Have you heard about the latest overwrought tempest in a P.C. teapot on this post-Super Bowl Monday morning?

It’s over Michigan Republican Pete Hoekstra’s “insensitive” Senate campaign ad using an Asian-American actress portraying a Chinese worker gloating over incumbent Dem. Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s big spending habits.

Watch:

Black ministers and Asian activists have decried the commercial.

Both left and right are up in arms:

The portrayal of a young Asian woman speaking broken English in a Super Bowl ad being run by U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra against Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow is bringing charges of racial insensitivity.

GOP consultant Nick De Leeuw flat-out scolded the Holland Republican for the ad.

“Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement,” De Leeuw wrote on his Facebook page Sunday morning. “Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

A media consultant who has advised Democrats also thought it could prove problematic.

“Some Asian-Americans may be offended by the stereotype that is portrayed in the spot,” said Robert Kolt, who teaches advertising part-time at Michigan State University and had previewed a number of

Sunday’s Super Bowl ads. “Pete seems like a nice guy in the ad, but I think he is wasting a lot of money now. … It’s just not Super Bowl-worthy. It’s not cute, it’s not funny and it’s not memorable.”

Is the ad less than tasteful? Yes.

Is it “xenophobic” to point out that China is benefiting ginormously from our fiscal recklessness, indebtedness, and outsourcing of jobs? Certainly not.

Oddly enough (in other words: predictably enough), there was little uproar when Vice President Joe Biden — a serial P.C. offender — mocked an Indian accent in decrying outsourcing of call center jobs just last month:

Back in 2006, Biden joked about Indian accents and Dunkin’ Donuts and gas stations — with a hardly a peep from the Sensitivity Police:

Liberal Democrat Bob Beckel mocked GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal’s State of the Union response address and likened it to a “call center ad in Mumbai:”

The P.C. police, as always, are P.C. only when it’s P.E. — politically expedient.

As for all the lefties decrying the ugly nativism of the “Buy American” message that resonates with Rust Belt voters, I remind you that it’s not just Republicans who have channeled Pat Buchanan for electoral gain:

Sheriff Joe Biden may only half-heartedly believe what he’s saying here. It’s just that word around Capitol Hill is that if you help convince Nancy that her reunion with the Speaker’s gavel is imminent, there’s a good chance she’ll throw a pretty good stock tip your way, so what the heck.

From The Hill:

House Democrats will win the House in November, swinging the gavel back into the hands of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Vice President Joe Biden predicted Friday.

“Nancy, I think, is not going to be remembered just for being the first woman Speaker,” Biden said, “she’s going to remembered for being the second woman speaker.”

Addressing House Democrats gathered on the Eastern Shore for their annual retreat, Biden said the combination of GOP obstructionism and a strengthening economy will propel the Democrats back into control of the lower chamber after just two years in the minority.

“It’s becoming absolutely clear the decisions that we made … are actually working,” Biden said, speaking softly because he said he’s battling a cold.

It’s sort of a “bad thought, good thought” situation. The bad is that Joe Biden is predicting the Dems will control the House after the election. The good is that in 2010 he predicted the same thing, and, well, you know how that turned out.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

**Written by Doug Powers

Clueless Joe is at it again:

In an interview with Leslie Gelb in Newsweek, Vice President Joe Biden says:

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us.

NPR might agree with Biden, along with select NY Times op-ed contributors, but the 9/11 Commission report — the recommendations of which Biden voted “yes” on implementing — does not agree:

The Taliban seemed to open the doors to all who wanted to come to Afghanistan to train in the camps. The alliance with the Taliban provided al Qaeda a sanctuary in which to train and indoctrinate fighters and terrorists, import weapons, forge ties with other jihad groups and leaders, and plot and staff terrorist schemes. While Bin Ladin maintained his own al Qaeda guesthouses and camps for vetting and training recruits, he also provided support to and benefited from the broad infrastructure of such facilities in Afghanistan made available to the global network of Islamist movements. U.S. intelligence estimates put the total number of fighters who underwent instruction in Bin Ladin-supported camps in Afghanistan from 1996 through 9/11 at 10,000 to 20,000.

Ah, but wait — maybe Joe just didn’t want to say anything too negative about the Taliban while this is going on. Unlikely though. When it comes to keeping secrets, Biden makes Cindy Brady look like an unbreakable confidant, so those beans would have more than likely been spilled during the interview.

