JustOneMinute on Obama: Who Is This Guy?

Interesting. Still, Bill Clinton also whiffed on health care, yet no list of his failings included a non-understanding of the Great Unwashed (We were his people!).

[Let's all enjoy the better weather we've purchased with our billions of dollars] - A Clunker of a Program? - NYTimes.com

“What we ended up with,” said one senior Obama administration official, who would not speak on the record because he was being critical of his own administration’s environmental bona fides, “is a program in which you trade in old clunkers for new clunkers.” Less discussed is the second critique of the program: It rewards drivers who chose to buy gas guzzlers a few years back, but not those who spent more to buy fuel-sippers (although in recent years those who purchased efficient new hybrids got generous tax credits).

But the White House argues that there is no contradiction here — older cars contribute disproportionately to global warming, so any stimulus program that gets them off the road is a win for everyone.

John Fund: Congress’s Gulfstream Jet Scandal Is Just the Beginning - WSJ.com

Frequent flying by Congress is a growth industry. As the Journal’s Brody Mullins reported this month, House members last year spent some 3,000 days overseas on taxpayer-funded trips, up from about 550 in 1995. This month, 11 separate congressional delegations will visit Germany.
...
The House’s official handbook requires that lawmakers use regular U.S. airlines “whenever possible, unless such service is not reasonably available.” But congressional records show members routinely take military planes to London, Paris and other well-served locales. Members can fly for free with their spouses on military aircraft.

You’d think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be wise to the poor symbolism of a jet-setting Congress. But she’s part of the problem. No one objects to her ability to fly on a government jet from time to time. But last March the watchdog group Judicial Watch obtained embarrassing internal Pentagon correspondence: “Any chance of politely querying [Pelosi’s team] if they really intend to do all of these or are they just picking every weekend?” one such email read. “[T]here’s no need to block every weekend ‘just in case.’”

Other emails show intermediaries for Mrs. Pelosi frustrated when told transportation demands couldn’t be met. “It is my understanding there are no [Gulfstream] 5’s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable . . . The speaker will want to know where the planes are,” wrote aide Kay King. In a separate email, when told a certain type of aircraft wouldn’t be available, Ms. King wrote, “This is not good news, and we will have some very disappointed folks, as well as a very upset Speaker.” A Pelosi spokesman said the Judicial Watch report seemed to be based on “a few emails.”

May '09: Pelosi Graduation Remarks at Johns Hopkins University Commencement

I believe that the greatest challenge of our day is the global climate crisis and have made it the flagship issue of my Speakership.