Obama's contempt for voters

Barack Obama emailed me again this week. His campaign did, that is.

In the arms race that is the presidential campaign, Obama for America sends out requests for support, by way of pleas for money, which is no surprise. But these emails treat his supporters, or Democrats (I am not one but I got the emails in '08 and they've kept up since then) or just its recipients as partisan fanboys/girls that root for the blue team, therefore they must believe the red team is pure evil, must be stopped and our president is the true defender of their values. The emails are reductive of its recipients and insulting to their intelligence given Barack Obama's actions in the White House are rarely consistent with his promises, nor of what progressives believe in and want to see from their standbearer. But maybe I'm projecting onto the Projection President.

For example, his latest:

(Recipient) --

We now know who our opponent is.

But what we're really fighting against is what our opponent has pledged to do if elected.

He would shower billionaires with more huge tax breaks, oppose setting a timeline to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, starve investments in clean energy research, and make it harder for students to afford to go to college. He'd outlaw a woman's right to choose and completely cut funding for Planned Parenthood.

We can't afford an endless war in Afghanistan, a return to policies that hurt the middle class, and a social agenda from the 1950s.

The stakes and the differences are profound. The outcome of this election will determine the course of this country for decades to come.

I need you by my side.

Make a donation of $3 or more today:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Ready

Thank you,

Barack

So the president points to Republicans', or, likely, Mitt Romney's, positions on serving the economic interests of the most wealthy Americans, a timeline in Afghanistan, clean energy, affordable higher education and reproductive rights.

Let's look at what has came out of Obama's administration in the last couple weeks on these issues.

Matt Taibbi on the JOBS Act, which Obama enthusiastically signed on April 5:

The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market.

In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market.

The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.

Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give "pre-prospectus" presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the "pre-presentation."

The JOBS Act also loosens a whole range of other reporting requirements, and expands stock investment beyond "accredited investors," giving official sanction to the internet-based fundraising activity known as "crowdfunding."

This Trojan horse is billed as a helping hand to the little guy, the ever-hailed small business. But as Taibbi pointed out, this is a giveaway to Silicon Valley that could cause major havoc later on and "invite a replay of the disastrous tech-stock bubble of the late nineties. That mess was made possible by a historic collapse in accounting standards, with the great investment banks the pioneers of the collapse."

What about Afghanistan? The Pentagon isn't taking the impending drawdown very well, as the AP reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON — Adm. Bill McRaven, the head of U.S. special operations, is mapping out a potential Afghanistan war plan that would replace thousands of U.S. troops with small special operations teams paired with Afghans to help an inexperienced Afghan force withstand a Taliban onslaught as U.S. troops withdraw.

While the overall campaign would still be led by conventional military, the handfuls of special operators would become the leading force to help Afghans secure the large tracts of territory won in more than a decade of U.S. combat. They would give the Afghans practical advice on how to repel attacks, intelligence to help spot the enemy and communications to help call for U.S. air support if overwhelmed by a superior force.

[...]

McRaven’s proposal amounts to a slimmed-down counterinsurgency strategy aimed at protecting the Afghan population as well as hunting the Taliban and al-Qaida. It’s not the counterterrorist plan advanced by Vice President Joe Biden, which would leave Afghan forces to fend for themselves while keeping U.S. special operators in protected bases from which they could hunt terrorists with minimum risk, according to a senior special operations official reached this week.

Thousands of U.S. troops could remain in harm’s way well after the end of combat operations in 2014, tasked with helping Afghans protect territory won by U.S. forces.

Let's not forget the administration did not want to stick to the BUSH TIMETABLE to leave Iraq, but the Iraqi government refused. So now Obama takes credit for ending the Iraq war, even though he didn't want to, it was Bush's plan and the sectarian violence continues there. Why should we think Afghanistan will be any different? Insulting.

Next, clean energy. I don't doubt the administration is committed to clean energy research. But I do doubt it is doing much to actively block oil and gas exploration. On April 9, TPM detailed Obama's "oil boom" in light of the GOP blaming him for higher gas prices because, they say, Obama refuses to allow for adequate oil drilling in the U.S. The argument is false, as TPM notes, not only because no president has that kind of power over oil prices but also because, well, the industry is doing just fine in this struggling economy. Oil and gas extraction has skyrocketed in the last year-plus.

Oil and gas extraction is a relatively small industry, but it has prospered in the weak economy, even as other industries climb slowly out of the great recession. Energy experts say that the oil boom itself is also due to factors outside of Obama’s control, but this gives the lie to the notion that Obama’s been actively squelching it.

