Photo credit: Willamette Week My syndicated column today spotlights the scandal behind the David Wu scandal: Nancy Pelosi’s pattern of malign neglect. While Washington looked the other way, it was left to local journalists and activists in Oregon to clean up the mess. Today, Washington County Democrats are expected to hold a no-confidence vote on Wu. Here’s a brief primer on what happens next in the maneuvering to fill his seat and how he’ll be able to keep/spend the $300,000 currently in his 2012 re-election fund. RedState wonders what fellow Democrats who accepted money from Wu will do with the tainted cash . Wu’s staffers are spilling the beans. Note: No word about Wu yet from all those Democrat women who were all over the airwaves last week decrying “misogyny” by GOP Rep. Allen West. *** The Creepy Enablers of Wu by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2011 Wu-hoo! Welcome to another freaky ethics fiasco brought to you by the D.C. den of dysfunctional Democrats. This one comes clothed in a Tigger costume, wrapped in blinders and bathed in the fetid Beltway odor of eau de Pass le Buck. Liberal David Wu is a seven-term Democratic congressman from Oregon who announced Tuesday that he’ll resign amid a festering sex scandal involving the teenage daughter of a longtime campaign donor. He won’t, however, be vacating public office until “the resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis.” Translation: Call off the U-Haul trucks. Wu’s staying awhile. Wu’s sexually aggressive, alcohol-addled and erratic outbursts stretch over decades. He admitted in 2004 that he engaged in “inexcusable behavior” as a 1970s undergrad at Stanford University. School officials disciplined Wu after his ex-girlfriend told campus police he attempted to rape her and stifle her screams with a pillow after they broke up. Last fall, Wu’s senior campaign staff quit en masse after confronting him about his ongoing drinking problem, watching him throw hissy fits at the Portland International Airport and at a local Democratic Party event, and receiving the now-infamous e-mail photo of him smiling in a Tigger costume. Wu’s staff received another photo of him seemingly passed out on a bed in the same costume in the wee hours of the morning, along with incoherent e-mails from his official government BlackBerry signed in the names of his tween-age children. The staffers so feared what Wu might do next that they kept him hidden from public view in the final days of the campaign. Gotta love that new era of transparency. In February, Wu’s advisers publicly demanded he get treatment. House Democrats — whose fundraising arm poured more than $80,000 into Wu’s re-election coffers last cycle — remained silent and took no action. Not until this weekend’s revelations about Wu’s alleged teenage victim were published by The Oregonian newspaper did Nancy “Drain the Swamp” Pelosi call for an investigation by the House ethics committee. Note: The victim called Capitol Hill in May to complain, months after Wu’s own staff demanded he get help and several left-leaning newspapers published editorials calling for his resignation. On Tuesday afternoon, White House spokesman Jay Carney claimed ignorance of Wu’s decision to (eventually) resign when convenient. He then downplayed the scandal as a sad personal tragedy about one “troubled individual,” rather than a systemic ethics morass. Bull. This is as much a scandal for Pelosi and her failed leadership as it is a scandal for Wu. We’re talking about the same proud feminist leadership and the same dysfunctional ethics panel that have dragged their feet on cleaning Capitol Hill’s mountain of other dirty laundry while providing cover to other predatory Dems: They slapped New York Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel on the wrist for serial tax-cheating. They have yet to bring California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters to trial after charging her last year with three violations related to her crony TARP bailout intervention on behalf of minority-owned OneUnited Bank in Los Angeles. They are just now looking into former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner’s possible abuse of government resources while sending lurid messages and photos to young women across the country. And they have only recently reauthorized a probe into the aftermath of allegations that former New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa sexually harassed several young male staffers. In that case, you’ll recall that Pelosi’s office and Democratic Rep. Barney Frank’s office had both been told by Massa’s top aides of the out-of-control abuse of underlings — but said and did nothing for months. Wu’s a creep. But the pattern of malign neglect on the part of his Washington enablers is even creepier. *** Previous: July 26, 2011 Update: Democrat Rep. David “Tigger” Wu to resign (*after debt-limit vote), Nancy-come-lately exhales; statement added July 23, 2011 Report: Democrat Rep. David Wu admits sexual encounter with donor’s young daughter; Update: Nancy-come-lately calls for gesture investigation February 25, 2011 Crack-up: Rep. David Wu needs a Democrat leadership intervention
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The Creepy Enablers of Wu
A candid exchange featured in a New York Times puff piece this week speaks volumes about Keith Olbermann and his merry band of liberal followers: Every few steps at the stadium, someone stopped him and said how much they missed seeing him on the air — the little old lady in the Mets cap, the West African working concessions, the Upper West Sider. To each one, he gave a card with information about Current. You get the feeling he would wear a sandwich board to retail his new enterprise if he thought it would help. “Mr. Olbermann, I have somehow managed to form opinions without your assistance , but I really miss your show,” said Arnold Karr, who works in publishing in Manhattan. “Don’t get too used to it,” Olbermann said. “We start broadcasting on June 20.” Translation: Why would you bother to form your own opinion when I’m here to tell you how to think?
