JAMES KIRCHICK - 07.26.2009 - 1:13 AM The most bizarre moment of the Michael Jackson memorial a few weeks ago at the Staples Center in Los Angeles had to be the rambling speech delivered by Sheila Jackson Lee, the joke of a woman who happens to represent part of Houston in the United States Congress. (At the time, Roll Call reported that Jackson Lee "has a history of making cameo appearances at funerals" and that her staff used to "cull the obituaries" to "find funerals" for her to attend.) There she announced that she would introduce a resolution on the House floor listing every single one of Jackson's charitable contributions and lauding him as a "world humanitarian" (his generosity to various teenage boys was presumably excluded). Fortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi recognized that even this would be too much for the American people to take and put the kibosh on Jackson Lee's scheme.
Well, it appears that at least some of Jackson Lee's constituents are up in arms about her trip, as well as the likelihood that she used taxpayer money to fund it. A local television station put Jackson Lee on the spot about the matter. See if you can make hash out of this:
"Who paid for that trip for you to go to that memorial service?" reporter Joel Eisenbaum asked Jackson Lee when she appeared live on the Sunday morning newscast.
"Well, uh ... that umm ... those resources are resources that I have and, therefore, they are in a way that does not interfere with anything that has to do with serving the United States Congress," answered Jackson Lee.
"Understood," Eisenbaum replied. "So, public funds?"
"Those resources are resources that I have," said Jackson Lee.
Hard as it is to believe, this episode does not rank at the top of Jackson Lee's absurd moments. Several years ago, she complained about the paucity of African-American names used by the National Weather Service for Hurricanes. And in 2002 the Weekly Standard revealed that Jackson Lee was using a government car to drive from her Capitol Hill apartment to her congressional office.
If she indeed did use government money to pay for her junket to the Jackson send-off, Jackson Lee will have to eventually report it. But given the tolerance of the people of Texas's 18th Congressional District for this sort of ridiculous behavior, Jackson Lee doesn't have a thing to worry about.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/26/2009 10:57 ||
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and her intelligence was again demonstrated when she asked about the manned trip NASA took to Mars back in '69. Stupid, fat, and racist is no way to go through life, hon
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/26/2009 11:24 Comments ||
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"Who paid for that trip for you to go to that memorial service?"
The very same people who paid for Air Force One and it's undisclosed passengers to conduct a low-level pass around the Statue of Liberty.
It's a Tuesday in June, and I am in one of the high-ceiling big rooms of the old office building next to the White House.
As I look around the room at the players assembled here -- including this scribe -- I'm thinking that with a few twists of fate, this all-Chicago gang could be huddling in Mayor Daley's City Hall.
With so many prominent Chicagoans playing key roles in the Obama administration, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has become the 51st ward. "Everyone misses Chicago," said Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
In front of me is Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama who today is chairing a roundtable marking the 37th anniversary of Title IX, the sports equity law. Across the room is Arne Duncan, the education secretary.
Seated in the first row is Tina Tchen, director of the White House public engagement office. Leaning against a wall is Susan Sher, chief of staff for Michelle Obama. In back of me in the vestibule is Daniel Hornung, a graduate of the University of Chicago Lab School who is working this summer for Jarrett. He is a friend of the daughter of Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary. Marilyn Katz, a public affairs consultant visiting from Chicago, is also at the Title IX event.
Jarrett, Sher, Duncan and Tchen were all Daley appointees on boards or in top posts at City Hall, as was Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. David Axelrod was Daley's political adviser. First lady Michelle Obama worked a stint at City Hall.
The Chicagoans have replaced the Texans in the White House.
In Washington, the relationships among the key players in government are subject to speculation and fascination over whether there is a "Chicago way" in the six-month-old Obama White House. There is a romanticized notion of Machine politics in the air here, though only remnants of it still exist in Chicago.
I've wisecracked that there are so many Chicagoans in the Obama administration, it's like covering the 51st Ward. Obama has swept into office with him dozens of Chicagoans, in all kinds of jobs.