So while the email's claim that the administration holds clean energy in high regard is clearly true, that doesn't tell the whole story. Obama cannot be legitimately considered the oil and gas sector's number one enemy.

How about affordable higher ed? Bloomberg broke this story in late March:

With $67 billion of student loans in default, the Education Department is turning to an army of private debt-collection companies to put the squeeze on borrowers. Working on commissions that totaled about $1 billion last year, these government contractors face growing complaints that they are violating federal laws by insisting on stiff payments, even when borrowers’ incomes make them eligible for leniency.

The Obama administration had no problem throwing drowning citizens to loan predators. It took the release of the story (which is a good read) for the administration to give a shit, claiming it will re-examine this practice and overhaul the system. But promises are often just words.

I guess he gets one and a half (clean energy) of five right, that one being reproductive rights.

But, hey, he's doing loads for the LGBT community, right? No. WaPo (April 12): "... White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity."

Pretty words. Contempt for voters. Do what it takes to simply get re-elected. The liberal standardbearer.

Will the peasant mentality reign?

Matt Taibbi has a particularly piercing column in The Guardian today on the ramifications of the government's treatment of Goldman Sachs and the corrosive, backwards ideas inspired by Ayn Rand's brand of selfishness.

Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God?


People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward "moochers" and "parasites" – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.

This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits.

It's time to reject the "vampire squid."

Adventures in hubris

Dick Cheney has endorsed Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race over Florida governor Charlie Crist, now deemed an insufficient conservative in today's Republican witch-hunt climate.

Now read Cheney's statement in support of Rubio. Think about what he's saying. This man, who irrevocably altered America in ways too numerous to name at this point in the day, has the unbridled, runaway ego to say the following.

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms. America requires leaders to face down these challenges who are confident in who they are and what they stand for. Leaders who know that public service is about something bigger than climbing the political ladder and amassing greater political power…

“We can trust Marco to stand up to the Obama agenda that threatens our freedom, and promote clear conservative alternatives…Charlie Crist has shown time and again that he cannot be trusted in Washington to take on the Obama agenda because on issue after issue he actually supports that agenda. Lately it seems Charlie Crist cannot be trusted even to remain a Republican. I strongly urge him to either stay in the Republican Primary or drop out of the race.”

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms." Fear, paranoia, denial, self-loathing, it's par for the course for Dick.

"Public service is about something bigger than ... amassing greater political power." Laughable. This is the man that drove an unprecedented level of executive power.

And he says don't trust those that aren't one of chosen. Sounds like McCarthyism. What vicious dirtbag.

The world needs Lil' Dead Pope

In honor of the latest news of the Pope's abandonment of innocence in his career as a fierce protector of rapists, molesters and pedophiles, it's time to revisit a Wonder Showzen's Beat Kids classic, Lil' Dead Pope (The link will have to suffice. There was no embed option.).

The Newt Gingrich Comedy Hour

Live! From his alternate reality! It's Neewwwwwwwwwt Ginnnnnnngriiiiiiiich!



Defund the Department of Health and Human Services! Zing! Soak me in your delusions, Newt! Douse us with your crazy!

Saturday Night Live should just play unedited clips of Newt rather than actually do their own pathetic skits.

The King has decreed: Assassinate the "guilty" peasant

And it is written: The king, our wise and fearless leader, has decreed ye a terrorist upon secret evidence only the king and his cohorts may view. The king, he of compassion and the Nobel Peace Prize, orders the extra-judicial execution of ye, an insubordinate subject, the mongrel the state knows as Anwar al-Awlaki.

NYT:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Now read the brazen comments in the Washington Post made by an (anonymous) official on the assurance that assassinating an American under the guise of his alleged involvement in "terrorism" is justifiable and legal.

"He's recently become an operational figure for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," said a second U.S. official. "He's working actively to kill Americans, so it's both lawful and sensible to try to stop him." The official stressed that there are "careful procedures our government follows in these kinds of cases, but U.S. citizenship hardly gives you blanket protection overseas to plot the murder of your fellow citizens."

So how about the two incidents the U.S. points to as proof of Awlaki's involvement in attempting to kill his fellow Americans? They would be the Fort Hood shooting (Nidal Hasan) and the underwear bomber (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab). WaPo:

Aulaqi corresponded by e-mail with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., last year. Aulaqi is not believed to have helped plan the attack, although he praised Hasan in an online posting for carrying it out.

