First off, I think it’s safe to say that Baracus Hubris Maximus, (Hail, Ceasar!) as alluded to by Facebook/Twitter-happy former Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, really does want to kill your grandmother. Let’s face it, when it comes to family, the guy’s got issues. The man dreams of a father who practically made a career of abandoning women like his mother, and the children he sired with them, in order to travel around the world to find new women to knock up and leave. Who wouldn’t be irreparably scarred by that? Add pee-stained shorts clad hugging episodes with his scotch-soaked “Pop” (Grandpa? Frank Marshall Davis?) on the brink of manhood to the mix, and, it’s no wonder he spends holidays railing about how badly lazy-assed, irresponsible, black boy-fathers suck. Read the rest of this entry »
For months now, (since at least September of last year) I’ve been making the case that if there’s indeed a mastermind behind a scheme to get Barack Obama into the Oval Office in order to advance a corporate, Wall Street-friendly agenda, it’s none of the usual suspects whose names are always thrown into the mix whenever these things are discussed, like Henry Paulson, but this guy, JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon. A profile of the bankster in today’s New York Times, while inaccurate on a few points, imo, does nothing to disabuse anyone of conviction resultant from such speculation. In fact, the piece, in detailing the New York Federal Reserve Board of Directors‘ member, who was selected along with Pepsico’s Indra Nooyi, another Obama campaign economic advisor, and his cozy relationship with the White House, especially with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, could be seen as express validation of such a claim.
Thanks primarily to Matt Taibbi and his recent Rolling Stone article about Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine, especially in light of the company’s latest profit report, Hank Paulson’s name has been prominent in the news. Everybody from Paul Krugman to Seeking Alpha to Congress has weighed in on the meaning, effect, genesis and reality of said profits in light of their new status as a bank holding company, the company’s bailout, and their relationship of the architect of the TARP program that provided it, Paulson.
However, the fact that JP Morgan has also benefited every step of the bailout/extortion way is inescapable, while the reality of Jamie Dimon’s relationship with Obama usually flies under the radar. As does the fact that where Obama, Dimon and Paulson are concerned, all roads lead to Chicago.
We all know that Paulson is from Barrington, Illinois and served as Goldman’s Midwestern Investment Division chief in Chicago before becoming the company’s CEO. A Republican, who once served as an intern to Richard Nixon, Paulson has nonetheless been accused by fellow Chicagoan, Robert Novak and Nina Easton of being a Republican in Name Only (RINO) whose appointments were to serve as groundwork for his wife’s college friend, Hillary Clinton’s cabinet, despite the fact that Paulson’s political donations were primarily in support of his party. However, if Paulson was trying to pave the way for anybody, it was Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton. Read the rest of this entry »
News of the release of documents detailing the shenanigans of the particular parties involved in perpetrating the 700 billion dollar fraud bank bailout, or Troubled Asset Relief Program, came out last week and didn’t really get the attention it was due, what with the Pretendident-as-Solomon’s first “Split the Fetus” tour stop at Notre Dame, and his fingernail clinging, bus undercarriage-headed Speaker of the House, Nasty Pancake’s, more-serious-because-chicks-have-a higher-standard, CIA never lies, and all going on. The Freedom of Information documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that TARP, (or, as I’m sure it is known in certain circle jerks, the Rape of They, The Sheeple, those willing, clueless, hopium-addicted, changeling co-conspirators, who managed to both bend over and grab all of our collective ankles, while forcing everybody’s, theirs included, hands up in a “reach for the sky” surrender gesture at the same time, by electing the Chicago Robbin’ Hood whose vig to the Merry Band of Banksters who he fronted for was due) is the cross-party, cross-administration, shady scummy scam we’ve all known it to be all along. From Politico: Read the rest of this entry »
Cutting through the crap is not as easy as it should be nowadays, not because it has suddenly become perfumed chocolate, but because so many people get paid so much to tell you it is. Pay no attention to the stench, either your eyes are going because you’re old, or you’re too young to know crap when you see it. The fact that neither proposition could ever possibly be true is irrelevant, that’s the premise everything in the media is predicated upon, so, sadly that is their, and our, basis for “truth.” It’s still bullshit, though.
American University professor Richard Benedetto makes that very clear in his Politico piece today; giving the media a failing grade for it’s fawning fluffing of the Polebritician currently holding the office of the president hostage:
Last week, I asked my journalism and political science students at American University to grade the news media covering the Obama administration for the first 100 days. The consensus fell between a C+ and a B-. Read the rest of this entry »
It seems that every day that the Pretendident manages to successfully navigate through without sticking his foot in his mouth, or his finger in the eye of someone, or a group of someones, worthy of PUMA respect, the resultant paucity of headlines causes the diligent bloggers of the PUMAsphere to turn introspective and compulsively begin to contemplate the future and direction of our nascent movement via our navels. Thus, we begin to see a spate of “Where Do We Go From Here?” What Have We Accomplished So Far?” blog posts, chronicling our genesis and calling for “focus.”
Why?
Where do we go from here? For now, we go where Barack Obama leads us. Not like the Lapdogs of Cheetoville, or the Sheeple of Sleepy Hollow, or the lazy, compliant Mainstream Media Mafia, all of whom have proven far too susceptible to the mindfucking and astroturfing of his devious, duplicitous minions to be trusted; but, like bloodhounds, or, what we are, PUMAs, who have caught the scent of prey and refuse to be diverted from our mission.
Barack Obama did not win fairly by being a superior candidate, he won by manipulating the media’s message, using whatever means necessary. PUMA was born to counter that by those who not only saw through his PuppetMaster’s manipulation, but were fucking outraged by it. We were not all of a color, religion, gender, political party or single mind, and though most of us supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries, our rejection of her rival was only minimally influenced by her. We always rejected Obama because of Obama.
Boy, oh, boy, reading the news can destroy lickety-split any sense of confidence unintentional proximity to residual whiffs of Hopium might inspire. Not that I’ve been so influenced, but I can certainly sympathize with the unfortunate souls who might have been unduly charmed by the relentless barrage of happy-hopeyness from the Changelings of Obamedia, only to have any semblence of Obamaptomism dashed by actually reading past the Headlines of Hype. Take, for example, today’s Wall Street Journal piece by Fox Business News’ Stuart Varney, who seems bewildered, nay, dare I say it, shocked, that the recent reluctance of the Obministration to accept repayment of TARP funds by banksters not exactly in league with the Big Bank Mafia means that (horrors!) the ObaHoods want to control the banks! Duh?! I mean, really, Stu, I’m no London economist, and I saw that weeks ago! Sheesh, you don’t need fancy degrees to tell you that if you want to control things, first ya gotta grab hold of the banks! Like I said, duuuuuh!
Coupla days ago, Newsweek ran an article claiming that Obama’s telephone buddy, Warren Buffet was the real architect of certain aspects of the bailout, not his Doogie Howser-esque Boy Wonder, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc). Holy cannoli, Batman! Who coulda figured that one out, huh?! Double-dog duh-uh-uh-uh-uuuuhhhh! In September, I wrote about Obama’ Bailout Buddies and, the second name mentioned besides Goldman Sachs’ own Treasury Secretary, and Obama telephone pal, Henry Paulson was, you guessed it, you super smart PUMAlicious devil, you, Warren Buffet. Ta dahhhh! Gee whiz, when even I can see this stuff, what’s taking the smartest guys in the media so long to see the handwriting on the mirror that’s right in front of the nose on their faces? Riddle me that one, Batman, whydoncha?
The “dirty little secret” regarding the firing of General Motors’ CEO Richard Wagoner by the Obama administration is not that it represents an alarming degree of government intervention into private business, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson fired AIG’s CEO of three months, Robert Willumstad, and brought in his Midwestern Goldman Sachs board member buddy, Edward Liddy, (who resigned his seat on Goldman’s board a couple weeks later) when he loaned the company 85 billion pre-TARP dollars in return for 79.5% of it, after all. In fact, the “dirty little secret” is not even a “secret” at all. You see, what nobody wants to admit, is that none of this crap makes any difference at all.
People simply can’t afford new cars, and everybody knows it. The Big 3 could be making the bestest, most beautifullest, fuel efficient air-powered chariots in the world and, like the housing market, they would struggle. Nobody’s accusing the construction industry of building crappy houses and causing the real estate collapse. Nope, the government is diverting your attention from the fact that they’re still funneling the money consumers might use to buy shit that would stimulate the economy to the banksters who screwed up the economy in the first place. All while they take over everything else, of course. Read the rest of this entry »
On the day when the Superman of Spokesmodel-in-Chief’s Boy Wonder, Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) was all over television promoting his plan to fundamentally change the American financial structure…
“But we’re going to emerge stronger from this. When we get through this, people are going to care less about what they make, more about what they do. What they achieve is what they make. And that will help make this country stronger.”
…by pumping even more cash into the banksters’ coffers than the 565 billion dollars already spent of the 700 billion allocated TARP funds, you’d think that money and Afghanistan were all that the Obamanians had to worry about.
Yet, with all that, and the other potential crises looming on the Obama horizon, like the auto industry collapse, no “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal forthcoming, and G20 to name another three, the upcoming April 7 date for indicting, or filing an extension to file charges against the Cabbage Patch Weeble, Rod Blagojevich, lurks menacingly in the background for the Pretendident. NBC Chicago says the indictment could come down sometime next week. While the Obministration might well be content to just let sleeping dogs lie, in about a week, one way or another, something’s gonna give. Read the rest of this entry »
As I watch the ill-prepared Pretendident try to advance his fauxgressive, pseudo-centrist, Republican-lite brand of quasi-liberal mishmosh of an ill-conceived agenda further along on the nightmare road to his own personal Jonestown that he seems so hellbent on guiding us, I can’t help but be furious at the KoolAid addicted juveniles who gleefully and cluelessly helped whoever tapped the hologram of an illusion that masquerades as the reality that is supposed to be Obama, to be the president that finally drives the country into the ground.
What the hell were you thinking?
Did you really believe that a guy who can’t remember where he is, or how many states there are, or whether he’s a Muslim or not, much less his own 4 year old, twice-daily repeated stump speech without a TelePrompTer, could actually guide this country to peace and prosperity? A man barely in the Senate long enough to figure out where his office, let alone the bathroom was, is suddenly going to be able and savvy enough to, what, wave a magic wand, kiss the nation’s boo-boos and make them all better? Is that what you thought while you watched his “what she said,” “I agree with you, John,” debate performances? Really? No shit?
Just Barely President, Baracus Hubris Maximus, (Hail Ceasar!) forced the networks to give him a hunk of their prime time last night because…well, he really, really wanted to go on TV again. It wasn’t like he had anything earth-shattering, or even new, to share with the nation; he just must have felt, just like the rest of us did, that his last few giggly, insulting television appearances sucked, so he needed to hijack American Idol time to try to re-convince America that he was indeed worthy of their American Idol, West Wing-esque devotion to his Spokesmodel-In-Chief-iness. Whatever; Obi in HD is getting old.
On a day when Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) appear before Congress seeking unprecedented power to further lootmanipulate regulate the financial industry, including non-banking entities like AIG, the company whose bonuses they’ve been called on the carpet to address, perusal of the day’s news stories, blog posts, and opinion pieces reveals more questions than answers. Is this the bizarre Obministration Hokey Pokey Bamboozle One Step Forward, Two Steps Back Cha-Cha-Cha it appears to be, or are the Obanomic efforts of the government so far truly on behalf of the people?
As the past two years’ Interminable Campaign of the Candidate Then Known As Obamessiah morphs into the Perpetual Campaign of Just Barely President Baracus Hubris Maximus (Hail Ceasar!) great pains have been, and continue to be, taken to ensure that the Commander-in-Training always appears “presidential.” Who can forget the Multi-Flag Backdrop in Lieu of Lapel Pin constantly on display at the Incessant Inspirational Best Speeches Ever, brilliantly read by the eye-squinching, head swiveling, nose-in-the-air Teflon TelePrompTer Reader that we’ve all endured, often three, four, five times a day since 2006? Or, the Not Quite Presidential Great Seal of ObamaLand, employed during the general election and re-introduced with slight modifications during the “transition?”
Then, there was the summer’s Record Breaking Troop Avoiding Barackapalooza World B-Ball Exhibition Tour and LoveFest aboard the Almost Air Force One, allowing America to share it’s Superman/Savior with those Hopium-deprived humans doomed to reside outside our shores. Once the Hope Hypester’s predilection for “um, ah, ya know…” peppered, long winded, incomprehensible pontification, and inexplicable gaffes about geography (57 states) and religion (my Muslim faith) when off-script became too obvious to ignore, Pre-President Pinnochio’s PuppetMasters succumbed to the wisdom of having the Twin Traveling TelePrompTers umbilically connected to the Changeling’s Corpus, since surgical implantation is not yet a viable option.