Read all about it in the latest issue:

Update: The White House stands by Biden.

(h/t Lachlan Markay, Newsbusters June 2011)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Alternate headline: Three states targeted for gaffe stimulus:

A year from Election Day, Democrats are crafting a campaign strategy for Vice President Joe Biden that targets the big three political battlegrounds: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, states where Biden might be more of an asset to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign than the president himself.

The Biden plan underscores an uncomfortable reality for the Obama team. A shaky economy and sagging enthusiasm among Democrats could shrink the electoral map for Obama in 2012, forcing his campaign to depend on carrying the 67 electoral votes up for grabs in the three swing states.

Obama won all three states in 2008. But this time he faces challenges in each, particularly in Ohio and Florida, where voters elected Republican governors in the 2010 midterm elections.

The wheels have really come off Hope & Change. Team Obama’s election strategy has gone from “Yes we can” to “stand up, Chuck!”

Here’s a reminder of the secret weapon Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida can look forward to seeing much more of next year:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

In 2009, Joe Biden, the Conductor of the Train to the Future, gave California’s high speed rail proposal his full support. Subsequently, $2.25 billion of the money for California’s rail construction came from the federal stimulus — a drop in an ever expanding bucket as it turns out.

From Mercury News by way of JWF:

Faster than a speeding bullet train, the cost of the state’s massive high-speed rail project has zoomed to nearly $100 billion — triple the estimate given to voters and more than enough to run the entire state government for a year.

What’s more, bullet trains won’t be up and running until at least 2033, much later than the original estimate of 2020, although that depends on the state finding the remaining 90 percent of the funds needed to complete the plan.

The new figures come from a final business plan to be unveiled by the California High-Speed Rail Authority on Tuesday, though some of the details were leaked to the media, including this newspaper, on Monday. Officials at the rail authority did not respond to repeated requests for comment Monday.

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday was expected to endorse the long-awaited plan, the first major update to the project in two years and the last before the federal deadline to begin construction next year. But state legislators, who were already skeptical, will tear through the plan starting Tuesday before deciding whether to start building, or to kill the project.

The new business plan pegs the price tag at $98.5 billion, accounting for inflation — more than double the estimate of $42.6 billion from two years ago, when it was already the priciest public works development in the nation. It’s a little less than triple the estimate of $33.6 billion voters were told when they approved the project in 2008.

If the projected cost of the California project has tripled just since 2008 and construction hasn’t even started yet, imagine what the cost will be by the time it’s finished — if the state (and country for that matter) hasn’t gone beyond bankrupt by then.

Politicians in other states have been offered federal money for high speed rail projects, run the numbers, and said “thanks, but no thanks.”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

As you’ll discover from the video below of Jason Mattera’s appearance with CNN’s John King, chivalry is not dead.

Sheriff Biden, the Beltway Bubble Boy, has lodged a formal complaint with the Capitol Hill Press Police’s Foot-in-Mouth Prevention Division over the Human Events reporter’s “ambush” question regarding Joe’s “raped and murdered” comment.

CNN’s John King didn’t like Mattera’s tactics one bit, and was this close to snapping him with an old pair of suspenders Larry King left under the desk.

Video by way of Freedom’s Lighthouse. For a minute here I was fairly certain King was going to throw down a white glove and challenge Mattera to a duel:

Thinking out loud: Joe Biden is telling Americans if Congress doesn’t pass another tax & spend bill their chances of getting raped, robbed and murdered will go up and Mattera’s misrepresentative?

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Joe Biden: Beltway Bubble Boy
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Last fall, before the midterm shellacking, Vice President Joe Biden admonished rank-and-file Democratic voters to “stop whining.” Uncle Tough Guy should practice what he screeches. The 2012 campaign has barely begun, but Biden’s thin skin makes a spring roll wrapper look impenetrable.

Biden’s office is now calling for an official investigation of a young editor who dared to question His Highness. Jason Mattera of the conservative-leaning Human Events magazine confronted the veep last week on his hysterical claims that rape and murder would increase if Congress didn’t ram through the half-trillion-dollar White House jobs bill. The testy exchange between the audacious journalist and the temper-challenged Beltway pol took place in a Senate hallway:

Mattera: Do you regret using a rape reference to describe Republican opposition to the president’s bill?

Biden: Murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise.