Concern grew about the cleric's role after he was linked to the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day by detonating an explosive device he had smuggled in his underwear. Aulaqi acknowledged teaching and corresponding with the Nigerian but denied ordering the attack.

That doesn't sound like solid proof of anything beyond incitement. But apparently our constitutional law professor-in-chief knows what we shouldn't mess our pretty little heads with.

Even the Bush administration's torture troll John Yoo didn't agree with these executive powers.

Spencer Ackerman contends:

There’s no doubt al-Awlaki is exploiting his citizenship, but there’s also a reason why the guarantees of citizenship can even be exploited, and to take those away in this case, based on secret evidence and asserted claims leads us down a very dark path.

Dark path indeed. Obama has continually emphasized a break from Bush-era excessive executive wartime powers. He promised to close Gitmo, he ended torture techniques and ordered closing of black site prisons. Admittedly, it was a low bar. But those differences the Obama administration claim to embrace are much less substantial when a record of Obama and Bush policy is examined.

Eli Lake:

But these differences in style mask a sameness in substance that should worry civil libertarians. When it comes to the legal framework for confronting terrorism, President Obama is acting in no meaningful sense any different than President Bush after 2006, when the Supreme Court overturned the view that the president’s war time powers were effectively unlimited. As the Obama administration itself is quick to point out, the Bush administration also tried terrorists apprehended on U.S. soil in criminal courts, most notably “20th hijacker” Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid. More important, President Obama has embraced and at times defended the same expansive view of a global war against Al Qaeda as President Bush.

The U.S. still reserves the right to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without charge, try them via military tribunal, keep them imprisoned even if they are acquitted, and kill them in foreign countries with which America is not formally at war (including Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan). When Obama closed the secret CIA prisons known as “black sites,” he specifically allowed for temporary detention facilities where a suspect could be taken before being sent to a foreign or domestic prison, a practice known as “rendition.” And even where the Obama White House has made a show of how it has broken with the Bush administration, such as outlawing enhanced interrogation techniques, it has done so through executive order, which can be reversed at any time by the sitting president.

Our unending war on terror continues, and our reckless leaders have the power to do whatever they want, including the order to kill an American without explaining or proving why. That's our America in 2010.

Persecuted Wall street overlords throw temper tantrum

There's some serious arrogance that oozes from this New York Times piece on those poor persecuted Wall St. bankers suffering at the hands of the big bad Democrats (who've proposed such lukewarm regulations after Wall St. terrorized the American/global economy that this entire exercise is beyond laughable).

Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda.

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

“If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support,” said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T. Mr. King is a board member of the Financial Services Roundtable, which lobbies for the biggest banks, and last month he helped represent the industry at a private dinner at the Treasury Department.

“I understand the public outcry,” he continued. “We have a 17 percent real unemployment rate, people are hurting, and they want to see punishment. But the political rhetoric just incites more animosity and gets people riled up.”

Glenn Greenwald sums it up:

... that Wall Street is dissatisfied with the Democrats and the Obama administration reveals how extreme are their expectations of control of the Government. The second-highest-ranking Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, recently conceded of the Democratic-controlled Congress: "frankly, bankers own the place." It's impossible to find a more loyal and attentive servant to bankers than Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. As the NYT article this morning details, Wall Street executives and their lobbyists have virtually unfettered access to the administration and to the President himself. You would think they'd be satisfied with the state of affairs in Washington. Yet so extreme are their perceived entitlements of control that even mere symbolic and rhetorical disobedience from the politicians they own -- he said some mean things about us -- creates a sense of righteous grievance: our government employees do not behave this way toward us and will be punished if it continues.

And, of course, the GOP is waiting to benefit off of this. The end of the story:

The Democratic campaign committees declined to comment on Wall Street money. But their Republican rivals are actively courting it.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.

Shocking. I can't wait to see the outrage when the tea partiers hear this....

And any excuse to post this video is appreciated. Big John Cornyn is here to save the day! Biiiiiiiiig Jooooooohn.

Obama administration still insists they care about civil liberties

Stay with me.

The Washington Times' Eli Lake today:

President Obama is coming under pressure from Democrats and civil liberties groups for failing to fill positions on an oversight panel formed in 2004 to make sure the government does not spy improperly on U.S. citizens.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, or PCLOB, was recommended initially by the bipartisan September 11 commission as an institutional voice for privacy inside the intelligence community. Its charter was to recommend ways to mitigate the effects of far-reaching surveillance technology that the federal government uses to track terrorists.

The panel was established in 2004 under President Bush as part of the executive office of the president. Its independence was unclear for several years. Congress responded by increasing the board's budget, expanding its powers and moving it outside the presidential executive office in 2007.