Donna Brazile, who claims her life is going to crap since her “MamaFactor” was elected, nonetheless says when it comes to bashing the Baby Prez on Training Wheels, everybody should just shut the hell up and keep sucking. Okay, she didn’t say that; that’s the punchline to an awful joke, but I thought that, given what she did say, it was a pretty apt interpretation. The Object of Donna’s Desire has been having a pretty rough go of it, lately, and DB is just sick of it, sick I tellya, and hates all the haters hating.
Donna’s mama would be proud that her baby girl is so kind-hearted and forgiving, considering all that her KoolAid-fueled infatuation has cost her. But, Does Donna blame Oboyfriend? Did Juliet blame Romeo? Cleopatra blame Antony? The chick on Dancing With The Stars blame The Batchelor? Noooooo! Whatareyounuts?
Over the last two months, I have seen my hours cut back, a newspaper column canceled, clients unable to renew their contracts with my firm, and others needing to renegotiate my modest fees. Business is drying up, and despite all my frantic maneuvers to move my little retirement funds out of harm’s way, my 401(k) is disappearing faster than the snow from the recent storm. I don’t want to see this president fail, and I suggest that to do so is a partisan luxury none of us can afford.
The whole “who put the “out” in the stimulus bill?” kerfluffle has had me flummoxed since it came to light. Why all the confusion? Either Christopher Dodd is a one-man crime spree, ( ‘cuz finagling with a bill after it’s been voted on should be a crime, if it isn’t) or he meddled with the wording during some crack in time before it was voted on, (in which case somebody should have noticed) or, he didn’t do nothing. I vote for the last one.
Chris Dodd was not on the House Senate committee that changed the language of the executive compensation amendment to the stimulus bill. I’ve posted the relevant portion of the February 8, 2009 version of the Senate bill here, and the final version here. The segment containing the February 11, 2009 cutoff date affecting AIG’s retention bonuses is not in the Senate version; however, the bill does contain the Wyden-Snowe amendment calling for a 35% tax, and a provision that executives be paid no more than the president of the United States. As near as I can tell, this is the bill that was voted on, and passed by the Senate, Tuesday, February 10, 2009. In fact, in Dodd’s mea culpa, he refers to the “Senate approved” language. Read the rest of this entry »
While conspiracy theorists and other befuddled Americans are searching for hidden agendas to justify, or at least, explain, the media-driven election of an inexperienced junior Senator who can’t form complete sentences without the use of a TelePrompTer, they’re missing the all-too obvious agenda staring them dead in the face. Whoever funded and formulated Barack Obama’s meteoric rise from obscurity to omnipresence is bound and determined to totally revamp the country’s policies, programs, and policy-making procedures, as we’ve known them. This is not cosmetic surgery we’re talking here; a little nip here, a tuck there. This is fundamental, foundational, systemic change, according to their dictates. If you’re not on board with every element of the sweeping “change” they have in mind, well, that’s just too damned bad.
The Press-ident and his backers want the economy to fail. That’s the only way his policies to this point make any sense at all. He has said he wants the population angry, outraged, even, so that he can push his agenda through under his budget umbrella. The economic system we live under must collapse, so that a new one can be put in place. With it, healthcare, education, housing, energy and other core elements of out national foundation will experience profound systemic “change.”
When it comes to Barack’s Bailout Bonanza Brouhaha, everybody responsible for the current “outrage” about the debacle is lying their head off through their perfectly capped teeth. Case in point, The Dodd Amendment supposedly “snuck” into the stimulus bill that allegedly restricted the bonuses to be paid executives employed by companies receiving government handouts. First, the amendment was there, then it wasn’t. Dodd said he didn’t change it, then he said he did. The exact sequence of events seems deliberately fuzzy. What, exactly did Dodd do, and when did he do it?
By February 4, Obama had angrily shaken his finger at “shameful” Wall Street executive excess and had issued new rules regarding their future compensation that even he, via MSNBO, admitted were “symbolic.”
The limits would not apply retroactively to any bank that received money from the first half of the $700 bailout allocated by Congress. For example, the restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.
But Obama touted the broad symbolism of his action.
While there are many tangled webs to unravel in the current Obama Drama Bailout Brouhaha, one man seems to have had a pretty clear eye on the situation all along. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Clintonite once accused of demeaning Barack Obama with the use of the phrase “shuck and jive” in a sentence only marginally related to Sir Nose in the Air, has been yelling and screaming about the unfair Wall Street bonuses since at least October. And, everybody knew it.
During the primaries Hillary Clinton supporting Cuomo, during a radio interview, said:
“It’s not a TV crazed race. Frankly you can’t buy your way into it,” Cuomo said, according to Albany Times Union reporter Rick Karlin. He then added, “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference. All those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in someone’s living room.”
Watching CNN this morning and listening to talking head after talking head egging on commentator after commentator responding to outraged viewer after outraged viewer, I’m struck by the ease with which my fellow Americans can be manipulated into gleefully relinquishing their common sense. Of course, this tsunami of indignation is just the latest episode of Barack’s Blameless Bailout Brouhaha, part whatever of the ongoing ObaDrama.
You see, first, the Candidate Once Known As Inevitable, in the immediate wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse that served as a catalyst to the current crisis, stood back and let his then-opponent commit to a position, only to assess, evaluate, formulate, mock and dismiss it, thereby gaining Sheeple points without actually countering, or even addressing it. Once his then-opponent was on the ropes, The American Idol boldly, yet, appropriately shyly, stepped into the fray, marketing himself as the voice of reason, willing to listen and adjudicate between the warring factions negotiating the wisdom of propping up crippled companies on a government crutch. While that maneuver gained the Chicago Calculator even more Sheeple points, public resistance to idea of pouring government money down incompetently run, failing companies’ drains, threatened to upset the Ocean Parter’s best laid plans. The Preppie Prevaricator then, feigning reluctance, went before Congress to plead the case for the bankers, for the good of the people, introducing his now-famous, and oft-used, “crisis to a catastrophe” line.
The Sheeple went wild. ObiWanNaBePresident had saved the day. Of course, having been in daily contact with the architects of the frequently renamed “don’t call it a bailout, it’s a recovery plan, TARP rescue,” then- Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson and his Boy Wonder, then-Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve and Obama’s mama’s boss’ kid, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc) the Obamessiah knew full well that the “bank bailout” would be divided between the two banksters and would soon stretch to include the world’s biggest government owned insurance company, too. Read the rest of this entry »
Somebody needs to get Vice-President Jo(k)e Biden a TelePrompTer so he too, like the Obamessiah he serves, can read White House-sanctioned policy positions without fear of inconveniently telling the truth. Because it seems clear that the virtual muzzle they’ve applied to him is not always going to work, and ya gotta let the guy out sometime, if only to attempt to justify his phony baloney position. Since he hasn’t changed, you have to wonder at the wisdom of a crew that chose Jo(k)e (Generated Crisis) Biden in the first place. It’s not like they didn’t know who he was when they picked him. They can’t possibly be surprised that a guy infamous for his ability to speak clearly with his foot in his mouth, shows no sign of sticking to the Obministration’s script, even when ostensibly cheerleading for it.
As the disenchantment with his boss grows amidst the increasing suspicion, long held by PUMAs and others for whom his ineptitude and unreadiness has always been clear, that President Alfred E. (What, me work?) Urkelbama is a puppet for unknown string pullers hellbent upon radically redesigning the country for their own benefit, Biden unwittingly goes and lets the cat out the bag. Speaking at a Democratic National Committee event for supporters, Politico reports that Biden, in stark contrast to the Obministration’s latest McCainian “the economy is only so crappy” official position, had a lot to say. First, the crappy economy setup: Read the rest of this entry »
There’s a lot to be mad at about the nation’s current financial situation, but most of it is not quite what the yammering yakkers in the media would like for you to focus on. The faux-rage being directed at the Biggest Beneficiaries of the Bailout Bonanza, American Insurance Group (AIG) is classic Obacratic Obfuscation by misdirection. The simple fact that AIG has exploited the government for one hundred seventy billion dollars is more than enough to justify the country’s growing national fury. The fact that they are contractually obligated to spend less than one tenth of one percent of that money on executive bonuses is not. In fact, it’s a lot like a parent who loans their basement-dwelling 30 year old who won’t move without a loan for a down payment on a house of his own, getting p.o.’ed because the kid took his girlfriend to the movies on her birthday.
The brouhaha is being fueled by Obacrats doing their media massage and Congressional grandstanding thing in an obvious ploy to shift the blame from their shoulders for acquiescing to Wall Street’s extortion demands in the first place. Their hope is that the short memoried public will forget just how involved Treasury Secretary Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc) then Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve, was in engineering the original AIG bailout following the Lehman Brothers collapse, as well as then Senator Alfred E. Urkelbama’s (what, me do something?) much touted input into the original, unpopular TARP passage at a critical point in the primaries. Read the rest of this entry »
Such a small, innocent, innocuous, deliberately vague word.
Our nation is being dramatically redesigned from the ground up, right under our noses, without our permission, and nobody’s really paying attention. Oh, sure, some parties are crying foul about having their toes stepped on, or their special interests assaulted, but that’s part of the plan. As long as folks are preoccupied with trivial details, they pay no attention whatsoever to the Big Picture. And, while, the housing crisis, foreclosures, unemployment, Nancy Pelosi’s travel abuses, etc. are important, in the Grand Scheme of Things, all those things are trivialities.
Our country is being redesigned from the ground up. Treasury Secretary and Barack Obama’s mom’s boss’ kid, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG, tc) told Charlie Rose that “capitalism will be different.” When? Now. Talking about the inadequacy of the regulatory framework relative to the financial system’s structure, TTTG,tc had this to say, according to Politico:
Asked if that meant in order to boost the economy out of recession there’ll changes to capitalism, Geithner said bluntly: “I think capitalism will be different, and the financial distribution will be dramatically different. It’s already dramatically different.”
Did you catch that? Read it again. Go ‘head, I’ll wait. dooby doo dooo…hmmm da dum… hmmm, da da da (fingers drumming) …okay, ya done? Good, let’s continue.
Our financial system has already been restructured, financial redistribution is dramatically different.
Alfred E. Urkel, the man who pulled out all the stops, even questionable ones he invented, to become President of the United States with a resume barely as long as a fleeting memory, and whose primary qualification for the job was the ability to read ghostwritten speeches from a TelePrompTer about how his inexperience was so “transformative” that he embodied “change” itself, which allowed true believers (Obots) to project their “hopes” of what they wanted him to be upon the “blank screen” he pretended to be, was advertised as being ready to rule on Day One, capable of single-handedly multi-tasking all the daunting problems any incoming president would face into submission, pronto. Yes, he could. Then was their time for shining lights, after all.
Now, at this time, halfway through his first hundred days, critics on both sides of the aisle are questioning his ability to handle the potentially “catastrophic” economic challenges before him and finding him lacking, while his true believers, aka Obacrats, are whining about the honeymoon due him as novice president not being acknowledged, supposedly making such judgments patently unfair.
Well, boo hoo.
The Historic Greatest First Black President Ever doesn’t get a honeymoon. The Man Who Would Be Lincoln was supposed to be so generously endowed with so much power, grace, elegance, intellect and just plain awesomeness resulting from inheriting the legacy of everything good that every president before him possessed and accomplished, that fixing what ailed the world was going to be a piece of cake consumed between workouts and vacations. Any guy who can make oceans rise at a moment’s notice, should be able to fix the economy before his first arugula and waffle breakfast after inauguration. So, if panels of economists on CBS News’ Early Show…
What’s the difference between American International Group (AIG) and any other garden variety extortionist? Not much. In fact, your average “gimme $1,000, or I tell your wife about the weekend with the monkey,” slimeball could take a lesson from these guys. According to Bloomberg, not only is AIG resorting to “pony up, or else you’ll be sorry” threats to keep the government on the hook, they’re warning their marks to keep it on the downlow:
American International Group Inc. appealed for its fourth U.S. rescue by telling regulators the company’s collapse could cripple money-market funds, force European banks to raise capital, cause competing life insurers to fail and wipe out the taxpayers’ stake in the firm.
AIG needed immediate help from the Federal Reserve and Treasury to prevent a “catastrophic” collapse that would be worse for markets than the demise last year of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to a 21-page draft AIG presentation dated Feb. 26, labeled as “strictly confidential” and circulated among federal and state regulators.