Never mind that the statistics in Flint actually show no correlation between crime rates and the number of police officers in the city. It’s never about the facts. It’s about the shameless demonization of Biden’s and Obama’s political opponents — and those in the press who would dare question their doom-and-gloom narratives.

After jabbing his finger in Mattera’s face, Biden stalked off, and one of his rattled press aide protectors yelped: “Who are you with?” Like playground tattletales who just got smacked in the face after cheating at tetherball, Team Biden then reported Mattera’s transgressions to the Senate press gallery and the standing committee of correspondents. The Hill newspaper reported on Tuesday that “the matter is under review.”

Biden’s crude response to Mattera’s challenge — “Don’t screw around with me” — is par for the Beltway Bubble Boy’s course. This entitled blowhard has long sought to bully reporters and ordinary citizens who question Bidenrhhea of the mouth.

In October 2008, WFTV Channel 9 anchor Barbara West put Biden on the hot seat over ACORN, voter fraud and Obama’s infamous “spread the wealth” comments. Biden falsely denied any relationship between ACORN and Obama, an ACORN affiliate Project Vote community organizer whose 2008 campaign doled out more than $800,000 to another ACORN satellite group. West was calm and professional. After sputtering, “C’mon, let’s get real” to West and asking whether her questions were a “joke,” Biden’s handlers lambasted the questions as “combative and woefully uninformed about simple facts.”

Anything less than total sycophancy from the Obamedia is considered “combative,” you see. Biden then cracked the brass knuckles and punished the Florida television station by canceling a previously scheduled interview with his wife.

The perpetually vexed veep seems to have a hang-up with Florida journalists. In March, Biden’s staff locked Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers in a closet for hours to prevent him from talking with wealthy donors at a $500-per-person fundraiser where Biden spoke. He told the Drudge Report: “When I’d stick my head out, they’d say, ‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when you can come out.’” One of the attendees later told the Sentinel: “If I had known there was a reporter stuffed in the closet, I would have been compelled to stand up and demand answers. I would also like to know if this is actually legal to treat people like caged animals. I’m disgusted by these actions.”

And yet, Biden keeps getting a golden pass for his half-oaf, half-ogre shtick.

Last year, when a Milwaukee, Wis., custard shop owner told Biden that Washington should lower his taxes, Biden snapped that he was a “smartass.” Biden’s apologists played it off as a joke. But he set the imperial tone with voters two decades ago during his failed presidential run, when a New Hampshire citizen named Frank asked him about his lousy academic record. “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect,” Biden hissed before falsely claiming he graduated in the top half of his law school class.

As political blogger Doug Powers joked: “If they start banning any reporter with the potential to make Joe Biden look silly, the press gallery is going to be as sparsely populated as Capitol Hill’s next ‘I quit earmarks, ask me how’ seminar.”

On a sober note, Team Biden’s media litmus test is appalling. If the Senate caves and bars Mattera, no one is safe from Uncle Joe’s goonish etiquette police.

***

Fun fact: Guess who Biden sought out for advice on not looking like an unhinged rage ball? Yep, that paragon of calm: Keith Olbermann.

**Written by Doug Powers

Instead of thanking Jason Mattera of Human Events for giving him an opportunity to reiterate his assertion that robberies, rapes and murders will go up if Congress fails to pass the “jobs bill,” Sheriff Joe Biden’s office is instead complaining that Mattera broke the rules:

Joe Biden’s office has complained to the Senate press gallery about a confrontation the vice president had with a conservative journalist last week on Capitol Hill.

Biden aides asked whether Senate rules were broken in the wake of the contentious exchange between the vice president and the reporter.

Jason Mattera, who works for Human Events, a conservative magazine, used a pretext to catch Biden off guard in a Senate hallway and grill him on claims the vice president has made about jobs legislation.

Biden’s office has also contacted the standing committee of correspondents, which oversees the gallery, regarding whether Mattera broke the rules by ambushing him.

Heather Rothman, the chairwoman of the gallery’s standing committee, said the matter is under review.

“We’re aware of the concerns,” said Rothman, a reporter for BNA. “It’s being discussed.

“We’re aware this occurred and the vice president’s office [has made] contact,” she added, noting the standing committee itself hasn’t met to deliberate the issue.

If they start banning any reporter with the potential to make Joe Biden look silly, the press gallery is going to be as sparsely populated as Capitol Hill’s next “I quit earmarks, ask me how” seminar.

