This'n'That; July 27th[FluffyRacist;FluffyScofflaw;obamacare;GovPerry]

Fluffy obama: The Street Thug

Cop Tells obama: I Didn't Vote for You and Won't Apologize Thursday, July 23, 2009 8:44 PM; By: Newsmax Staff The police officer at the center of a national racial firestorm triggered by Der Fluffmeister, told an interviewer Thursday that he had nothing to apologize for in the arrest of a black Harvard scholar, and that the president he didn’t vote for should have considered his words more carefully.

• “The apology won’t come from me,” Sgt. James Crowley told Carl Stevens of WBZ News Radio in Boston. "I’ve done nothing wrong."
• A well-regarded officer who is an expert on racial profiling, Crowley responded to a call at the Cambridge home of Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week to investigate a report of a burglary.
• Confronting Gates and another man who appeared to have forced open the door of the home, Crowley asked Gates to show him identification.
• The professor, a close friend of Harvard alumnus Barack Obama, was charged with disorderly conduct.
• The charge was dropped.
• Tuesday, and Gates has since demanded an apology from Crowley.

In a four-minute interview outside his home, Crowley revealed that:

• Gates escalated the situation by yelling and refusing to calm down, calling Crowley a racist, and referring to his mother.
• He was the police officer who tried to save the life of former Boston Celtics player Reggie Lewis, a black man, who collapsed and died during an off-season workout at Brandeis University.
• Crowley said he still is very shaken because of that event.
• Crowley said he didn’t vote for Obama but supports the president 110 percent.
• He also suggested that the president was siding with his friend Gates, and he probably would have done the same in a similar situation.
• Though he said he would do everything exactly the same way again, Crowley did express regret at the media attention and pressure the event has brought on his friends and family.
• “I acted appropriately. Mr. Gates was given plenty of opportunity to stop what he was doing,” Crowley said. “He didn’t. He acted very irrational, and he controlled the outcome of that event.”
• “There was a lot of yelling. There was references to my mother,” Crowley said. “Something you wouldn’t expect from anybody who should be grateful you’re there investigating the report of a crime in progress, let alone a Harvard University professor.”
• The reporter then referred to the death of Lewis, explaining that he worked the scene that night when Crowley tried to save the player’s life.
• “I was a police officer at Brandeis University at the time and I was responding to a medical call and had the unfortunate experience of trying to revive somebody who was probably already gone,” Crowley said. “It was very tough emotionally dealing with that as well.”

The reporter than asked him to respond to those who allege that he is a racist.

• “It almost doesn’t warrant a comment.
• My friends, my family my colleagues — those people whose opinions mean the most to me — they know who I am, they know what I am and what I am not.
• It’s an unfortunate thing that the professor and other people even mentioned that.”
• Asked what he thought of the president’s comments, Crowley immediately replied, “I didn’t vote for him,” and then smiled.
• “When he said the Cambridge police acted stupidly, he was talking about you,” the interviewer said. “What was your reaction to that?
• “My only reaction, somebody had told me what he said. I didn’t hear the press conference but I did listen afterwards and I support the president of the United States 110 percent.
• I think he’s way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts as he himself stated before making that comment so again, I don’t know what to say about that. I guess a friend of mine would support my position too.”

Asked whether he is able to do his job, Crowley responded:

• “Sure. I absolutely will. This will not distract me from doing what it is I do.
• And if a similar call came in tomorrow, I wouldn’t shy away from responding and I’d do what I have to do.”
• Asked whether he should have done anything differently, Crowley responded bluntly: “No.”

Fluffy Really Presidential Quality? 'Scofflaw' obama Grudge Against Cambridge Police? Thursday, July 23, 2009 8:34 PM One reason Fluffy obama may have been so critical of the Cambridge Police Department is that he might have a grudge against the law enforcement agency. obama, who attended Harvard Law School from 1988 to 1991, lived in Cambridge and apparently didn't like the fact he was frequently hit with parking tickets.

• In all, Obama received 17 tickets for parking violations, and he did not pay 15 of them until a local newspaper exposed him as a scofflaw.
• According to a 2007 Associated Press story, Obama was a parking ticket deadbeat for more than a decade — and felt the need to pay the 15 outstanding parking tickets only as his presidential campaign began in earnest in 2007.

Here is the Associated Press story detailing Obama's negligence:

• Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama got more than an education when he attended Harvard Law School in the late 1980s. He also got a healthy stack of parking tickets, most of which he never paid.
• The Illinois senator shelled out $375 in January — two weeks before he officially launched his presidential campaign — to finally pay for 15 outstanding parking tickets and their associated late fees.
• The story was first reported Wednesday by The Somerville News.
• Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, mostly for parking in a bus stop, parking without a resident permit and failing to pay the meter, records from the Cambridge Traffic, Parking and Transportation office show.
• He incurred $140 in fines and $260 in late fees in Cambridge in all, but he paid $25 for two of the tickets in February 1990.
• Jen Psaki, a spokeswoman for the obama Campaign of Fluff, dismissed the tickets as not relevant. "He didn't owe that much and what he did owe, he paid," Psaki said on Wednesday.
• "Many people have parking tickets and late fees. All the parking tickets and late fees were paid in full."