Though I make no claims of being a financial wizard, or a political maven, even I can see that all is not right on Wall Street, D.C. where the heart and soul of our country is on life support, currently being administered to by second graders who want to be doctors when they grow up. And, I’m sophisticated enough to recognize that a lot of what I read about our dire national situation is presented in the media by people representing the political party so far out of favor they have to look to bloviating blowhards for advice, or worse, can be made to appear to need to do so. I get that. However, in spite of all that, the forces pretending to represent the white-hatted good guys in this classic Adventures in Administration movie, armed with their heralded sky-high approval ratings for their poor man’s Dark Gable leading man, simply can’t mount enough of a stampede to disguise the fact that the dustcloud that follows them like Charlie Brown’s pal Pigpen’s is not the result of riding hard and strong over the dusty trail, but merely the wispy smoke trails from their “throw ‘em off the path,” hastily built, diversionary cookfire. In other words, they got nothing.
Stalwart bastion of the Obamedia protection service, Salon Magazine, has an article by former Clinton labor secretary and Obacolyte, Robert Reich, in which he pitifully attempts to pooh-pooh rightwing claims that the Obamessiah himself is responsible for our economic woes by trying to lay them at the feet of the finger-pointers:
When it turns out that people like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who took home $68 million in 1997, was the only Wall Streeter in a meeting last September at the New York Federal Reserve to discuss the initial AIG bailout with Tim Geithner, then New York Fed chair, among others, at the very time Goldman was AIG’s largest trading partner, a distinct scent of self-dealing begins to emanate. When it turns out that Citigroup got a bailout deal last October far more generous than that given to any other distressed bank, when a top Citi executive was advising the Treasury and Fed, the scent increases. Goldman’s past CEO was treasury secretary at that time, by the way, and another former Goldman CEO was a top Citi official and also a former treasury secretary. I am not suggesting anything so crude as corruption. But could it be, given these tangled webs, that — innocently, unintentionally, perhaps even subconsciously — the entire bailout effort was premised on saving these companies rather than protecting the public? Or that the distinction between the two was lost, and still is?
Yet, Reich gleefully and disingenuously, ignores the fact that the people he’s defending his ObaMaster against are the people who funded his campaign. Not only that, the central figure in Reich’s little morality play, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc) has a family history of sorts with Barry Sutoro, and is currently employed as the Blameless One’s lapdog and whipping boy. To point out that he may have colluded with the banksters against the public in ripping off the country on the other team’s watch is…well…stupid.
Why would anyone purporting to defend the Obama administration draw attention to the man quickly becoming the public face of its incompetence? Especially when the author can’t even make it through to the end of his own piece without acknowledging at least some of the complicity of the Obama Drama Troupe?
The Wall Street and Republican media attack machine doesn’t know exactly what to make of this. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, along with CNBC, alternates between attacking Obama for bailing out Wall Street and excusing Wall Street’s excesses. But then again, Obama doesn’t seem to know exactly what to make of it either. He seems to vacillate as well — one moment scorning Wall Street, the next moment justifying further bailouts. I do hope he takes a firmer hand, drawing a clearer distinction and making a clearer connection between clearing up these financial balance sheets and helping average people. Otherwise, the next populist uprising will be born in this moneyed quagmire. It is here — within the muck that was created by AIG, Citigroup, Fannie and Freddie, other giant financial institutions, now in combination with the U.S. Treasury and Fed — that the public is most confused, bears its most serious scars, and is potentially most burdened in future years, by decisions still made in secret.
During the contentious Democratic primaries, now President, then Senator Black (Selma Got Me Born) Obama and his Band of Merry Men bitched and moaned daily, hourly, minutely (is that a word? you get the idea) about his superior opponent’s “refusal” to release her tax returns. From his unearned perch upon his high horse, he looked down his nose at every opportunity and demanded with all the righteous indignation he could pretend to muster, “Where’s your tax returns, huh? Whadd’reya skeered of, Hillary? Hiding something?” When he wasn’t browbeating her directly, he was scratching his head and feigning innocence, “I don’t get it. Why won’t she just let the American people know the truth?” Jerk.
“I’ve released my tax returns,” Obama said today on his campaign plane, noting that Presidential candidates have a duty to be transparent and accountable.
He said, “The American people deserve to know where you get your income from.”
When Bill and Hillary Clinton didrelease their returns, Camp Obuhbuh, as well as the “objective” CDS-obsessed, drive-by media squads masquerading as “journalists,” hired teams of forensic accountants to go through them line by line looking for any little uncrossed “t” or undotted “i,” and when they found one, that invariably turned out to be nothing, they crowed, “aha!” triumphantly anyway. Which was, of course, good for at least two news cycles before the media whores were forced to mumble a retraction, clarification, but never apology, and reluctantly move on to the next non-”gotcha” moment in Sir Snob’s routinely self described “silly season.”
Now that he has Astroturfed his way to organizing the national community, the rules seem to have changed. No longer is “tax return tag” such a fun game. Nobody seems to have told him that the rules are different when one of your guys is “it.” Suddenly, five-figure “mistakes” are no big deal. And, just when he thought it was safe to go back in the water, after he went to bat for a tax cheat to handle nation’s money during what he calls a potential national financial “catastrophe,” and reluctantly accepted the withdrawal of two other tax cheats, then squeaked in one other, here comes another one. That nose in the air must be plenty out of joint by now, doncha think?
Okay, girls and boys, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. As regular readers are well aware, Yours Truly is not afraid to don protective clothing and venture forth into the nether regions of TinFoilVille, Obamerica. Today, I ask you to set aside your skepticism, grab your shiny chapeau, and join me on yet another trek into another dimension, across the line to the Dark Side. Nothing more is required of you than to sit right back and hear a tale; just mentally follow me as I wind up the Way Back Machine to a land far, far, away, once upon a time, back to the future. Be not afraid, my pretties, this won’t hurt a bit. So, put on your high heel sneakers and your red dress, baby; slap that foil-wrapped wig-hat on your head and…okay, enough. You get the idea; hell, you’ve had it all along, I just felt like messing with you.
Did you know that Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc) is the son of Peter Geithner, former Ford Foundation head of the Indonesian region’s microfinance program, which formerly employed one S. Ann Sutoro, Program Director, and Mother of the Obamessiah? Betcha didn’t. Well, didja know that when Son of Stanley was going to school in Los Angeles, he went with a Pakistani friend to visit his mother in Indonesia, who was working for TTTG, tc’s father at that time, then spent a couple weeks in Pakistan, before he abruptly transferred to Columbia in New York where TTTG, tc’s dad was headquartered? Now, you do. How’s that Jiffy Pop hat fitting now, huh?
According to this Columbia.edu website, Daddy TTTG, tc is also the recipient of the Royal Thai Government Order of the White Elephant. The plain vanilla site offers no elucidation as to why a Harvard advisor is being featured, nor does it explain why a White Elephant award is a good thing, but hey, I found it on Google, as is. If you leave off the letter scramble at the end of the address line, it takes you to Columbia U.’s website, but that’s all I know. I told you I’d show you around the madhouse, I never said I could explain what it meant. Sue me.
Peter F. Geithner is an advisor to the Asia Center at Harvard University and a consultant to the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium, Rockefeller Foundation, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and other organizations. He serves on the boards of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, the China Center for Economic Research (Peking University), the Center for the Advanced Study of India (University of Pennsylvania), Clemente (Holdings) Asia, Inc., and the Institute of Current World Affairs.
Mr. Geithner was with The Ford Foundation for 28 years, where he held program management positions mainly concerned with Asia. He was Director of Asia Programs from 1990 to 1996. Prior to assuming that position, he served for two and a half years as the Foundation’s first representative in Beijing, China. His earlier assignments with the Foundation included Program Officer in Charge, Developing Country Programs (New York), Representative for Southeast Asia (Bangkok), Deputy Head, Asia Pacific (New York), and Deputy Representative for India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka (New Delhi).
Prior to joining The Ford Foundation, Mr. Geithner served with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Washington, D.C. He was also Assistant to the President of a private international company, and served for four years as a Naval Aviator.
Mr. Geithner is a graduate of Dartmouth College (BA) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (MA). He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a recipient of the State Department Distinguished Service Award, and the Royal Thai Government Order of the White Elephant.
Anyway, that info is obviously dated. Though Pops Cheat is a pretty interesting guy, he’s now retired from giving away other people’s money to future president’s moms to give away, and is currently president of LAFF. No, I am not making this up. I read it in the New York Times, so I know it’s true:
LAFF, which stands for Life After the Ford Foundation, is an alumni association for former foundation employees. It is perhaps the first such organization in the philanthropic community and has inspired former employees of other charities to form their own groups.
The LAFF Society, which holds reunions and other get-togethers in various regions, has 375 to 400 members on its mailing list, said Peter Geithner, its president. “I don’t think we’ve reached our full potential by any means,” he said.
Papa G.’s obviously rather unconventional style gives him a lot in common with the ObaMama, considered to be a pioneer in the field of anthropological microfinance for underprivileged Asian women. Though from far different backgrounds, both parents afforded their sons with globe-trotting, exotic childhoods, culminating in Peter’s cheater playing Robin to Stanley Ann’s OBatMan. Small world, huh?
According to The Atlantic, young Timmy’s experiences at Dear Old Dad’s knee in Asia, even in China during the Tiananmen Square uprising, greatly influenced his life choices:
First, his Asia background. Geithner’s father, Peter Geithner, was a development specialist who opened the Ford Foundation’s China office – the first foreign NGO here, under a special agreement that continues to this day. That was just before Tiananmen Square, and the father was part of the Foundation’s difficult but, ultimately, undoubtedly correct decision to remain engaged. Tim apparently also studied Chinese, was posted in Tokyo for Treasury, and focused on Asia studies as undergraduate and graduate student. This is all great background for Treasury’s international dealings in the coming years.
Yeps, it might be real great for our international money dealings given the amount of foreign investment in our current financial infrastructure; you know, the one the Boy Wonder and the Caped Crusader are so intent upon demolishing to the studs in order to rebuild with the blessing of their UniParty predecessors and evil PuppetMasters? Oh, yeah, baby, I told you, TiFoilVille, sugar, start the scary Twilight Zone music, now!
We don’t even need the VastRightWingConspiracies to enjoy the deliciously wicked implications of the tangled web that pulling the Geithner/Sutoro knot unravels. Just knowing that former Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson was just named a “distinguished visiting scholar” at the same Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) that his successor, TTTG, tc, graduated from in 1985, like his daddy before him, is enough to fire up the electrodes on my headgear. There’s plenty of synapse snapping, corroborating info from so-called “legitimate” sources to keep the old juices flowing like a teenage Madonna’s in the high school football team’s locker room. And ObaBuddy George Clooney’s dad, Nick’s upcoming March 4, SAIS screening of his and ObaFluffing son, George’s “A Journey to Darfur” documentary is just a little bit of spicy seasoning for the witch’s brew.
A simple peek at Wikipedia’s TTTG,tc entry will tell you about his childhood, education, his DaDa’s relationship with Obama’s mama, his own cozy relationship with Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, as well as his position on the Council on Foreign Relations and membership in the Group of 30, all good places to start on the Yellow Brick Road of TinFoilia. While we’re in town, stop by Logistics Monster’s place and have a good look around, see if we’re in the right place.
TTTG, tc’s New York Fed bio and the profile on the Treasury Dept. website are a little sketchier, but they back up the basics. Biography.com backs up the Paulson and Bernanke associations, and his involvement in the G-10, the Rand Corporation, the Economic Club of New York, and the Center for Global Development. Huff’n'Puff sings the praises of his Daddy-O’s legacy of Microcredit. However, for some strange reason, the International Herald Tribune tries to make it seem that when the soon-to-be Spokesmodel-in-Chief and the hapless TaxMaster met in October and became “smitten with” and “fell in love with each other” they were both unaware of the prior relationship between their respective Parental Units, as unlikely as that may be, given that Geithner was rumored to be the odds on favorite for Treasury Secretary long before that due to his integral position on Obie’s Campaign Finance Committee. More tinfoil for that red flag, anyone?
The story of Obama’s Mama and her role in assisting Indonesian women get small loans from banks for pots, looms scrap iron and such, which to be fair, often greatly improved these women’s lives and earning potential, is pretty well documented. If you get a chance, be sure to pick up her dissertation, Peasant Blacksmithing in Indonesia, I hear it’s a real page turner. Even Wikipedia is useful in informing us of her various personas, manifested throughout her life via her multiple monikers. Stanley Ann Dunham’s life was markedly different in a lot of ways than that of S. Ann Sutoro. It is through this entry that we learn that Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Dunham met her second husband, Lolo Sotoero, at the East West Center on the University of Hawaii Campus. Ann Dunham had met her son’s father, Barack Obama, Sr., on the same campus years earlier, that time in a Russian language class. She seems to have had a thing for men who work for oil companies, too, since ObaOne worked for Shell and Lolo worked for Mobil. The two profiles of Obama, Sr. here and here give interesting background on both parents and their influence on their son, but from wildly different perspectives.
