Obama White House Tried To Convince S&P To Maintain “Stable” Rating–And Failed

Chalk up another failure of the Obama Magic Tongue:

The Obama administration privately urged Standard & Poor’s in recent weeks not to lower its outlook on the United States — a suggestion the ratings agency ignored Monday, two people familiar with the matter said.

Treasury Department officials had been discussing with S&P whether the ratings agency should change its outlook on the United States to “negative” from “stable,” an indication that the country could lose its crucial AAA rating in coming years over its soaring debt levels.

Treasury officials told S&P analysts that they were underestimating the ability of politicians in Washington to fashion a compromise to curb deficits, a Treasury official said. They argued a change in ratings was not needed at this time because the debt was manageable and the administration had a viable plan in the works, the official said.

But S&P analysts told Treasury officials on Friday that they were unmoved — and released a report that expressed skepticism that the political parties could come together on how to bring spending in line with revenue.

In other words, Mr. Obama’s honeyed words didn’t convince the hard-nosed economists at S&P that he was serious about solving America’s financial crisis.

Wonkette Decides To Mock A Down’s Syndrome Baby On His Birthday

Mediaite is doing a great job of covering it, but I’ll share this excerpt from the story just to give you a taste of what Wonkette considers “humorous.”

Today is the day we come together to celebrate the snowbilly grifter’s magical journey from Texas to Alaska to deliver to the America the great gentleman scholar Trig Palin. Is Palin his true mother? Or was Bristol? (And why is it that nobody questions who the father is? Because, either way, Todd definitely did it.)

Now, I am by no means a Palinite, as I’ve shown by several past posts, including this one and this one. However, there’s something really scuzzy about using a child with Down’s Syndrome, who just happens to have been born into a famous family–through absolutely no fault of his own–to make bad and off-color jokes in order to score political points.

But this is what the anti-Palin left has sunk to.

UPDATE: WE WIN!

Issa Threatens Contempt Proceedings Over Gunwalking

I would say that The Honorable Representative Darrell Issa has just about had it with Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco stonewalling, according to this letter obtained by The Daily Caller.

“We are not conducting a concurrent investigation with the Department of Justice, but rather an independent investigation of the Department of Justice,” Issa says in his April 20 letter, citing three historical examples of congressional oversight of Justice Department investigations, including during the Teapot Dome scandal in 1922.

He’s threatening contempt proceedings if the documents aren’t forthcoming soon. I daresay he’ll follow through on that threat, too.