mainstream of the Republican Party. The attempt to depict Hoffman and his supporters as rabid fringe fanatics is either (a) liberal propaganda or (b) faulty analysis by people who've been misled by liberal propaganda.

Hoffman did not lose because he was ideologically outside the mainstream. He lost because (a) he started with zero name recognition outside of his Lake Saranac hometown, (b) his campaign was badly underfunded until mid-October, (c) the national GOP wasted nearly $1 million propping up the doomed campaign of Dede Scozzafava, and (d) Scozzafava dropped out and endorsed the Democrat the weekend before Election Day.

Circumstances (c) and (d) are unlikely to occur again anywhere anytime ever, much less in North Carolina. For so many political "experts" to try to extract from the NY23 campaign the lesson that Hoffman was too right-wing, and that conservative Republicans are therefore generally doomed to defeat, is a case of wishful-thinking theory without adequate factual support.