Dude, Where's My Change?

A couple of weeks ago we noticed the useful idiots on the left were already having a temper tantrum because Barack Obama wasn't appointing a cadre of freakazoids to his cabinet and was instead looking for more palatable Clinton retreads and assorted centrist types.

Well, they're still whining. This reminds me of little kids who during Christmas season ask every day why Santa didn't come yet. You have to explain to them when Santa is coming but also teach them what Christmas is all about. Santa Obama hasn't even arrived in office yet and the little kiddies are already clamoring for their presents, such as socialism, Hague trials for Bush and Cheney and gulags for radio talk show hosts they dislike.

They don't seem to understand a Cabinet and administration made up of Kos Kidz won't sell with normal Americans.

The more things change, the more they

stay . . . well, you know. And looking at President-elect Barack Obama's top appointments, it's easy to wonder whether convention has triumphed over change -- and centrists over progressives.

A quick run-down: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who supported the Iraq war until she initiated her presidential bid, has been handed the Cabinet's big plum: secretary of state. And Bush's second defense secretary, Robert Gates, will become Obama's first defense secretary. The Obama foreign policy adviser regarded as the most liberal in his inner circle, Susan E. Rice, has been picked for the U.N. ambassador slot. Obama is elevating this job to Cabinet rank, but he's still sending Rice to New York -- and in politics and policy, proximity to power matters. For national security adviser, Obama has picked James L. Jones. The retired four-star general was not hawkish on the Iraq war and seems to be a non-ideologue who possesses the right experience for the job. But he probably would have ended up in a McCain administration, and his selection has not heartened progressives.

Obama's economic team isn't particularly liberal, either. Lawrence H. Summers, who as President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary opposed regulating the new-fangled financial instruments that greased the way to the subprime meltdown, will chair Obama's National Economic Council. To head Treasury, Obama has tapped Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who helped oversee the financial system as it collapsed. Each is close to Robert Rubin, another former Clinton Treasury secretary, a director of bailed-out Citigroup and a poster boy for both the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and discredited Big Finance. Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be guided by Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman whose controversial tight-money policies ended the stagflation crisis of the 1970s but led to a nasty recession. (A genuinely progressive economist, Jared Bernstein, will receive a less prominent White House job: chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.)

Corn goes on to cite the typical laments of nutroots bloggers, and warns if they don't get their way, there'll be trouble.

That doesn't mean Obama deserves a pass for (so far) bypassing progressives. When he announced his foreign policy advisers last week, he declared that he was a "strong believer in strong personalities and strong opinions" and wanted "a vigorous debate inside the White House." But he has largely left liberals out of the debate. If strong progressive voices are not included in Obama's wild and woolly free-for-alls at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., they will have little choice but to find outlets on the outside (remember the Internet?) -- and become their own agents of change.

Translate that as they'll take their party off the cliff no matter what Obama does.

It's pretty clear the far left isn't open to diversity after all. If you don't march in lockstep with all their grandiose progressive goals they have no use for you.

Corn: Hey, Only the Left Is Allowed to Make Hitler Analogies, Or Something Like That

David Corn's lament that some fringe types are making comparisons between Barack Obama and Hitler might carry a bit more heft if we hadn't spent the better part of eight years enduring the angry left's absurd Bush is Hitler talk.

Further undermining his case is using long-ago discredited George Soros-funded Media Matters as his source as well as a column on World Net Daily from a guy nobody has ever heard of.

Anyone on the right making such specious claims needs to be ignored. The fact anyone on the left has the gall to complain about Hitler analogies is more absurd that anyone on the right even making the claim.

Maybe Tito the Builder ought to help straighten Corn out again.

McCain Supporter Unloads on Mother Jones Tool David Corn

Byron York has the details.

Someone asked why Munoz had come to the rally. “I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

The scene turned into a mini-fracas when David Corn, of Mother Jones, defended press coverage. Munoz was having none of it. Why, he asked, would the press whack Joe the Plumber when it didn’t want to report on Obama’s relationship with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber? “How come that’s not in the news all the time?” Munoz said. “How come Joe the Plumber is every second? I’m talking about NBC, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN.”A black woman with a strong Caribbean accent jumped in the fray. “Tell me,” she said to Corn, “why is it you can go and find out about Joe the Plumber’s tax lien and when he divorced his wife and you can’t tell me when Barack Obama met with William Ayers? Why? Why could you not tell us that? Joe the Plumber is me!”

“I am Joe the Plumber!” Munoz chimed in. “You’re attacking me.”

“Wait a second,” Corn said. “Do you pay your taxes?”

“Yes, I pay my taxes,” the woman said.

“Then you’re better than Joe the Plumber,” Corn said.

That set off a general free-for-all. “I’m going to tell you something,” Munoz yelled at Corn. “I’m better than Obama. Why? Because I’m not associated with terrorists!”

The media for the most part during this election cycle have demonstrated they are beneath contempt. They need to be treated as such. The absurd treatment applied to Joe Wurzelbacher may have been the last straw. People have had enough.