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According to Fox News, liberal Holland is out of control and drug addicts have run amok, particularly in Amsterdam. One resident of the capital city of the Netherlands begs to differ.

But despite appearances, is Amsterdam in fact a cesspool of decadence and despair? Maybe Karen Damen knows…

The 911 call to the Cambridge, MA Police makes it clear that the caller was acting at the request of someone else, and she said nothing at all about race until she was asked by the police dispatcher. It sounds as though the dispatcher said, “Are they White, Black or Hispanic?” Listen starting at 2:00 into the audio clip.

This gives her a lot of credibility when she says that she did not speak with Sergeant Crowley at the scene, contrary to his filed report.

And the recording of Crowley’s radio calls does nothing to substantiate his claim that Professor Gates was loud and abusive.

The big loser in all of this is Obama. He’s lost the backing of cops nationwide, and he’s handed the Right the ammo they needed to question who Sonia Sotomayor will empathize with once she’s seated on the Supreme Court.

I would suppose that the first thought for some Americans when hearing “Gates” and “Harvard” in the same breath would be to think, “Didn’t Bill Gates drop out of Harvard?” But the talk of the town today is the imbroglio surrounding the arrest last week of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The disorderly conduct charge was quickly dropped. The arrest report is available at The Smoking Gun.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html

This story is such a big deal here in greater Boston that I’ll weigh in with a few points.

• I don’t think it’s the job of police to know who every “somebody” is in their town. In fact, it’s better that they don’t know.
• President Obama, after saying “”Skip” Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don’t know all the facts,” should not have said “that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly.”
• I think Gates should have stopped making reckless accusations of racism against Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, and when he didn’t I think Crowley should have let it drop.
• If Gates pursues a lawsuit against Crowley, I wouldn’t be surprised if Crowley sues Gates for slander.
• I would like to see Gates and Crowley appear together, shake hands, and say the whole thing ends then and there. Neither has to apologize personally, other than to say they’re sorry it happened, and leave it at that.

The talk show “On Point” on Boston’s NPR station WBUR has a must-hear hour on Goldman Sachs & Co.. The springboard is investigative reporter Matt Taibbi’s exposé, “The Great American Bubble Machine.”

[audio:http://www.bu.edu/wbur/storage/2009/07/onpoint_0721_1.mp3]
(Note: I’m hot-linking this audio from ‘BUR, and it isn’t on my server, so it may disappear.)

Taibbi rips apart the understandably defensive, but ludicrous, arguments put forth by Goldman Sachs consultant Charles Ellis, who claims to be outraged by the excesses of the market — yet he insists the blame lies with government regulators and complicit consumers, but not the banks. I feel that Ellis and his ilk deserve to be treated with ridicule, condescension and derision.

Taibbi also tears into President Obama, for paying lip-service to an end of lobbyist influence and bonus-driven business as usual on Wall Street. I’m becoming increasingly disappointed with Obama for what he isn’t doing, in contrast to Bush, who I hated for what he was doing.