Bloomberg has a rather unflattering look into Obama’s Indonesian years, but ABC News‘ reportage of the moment on the campaign trail when Perpetual Candidate Obama revealed his foreign policy qualifications a being his life in and travels to Indonesia and Pakistan that gives us the piece that makes the puzzle whole. I told you at the top that Timothy Geithner’s father, Peter was with the Ford Foundation and oversaw a program with which S. Ann Sutoro was intimately involved. The links I provided show that the years involved were those between 1981 and 1983. From ABC News:
Apparently, according to the Obama campaign, In 1981 — the year Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University — Obama visited his mother and sister Maya in Indonesia. After that visit, Obama traveled to Pakistan with a friend from college whose family was from there. The Obama campaign says Obama was in Pakistan for about three weeks, staying with his friend’s family in Karachi and also visiting Hyderabad in Southern India. (emphasis mine)
I guess the future Savior of All That’s Good and Holy in the Free World must have juuuuuust missed his future Sidekick-to-be, huh? Imagine that. And, he probably was planning to transfer out of Occidental, anyway, don’t ya think? That little side trip to Pakistan was probably something like a Spring Break thing, right? Sure.
Okaaay-dokaaay, boys and girls, time to say the magic words, “Twizzle twazzle twuzzle, twome, time for this one to go home.” Wow, wasn’t that fun? Maybe next time we get together we can go to the Nepotism Club on Rahm Emanuel Street. Or, maybe we’ll stop by Skadden Arps, or one of the other tinfoil lawfirms or, visit one Omerica’s many fine University campuses. Isn’t it great to know that TinFoilVille is not the only fun place in Obamerica? Just about any street you go down there has just oodles and scadoodles of fun things to see and do.
So, take your time, follow the links down the side streets and alleyways where ever they may lead. Don’t be scared, there’s no real danger, well, okay maybe a little, but not nearly as much as there is if you don’t go exploring and see for yourself. Even if you do find yourself at a dead end, don’t panic, the way back is clearly marked. And, who knows, you might find a whole new puzzle to solve!
See you next time, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. And remember, “through the years we’ll all be friends, wherever we may be…
As I watched last week’s PBS special about the financial crisis, “Inside the Meltdown,” one of the many things I was struck by was the lengths to which the producers went to establish the consensus of opinion regarding Wall Street’s inordinate sensitivity and susceptibility to rumor, gossip, and innuendo. That such a vast, powerful, integral industry run by people presumed to be America’s “best and brightest” could allow decisions affecting the rise and fall of entire global conglomerates comprising the world’s economic foundation to be based on nothing more than “he said, she said” tales told out of school, or worse, possibly deliberately planted, malicious seeds of doubt, seems hard to fathom. Yet, the possibility of such an eventuality was demonstrated in great detail in the documentary, and, with just a modicum of imagination, one might easily consider that a few well timed “revelations,” true or not, might well take down an entire financial empire, if not industry. A little research might lead one to believe that such a thing is not only possible, it just might have happened.
In March of 2008, at the time Bear Stearns tanked and was sold to JP Morgan Chase at 2 dollars a share, only to have the price bumped up to ten dollars a share after the government intervened, even that price was only considered to be approximately ten percent of its market value. According to many sources, such intervention was rather suspect, for a lot of reasons, especially considering that the firm was not insolvent, though nobody would loan them money because of rumors that they were. In other words, it was not a lack capital that undid the company, but a lack of confidence. Vanity Fair encapsulated the cause of Bear Stearns’ death this way in the opening paragraph of its August ‘08 “autopsy:”
On Monday, March 10, the rumor started: Bear Stearns was having liquidity problems. In fact, the maverick investment bank had around $18 billion in cash reserves. But soon the speculation created its own reality, and the race was on to keep Bear’s crisis from ravaging Wall Street. With the blow-by-blow from insiders, Bryan Burrough follows the players-Bear’s stunned executives, trigger-happy reporters at CNBC, a nervous Fed, a shadowy group of short-sellers-in what some believe was the greatest financial scandal in history.
So, why did the corporation’s protestations to the contrary fall on industry-wide deaf ears? The company hadexperienced difficulties the previous year with 2 of its subprime mortgage hedge funds, High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund, and High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund, and was facing lawsuits from Barclays and other angry investors, as a result. Additionally, two of its former managers, Matthew Tannin and Ralph Cioffi, were eventually arrested in June of ‘08 for taking their own money out of the funds while propping them up with corporate bailout money and lying to investors about it. But, that was after the company died and was consumed.
According to CNN Money, Fortune, CFO Sam Molinaro asserted that by February, ‘08, Stearns’ troubles were behind them:
Bear had survived one liquidity challenge, in the summer of 2007, when two of its hedge funds cratered after the subprime mortgage collapse. The firm had labored to repair its balance sheet and improve its financing. “Our capital position is strong,” said Bear’s CFO, Sam Molinaro, at an investors’ conference in February. “Balance-sheet liquidity has continued to improve throughout the course of the year. We spent an awful lot of time trying to reduce our higher-risk asset categories.”
So, could Bear Stearns have weathered the storm? Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s old company didn’t think so. On March 11, an email sent by Goldman Sach’s derivatives group to its hedge fund clients, saying they would no longer back them on Bear Stearns deals, was the nail in the company’s coffin.
While I am not prepared to suggest that there was a direct “cause and effect” relative to the currently discussed events, I do think it’s helpful to bear in mind that the financial “crisis” evolved against the backdrop of the presidential campaign. Would Bear have “collapsed” had the results of Super Tuesday been different? Who knows? It is something to think about, though.
On March 28, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters, among others reported that rumors that the company was claiming were “totally unfounded,” were swirling about Lehman Brothers, too. By August 25, on the day the Democratic National convention started, The Deal.com was reporting that the rumors had become a full-fledged storm amid suggestions of a hostile takeover by Korea Development Bank and intra-company planned coup against CEO Richard Fuld.
On September 15, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy after the government, presumably weary of going to bat for “failing” Wall Street companies, like Bear, having bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, refused to intervene this time. Interestingly, one of Lehman’s holdings, Neuberger Berman, headed by then President, George W. Bush’s second cousin, George Herbert Walker IV, was exempted from the bankruptcy filing:
Neuberger Berman LLC and Lehman Brothers Asset Management will continue to conduct business as usual and will not be subject to the bankruptcy case of the parent company, and its portfolio management, research and operating functions remain intact. In addition, fully paid securities of customers of Neuberger Berman are segregated from the assets of Lehman Brothers and aren’t subject to the claims of Lehman Brothers Holdings’ creditors, Lehman said.
According to Wikipedia, and corroborated here, on September 13, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc,) then President of the New York Federal Reserve, now Secretary of the Treasury, convened a meeting about Lehman’s future that Lehman wasn’t invited to, after Lehman suffered substantial losses starting September 9:
An official from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said participants include Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. The New York Fed official asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the talks.
Participants in today’s discussions at the offices of the New York Fed also include executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Merrill Lynch. Representatives for Lehman Brothers were not present during the discussions.
Lehman claimed to be in negotiations for sale with Barclays and Bank of America, both of whom backed out. Bank of America bought Merill Lynch on September 14, instead. Barclays bought Lehman’s North American investment-banking and trading divisions along with its New York headquarters building, the next day, after Lehman was, for all intents and purposes, dead.
After the fact, in October, former CEO Richard Fuld said in prepared testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that rumor-mongering was a big part of the problem that brought Lehman down. However, Fuld’s first contention was that the Federal Reserve’s refusal to allow Lehman an exemption to become a bank holding company, or commercial bank, was a body blow to the company. On September 22, a week after Lehman filed bankruptcy, The Fed allowed Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, “the last two major investment banks” to switch. According to the New York Times, this was a major big deal. The Washington Post reported at the time that the Fed had approved the conversion with “unusual haste.”
On September 27, the New York Times* reported that one of the members at the meeting that decided Lehman’s fate was Lloyd C. Blankfeld of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson’s old firm. At that meeting, the state of A.I.G., Goldman Sach’s largest trading partner, was discussed. As we know now, the government bailed out A.I.G., yet let Lehman die. Naked Capitalism asserts that the Goldman Sachs/Paulson relationship might have been more than a factor. In October, Bloomberg claimed that Lehman’s collapse was the fault of JP Morgan Chase, purchasers of Bear Stearns.
It bears remembering that in the midst of this Lehman Brothers/A.I.G./Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac financial upheaval, Barack Obama and John McCain were involved in a pitched battle for the presidency. It is also worth noting that Obama was reported at the time to have been in daily contact with Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary and former head of Goldman Sachs, one of Obama’s largest campaign donors. FYI, Paulson was raised in Barrington, Illinois, outside of Chicago, was also head of Goldman’s Midwestern Division, headquartered there. Worthy of equal or better note, Obama’s campaign economic team included William Daley, Mayor Richard Daley’s brother, and Midwest Chairman of JP Morgan Chase, as well as its CEO and New York Fed Board of Directors member, Jamie Dimon, who parlayed his turnaround of Bank One, after being dumped by his mentor, Sandy Weill of Citigroup, into the JP Morgan gig. Oh, gosh, did I forget to mention Bank One is in Chicago? My bad. One other noteworthy Obama advisor at that time was Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG, tc). I have done a series of posts chronicling Jamie Dimon’s involvement in the Obamenon, I humbly advise readers to check them out, here, here, here, and here,to name just a few posts, not so much for my opinions, but for the links to information they provide.
By November, when Obama secured the presidency, Paulson’s TARP had distributed about half of the allotted funds to “troubled” banks, more than half of it to the country’s largest, including Goldman and JP Morgan. According to reports, most of which came to light after Obama was inaugurated, the banksters were forced to accept the funds the Treasury was giving away, whether they wanted to or not, yet were later called on the carpet to explain how they spent them. At the hearing in the House, they, like their counterparts in the beleaguered auto industry, were castigated for frivolous financial excess, even though, not all of them requested government funds. As president, Obama had by that point, already railed against the ” shameful” bankers, and issued a “salary cap,” generally considered to be window dressing, since it only applied to those financial institutions receiving future government assistance from the second half of TARP, not the ones funded in the first bailout. TTTG, tc was said to have prevailed against other Obama administration advisers, namely David Axelrod, in the president’s ultimate soft bailout stance.
The TARP program, or Paulson Plan, is not universally loved by bankers, some say it’s a sneaky attempt at nationalization, or in the words of Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel, “subsidization.” The Brookings Institute called for more Congressional oversight in December, calling the plan “frayed” and “rushed into law.” At any rate, the relatively ineffective, previous admonition is now a moot point, having been trumped by the new, stricter “salary cap” guidelines supposedly snuck into the president’s “stimulus plan” by Chris Dodd when nobody was looking.
The new rules require all banks recieving government assistence to be subject to the new, stricter salary cap rules. That means, even banks forced into the bailout program are now under government supervision. And, though Obama has made, “the discussion’s not over” noises, as Politico pointed out, it’s not credible that the administration was blindsided:
The tougher rules that passed in Congress were no last-minute surprise. Dodd talked them up in a February 5 press release, and in another released on Thursday, just hours before the bill was filed. The rules were debated in the Senate.
Okay, I know this is a long post, and to be honest, I’ve only scratched the surface of the mountains of information and questions that arise from it, here. But, for a series of rumors to be the catalyst for events that end up in the “nationalization” and/or “subsidization” of the nation’s banks, at the expense of the global economy, is a mindboggling thing to consider, even if it’s ultimately untrue, or unprovable, if it is.
As I’ve said before, it’s reminiscent of a John Grisham novel, The Appeal, to be exact, so maybe my skepticism is born of an overactive imagination. But all things considered, the more pertinent question is, what if it’s not?
*The New York Times printed a correction clarifying the dates and participants of 2 separate meetings re: Lehman/A.I.G.:
Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about the financial problems of American International Group referred incorrectly to the timing and participants at meetings at the New York Federal Reserve between Saturday, Sept. 13, and Monday, Sept. 15. Although there were indeed meetings that weekend, there was also a separate meeting on Monday to discuss financial aid for A.I.G. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, was the only Wall Street chief executive who attended the Monday meeting, not the only chief executive who attended weekend meetings. Also, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary, did not lead or attend the Monday meeting. (Both Mr. Blankfein and Mr. Paulson did attend the weekend meetings.)