Evanston's Jon Samuels is in the White House legislative affairs office and Ben LaBolt, a LaGrange native, is a White House spokesman. Ellie Schaefer, from Lincolnwood, runs the White House visitors office. They worked on the Obama presidential campaign.
The late, great Chicago political scientist Milton Rakove titled one of his books We Don't Want Nobody Nobody Sent, and that's what I see so far: concentric circles of interlocking social, personal and political relationships that go back years. The University of Chicago is one focal point; City Hall is another.
Think Muckety, not machine. (Muckety.com is a Web site that pulls together a person's interlocking relationships.)
Jarrett disagrees with my 51st Ward metaphor. The Chicagoans, after all, are now operating on a national and international stage.
But I brought up the analogy because I wanted to figure out if there is a Chicago sensibility in the Obama White House.
What was exported from Chicago to Washington, Jarrett said, was "personal relationships that we have that creates a foundation of trust. . . . Some of my closest friends today are people who have been at City Hall," she said, referring to Sher, Mrs. Obama and Axelrod.
The Chicagoans at the top tier of the Obama White House have actually known each other longer than they have known the Obamas.
"We shared a common history in that so many of us did have ties back to City Hall and had relationships that grew out of that experience, and we have grown up in a sense together,'' Jarrett told me. "And then to come here together, it would have been much harder without each other."
Duncan, the former Chicago Public Schools chief, also brought a contingent with him to Washington. "There is a Chicago crowd of people here, and a lot of us learned our politics from some pros," said Peter Cunningham, who worked for Duncan at CPS. Cunningham, a former speechwriter in Daley's City Hall, is now assistant secretary for communications and outreach in the Education Department.
Obama named three Chicagoans -- all major fund-raisers -- to be ambassadors: Lou Susman to Great Britain, David Jacobson to Canada and Fay Hartog-Levin to the Netherlands. Hartog-Levin's husband, Daniel Levin, is the chairman of the Habitat Co. Jarrett is the former president and CEO of Habitat.
Chicago lawyer Ertharin Cousin -- who worked on the Obama campaign and is a veteran of city, state and national politics -- was nominated last month to be U.S. ambassador to the Rome-based United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.
Cindy Moelis was tapped by Obama last April to be the director of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships. Moelis is a friend of Mrs. Obama and worked with her at City Hall. Moelis later became the executive director of the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation.
That's Pritzker as in Penny Pritzker -- the Obama presidential campaign finance chairwoman. Obama headlined a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser at her Lincoln Park home Thursday. Moelis' husband is Robert Rivkin, who wound up in the Obama administration as general counsel to the Transportation Department. Rivkin is a former CTA general counsel. Jarrett formerly chaired the CTA Board.
Rivkin's boss is Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the former Illinois congressman who worked closely with Emanuel while they were both in the House. (Chicago author Carol Felsenthal, writing for the Huffington Post, noted that Rivkin's brother Charles, also an Obama fund-raiser, was picked to be ambassador to France.)
Last month, Obama named Bryan Traubert, Pritzker's husband, as a member of the commission Moelis now runs. The president also named to the commission Eleanor Kaye Wilson, a former DePaul University official and a friend of Marian Robinson, Mrs. Obama's mother. Wilson is godmother to Obama daughters Malia and Sasha.
Last December, Obama said he would try to get back home every four to six weeks. While Obama stopped at his Kenwood home briefly Thursday night, more-regular visits haven't been possible. "The world is a busy place," Jarrett said.
Even with all the Chicagoans in Washington, "we're all a little homesick. Everyone misses Chicago," Jarrett said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/26/2009 11:01 ||
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fine. go home. Take the empty suit with you
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/26/2009 11:25 Comments ||
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There is a romanticized notion of Machine politics in the air here, though only remnants of it still exist in Chicago.
HA HA HA! How stupid do you think your readers are, lady?
And isn't this the broad that thought she was grooving up a softball to Barry with the Sippy Gates question?
...Bret Baier, filling in for regular host Chris Wallace, asked Gibbs, Before Wednesdays news conference, did you prepare [the president] for a question about Henry Gatess arrest in Cambridge?