Here’s the “confrontation” in question, in case you missed it:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Alternate headline: Job experts optimistic “fact checker” will remain fastest growing career field in US

When you go to the polls in five years, you might have a chance to vote for that four-letter word: BIDEN — unless of course you want robberies, rapes and murders to go up.

Sheriff Joe was asked if he’d be open to running in 2016, and he didn’t rule it out:

“I’ll make up my mind on that later,” Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley. “I’m in one of the, probably the best shape I’ve been in in my life”

I’m doing pretty well. I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and as long as I do, I’m going to continue to do it,” he said.

Biden’s final decision will probably depend on which Republican incumbent he’d be running against in 2016.

Click the pic to roll tape:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

In January of 2010, a “green” automotive startup called Fisker, the recipient of a $529 million US Dept. of Energy loan, purchased a former GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware. Almost immediately there were suspicions of a possible quid pro quo deal involving Joe Biden.

For now, though, those allegations can be put on the back burner, because the car won’t be manufactured in Delaware. As a matter of fact, it won’t even be manufactured in the United States.

From ABC News:

With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.

Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.

“There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle,” the car company’s founder and namesake told ABC News. “They don’t exist here.”

Why is the car called the “Karma”? Because “Thanks for the Money, Suckers, We’re Outta Here” wouldn’t fit on the hood ornament.

One would have guessed that the ability to produce the vehicle in the U.S. might have been part of the intensive research the Department of Energy claims to perform before handing out “green energy” grant and loan. That doesn’t appear to be the case. Wile E. Coyote performed more competent due diligence before he bought a piece of Ajax and Acme.

I know… I know… it’s hard to believe the same administration that thought Solyndra was a good idea didn’t spot the pitfalls of the Fisker deal from a mile away. But Al Gore is pleased, and these days, isn’t that all that matters?

Update: Read well into the ABC story and you’ll run across the inevitable Obama campaign connection:

One of Fisker’s biggest financial supporters, records show, is the California venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The firm financially supports numerous green-tech firms, records show.

Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr, a California billionaire who made a fortune investing in Google, hosted President Obama at a February dinner for high-tech executives at his secluded estate south of San Francisco. Doerr and Kleiner Perkins executives have contributed more than $1 million to federal political causes and campaigns over the last two decades, primarily supporting Democrats. Doerr serves on Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Doerr has not replied to interview requests since March.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

White House Spokesman Jay Carney today didn’t stray from Joe Biden’s side over his latest round of fear mongering.

Transcript from Real Clear Politics:

“I think it would be hard to find anyone that doesn’t agree,” White House press secretary Carney said about Joe Biden’s remark that rapes will increase if Congress does not pass Obama’s latest stimulus bill.

Carney was asked about Vice President Joe Biden saying rapes and murders will rise if the president’s jobs bill is not passed.

“I think everyone will agree with the equation that fewer police officers on the street has a direct effect on the crime rate. We saw this in the 1990′s. I do know that any lawmaker up on Capitol Hill will contest that simple fact or any American who makes that assessment in their local communities. Would you want fewer or more law enforcement officers on the job? Do you think that having more officers on the job would have a positive impact on crime? That is the point that the President absolutely shares,” Carney said.

Maybe at some point a reporter will ask Carney why there are fewer police on the streets today and they’re seeking billions more when the sales pitch for the original stimulus was that billions of those dollars would put more cops on the job.

Biden’s gotten so unhinged that the RNC is using him in an ad, so it’s probably good that President Obama isn’t reeling him back in. Plus, it’s entertaining for the rest of us.

Click the pic to roll tape:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

At Goode Elementary in York City, Pennsylvania yesterday, Joe Biden taught some 4th graders a valuable economic lesson: “If you need more money, just take it from rich people.”

From The Blaze by way of Ace of Spades:

Biden actually told the schoolchildren that, in order to rehire some 400,000 teachers nationwide, along with thousands of police officers and firefighters, all that needs to be done is tax wealthy individuals at a higher rate than they are currently taxed.

Then, in a move perhaps intended to woo, Biden told Lenid Keebaugh’s class of fourth-graders, “We’re going to give you some money to hire them back.”

Take about $500 in additional taxes from someone who makes a million dollars – “a million dollars,” Biden stressed – and those jobs will come right back.