Looks like Obama the Candidate was really serious about “change.” As we all know, “change” was the buzzword of the 2008 campaign season, promoted constantly, incessantly, annoyingly by Barack Obama, and picked up on by all of his opponents in self defense. But, while everybody else was just spouting campaign rhetoric; after all, whenever one administration replaces another, you’re going to get “change,” Obama seems to have been serious as a heart attack without health insurance about it.
Conventional wisdom and common sense would indicate to even the densest among us that in order to achieve the “true change” Obama promised to bring to the “old ways of Washington” in his determination to “remake the country,” the country in question, as in any renovation, would need to be torn down to the studs. And, it appears Obama is well on his way to completing Phase One. At least, according to George Soros. Reuters reports that Soros, speaking at a Columbia University dinner, echoed the sentiments of the speaker before him, Paul Volcker, head of the president’s new Economic Advisory Board, when he said the world as we know it is well on its way to irrevocable destruction, economically speaking:
Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Soros said the turbulence is actually more severe than during the Great Depression, comparing the current situation to the demise of the Soviet Union.
He said the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September marked a turning point in the functioning of the market system.
“We witnessed the collapse of the financial system,” Soros said at a Columbia University dinner. “It was placed on life support, and it’s still on life support. There’s no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom.”
Hmmm…isn’t that what Rep. Paul Kanjorski said, and all the Obots went, “Pfssshh, yeah, right“? And, if I’m following all this correctly, doesn’t this mean that the economic event that lead to Paulson’s TARP (don’t call it a) bailout and propelled a curiously over-funded Obama from a hotly contested, tied competition into the White House virtually unopposed, is also the catalyst of global financial ruin? What say the Obots, now?
Well, they can’t say Obama leads by example. Or, maybe he does, since people not paying bills, for one reason or another, is a big part of the mess we’re in. Obama doesn’t seem to want to pay his bills, either, at least not the one to his adopted home city for the Bashapalooza they threw for him on Election Night. The Chicago Sun Times has the details:
Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama’s victory celebration in Grant Park — despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.
“The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,” Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. “We’re reaching out to them this week.”
I guess South Side Slick expects the city to just hang on for the stimulus money since there’s probably pork aplenty to cover. And, now that the Illinois legislature has done its part in kicking Rod Blagojevich to the curb, the state qualifies for its share. There’s probably a bonus for breaking harmless little Roland Burris‘ heart by stomping on his dreams and jackbooting him out of the Senate job he dearly wanted, foolishly embraced and would be out of in a minute anyway. One way or another, Chicago will be paid; either they’re headed under the bus, or somebody will “deliver an envelope,” if you get my drift. Obama takes care of his own, it’s the Chicago Way.
Of course, the Obama Way means nobody has to pay their bills; he’s hellbent on seeing to it that everybody at least has a house, regardless of whether they can afford it, or not. He unveiled his big, stock market tanking housing plan to help out the lender-seduced buyers who jumped off the deep end into houses that now have them underwater, and financially back up those lenders for going along with the program with government money, if they feel like it, unless they’re Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Since that’s the only way the greedy lenders can get the up front bailout money and back end insurance, I have a feeling they’ll probably play along.
For those pretty much destitute-from-the-jump folks just given over-priced houses by lenders, basically for free, just to get the right numbers on the paper those bankers were going to turn right around and sell for even more worthless computer bits and bytes signifying nothing, even though everybody knew they’d never be able to pay it back, Obie has sicced ACORN on the problem on the QT. All those folks have to do is make like Wild West expansioneers and just squat on their homestead, since Obie’s got their back with the bailed out bankers, no matter what. Besides, the original mortgage has probably been through so many grubby banksters’ hands, the guys trying to foreclose probably couldn’t produce the necessary paperwork if they wanted to. If the system gamers get cold feet, or the banker on the low end not hip to the deal tries to lock them out, a quick call to Obie’s ACORN enforcers will bring the strongarm crew to help you gain access to your now completely free house. Of course, like all Dons, Obie’s three steps removed, especially since he got Rep. Marcy Kaptur to sell the plan to the clueless for him.
Don’t be fooled by the “hold bank executives feet to the fire” rah-rah coming from the administration, either. The whole “salary cap” thing is bogus all around, being nothing but re-election theater as it is. Team Obama and his money man, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) tried to quietly tiptoe out of the whole TARP-related “take my money, play buy my rules” dramatic ploy, but Congress realized they need votes too, so they snuck it back into the stimulus bill. And, even though it sounds like “Ooooooh, we showed those bad bankers,” anybody who believes there isn’t enough wiggle room in the provisions to drive a fleet of private jets, and Daschle limos through, is a hopium head, and deserves the no grease screwing a-comin’.
Same for anybody who really believes Obie’s gonna close Gitmo; I’ll believe it when I see it, since the Obama patented “clear myself ahead of time” review panel he commisioned, this time through the Pentagon instead of White House counsel like the brush-Blago-off-the-shoulders one, says everything at Gitmo is Geneva convention compliant and thus, hunky dory. So, why close it? Look for him to rescind his exec order sometime in the coming year, on the sly, like he’s extending those Bush policies. Shhhhhh.
So, while Obacrats raise Democratic in-fighting to a new art form, using definitions of “what is is” as a time tested, media approved bludgeoning tool against their brethren-on-the-outs in the case of David (Caroline wasn’t my first choice) Paterson and Roland (but I didn’t give him any money) Burris, the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader can continue happily fronting for the banksters, robbing the world blind, fighting wars, and tearing the country to the ground, so he can remake it in his own image with a clean slate. Like he, and his wife, told you he would.
All the while, remaining more popular than Jesus in the process. Like Dee Dee Myers told us he was.
Barack Obama is a mild-mannered college professor playing at being a politician pretending to know what the hell he’s talking about when he reads other people’s ideas written up by the Cardboard Titty Groper from a TelePrompTer, or, Heaven forbid, note cards. As such, he has yet to settle on a comfortable persona, or alter-ego, if you will. Is he an affable, perpetual campaigner, selling “hopey change” to the hard of listening? Is he a Dark Darth Vader of Doom with a “sky is falling” Chicken Little complex? Could he be SuperO!, sent to us from a planet far, far, far away, in another galaxy, by a benevolent father determined to save our people as his meet their end? Or, is he a stern, yet compassionate EveryDad, kindly dispensing “tough love” to his cherished, yet clueless adolescent children? Whatever role he’s playing, he seems to have forgotten that in our system of government, he’s technically, no better than any other citizen.
“My fellow Americans.”
Most presidents use this phrase to address their fellow citizens, but, to the best of my knowledge, Barack Obama usually does not. One suspects that the reason for this is that even he knows enough to realize that “My loyal subjects,” what he wants to call us, is inappropriate. Therefore, he tends to call us the political equivalent of “you guys,” which is, “everybody,” as in, “Good evening, everybody,” or “Everybody be seated.”
Whatever. The Obamessiah has donned just about all of his myriad personalities over the past few weeks since the inauguration; first as the Play President, getting his picture taken sitting behind his big, shiny new desk in his shirtsleeves, pretending to talk on the phone so it would look like he was actually doing Important Stuff. When that proved to be insufficient to inspire the proper degree of deference and awe necessary to force Congress to do his bidding, he and his PuppetMasters decided it was time to dust off the Lovable Candidate suit, pack up the Traveling TelePrompTer and and hit the road giving away houses door to door like Oprah doing Ed McMahon. When it looked like even that might not work, he commandeered the airwaves as Doctor Destructo, scaring the shit out of “his fellow Americans,” and other little children with his “catastrophic” proclamations portending imminent doom and devastation if he didn’t get his way with his stimulus plan, only to be met with the fate he said he was trying to avoid when he did.
Earlier today, Obantos channeled his inner Huxtable and scolded his headstrong older mayoral sons and daughters working in the family business, charged with dispensing their allowance to their younger siblings fairly. Like Cliff to lovable screw-up Theo, Papa Prez laid down the law; “do it right, or answer to me.” Like Theo, the kiddie mayors grabbed the cash, said, “uh-huh, luv ya, Pops,” and hit the door quick before he changed his mind and snatched it back in order to issue more conditions they fully plan to ignore. Again, like Cliff, the Acting President smiled indulgently, knowing they’d be back for more as soon as they ran through what he’d given them, just as well as they knew he had held some back for just that purpose.
He has also, on occasion, been thrust into the role of hapless, bumbling Mr. Peepers does Dagwood, such as when his best laid cabinet plans gang aft aglaed. Having three candidates for one position withdraw from consideration, as he has had with Secretary of Commerce (Pritzker, Richardson, and Gregg) could make anybody look stupid, even if his Secretary of Treasury wasn’t a tax cheat the world had no confidence in. And, if he was the only one.
As he theorizes and strategizes hypothetical responses to focus group directives, marking time giving pep talks in front of crowds and television cameras, tap dancing as fast as he can in an attempt to divert attention from his un-preparedness and ineptitude, his Traveling Light and Magic Show still enjoys good ratings. However, in spite of his uncanny quick-change talent and clever scriptwriters eerily in touch with their target audience through age, internet and Starbucks, he would do well to remember that there is not enough Mocha Choca Latte bars and customers to keep a bad show on the air once the novelty wears off for the fickle “fellow Americans” he serves.
Especially if they think it’s his fault they’re broke.
So, keep dancing, Mr. President, so far, your fancy footwork has been enough to dazzle the gullible with your particular brand of Obandini. Tomorrow, a better show might come along.
Or, your fans’ real parents might make ‘em get a job.
Let’s face it, most PUMAs are sick to death of Barack Obama. We recoil from the sight and sound of him stumbling through ghost-written, TelePrompTer read speeches on our television screens, tens, that feel like thousands, of times a day, droning incessantly about something that only he can so successfully make seem like nothing. And vice-versa. However, where we once railed against the excessive exposure, shouting at our computers and TVs every time he, his name or likeness popped up in yet another puff or fluff piece of a sad excuse for a print “news” article or op-ed column, or tedious You Tube lecture, or “get your very own useless Obama trinket” commercial, we now just sigh.
We’re simply getting tired.
“Obama fatigue” was all the rage this summer after a Pew poll showed that Obaexposure had reached saturation point. Coincidently, about a month thereafter, the economy tanked, an event which diverted attention, and predictably, allowed the Obamachine to go into Obadrive with layers of Axelrod brand Astroturf and effectively counter all the prior negativity. To allow this sort of signature combat maneuver to continue to go undefended is just as dangerous now as it ever was because it allows crappily written pump ‘n’ prop him up pieces of “ain’t he just the greatest thing since Mickey D’s” drivel to sneak into the public consciousness unchecked, except for rightwing Republican kneejerk “everything he does sucks” often baseless, yet predictable partisan responses, which can be easily refuted. We PUMAs just cannot afford to be complacent without accepting at least some of the blame for his further chicanery and incompetence.
Frank Rich in the New York Times, and Pamela Gentry in the Huffington Post, both have “hush the Obama naysayers” pieces today touting the Nascent Neophyte’s “triumph” of getting the massive, unread “stimulus bill” through Congress that many economists claim won’t stimulate anything except the libidos of the crooks who porkified and passed it in the dark. Though Rich’s piece is interminably longer than Gentry’s, both give literary raspberries to those critical of both the bill and the stumblebum method of passage. According to these two, the mere fact that the bill was passed proves Obiteme is not only not incompetent, he’s shrewd, skillful and he’s smarter than everybody on the planet, to boot.
Of course, the fact that he still doesn’t have a Commerce or Health and Human Services Secretary, and his Treasury Secretary is a tax cheat nobody in the world has confidence in, is not mentioned by either opinionist. Nor is the fact that Oblahblah and Associates have mounted a “lowered expectations” media campaign relative to his victorious, historic, stimulus bill, while ducking legitimate questions they don’t like.
And, just what is the great accomplishment of which they crow, anyway? His attempt at bipartisanship was an utter failure, allowing Sen. John McCain, Sen. Lindsay Graham, and young Rep. Aaron Shock to access the airwaves all day Sunday trashing him and it, as John Boehner did on the floor of the House. In fact, the net effect of the reality of Obama’s support for the bill is that more Democrats voted against it (7 in the House) than Republicans voted for it (3 in the Senate).
The main reason such cheerleading must be countered is that if it is not, the Obama “brand” becomes further entrenched in the American psyche without challenge, which is as fraught with danger as allowing Peanut Corp. to continue selling its products without reporting the salmonella outbreak. If nobody raises a stink, people will keep right on buying Jiff because they like Mr. Peanut, regardless of the fact that he represents another company.