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has allowed the board to languish. He has not even spent the panel's allocation from the fiscal 2010 budget.

SOME lawmakers are pushing the administration to act. Then Lake gets a comment from the Obama team.

Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, defended the administration's record in general but acknowledged the Democrats' criticisms and said the White House would soon act on them.

This president has made clear his commitment to civil liberties through the actions of his administration, and appreciates the congressional interest in this important issue. The White House has allocated funding for the PCLOB, and looks forward to appointing its leadership soon, he said.

(Emphasis mine)

That's beyond rich. Obama tried to peddle that line of thought in his State of the Union too.

Lake begins to chronicle proof that Rhodes is brimming with deception:

For example, the Obama administration pressed a British court last year to keep secret details of how terrorism suspect Binyam Mohammed was treated while in U.S. and Pakistani custody. The administration has also embraced in some cases the concept of indefinite detention for some terrorism suspects apprehended during the Bush presidency, and it has increased the practice of targeted killings in Pakistan and Yemen through unmanned aerial vehicles.

On the issue of surveillance, Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign voted for reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, a bill criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union for providing only minimal court oversight to expansive electronic intelligence-collection programs.

It goes on.

Outside of authorizing torture (and we have no proof torture isn't still going on since no one's allowed to observe overseas prisons), Obama is a direct heir of the Bush/Cheney legacy. The constitutional law professor and his own attorney general, in refusing to hold those guilty of what we'd call war crimes if another country did it, are beyond being accessories to the ugliness and are now the prime drivers of this illegal, shameful and immoral activity.

Hubris ... overweening pride

Torture-memo author John Yoo will never go away. He'll continue to pop up to defend torture, a de facto defense of his own egregious behavior as a stooge Office of Legal Counsel lawyer for the Justice Department who was more than giddy to rubber stamp whatever his dear leader Bush wanted: the torture of other human beings in the name of "national security."

Yet it's still a little disorienting to read quips like the ones he offered The New York Times Magazine.

Do you regret writing the so-called torture memos, which claimed that President Bush was legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture?
No, I had to write them. It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered.

When you say you had “a client,” do you mean President Bush?
Yes, I mean the president, but also the U.S. government as a whole.

But isn’t a lawyer in the Department of Justice there to serve the people of this country?
Yes, I think you are quite right, when the government is executing the laws, but if there’s a conflict between the president and the Congress, then you have to pick one or the other.

Were you close to George Bush?
No, I’ve never met him. I don’t know Cheney either. I have not gone hunting with him, which is probably a good thing for me.

"It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered." Unbelievable. Does he hear what's coming out of mouth? I get it, defend yourself at all costs John. But understand that you'll have keep up this pathetic, soul-sucking charade the rest of your miserable life. Maybe it's not a charade, maybe he's convinced himself through extreme delusion that what he did was just. But then why does he continue to pop up in such inane "interviews" like this that only make him look more like the tool he is? Why does he keep writing op-eds?

He knows what he's validated. And he'll have to keep it up, at least for the next 20 years or so.

The indistinguishables

I'm obviously six days late, but I've finally taken in what happened with Obama's speech six days ago. Who did he sound like last week? 9/11 this, 9/11 that. Fear, paranoia, 9/11. 18-year-old kids going to war next year were 10 years old on 9/11; this thing is fueled by legends and folklore to them at this point. I guess we knew he would do this, from day one. But that doesn't make it any less disheartening. A candidate Obama doesn't have near the responsibility and access to hard truths like a President Obama. It was another one of "those" dark days.

Holding it at West Point? Mistake. It was not a rousing speech. It was the most somber war escalation speech in history, I'd boldly presume. Like any other president that has sent troops to war -- much less a botched, near-impossible war started by someone else -- the soldiers that die are his kids now. Haunting stuff. But they're so paralyzed by the powerlust and sheer death hold the system has on them.

What, is he giving the generals "one last try" to get it right? How war-tested and noble of our commander-in-chief. What about all the death, of us and Afghanis? You can't stop fucking terrorism (in this case al-Qaeda), and you definitely will only help coalesce al-Qaeda and the Taliban. You think escalating is a deterrent for them? This is what they want: To contribute to America's self-inflicted bleeding of lives, resources, principles. And Washington, like most everyone else in the U.S. it seems, fiddles while Rome burns. That's what I thought of our president. It reminds me a little of the last scene in Orwell's "Animal Farm" sometimes.