Biden must have forgotten to blame Bush, which normally is part of his stock motivational speech to school children, but there’s such an urgency to pass the recently voted down jobs bill that I suppose the oversight is understandable:

A much more useful presentation would have been for Joe to show the kids where all that free money he keeps talking about is actually coming from:

Joe Biden update: You might have heard Joe Biden’s latest scare tactic of telling people that if the “jobs bill” isn’t passed, their chance of getting raped, robbed or murdered will increase.

Jason Mattera at Human Events confronted Biden about that claim. Check out the video here. The Sheriff got a little testy and a couple of aides whisked him away.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Last month, President Obama warned us that if we didn’t help get the jobs bill passed, our chances of dying in a bridge collapse would rise. Today, Joe Biden upped the ante while in Flint, Michigan trying to resuscitate the same jobs bill the Senate voted down yesterday.

Transcript via Weekly Standard:

“In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city,” Biden said. “In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65 and rapes–just to pick two categories–climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it.”

If the jobs bill doesn’t ultimately pass and you really want to live on the edge, try driving across a bridge in Flint.

There are fewer police officers in Flint these days? Um, wasn’t one of Sheriff Biden’s selling points for the “Recovery and Reinvestment Act” that it would help hire more local police? Pluggers is unwittingly pointing out that economic “stimulus” as designed by this administration has had an opposite to the “as advertised” effect.

But at least by citing the lower crime rate three years ago, Biden finally seems to have discovered something the current administration didn’t inherit from Bush:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

According to the NY Daily News: “A ‘Millionaires March’ will visit the homes – or, more realistically, the gleaming marble lobbies – of five of the city’s wealthiest residents, including News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and conservative billionaire David Koch.”

Some millionaires and billionaires and their homes get protected, of course. Billionaire NYC Mayor Bloomberg, who refuses to crack down on protesters who have no permit to conduct the march, has a pass. Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman’s compound is off-limits. So is NY-based billionaire hedge fund mogul, Obama donor, and Dodd-Frank waiver beneficiary George Soros.

Photo credit: Business Insider

Scandal-plagued LightSquared billionaire investor and Obama donor Philip Falcone owns a $49 million Upper East Side palace that won’t be on the protest route.

GE billionaire fat cat Jeffrey Immelt won’t be targeted, either.

Outside NYC, Billionaire Obama donor and Solyndra peddler George Kaiser isn’t even on their radar.

Also on the immunity list: Al Gore’s multiple mansions, including his $9 million Montecito oceanfront villa:

Oh, and you won’t see any Occupy Wall Street zombies banging their bongo drums in front of the sweetheart homes of privileged Democrats who’ve cashed in on cozy Wall Street/BigGov-BigBiz deals like the ones below.

Remember?

Flashback September 2010…

How privileged Democrats pay for their houses
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

…Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware’s ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens’ most valuable asset. Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his compound’s lawn needs. He secured the new estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden’s top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA.

In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property.

Stoltz told the Wilmington News Journal that “the residential real estate market was soft” at the time he sold the land to Biden. But “soft” for whom? Stoltz was a well-off businessman who didn’t appear to be in such dire financial straits that he needed to unload the property quickly in a weak market.

Reporter Byron York looked at comparable properties in Biden’s neighborhood and found three cases where homes in the area went “for a good deal less than their appraised value. In comparison, it appears Cochran simply paid Biden’s full asking price.”

Biden’s office denied any sweetheart deals took place, but York noted that it appeared MBNA indirectly helped Cochran buy the Biden house through six-figure executive compensation funds listed as moving expenses and losses suffered on the sale of his previous home.

To be clear, no laws were broken. These arrangements were simply a continuation of Biden’s decades-long, Beltway business-as-usual relationships with a deep-pocketed corporate benefactor — which, by the way, later hired his son. Nice nepotism, if you can get it.

North Dakota Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd made cozy arrangements with subprime sleaze lender Countrywide. Portfolio.com reported that Conrad “borrowed $1.07 million in 2004 to refinance his vacation home with a balcony and wraparound porch in Bethany Beach, Del., a block from the ocean.”

Senate Banking Chair Dodd received two discounted loans in 2003 through Countrywide’s VIP program. He borrowed $506,000 to refinance his elite townhouse in Washington, D.C., and $275,042 to refinance a home in East Haddam, Conn. Countrywide helpfully waived fractions of points on the loans. The lower interest rates could have saved Dodd a combined $75,000 during the life of the 30-year loans.

Dodd had known about the preferential treatment on his loans since 2003, yet continued to deny that he was treated like a VIP, refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and encouraged government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to invest in Countrywide’s risky loans.