Kevin Price of BizPlusBlog, someone I know nothing about, underscores my point that the vast majority of Bicardi ‘n’ KoolAid drinkers know next to nothing about politics, and are those deliberately targeted by the Obama campaign, being overly susceptible to “branding.” Price argues that Obamacamp’s manipulation of the “gotta do someting, anything’s better than doing nothing, or we’re all gonna die” or, “the ship is sinking, hurry up and jump aboard!” theme was directed at these folks:
There are two basic views of government. One sees the best government doing as little as possible and being focused on protecting individuals from other individuals and our country from foreign adversaries. The opposite extreme is that government should play a pervasive role in every aspect of our lives and that it should be the primary driver of our economy and society. The vast majority who have an opinion fall some where in between. Far more than those with an actual opinion have no real view at all. Those people are my concern here.
This uniformed majority are the same people who are driving Barack Obama’s extremely high approval ratings. They don’t really know what they are doing, or what they believe, they are merely very sincere. They think some action is, at least, action. But the actions of this administration will take generations to pay off and they promise to make things far worse than better.
Here’s the rub, most PUMAs are not political science majors, either. We’re simply politically aware bullshit detectors. The danger we face is that, like most fertilizers, the odor of Obandini can become tolerable with enough constant exposure. That’s bad enough, but when the super slick fertilizer salesman touts the benefits of using his new chocolate flavored product on store bought vegetables, and even as an ice cream topping, some gullible folks can be persuaded to forget they’re swallowing bullshit whole. Unfortunately for the rest of us, there are so many more of them. And they’re more than willing to let the government promote the notion that fecalized fast food is nutritious and delicious while they sell it to us and our children by the pound.
We PUMAs just don’t have the luxury of Obama fatigue.
President Black Obama is crowing like a bantam rooster about his shiny new stimulus bill, as if passing a anything with only 3 Republican votes necessary was as difficult as he and his media took such pains to make it seem. I mean, really, if he couldn’t have gotten it done, that would be news. Plus, it probably was not as hard as it might have been if he had actually let anybody read it first.
Anyway, looks like Rod Blagojevich hit his eventual appointee for Oboyi’mgreat’s vacant Senate seat, now Senator, Roland Burris up for cash before picking him. However, it’s not clear if this really means anything since, as far as I know, Burris was never on the short list until after Blago was arrested, and by all accouts, Burris didn’t give him any money. Seems Burris was concerned about appearances, given that he really wanted the appointment, even though Blags didn’t seem inclined to give it to him. Burris wasn’t on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s published radar, either.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd was miffed at the Obamessiah earlier this week because of the way the Ofolks manage the press. In a rather whiny First Read post, Todd gripes that being a “newbie,” he takes offense at being denied unfettered access to press conference attendees, something he sees as a First Amendment issue:
For instance, today, the president gave a speech in the East Room to the business council, an audience of dozens of CEOs and major business leaders in America. As per usual, we’re allowed to watch the event behind a ropeline. Ok, standard procedure for any event for any candidate, let alone a president. But unlike public events, here at the White House, when the event ends, we get no access to the audience unless the audience happens to amble up to the ropeline and chat with the press.
Today, it was so bad that we were kept behind closed doors so that these CEOs and other business leaders could leave without accidentally mingling with us poor press peons. Once the CEOs were clear and escorted downstairs, then we were let out of our East Room pen. And it’s not like we could rush over to the east side of the White House and find anyone left to interview about their role on this business council. By the time, a member of the press leaves out the one exit they can come in and out of, those guys and gals would be history. I’m sure most of them had cars at the ready to quickly get them to their next meeting.
Poor Chuck, he obviously didn’t get the Official ObamaRules handbook that spells out that only the appearance of transparency can be tolerated. He also didn’t get the MSNBO Official ObamaRulebook spelling out that the Leg Tingler must never be criticized by any employee, something his commenters were quick to point out, calling him a “freakin’ crybaby,” and assuring him nobody gave a shit about his hurt feelings, which to them are no more important than that pesky First Amendment thingy when it comes to Obamaman.
Underscoring MSNBC readers’ sentiments, Politico reports that it matters not one little whit what the Great Obandini does, people who vote love his dirty drawers and can’t wait to suck down as much of his KoolAid flavored bathwater as he deigns to distribute. In spite of all the documented Dagwood Bumstead-style bungles, stumbles, bumps and missteps of the neophyte Spokesmodel-In-Chief, his approval ratings are still off the charts. Go figure. Maybe they should poll the PUMAsphere, huh?
Meanwhile, in an underreported story from February 9, it seems Chicago school children are afraid to go to school for fear the teachers, not other students, will beat the crap out of them:
Hundreds of students have allegedly been beaten by teachers, coaches and staff at Chicago Public Schools. 2 Investigator Dave Savini continues his ongoing investigation involving the illegal use corporal punishment.
CBS2Chicago’s Savini reports finding an alarming number (eight hundred eighteen) of assaults against students, mostly going under-punished by authorities:
The 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student’s neck.
But even more alarming, in the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist.
This report comes on the heels of a February 4 report of the death of a 10 year old Evanston, Illinois student found hanging from a coat hook. The death was ruled a suicide, a finding with which the family disagrees.
What else? Oh, California’s broke, so they’re going to let all the prisoners go. Wonder if Obie’s Big Give and that Big Bailout of Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) will help Chicago’s children or the citizens of California sleep better at night?
Illinois State University wants to know if the bell tolls for Black History Month now that the president is black. According to MSNBC, the jury’s still out on that one, which seems to tick this guy off. The New York Times prints an opinion piece by Alaa Al Aswany who complains that though Egyptian Muslims have love for Obama, they’re not feeling the love back, while our friend Sugar sounds off about the beheading of an American Muslim woman in Buffalo, New York by her jilted husband. Murphy cries for all of us about this and other things over at Puma Pac.
The peanut people still want you to feed their product to your kids even though they recalled peanut butter cookie dough from Austin, Texas schools today. Good thing the good folks at the Associated Press provide us with this handy list. Not sure if it matches this one, though. Oh, and mark your calenders, Peanut Butter and Jelly Day’s a-comin’ March 4.
And, last, but not least, the Obama family clebrates Valentine’s Day in the Rezko-subsidized Hyde Park empty house the president dramatically told goodbye just a few weeks ago. Must be cold sleeping on bare floors. Leaving his family to brave the elements without furniture in a barren home, the Persnickety President visited his friend’s gym. What’s up with that?
Anyway, that’s just a taste of the juicy little tidbits I tend to pick up news surfing week to week. So, for those of you with Valentines to share the day (and night) with, enjoy. For those, like me, who will spend the day cursing the Fates and shooting daggers from our eyes at the lovestruck, between loud verbal declarations of the foolishness of voluntarily plunging oneself into the pitfalls of romance, have a Scotch on me.
Now that President Black Obama’s huge “stimulus plan” down payment on the country’s economic recovery has cleared Congress without a vote to spare, it has become quite clear that the Republicans have set him up to sink or swim on his own. If it works, he’a a hero, if not, well, they’re banking it won’t. In the biggest “duh” moment ever, even Rahm Emanuel and Arlen Specter agree on that. Maybe that’s the very definition of “bipartisanship,” even though they express it differently.
Rahmbo says Obama “lost control” of the debate by reaching across the aisle and getting his hand slapped silly:
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel conceded President Barack Obama and his team lost control of the message for selling their massive stimulus bill last week, fixating on bipartisanship while Republicans were savaging the legislation.
Duh.
Of course trying to bully Republicans into accepting some of the blame for the potential failure without promising a share of the possible rewards in an attempt to make them look uncooperative was amateurish and a mistake. Maybe that kind of obviously hollow gesture is what Obie had in mind when he talked about “transparency.” Democrats didn’t need overwhelming support from the other side, it was stupid to waste time trying to play baby politics with the big boys. The best move all along would have been for the Obacrats to be the Big Boyz on the Block, like they ended up doing. They were always going to have to own the results, no matter what the Republicans say, that’s what it means to have a majority. Unless Obie thought his Dem support was always shaky, there was no need to be overly conciliatory in the first place.
Arlen Specter, along with two other “centrist” Republicans, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, probably would have ended up voting for the bill, anyway. Since Emanuel says Obie got “90 percent” of what he wanted, perhaps fewer concessions could have been made to those three Senators without even giving up as much as they did. In the political poker game the Republicans have to play with their crappy hand, backing off the pot and letting the Dems bluff each other out was the only play. Specter said as much:
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama’s stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.
edit
“I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation,” he said.
Double duh.
With Obama being so publicly rebuffed by the Republicans, and seeming to be at odds with factions of his own party at times, he has assured himself all the glory should their be any, while setting himself up as a solitary goat if there isn’t. Had he concentrated more on partisanship, and promoting a united Democratic front, at least he could hide behind his team if his bill tanks. Now, Pelosi, Reid and the gang have an out, and will hang him out to dry in a heartbeat, should the need arise.
Obama also faces virtually the same scenario going forward, making it clear that the stimulus is a first step of many he envisions as necessary. Due to unveil a “foreclosure plan” next Wednesday, probably sooner than he’d like, given the big banks’ voluntary foreclosure moratorium in the wake of their public Congressional spanking, his staff is already putting out the “don’t expect miracles” vibe:
The White House cautioned Americans on Friday against having unreasonable expectations about President Barack Obama’s plan to stem home foreclosures, which he is due to unveil on Wednesday.
Lowered expectations for Obanomics might work for Obamaniacs here at home, but they suck globally, as Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) is finding out at the “downbeat” G7 summit in Rome:
Geithner was set to discuss his vast US financial stabilization plan, which received a sceptical reaction in the United States and has prompted calls for more details.
“There is still some need for more elaboration” on the US financial plan, Canada’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters in Rome as ministers gathered for the G7 opening dinner on Friday evening.
Obama’s reluctance to put himself forward as “Da Man” does nothing to mitigate against the fact that he is. As president, he gets no cover. If he is a right leaning Democrat, an undercover liberal, a Republican Trojan horse, or a Marxist/Socialist/Commie/Pinko, he’s soon going to have to strut his true colors boldly, with pride, whatever they are. Otherwise, he will always be seen as a wishy-washy, wimpy wuss, no matter how his plans work out.
When you shoot craps, even with somebody else’s chips, it’s your ass on the line, win or lose, if you let it ride.
What’s up with the Most Transformational Super Fantastic Bombastic Charismatic Political Figure Who Happened To Be Black And Blessed, that he can’t pick a cabinet for shit? According to Fox News, Commerce Secretary appointee, Judd Gregg has officially said, “bump this noise, I can’t hang,” only not exactly in those words:
Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has withdrawn his nomination to become President Obama’s commerce secretary.
In a statement released by his office, the New Hampshire senator cites “irresolvable conflicts” on issues including the economic stimulus package.
Gregg was named the Commerce nominee a week ago after the withdrawal of former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
So while Oboyi’mboss trots around the country today being just black enough, killing two racial birds with one stone by celebrating Lincoln’s birthday, which conveniently falls during Black History Month so he doesn’t actually have to mention it, in the “symbolism over substance” manner of the 16th President, his much touted “superior judgment” is proving to be equally insubstantial. His scandal plagued Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc) has shown himself to be not only not the only guy on the planet capable of leading us out of the wilderness of our economic crisis, but excruciatingly boring as well.
Obuyme’s first Secretary of Commerce choice, Bill (Judas) Richardson, is another big ol’ heap o’ trouble waiting to fully develop like a Polaroid picture, according to Politico:
A grand jury in New Mexico is currently investigating whether the financial services company CDR funneled more than $100,000 in campaign contributions to Richardson’s PAC in order to win state bond and construction finance projects. Several other financial firms and banks, including UBS, are also accused of contributing to the PAC in order to gain contracts.
Richardson’s office has been subpoenaed to hand over correspondence with the Democratic Governors’ Association, which received contributions from UBS during Richardson’s time as DGA chairman that alone total more than $400,000.
And the governor’s former chief of staff was recently identified in another alleged pay-to-play scheme; the allegations are that a Chicago investment firm was awarded a contract to handle the state’s pension fund because it contributed $15,000 to Richardson’s PAC. The fund lost $90 million under the company’s watch.
In addition, Richardson has come under criticism for awarding state contracts to political allies. Local news outlets have chronicled how one local firm stacked with Richardson allies has been awarded $7.8 million in state auditing contracts since he became governor. In the five years prior to his 2002 election, the firm received $274,000 in such contracts, according to the New Mexico Independent.
A slew of America’s toniest Captains of Capitalism were hauled onto the House of Representatives’ carpet to justify to their bailout benefactors, Big Daddy Ourbucks, why they took taxpayer money just because the government told them to, and exactly what they thought they were doing with it. On the whole, they took their hand slapping like big boys, though. Here’s the CliffsNotes version:
Congress: You’ve been bad!
Bankers: We’ll be good.
Congress: The whole family’s mad at you!
Bankers: We’re sorry?
Congress: What will people think?
Bankers: We’re really, really sorry?