Update: This post by Glenn Greenwald exemplifies the "Animal Farm" comparison:

As (Harper's Scott) Horton writes, the claim that government officials enjoy a virtually impenetrable shield of immunity even in the commission of war crimes "has emerged as a sort of ignoble mantra for the Justice Department, uniting both the Bush and Obama administrations." Indeed, that is the common strain of virtually every act undertaken by the Obama DOJ with regard to our government's war crimes and other felonies, from torture to renditions to illegal eavesdropping.

With revelations of serious, recent abuse at an ongoing "black site" prison in Afghanistan, serious questions have been raised about the extent to which detainee abuse has actually been curbed under Obama. But there's no question that the single greatest impediment to disclosure and accountability for past abuses is the Obama Justice Department, which has repeatedly gone far beyond the call of duty in its attempt to protect Bush war crimes and other illegal acts. This new Seton Hall Report regarding these three detainees deaths illustrates not only how perverse and unjust, but also how futile, such efforts are. War crimes never stay hidden, and the only question from the start was whether the Obama DOJ would be complicit in the attempt to shield them from disclosure. That question has now been answered rather decisively.

Last of the golden boys

Was Tiger possibly the last American golden boy? I mean, I never thought of him in any scandal situation. He just seemed determined, or something. Turns out he was bored. Or I assume he was. I imagine if you're the best in the world at something, you're beyond rich and you're married to a Norwegian model, reality is skewed and you need a new thrill. He could do whatever he wanted. What person wouldn't take it advantage. You'd almost be crazy not to. I'm not condoning infidelity (though I don't really care b/c it's not my business). He'll get hounded, but this isn't the end of course. And, as Michael Wilbon points out in Tiger's remarks, it's a shame this personal sin has to be splayed out and filleted for the whole world to see. Again, no one suffers like the victims, and even more so in the public eye. THAT should have deterred him. It didn't.

Libra sabotage

I think embarrassing is the word to describe Tiger Woods' little predicament. Refusing the police three times? It has to be serious if it's gone this far. PR nightmare. (Did I just say PR nightmare? God, I hate media-speak.)

Tiger Woods finally gave his side of the story Sunday — on his Web site, not to police — and took the blame for an "embarrassing" car crash that gave him cuts, bruises and public scrutiny like never before.

His statement failed to clear up any questions about the middle-of-the-night accident outside his Isleworth estate in which his wife told police she used a golf club to smash the back windows of the Cadillac SUV to help him out.

"This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me," Woods said on his Web site. "I'm human and I'm not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn't happen again."

Then he's got the balls to say this:

"Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible," he said. "The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false."

And the authorities:

"We have been informed by the Florida Highway Patrol that further discussion with them is both voluntary and optional," Mark Steinberg, his agent at IMG, said in an e-mail. "Although Tiger realizes that there is a great deal of public curiosity, it has been conveyed to FHP that he simply has nothing more to add and wishes to protect the privacy of his family."

Woods' wife turned troopers away from their home in the exclusive gated community outside Orlando on Friday, the day of the accident, because she said he was sleeping. Steinberg called troopers en route to Woods' house on Saturday and postponed the meeting until Sunday.

"We're just continuing our traffic crash investigation," Montes said. "If we have somebody who we feel is pertinent to the investigation, then we will interview them."

And no matter whether this was an innocuous accident or a savage scandal or whatever, there will be no discussion of the affluent getting preferential treatment from the law.

Part marketing, part vainglory

Here's some powerful sentiments from Carrie Brownstein on the commidifying of art and the powerful self ego, even with babies involved....

The folks over at Rockabye Baby! -- who turn everything from Queen to Aerosmith into child-friendly lullabies -- are aiming to infantilize Guns N' Roses next. Hard-rocking, balls-to-the-wall, guitar-laden tracks such as "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle" will soon be reinterpreted with harps, bells and xylophones.

As far as I'm concerned, these efforts to expose children to reggae-less versions of Bob Marley and cocaine-free versions of The Eagles has much more to do with the parents than with the kids themselves. I mean, do The Beatles and The Beach Boys really need to be more kid-friendly than they already are? Perhaps it's the adults who want things quieter and softer, who need the guitar turned down and the harp turned up, who need to be soothed after a long day of work and would rather stay home and watch Parks and Recreation than go to a rock show. And now, thanks to Rockabye, they can listen to benign, enervated versions of their old favorites and claim it was their kids who made them do it.

I completely agree with her (as someone that has no art output like Ms. Brownstein's). But I'm entitled to an opinion regardless. It's partly due to what can be called ... vainglory! (Cool word, right?)