Well, look, said Gibbs, Lets just say its safe to say we went over a whole lot of topics that we thought might come up, and certainly this was a topic that was, has been in the news . . . He then went on to try to un-ring the bell by repeating the line that the president hadnt calibrated his words well, and blah, blah, blah, beer at the White House, blah, blah, blah.
So now we know that President Obama didnt properly calculate his words about the Cambridge police acting stupidly even after being prepared for such a question in advance. Thus is revealed the presidents tone deafness in failing to anticipate the backlash such an answer might provoke.
And now we are told, in a further attempt at damage control, that the Gates arrest can serve to educate all those mouth-breathing cops out there who may yet stumble into an unpleasant encounter with some other Ivy Leaguer. Its our hope, said Gibbs, invoking that insufferable locution that one hopes will soon fade from common usage, that the Gates arrest can be part of a teachable moment.
So, since the president is keen on offering instruction, here is what I would advise he teach his Ivy League pals, and anyone else who may find himself unexpectedly confronted by a police officer: You may be as pure as the driven snow itself, but you have no idea what horrible crime that police officer might suspect you of committing. You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.
When the officer has satisfied himself that it was not you and your Hupmobile that were involved in the Piggly Wiggly heist, he owes you an explanation for the stop and an apology for the inconvenience, but if youre running your mouth about your rights and your history of oppression and what have you, youre likely to get neither.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/26/2009 16:23 ||
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Chris Rock has a very funny video about how to not get your ass kicked by the police.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
07/26/2009 18:24 Comments ||
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"Jack Dunphy" is a non-pc treasure. I hope the LAPD HR assholes never find out his true identity
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/26/2009 18:27 Comments ||
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There's one columnist (whose name I forget) at the LA Times who handles all the 'race issues'. She did up an article yesterday.
Her basic gist: Gates was probably a jerk, but the Cambridge police were worse jerks 'cause they weren't deferential enough, history of cops and blacks, etc.
The LAPD, she allowed (paraphrased) 'at least know their place' during traffic stops.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. That's the first time his ratings have reached double digits in negative territory (see trends).
These updates are based upon nightly telephone interviews and reported on a three-day rolling average basis. Today is the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted after the President's prime time televised press conference. The number who Strongly Approve of the President has remained unchanged since the press conference but the number who Strongly Disapprove has gone up by five percentage points (from 35% on Wednesday morning to 40% today).
Methinks the public didn't buy his on air speech. Maybe they are smarter than I gave them credit for.
#2
IMHO his commenting on Skip Gates' incident has left a bad taste in the mouth of a lot of people. I think he can kiss the support of any law enforcement folks goodbye, and that includes the citizens who support them. Even Jon Leibowitz aka Jon Stewart lampooned him for being "stupid" about his commenting on an incident he didn't know all of the facts to.
TOTUS is pulling his electrons out & saying; "dude, will you just shut up and let me handle this, I'm your Cyrano remember?!"
#3
" The number who Strongly Approve of the President has remained unchanged "
And likely will never change even if the nation burns as Obama morphs into a modern day Nero.
These are the personality-cult believers, and the race-fixated voters i.e. those who slavishly support him blindly due to nothing more than commonality of skin color.
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The most bizarre moment of the Michael Jackson memorial a few weeks ago at the Staples Center in Los Angeles had to be the rambling speech delivered by Sheila Jackson Lee, the joke of a woman who happens to represent part of Houston in the United States Congress. (At the time, Roll Call reported that Jackson Lee "has a history of making cameo appearances at funerals" and that her staff used to "cull the obituaries" to "find funerals" for her to attend.) There she announced that she would introduce a resolution on the House floor listing every single one of Jackson's charitable contributions and lauding him as a "world humanitarian" (his generosity to various teenage boys was presumably excluded). Fortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi recognized that even this would be too much for the American people to take and put the kibosh on Jackson Lee's scheme.
It's a Tuesday in June, and I am in one of the high-ceiling big rooms of the old office building next to the White House.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 29% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. That's the first time his ratings have reached double digits in negative territory (see trends).
