It's all fun and games -- until someone gets fired...

'GSA Again Under Fire, Now Over Video Spoof'

Two House committees said Thursday they are investigating wasteful spending by the General Services Administration, following an inspector general's report criticizing a lavish conference in October 2010 in Las Vegas.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee also released a six-minute video (below) that was reportedly shown at an awards ceremony at the conference in which a GSA employee is applauded and named "commissioner for the day" for rapping about what he would do if he were head of the agency.

Earlier this week, the White House accepted GSA chief Martha Johnson's resignation after she dismissed two deputies and suspended other career employees over the conference, which cost $820,000.

Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's office issued the following press release regarding a video they uncovered of a General Services Administration (GSA) employee bragging about lavish taypayer funded perks he enjoyed while working there.

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Federal Worker “American Idle” Uncovered:

Winning Video Skit from Taxpayer Funded Luxury Las Vegas GSA Convention

Video featuring Federal Employees jokes about never being under Inspector General Investigation, Lavish GSA Spending

The video clips below are from the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) October 2010 Western Region Conference in Las Vegas, NV. It was played on Thursday, October 28, 2010 at the “Capstone Dinner Event.”

Obama better prepare, when I’m Commissioner.
I’d have a road show like [Acting Regional GSA Administrator Jeffrey] Neely, every time you see me rolling on 20s yeah, in my GOV.
Spend BA 61 all on fun.
ATF can’t touch GS-15 guns!
Cause I buy everything your field office can’t afford.
Every GS-5 would get a top hat award.
Donate my vacation, love to the nation,
I’ll never be under OIG investigation.

In congratulating the winner at the conference, Deputy Commissioner of the Public Building Service David Foley presents an award and jokes about the previous night’s lavish “party that was held in the commissioner’s suite,” having to respond to congressional oversight, and Obama Administration efforts to restrict executive pay. 
GSA Administrator Martha Johnson later resigned after the GSA Inspector General presented findings of abuse and waste of taxpayer dollars at the conference.

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UPDATE

GSA has issued a statement condemning the video that was released earlier today by Issa’s office, showing GSA employees joking about the 2010 conference.

“This video is another example of the complete lack of judgment exhibited during the 2010 Western Regions Conference. Our agency continues to be appalled by this indefensible behavior, and we are taking every step possible to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.” - GSA Spokesman

The Return of the Gaffe-inator!

Vice President Joe Biden: the gift of comedy (that keeps on giving)!

While addressing voters in Iowa on the campaign trail, Biden mistakenly referred to Scott Community College President Dr. Theresa Paper as "Dr. Pepper."

Good thing he's a "heartbeat away from the presidency," right?

Late add/Biden bonus: In Biden's speech, he said that Mitt Romney is "consistently wrong."

(h/t: Washington Examiner)

Obama on Solyndra - then and now

My, how things change.

At the nation’s largest solar energy plant Wednesday, President Obama doubled down on his commitment to government subsidies for clean energy technology and green jobs — and deflected blame for instances when those investments have failed.

“Are you doing your ‘all-of-the-above’ strategy right if that’s what we have to show for it — Solyndra?” asked Kai Ryssdal, host of “Marketplace” on American Public Media, in an interview with Obama.

The solar energy start-up Solyndra, which had been the poster child of Obama’s initiative, went bankrupt in 2011, putting 1,000 employees out of work. It had received more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees through a Recovery Act program. The loan process is now the subject of a congressional investigation.

“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt,” Obama said. “But understand: This was not our program per se.”

Per se...

Video bonus below --

Then: “We can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans… Before the Recovery Act, we could build just 5 percent of the world’s solar panels. In the next few years, we’re going to double our share to more than 10 percent.” — Obama, remarks at Solyndra Inc., Fremont, Calif., May 26, 2010

Now: “Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt. Part of the reason they did was because the Chinese were subsidizing their solar industry and flooding the market in ways that Solyndra couldn’t compete. But understand: This was not our program, per se. Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it’s easy to raise money for startups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help startup companies get to scale.”— President Obama, interview with American Public Media’s “Marketplace,” March 21, 2012

U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder and his views on the Second Amendment

If you thought "Project Gunwalker - Operation Fast & Furious," the Dept. of Justice/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' supplying of high-powered weaponry to Mexican drug cartels, was just "a mistake" or "merely an example of federal bureaucratic incompetence," it's time to think again.

For sometime now, here at The Bliss Index and at many other outlets, there have been numerous accounts of Fast & Furious being a stealth attempt not to track illegal firearms and their use by the cartels but, instead, to specifically undermine the Second Amendment.

Breitbart.com's BREITBART.TV, as part of its "Vetting" campaign, has just released the following video of a talk U.S. Attorney Gen. Eric Holder made a few years before he took the lead at DOJ.

Listen closely -- it's telling and chilling.

From Breitbart.com:

Breitbart.com has uncovered video from 1995 of then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder announcing a public campaign to "really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

Holder was addressing the Woman's National Democratic Club. In his remarks, broadcast by CSPAN 2, he explained that he intended to use anti-smoking campaigns as his model to "change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC" about guns.

"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes."

Holder added that he had asked advertising agencies in the nation's capital to assist by making anti-gun ads rather than commercials "that make me buy things that I don't really need." He had also approached local newspapers and television stations, he said, asking them to devote prime space and time, respectively, to his anti-gun campaign.

Local political leaders and celebrities, Holder said, including Mayor Marion Barry and Jesse Jackson, had been asked to help. In addition, he reported, he had asked the local school board to make the anti-gun message a part of "every day, every school, and every level."

Despite strict gun control efforts, Washington, DC was and remains one of the nation's most dangerous cities for gun violence, though crime has abated somewhat since the 1990s.

Holder went on to become Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration, and currently serves as Attorney General in the Obama Administration.

The video of Holder's remarks was uncovered by Breitbart.com contributor Charles C. Johnson.

Known by the company he's kept...

Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground terrorist and one of the Chicago radicals who helped launch Barack Hussein Obama's political career (and we're still not sure if the president counts him as a "friend"), has this interesting tidbit to share:

"I mean, I think the people who practice white supremacy and who benefit from it are going to have to be stopped. And I think that's a huge undertaking and I think it takes a revolution."

(h/t: Breitbart.com)

Photo bonus: For a guy who tries to keep his distance from Bill Ayers and pretend he doesn't know him, he sure has been chummy with the guy.

On December 21, 1997, Barack Obama wrote a short review of William Ayers’ book A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court, which had recently been published by Beacon Press. (On page 82 of the book itself, Ayers mentions Obama. So much for casual acquaintance.)

Hooray (who works for) Hollywood...?

Elizabeth Warren (Socialist), who will face U.S. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in a campaign for the old "Teddy Kennedy seat" in the Bay State, has been touting her socialist credentials, far and wide.

The truth is, like most socialist politicians, she says one thing and lives another. The latest anti-Warren video (below) is a hilarious send-up of the Oscar-winning "The Artist" (and a spot-on representation of who she is and who she represents...hint, it ain't the "1 percent").

"Cough Drops-The Mandate"

If you're looking for inspired satire, check out the video below...

In it, Remy crashes Sandra Fluke's Congressional testimony to demand a mandate for his cough drop addiction. "Remy: Cough Drops-The Mandate" is one of a series of collaborations between Remy and Reason.tv. To watch Remy's other videos, go to youtube.com/goremy.

See more here...