Congress: Don’t let it happen again!
Bankers: Okay.
Congress: Alright, then, go play.
That’s pretty much what happened. Here’s how the Associated Press reported it:
Facing a disgusted public and Congress, bank CEOs agreed with demands for greater accountability Wednesday in the first testimony on how they’re spending money from the taxpayer-funded $700 billion bailout.
“Both our firm and our industry have far to go to regain the trust of taxpayers, investors and public officials,” John J. Mack, head of Morgan Stanley, told the House Financial Institutions Committee.
Added JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon: “We stand ready to do our part going forward.”
Mommy and Daddy Good Government conveniently forgot to mention they bought the little darlings the hot rod they went joyriding in, though:
Most of these bankers didn’t beg for their money. They were selected because they were relative healthy banks that could spur more banking activity and eliminate the stigma of taking taxpayer money for other financial institutions.
I guess next time Father Knows Best will make sure there’s a GPS system on the dashboard:
Obama Tuesday accused Wall Street of seeking an “easy” way out of the mire and promised more “tough love,” after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner outlined a new bank bailout potentially worth up to two trillion dollars.
Lawmakers’ approval will be required to release new taxpayer funds for Wall Street. And that could be a tough sell, with Congress already doing battle over a stimulus package worth upwards of 800 billion dollars.
Maybe the next kids will have to settle for a bike.
Turbo Tax Timothy Geithner, tax cheat, or “TTTG,tc,” made his television debut today in his much anticipated spin-off of America’s newest reality show hit, “Meet Mr. President,” because, goodness knows, we just can’t get enough of being re-introduced to our nascent Spokesmodel-In-Chief whenever he wants to change personas to match situational focus group expectations. Anyway, TTTG,tc’s inaugural episode borrowed classically familiar techniques from his minion boss’ playbook: TelePrompTer-read prepared remarks, though Sahara Desert dryly delivered, were rendered strangely compelling, in a traffic accident lookyloo, or D-level foreign horror movie kind of way, by the fascinating Vulcan-esque shape of his ears, in much the same way his tool superior’s Jerry Mouse-like auricles are.
TTTG,tc’s proposal can best be characterized as either the Obama administration-sanctioned revision of the Paulson Plan, TARP, first proposed early last year, and passed into law in the wake of the Sept. 15, electronic bank run, to divvy up the nation’s finances between a handful of national banks, or, the next phase of the Bilderberg Group/Tri-lateral Commission’s grand scheme to take over the world through the establishment of 5 or 6 global corporate nations, (Sino-Russica, North Americana, European Union, etc.) depending on the size, shape, quality and fit of your tinfoil hat.
The most intriguing aspect of TTTG,tc’s contribution to establishing America’s big baller status at the table of global domination through the bankrupting of it’s economy, is his “three-legged stool” approach. Basically, the government, in conjunction with the private sector, will agree to take the troubled assets part (now called “toxic”) of TARP off the hands of the banksters reluctant to sell them at the fire-sale prices they’re now worth, choosing instead to blackmail the government with them by threatening to withhold funds from everybody until they get what they paid for them, plus interest. Think, trying to get the money to buy your girlfriend an engagement ring by sellinng your crappy 1976 aubergine Pinto on EBay for the 4,000 dollars you overpaid for it, plus 5,000 dollars just for the hell of it, then getting pissed when the only offer you get is to have it hauled away at cost. Under the Geithner Plan, the government would pay you the 9 grand, with the assistance of a legitimate buyer who would contribute the 50 dollar Blue Book value, then, turn around and sell it to a sucker who thinks he’s getting a bargain, for 500. Somehow, this will encourage somebody else to take out a new car loan with the banker who bought your Pinto’s paper for fifty bucks, or the one who used to have it who bought it from the bank you originally financed with, either of which will now be only too happy to grant them one. If they don’t, the government will. Then, you could buy your girl the ring, or say screw that and loan somebody else all or part of the nine grand, or, keep it all for yourself.
Anyway, not being a financial expert, (hell, I get pissed when the mechanical lady at the Wal-Mart self-checkout gives me grief for not putting the money in right) that’s what I got out of TTTG,tc’s throat-searingly dry presentation. I’m not the only one who either doesn’t really get it, or thinks it’s a butt-scratchingly stupid idea, because stocks are a-tumbling like dominoes in the wake of the “Banking with Timmy” show. I guess some people just don’t like the idea of a guy who helped engineer the crisis he’s now pretending to try to fix, ballsily promoting a plan to further rape and pillage the masses. Go figure.
Since the mega Wall Street players got their taxpayer money free in the first half of the Paulson Plan, and have already split it up amongst themselves and are using it to buy stuff in and hire people from foreign countries, they should be cool. The rest of the chump bankers will have to jump through hoops to get their cut, but not too many, TTTG,tc is a bankster himself after all, so he cut them some slack. And, while they don’t get the sweeeet deal the major players did, they’ll make out like bandits anyway.
The rest of the country is seriously screwedall the way around though, but when you put a tax cheating, former head of the New York Fed in charge of the FREAKING TREASURY, to handle a financial crisis aided and abetted by the Fed, that’s what you should expect. Doesn’t much matter, though, it’s all theater, anyway.
The latest trumpeter of the “Obama Drama Equals Bad PR” song, Marc Ambinder is the most recent addition to the growing chorus of Obama fluffers playing what’s rapidly becoming a hauntingly familiar and disturbingly discordant tune. The reason the American public is getting impatient with the whole stimulus bill kerfuffle and the Spokesmodel in Chief’s early performance of presidential duty is not because they fear it is a bloated, most likely ineffective bill that will probably cost them money in the long run, or they’re afraid that he really is the empty suit he’s been accused of being and now actually appears to be, but because the Republicans got to tell the public more bad stories than the Obama team could effectively Astroturf over. We, the people, are only upset with Obama’s cabinet picks’ lack of ethics and stuff because Fox News made a big deal about it, so the theory goes. News outlet after news outlet is putting forth variations of this Axelrod-generated theme, straight-faced, no chaser, and offering the sage advice that all that’s needed to lead us transparently on the way to financial recovery is a really good TelePrompTer-read speech, the kind the candidate Obama used to read in front of thousands of people who had already pledged their love and devotion to him by attending his campaign rallies. That anyone would dismiss legitimate criticisms of a president’s performance as merely opposition pushback in a spin war is bad enough, to use it as a defense for incompetence is appalling. To forget that half the country is not predisposed to embrace anything that comes out of his mouth as gospel is stupid.
If Obama sucks, he sucks because he sucks, not because Rush Limbaugh says he sucks. Whether Obama forcefully denies that he sucks or not, does not change the fact that he does or he doesn’t. So, why are so many people in the media, mainstream and otherwise, rallying behind the “he’s just been getting bad pr” theme?
Like Politico, Ambinder blames the lack of bipartisan support for Obama’s stimulus plan, and all his other problems in the first two weeks in office, on the White House email system. According to these guys, the problem is not that Obama was trying to stuff the cabinet with crooks, and shove a high-fat and cholesterol pork-laden stimulus plan down the country’s throats on top of the mystery-shrouded TARP, or that his bumbling outreach for Republican support was clumsy, stupid and unnecessary, it was because the ancient email system didn’t allow reporters to get their talking points in a timely enough manner:
When news of Daschle’s car-and-driver tax problem was disclosed, the White House faced an immediate communications challenge. Mr. Obama had campaign on a platform of single standards and transparency, and here he seemed to be making an exception for a good friend of his on the basis of, well, nothing but the friendship.
He campaigned on a platform of blocking lobbyists from serving in his administration, but he had just given several of them a waiver, and here was standing by a Washington insider who ostensibly (although unintentionally) broke the law to the tine of over $100,000.
I know White House aides were worried about this appearance, but I also know they had a tough time figuring out which reporter was working on which story, and they didn’t respond to events as quickly as Republicans in Congress were able to exploit them.
During the campaign, Mr. Obama’s team was known for its ability to proceed along several tracks simultaneously. It’s been harder in the White House.
The trouble with Daschle bled over into the debate about Mr. Obama’s stimulus principles, forcing the White House to use Mr. Obama’s personal charm as a pitchman. He spent three hours of daylight in television interviews on Tuesday.
Nobody is offering any practical advice on how to fix the bill in a way that efficiently serves the public’s interests, or pushing for Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat to be fired and replaced in an effort to shore up the Neophyte Naked Emperor’s ethical transparent government creds. Nope, just give a speech, send out some emails, manage the message, massage the messengers. Why not? That’s what got him elected. But the presidency is not a 4 year campaign for the next election, or at least, it shouldn’t be. And even if that is an element of a politician’s life, it is not the goal of governing. You don’t perpetually run for office and do a little of the people’s business on the side. Unless you’re Barack Obama.
That’s why he has met his ultimate Peter Principle level of incompetence, and will ultimately fail. He probably reached it earlier, but the miracle of elections as popularity contests obscured that particular truth until now. Unfortunately for him, and us, there’s no higher office to try to attain; it’s put up or shut up time. And sadly, his media baby sitters, enablers, and defenders don’t realize that every time they blame his setbacks on the opposition’s better campaign spin, rather than a rectifiable lapse of some sort on his part, they admit he’s got nothing else.
Somehow, the Post-Racial President’s “it ain’t perfect, but it’s something” argument in support of a 900 billion dollar spending spree during yet another “this is our moment” rah-rah, just doesn’t cut it for me.
Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it’s received, and you will get another chance to vote for this bill in the days to come. But I urge all of us to not make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right.
Poor President Black Obama. Life as leader of the free world must be so very much different than he thought it would be back in the days when he read about it in the news and decided that gosh darnit, things needed to change. I mean, how was he to know that getting people to give up old ways that worked fine for them all their lives would be hard, really hard, as really, really hard as George Bush found the job to be, too? Back when Obie was conjuring up hypotheticals to challenge the young minds of privileged youth as an “all but what it lack” constitutional law professor in the cloistered confines of the Hyde Park enclave’s Ivy League equivalent, the answers had to seem so obvious. Forget the “duh” factor involved since he was the one who made up the questions; mingling with sharks, tigers, barracudas and lions and trying to turn them into pussycats, puppies and pretty, pretty sparrows is not as easy as you might think from the comfort of your ergonomic Barcalounger. Running smack into the “I hope you take your change and stick it where the sun don’t shine” reality of the “survival of the fittest” predatory jungle that is D.C. politics has to be a cold, cruel wake-up call to the man who dreamed ObamaLand. Oh, well.
Looking out the window of a Rezko subsidized McMansion, the fact that lobbyists are bad, bad, bad, and the country needs clean, honest, transparent government is such an obvious no-brainer. Don’t need a Harvard Law degree to figure that one out. But, funny thing, that. Not only do those stubborn lobbyists not want to give up a single iota of power and influence, (can you imagine?) everyfuckingbody is one! And, they’re all crooks to boot! Even people you like a lot. I mean, sheesh! What’s a Spokesmodel Pres to do?
Barack Obama promised a “clean break from business as usual” in Washington. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.
From the start, he made exceptions to his no-lobbyist rule. And now, embarrassing details about Cabinet-nominee Tom Daschle’s tax problems and big paychecks from special interest groups are raising new questions about the reach and sweep of the new president’s promised reforms.
Maybe he shouldn’t have promised so much, some open-government advocates say. They’re willing to cut him some slack — for now.
The delusional Associated Press is obviously in denial too, since they seem oblivious to the “if it was a snake it woulda bitcha” truth staring them in the face that slack-cutting has become a way of life for those charged with monitoring and assessing the performance of the Baby Pres-In-Training Wheels’ nascent administration.
There was slack-cutting aplenty going on when the “aahh, fuhgeddaboudit” press pass was issued to Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, via the access given Astroturfing Obacrats assigned to speak on, and off, the record excusing his “innocent” transgressions between proclamations of his stellar qualifications as worthy Obamessiah acolyte. Snip, snip, slack abounds. More slack was paid out in the noose line that threatened to choke the life out of the appointment of another TelePrompTer Jesus disciple, Eric Holder, approved by the bishops just today. And Williams Lynn and Corr were snuck onto the Fisherman’s boat with slack sufficient to jump rope with, despite Lord Changey Hope’s oft-issued earlier proclamations from on high:
However, William J. Lynn III, his choice to become the No. 2 official at the Defense Department, recently lobbied for military contractor Raytheon. And William Corr, tapped as deputy secretary at Health and Human Services, lobbied through most of last year as an anti-tobacco advocate. Corr says he will take no part in tobacco matters in the new administration.
“Even the toughest rules require reasonable exceptions,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
That was a big step back from Obama’s unambiguous swipe at lobbyists in November 2007, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. “I don’t take a dime of their money,” he said, “and when I am president, they won’t find a job in my White House.”