House obamacare Talks Break Down In Anger By Jared Allen, Mike Soraghan and Lauren Burke Posted: 07/24/09 03:27 PM [ET] House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders. In advance of a subsequent press conference called by House leadership, Blue Dog liaison Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) said the healthcare bill should be staying in committee. "I expect the committee process to proceed," Cardoza said. The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill. “I’ve been lied to,” Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chairman Charlie Melancon (D-La.) said on Friday. “We have not had legitimate negotiations. “Mr. Waxman has decided to sever discussions with the Blue Dogs who are trying to make this bill work for America,” Melancon said. Although those Blue Dogs were supposed to be headed back into another meeting of the Energy and Commerce Democrats, their anger was visible. If the two sides cannot reach an agreement, the only hope for passage of the bill in the House will be to go straight to the floor, an option leaders shied away from endorsing but said was an option. But the Blue Dogs issued dire warnings to leaders contemplating that approach. "Waxman simply does not have votes in committee and process should not be bypassed to bring the bill straight to floor,” Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), the lead Blue Dog negotiator, said on Friday. “We are trying to save this bill and trying to save this party.”Melancon said there would be 40-45 “solid no” votes from the 52-strong Blue Dogs, among other problems throughout the caucus. And Melancon said there are more Democrats who will vote against the bill. “If they try to bring it to the floor, I think they’ll find out they have more problems than the Blue Dogs.”

Perry: Show obama "Where Bear Shit In Buckwheat?"

Perry raises possibility of states' rights showdown with White House over obamacare By DAVE MONTGOMERY dmontgomery@star-telegram.com AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the obama administration, suggested Thursday [07/23] that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas. Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as "obamacare." But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a "number" of states might resist the federal health mandate. "I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying 'no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare," Perry said. "So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats." Perry, the state’s longest-serving governor, has made defiance of Washington a hallmark of his state administration as well as his emerging re-election campaign against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary. Earlier this year, Perry refused $555 million in federal unemployment stimulus money, saying it would subject Texas to long-term costs after the federal dollars ended. Interviewed after returning from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, Perry spoke out against Fluffy obama's obamacare package less than 24 hours after the president used a prime-time news conference Wednesday night to try to sell the massive legislative package to Congress and the public. 'Not the solution’ "It really is a state issue, and if there was ever an argument for the 10th Amendment and for letting the states find a solution to their problems, this may be at the top of the class," Perry said. "A government-run obamacare system is financially unstable. It’s not the solution." Perry heartily backed an unsuccessful resolution in this year’s legislative session that would have affirmed the belief that Texas has sovereignty under the 10th Amendment over all powers not otherwise granted to the federal government. In expressing "unwavering support" for the 10th Amendment resolution by state Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, Perry said "federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens and its interference with the affairs of our state." Returning to the "letter and spirit" of the 10th Amendment, he said in April, "will free our state from undue regulations and ultimately strengthen our union." Perry, in his on-air interview Thursday with Davis, did not specify how he might use the 10th Amendment in opposing the Obama health plan. His spokeswoman, Allison Castle, said that the governor’s first goal is to defeat the plan in Congress and that any discussion of options beyond that would be "hypothetical." "I don’t think it’s surprising that the governor is taking a stand against it," said Anne Dunkelberg, associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based research organization that supports the House version of obama’s plan. "Unfortunately, the national dialogue on health reform has been extraordinarily partisan and polarized." The White House Media Affairs Office, asked to comment on Perry’s statements, did not have an immediate response. In his remarks to the nation Wednesday, obama restated his midsummer deadline for passage of the bill in Congress, saying it is urgently needed to help families "that are being clobbered by healthcare costs." High stakes in Texas Texas has a higher percentage of uninsured people than any other state, with 1 in 4 Texans lacking health coverage. Dunkelberg, whose organization supports policies to help low- and modest-income Texans, said the House version would create a "predictable and comprehensive benefits package" for thousands of struggling middle-income Texans. Former Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth of Burleson, a senior fellow for healthcare at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, echoed Perry’s assertion that the obama plan is the wrong approach and could have disastrous financial consequences for Texas. Under the Senate version of the bill, she said, an expansion of the joint federal-state Medicaid program for the poor could cost Texas $4 billion a year. "There are good solutions" to the country’s healthcare problems, Wohlgemuth said. "This isn’t it."

Perry said the plan is another example of the Obama administration’s "massive takeover of the private-sector economy." "I hope our leaders will look for solutions that don’t dig our country further into debt," he said. Perry called on Texans in the House and Senate to oppose the plan. "I can’t imagine that anyone from Texas who cares about this state would vote for obamacare. I don’t care whether you’re Democrat or Republican," he said. Of those Texans who might consider supporting the plan, he said: "This may sound a little bit harsh, but they might ought to consider representing some other state because they’re sure not representing Texas."

Til Nex'Time....