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Keith Olbermann reveals the left’s secret to success
Arianna Huffington recently surprised Jon Stewart by announcing she’d sport the $250k or so to bus however many people show up at HuffPo HQ down to DC for the comedy bit they are staging there on some date that I don’t care about. The only reason I bring it up is because Arianna unwittingly displayed the fundamental difference between conservatives and progressives. How? Let’s start with how she decided to donate the buses: “Jon and I were talking in the green room about the rally. I said, ‘Oh my God, how are those people going to get there?’ On the air I decided to make that offer, it was spontaneous, and nobody knew. My people were in the green room with me, and even they had no clue.” Oh, those poor, helpless little Jon Stewart fans! How will they ever figure out how to travel from New York City all the way to Washington DC?! Arianna believes his fans are so pathetic that they can’t figure it out themselves. So she swoops in and just promises $250k to bus them. Furthermore, as typical of progressives, she acts immediately on emotion and throws money at the problem without thinking it through and without having any clue if she can afford it or not. That left HuffPo president Greg Coleman scrambling: “Coleman is working to entice sponsors to underwrite the gesture, and turn the surprise into a revenue bonus.” Translation: Coleman is stuck cleaning up Arianna’s mess. Finally, why not top off this little microcosm of progressivism with a little incompetence? Arianna directed people to stop by HuffPo HQ in New York to find out more – but since none of her employees had any clue what was going on, they didn’t even know what to tell folks who wandered in. To summarize: 1) Progressives have no faith in people’s ability to problem solve 2) They swoop in to save the day without thinking it through 3) They screw everything up Compare that to conservatives. Fans who came to the 8/28 rally planned everything on their own. They organized their own buses. They set up their own web sites to facilitate car pooling. They didn’t even consider asking for help – they just did it. To summarize: 1) Conservatives don’t expect handouts 2) They did it themselves 3) Everything worked perfectly. So, thanks Arianna for proving (for the bajillionth time in history) that conservatism is superior to big government progressivism!