Not content with two shady home deals, Dodd got in on a real estate scheme for an Irish cottage and nearly 10 acres of land with William Kessinger, a businessman tied to his close friend, insider trader Edward R. Downe Jr.

Downe had pleaded guilty to tax and securities law violations and was banned for life from the business. In 2001, Dodd helped Downe obtain one of the treasured presidential pardons on Bill Clinton’s last day in office. A year after that, as Irish real estate prices went through the roof, Dodd purchased Kessinger’s share of the estate at a discount. He failed to include the obvious quid-pro-quo gift on Senate disclosure forms: Help a crooked friend, reap a cut-rate real estate deal.

Prominent members of Team Obama benefited from similar special home deals. Politico.com noted that the Clintons secured a $1.35 million loan from Democrat pal and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe for their New York estate; Obama special envoy Richard Holbrooke snagged a sweetheart loan to refinance his Telluride, Colo., ski vacation home from the Countrywide VIP program; and Obama’s close confidante and erstwhile vice presidential search committee panelist Jim Johnson accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate loans from Countrywide.

Then there’s President Barack Obama’s own $1.7 million Chicago manse — which was financed with a discounted mortgage from Northern Trust and infamously included a shady land swap with convicted felon donor/developer Tony Rezko. A report released by the Federal Election Commission in February 2009 underscored that the Obamas received reduced loan rates (saving $300 a month, or $108,000 over the life of a 30-year loan) because of their high-profile positions.

Northern Trust offered the super jumbo loan to the Obamas in anticipation of entering “long-term financial relationships” with the successful couple. The FEC refused to call the Obamas’ mortgage deal an illegal corporate contribution, but it was an obvious act of favor-trading. Northern Trust employees had contributed $71,000 to Obama since 1990…Perhaps fat-cat Democrats in crony-funded houses should put down their stones.

***

It’s getting ugly out there. Won’t be long ’til the agitators are back to breaking into private homes like their ACORN predecessors in 2009. Everything old is new again.

Related: Matthew Vadum reports at BG…Operation #OccupyWallStreeters–SEIU’s Stephen Lerner Leaks Plan to Terrorize Corporate Executives

***

Update: 2:05pm Eastern…Live video of the march here.

Logo credit: Sloane

Buried within an ABC News story about today’s release of hundreds of Solyndra-related emails is a reminder of what White House Spokesman Jay Carney said at a press conference late last month after being asked about the involvement of a Department of Energy consultant and Obama fundraiser named Steve Spinner:

Carney replied: “It’s my understanding, at least with regard to the gentleman you just mentioned [Steve Spinner], that he had no connection to overseeing the loan guarantee program.”

After hearing Carney say that, your first instinct might have been to think, “Hey, Spinner must have a connection to overseeing the loan guarantee program!”

Now back to the top of the story for confirmation that you should always trust your instincts:

An elite Obama fundraiser hired to help oversee the administration’s energy loan program pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra, even as his wife’s law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday.

“How hard is this? What is he waiting for?” wrote Steven J. Spinner, a high-tech consultant and energy investor who raised at least $500,000 for the candidate before being appointed to a key job helping oversee the energy loan guarantee program. “I have OVP [the Office of the Vice President] and WH [the White House] breathing down my neck on this.”

Many of the emails were written just days after Spinner accepted a three-page ethics agreement in which he pledged he would “not participate in any discussion regarding any application involving [his wife's law firm] Wilson [Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati].”

Prediction: At the next press conference Carney will claim that when he said Spinner had “no connection” to the loan program, he meant literally — as in that Spinner wasn’t duct taped, chained, super glued or stapled to it in any way.

If the “breathing down my neck on this” Spinner references from the White House and Veep’s office was in email or memo form, we might learn about it on a subsequent Friday afternoon document drop & dash.

Also, it isn’t difficult to spot a party planner who has access to piles of other people’s money:

Many of the emails surround his efforts to coordinate plans for either President Obama or Vice President Biden to announce it as the administration’s first loan approval — one that he repeatedly notes will create clean energy jobs.

It is Spinner, for instance, who pushes for a “big event” with “golden shovels, bulldozers, hardhats, etc.”

It wasn’t just a shovel ready job — it was a golden shovel ready job. At this point though, the whistling robots were just a gleam in his eye.

Politico has a story today about the “*#~@ show,” and there’s lots more Solyndra and Solyndra-related background here.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe