Miscellaneous Whatever

The media have something else than Michael Jackson's death to obsess over:

Director Roman Polanski was arrested by Swiss police for possible extradition to the United States for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl, authorities said Sunday.

Polanski was flying in to receive an honorary award at the Zurich Film Festival when he was apprehended Saturday at the airport, the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement. It said U.S. authorities have sought the arrest of the 76-year-old around the world since 2005.

"There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming," ministry spokesman Guido Balmer told The Associated Press. "That's why he was taken into custody."

Balmer said the U.S. would now be given time to make a formal extradition request.

Given the fact there was clear judicial misconduct (Polanski served his 42-day sentence but the judge reneged on the agreement--clearly wrong) and the fact victim Samantha Geimer wants the case dropped, the whole circus should be ended with a dismissal of the ancient charges.
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Former president Bill Clinton mentions President Obama is going through the same crap he went through from the radical right.

Because Obama is a Democrat,

and we can debate how much of a Democrat he really is, he is getting the identical treatment Bill Clinton (or for that matter, Jimmy Carter) got. It is no surprise at all. The Republicans are worried that because Obama got huge chunks of red state votes and even carried red states like Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina, the party will be marginalized for years to come.

When backed into a corner, the Republicans do what they do best, and that's smear, smear, smear until something sticks. Apparently it is working to some extent according to recent opinion polls.

Lyons:

But unease runs deeper. In my hometown paper today, there's word of a factory manufacturing stainless-steel sinks shutting down, a sawmill cutting production to one day a week and Eli Lilly & Co. announcing the elimination of 5,500 jobs.

Meanwhile, Obama's on Wall Street, talking about financial reforms, which mainly reminds people that these jokers damn near gambled the economy away, took billions in taxpayer bailouts, then kept awarding each other obscene bonuses as if nothing had happened. Fear and anger won't diminish until sawmills and factories start hiring again.

Alas, it appears to be considered bad form in the Obama White House to keep reminding voters that it was President George W. Bush's economic and tax policies -- the very miracle cures now championed by Fox News celebrities, politicians like Rep. Joe Wilson and "Teabaggers" alike -- that caused this economic Katrina to happen.

It's the economy, stupid.

Obama needs to focus on the economy, not wasting his time so much on the health care reform sideshow or especially giving handouts to the crooks who created this disaster.

Chalk It Up

to inexperience or the desire to pander to corporate interests in order to explain why the president has squandered vast amounts of political capital this summer.

The GOP is sure to bounce back and make this country even worse off. I can't believe the whole damned thing.

Obama needs to focus on job creation and the economy and forget health care for the time being. It just pales in importance when millions can't find work and those who do have jobs are scared to death they, too, will be poor.

That he let the hard-core base of a leaderless minority party drive the debate only diminished his stature. That’s why his poll numbers on “leadership” declined. The right-wing fringe has become so deranged that it will yank its kids out of school to protest the president and risk yanking more Americans off assembly lines by boycotting General Motors to protest the administration’s Detroit bailout. Even Laura Bush and Newt Gingrich stepped in last week to defend Obama’s classroom homily from the fusillades by some of their own party’s most prominent ideologues. The White House should have landed a punch before they did.

Obama would have looked stronger if he’d stood up more proactively to the screamers along the way, or at least to the ones not packing guns. As the Roosevelt biographer Jean Edward Smith has reminded us, it didn’t harm the New Deal for F.D.R. to tell a national radio audience on election eve 1936 that he welcomed the “hatred” of his enemies. Indeed Obama instantly gained a foot or two in height Wednesday night once that South Carolina clown hollered “You lie!” (One wonders what this congressman calls the Republican governor of his own state, Mark Sanford.) As the political analyst Charlie Cook has pointed out, Obama’s leadership poll numbers have also suffered from his repeated deference to Congress. Waiting for the pettifogging small-state potentates of both parties in the Senate’s Gang of Six is as farcical as waiting for Godot.

But Obama was always campaigning about "reaching across the aisle" with people who have NO intention of compromising their twisted political beliefs. He didn't and doesn't understand the opposition AT ALL. But then again columnists like Frank Rich were huge cheerleaders for Obama last year and should have known he was one of these "conciliators," exactly what we DON'T need running the country.

But of course Obama is in the White House, and he better be realizing what the hell is at stake for him, the party, and the country.

Thanks toTheir Noise Machine,

the GOP sees hope in creating a "protest movement" against Barack Obama without appearing racist. Naturally racism plays a bit of a factor in it, but if Obama were Republican, there would be no protests.

They tried this crap with Clinton, to much success. They are hoping lightning strikes twice so that they improve their chances in 2010.

Obama keeps screwing things up, however. He's bogged down with health care when he should be focusing on job creation. The job market is dire beyond belief.