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Arianna Huffington thinks Jon Stewart fans are morons
For the past few months, I’ve been spotlighting the Obama administration’s War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s War on Jobs, and the White House land lock-up ( Part 1 , Part 2 ). Today’s column exposes the next Obama environmental power grab — into the sea. *** And now: The Stealth Obama Ocean Grab by Michelle Malkin Creators Syndicate Copyright 2010 It’s not enough that the White House is moving to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land in the name of environmental protection. The Obama administration’s neon green radicals are also training their sights on the deep blue seas. The president’s grabby-handed bureaucrats have been empowered through executive order to seize unprecedented control from states and localities over “conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes.”_ Democrats have tried and failed to pass “comprehensive” federal oceans management legislation five years in a row. The so-called “Oceans 21″ bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Sam Farr of California, went nowhere fast. Among the top reasons: bipartisan concerns about the economic impact of closing off widespread access to recreational fishing. The bill also would have handed environmentalists another punitive litigation weapon under the guise of “ecosystem management.” Instead of accepting defeat, the green lobby simply circumvented the legislative process altogether. In late July, President Obama established a behemoth 27-member “National Ocean Council” with the stroke of a pen. Farr gloated: “We already have a Clean Air Act and a Clean Water Act. With today’s executive order, President Obama in effect creates a Clean Ocean Act .” And not a single hearing needed to be held. Not a single amendment considered. Not a single vote cast. Who gives a flying fish about transparency and the deliberative process? The oceans are dying! The panel will have the power to implement “coastal and marine spatial plans” and to ensure that all executive agencies, departments and offices abide by their determinations. The panel has also been granted authority to establish regional advisory committees that overlap with existing regional and local authorities governing marine and coastal planning. No wonder the anti-growth, anti-development, anti-jobs zealots are cheering. The National Ocean Council is co-chaired by wackadoodle science czar John Holdren (notorious for his cheerful musings about eugenics, mass sterilization and forced abortions to protect Mother Earth and for hyping weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich) and White House Council on Environmental Quality head Nancy Sutley (best known as the immediate boss of disgraced green jobs czar/self-avowed communist Van Jones). Also on the new ocean panel: – Socialista and energy/climate change czar Carol Browner, last seen bullying auto company execs to “put nothing in writing, ever” and threatening to push massive cap-and-trade tax hikes during the upcoming congressional lame duck session. – Dr. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a former high-ranking official at the left-wing Environmental Defense Fund, which has long championed drastic reductions of commercial fishing fleets and recreational fishing activity in favor of centralized control. – Attorney General Eric Holder, who will no doubt use his stonewalling expertise to shield the ocean council’s inner workings from public scrutiny. – Interior Secretary Ken Salazar , who apparently doesn’t have enough to do destroying jobs through his offshore drilling moratorium, blocking onshore development and wreaking havoc on the energy industry. Given Salazar’s fraudulent book-cooking in support of the administration’s offshore drilling moratorium (Remember: Obama’s own appointed scientists blasted the Interior Secretary for unilaterally contradicting and misrepresenting their conclusions.), his comments on the new ocean grab are more threat than promise: “With two billion acres we help oversee on the Outer Continental Shelf, Interior is a proud partner in this initiative, and we look forward to helping coordinate the science, policies and management of how we use, conserve and protect these public treasures.” “Helping coordinate the science,” as interpreted by Obama’s Chicago-on-the-Potomac heavies, means doctoring, massaging and ramming through whatever eco-data is necessary “to reduce conflicts among uses, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible uses, and preserve critical ecosystem services to meet economic, environmental, security and social objectives.” Translation: drastically limiting human activity from coastal areas to seabeds to achieve the “social objective” of appeasing the enviros and their deep-pocketed philanthropic funders. Even New York Sen. Charles Schumer slammed the administration’s junk science-based fishing limits at a meeting this week between NOAA’s Lubchenco and Long Island recreational fishermen. Draconian regulations, he said, according to the New York Post, “put the industry on death’s door.” Now, the same forces behind such job destroyers will have free reign over a national ocean policy established by administrative fiat. Viva la Summer of Wreckovery. *** Laura Curtis at Hot Air has more on the consequences of this stealth ocean grab: The formation of this new Council is a signal that offshore drilling will likely be regulated into nonexistence. The Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will also participate in the National Ocean Council. The Council is also specifically tasked to cede our maritime sovereignty to the United Nations via the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea; if this is ratified, the International Seabed Authority will be able to restrict or limit our access to undersea “solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources” if it so chooses. Obama sees skyrocketing energy costs as a feature, not a bug, of his energy policies. If you recall he even said so before the election. He does not have the support of all Democrats. Mary Landrieu is fighting against the unnecessary and costly moratorium which is fueling the perfect economic storm Obama is inflicting on Louisiana. As she pointed out, this will cost us tens of thousands of jobs, and actually expose us to more environmental risks. See also: What the NOC means for anglers And Mike Johnson at the American Thinker: Wealth, Jobs, the Fishing Industry, and Obama
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And now: The stealth Obama ocean grab