So, now that absolution has been granted to so many other transgressors, Tax Cheat II, Tom Daschle, is almost assured forgiveness, despite the fact that he’s a liar who has had to confess to the dreaded lobbying sin, too:
For Tom Daschle, life out of the Senate has been lucrative. In addition to his work as an adviser to a Washington law firm and as chairman of the board for a private equity firm, Daschle has been paid $195,000 to give speeches to health care industry groups — the very sector President Obama has designated him to overhaul.
While it is common for former lawmakers to engage in paid speaking and lobbying, the fees Daschle received and his work as a special policy adviser to health care clients with the lobbying and law firm Alston & Bird raise fresh questions about his nomination to be Health and Human Services secretary, a selection already thrown off track by revelations that he amended his tax returns on Jan. 2 to pay the IRS roughly $140,000 in back taxes and interest.
Hey, it’s not like Little Lord Wannabe’s doing any Blago-type pay-to-play shenanigans with Senate seats, or nothin’. Is he supposed to know that sometimes the people you appoint for all the right reasons have skeletons in their closets, like trying to abolish the very department you seek to have them head? These things are simply not his fault! It’s just that painting rainbows on graffiti filled alley walls is hard.
Ever have two distinct and separate ideas rolling around in your head suddenly come together with the force of an electron smashing an atom in a particle accelerator? Probably not; it was a stupid analogy. Bear with me, I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why a president with an almost filibuster-proof majority would be so determined to be perceived as “bipartisan” that he would make unnecessary concessions in his stimulus package to the detriment of his own party’s constituents and at the expense of his party’s principles. That’s about as dumb as giving your house to a homeless guy so poor people will like you. It really makes no sense in light of the fact that the president in question is not above engaging in the political equivalent of NFL end zone booty shaking victory dance taunting, “I won! You lose! Suck off, punktards!” Which brings me to the second part of my quandary. Why is the country broke in the first place? Are the two realities related?
In perusing one of my favorite PUMA sites, PUMA Pac, I came across a comment about the Federal Reserve Bank, which asserted that it was a private institution owned by powerful banking families, not the government. That seemed a bit far-fetched to me, so I did a little research. I Googled, “Who owns the Federal Reserve?” Turns out that the truth is pretty complicated. The Fed is not exactly federal or private, neither fish nor fowl, though a little bit of both. From the Federal Reserve Bank’s FAQ web page:
The Federal Reserve System is not “owned” by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution. Instead, it is an independent entity within the government, having both public purposes and private aspects.
As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the U.S. Congress. It is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms. However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by Congress, which periodically reviews its activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Also, the Federal Reserve must work within the framework of the overall objectives of economic and financial policy established by the government. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as “independent within the government.”
Huh? The president selects the deliberately designed to be non-partisan Board of Governors of the Fed, but has no authority over it. It is also not part of the Treasury, though it is supposed to work in tandem with it. From Investopedia:
The Department of the Treasury and Federal Reserve work together in an effort to maintain a stable economy. The Federal Reserve serves as the government’s banker, processing transactions, such as accepting electronic payments for Social Security taxes, issuing payroll checks to government employees and clearing checks for tax payments and other government receivables.
The Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury also work together to borrow money when the government needs to raise cash. The Federal Reserve issues U.S. Treasury securities and conducts Treasury securities auctions, selling these securities on behalf of the Department of the Treasury. Examples of Treasury securities include:
The Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury are also linked in another way. The Federal Reserve is a nonprofit company. After their expenses are paid, any remaining profits are paid to the Department of the Treasury. The Department of the Treasury then uses that money to fund government spending. It’s a relationship that produces a considerable amount of money. The Federal Reserve System contributed in excess of $29 billion to the Treasury in 2006, according to the Federal Reserve Board (FRB). So, the Federal Reserve not only helps to make and implement policies, it also serves as the government’s bank and generates a portion of the revenue used to fund the country’s activities.
Now, what does all this have to do with Barack Obama? Well, we know he has appointed Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, to the position of Secretary of the Treasury, ostensibly because he’s the only guy qualified to get us out of our current dire economic straits. We also know that Geithner comes to us directly from the New York Fed, one of 12 Federal banks which comprise the Fed. From Wikipedia:
There are 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks (not to be confused with the “member banks”) with 25 branches, which serve as the operating arms of the system. Each Federal Reserve Bank is subject to oversight by a Board of Governors.[42] Each Federal Reserve Bank has a board of directors, whose members work closely with their Reserve Bank president to provide grassroots economic information and input on management and monetary policy decisions. These boards are drawn from the general public and the banking community and oversee the activities of the organization. They also appoint the presidents of the Reserve Banks, subject to the approval of the Board of Governors. Reserve Bank boards consist of nine members: six serving as representatives of nonbanking enterprises and the public (nonbankers) and three as representatives of banking. Each Federal Reserve branch office has its own board of directors, composed of three to seven members, that provides vital information concerning the regional economy.
The current board of the New York Fed includes Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Indra Nooyi of Pepsi, Leo Bollinger, Columbia University, and Dennis Hughes, AFL-CIO. Dimon and Nooyi are advisers to President Barack Obama, and have been throughout his campaign. Pepsi has launched a “Refresh Everything” ad campaign tied into the new administration’s “hopey-changey” philosophy, and JP Morgan has benefited from the acquisition of Bear Stearns with assistance from the Fed.
I’m no economist by a long shot, and I admit I have no real idea what it all means when I read that the Fed and the Treasury have also “bailed out” AIG, or that the Treasury has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, when the president is hinting at big doings a-coming from Geithner in the near future, my ears perk up, all things considered:
“Soon my Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, will announce a new strategy for reviving our financial system that gets credit flowing to businesses and families,” Obama said. He didn’t provide specifics.
“We’ll help lower mortgage costs and extend loans to small businesses so they can create jobs,” Obama said. “We’ll ensure that CEOs are not draining funds that should be advancing our recovery.”
Now, a lot of info comes from suspect places, so I tried to find independent corroboration wherever possible. And, while there’s a lot to process that requires somebody with a lot more expertise than I possess to properly assess, when I look at all this stuff, something seems fishy. Like the fact that the New York Fed, which seems to be the lead bank of the 12, and according to Wikipedia implements policy decided in Washington, lists the “primary dealers” of the Federal Reserve as including some of Barack Obama’s largest donors. Wikipedia’s list of primary dealers includes Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS. Barack Obama’s biggest donors list, according to Open Secrets, includes Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, the United States Government, and Columbia University.
Now, like I said, I don’t really know what all of this means, but maybe bipartisan participation leading to a sort of UniParty is just what the bankers ordered. Maybe that’s what the real “change” is all about. I suggest everybody look into the Federal Reserve question, I’d love to discuss this with anybody who’s interested. How all this works together to bring us to this point, with this president, deserves closer scrutiny, in my very humble opinion.
No lobbyists! Change Washington! The old ways must go! Blah, blah, blah. The Spokesmodel-In-Chief, Black Obama, has used, and, continues to use, these and other similar rah-rah phrases as his stock-in-trade bamboozle shtick, reading variations of them from cards and TelePrompTers, ad nauseum, throughout his national career, riding them to the White House like a gangster rapper in a pimped out Escalade,(or a good old boy in a cherry F-350, or a bailed out executive in a fully appointed private jet, or…you get the idea). And, to paraphrase Steely Dan, the poor people keep sleeping with the shade on the light; dreaming they’re awake, participating, and even (giggle) making a difference.
Have a house party and talk about me! Play poker with Obama playing cards, use Obama coins for chips! Read my quotes in your little blue Pocket Obama books while wearing your official Obama drawers, panties, and sneakers! Tell me what you would do if you were me! Pay no attention to what I’m doing behind this curtain, how I spend your money is my business! And, the(L)Obotomized sheeple gleefully dip into their meager financial reserves, toddle off to Smart ‘n Final for mega-sized Tubs O’ Treats so they can stimulate themselves and other like-minded Obots into a frenzy over the fact that the Mean Ol’ Republicans won’t help their Obamessiah screw the people exactly the way he wants to. Boo fucking hoo.
While the Great and Powerful Odd transforms Washington into a new, improved model of the Same Old Shit (copyright pending) the nation’s attention is skillfully diverted by the spectacle of the masterful artistry of the Wizard’s prestidigitation skills while tap dancing. And, indeed, it is a wonder to behold. For, the man who swore that lobbyists would have no place in his shiny new, bright, clean, articulate, transparent Washington is not-so-quietly assembling a team of cheats, liars, and (horrors!) lobbyists, right in front of your face. Par-tay!
Faced with the J. Edgar Hoover-like 7 page vetting questionnaire cabinet appointees were required to fill out, New Mexico Governor and Commerce Secretary-designate, Bill Richardson decided to cut and run, getting the hell out of Dodge before anybody could turn his pay-to-play allegations into a Blagojevich-type full-fledged media assault and impeachment.
Turbo Tax Cheat Timothy (Ooops!) Geithner revealed to Transition Team O that he had made a bunch of “innocent mistakes” on his own taxes as he was about to be confirmed as the country’s Treasury Secretary and overseer of the Internal Revenue Service. No mind, they were Turbo Tax’s fault, and he made good, so no sweat. Besides, Oboyi’mpresident really likes him ‘cuz he’s the only one, in the whole wide world, who can lead us out of the financial crisis he helped put us in. Duh.
Two days after proclaiming from on high that lobbyists would have no place, get it, no place, I tellya, in his administration, Obiteme quietly put out the “except for” word on one guy, and then snuck a whole buncha more guys in while the door was open. Sssshhhhhh!
The latest O’Kerfluffle combines all the elements of the classic O’Drama, lobbying and tax cheating and other stuff, oh, my! Tom Daschle, Obuhbuh’s pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, is going to work in a similar capacity in the Obama administration whether his newly revealed tax troubles prevent him from being confirmed or not, since he’s also been tapped as Director of the White House Office of Health Reform for backup. Daschle, the “consultant” for lobbyists who suddenly remembered he had tax issues, is married to a lobbyist, and is himself being lobbied by health care groups who have paid him money in the past. Gotta cover all those bases, right? From Politico:
Tom Daschle, tapped to be President Obama’s health czar, was paid more than $200,000 by the health-care industry in the past two years, according to documents obtained by Politico.
The former Senate majority leader, who gave speeches to firms and groups with a vested-interest in the administration’s upcoming health reform, collected the checks as part of a $5 million windfall after he lost reelection to his South Dakota seat.
This weekend, Daschle’s nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services became embroiled in controversy over the last-minute revelation that he had only recently paid long-overdue taxes.
Daschle also “forgot” to report on his taxes that somebody paid him more than most people make in a whole year, according to the Associated Press:
Daschle also had unreported consulting income of $88,333, in 2007. He also had reductions to charitable contributions totaling about $15,000 over the three years covered, according to the Senate Finance Committee document. The document, marked “Confidential Draft,” is a committee statement concerning Daschle’s nomination.
No worries. Our new Twinkletoes the Magnificent president just waved his magic wand (issued a statement) that made the appearence of impropriety go away, just like he did for Turbo Tax Timmy:
White House spokesman Bill Burton said Daschle’s role in the new Obama administration was not in danger.
“The president has confidence that Sen. Daschle is the right person to lead the fight for health care reform,” Burton said. “In preparation for his nomination, Sen. Daschle and his accountant identified some tax issues and fixed them. They filed amended return with the IRS and made payments with interest.”
Ah, well, it’s a good show. At least we know that with the continued early morning daily Axelrod approved Astroturf talking points delivery to CNN’s James Carville and Paul Begala, direct from the White House via Rahm Emanuel, we’ll get the Michael Jackson-in-his-heyday quality spin we’ve grown accustomed to. And, if you’re on the official Obie sucker donor list, you, too, can give a stimulating stimulus party to celebrate how the wheels on the bus go bumpety, bumpety bump all over the people under it.
America, gotta love her. While everybody dances to the Blagodrama circus music, the really surreal proliferates. President Black Obama, hellbent on pushing through his stimulus plan before anybody examines it too closely, in a manner reminiscent of the Bush run-up to the Iraq war, rushes even faster to get his just confirmed (60-34) tax cheat Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, sworn in before anybody wakes up and tries to stop him. From MSNBC’s update:
NBC’s Antoine Sanfuentes adds that President Obama is expected to attend Geithner’s swearing in at the Treasury Department between 7 p.m. and 7:15 p.m.
Meanwhile, John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has issued a subpoena for Karl Rove, who has a history of ignoring them. From Fox News:
The subpoena Monday by Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers continues a long-running legal battle. Rove previously refused to appear before the panel, contending that former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress.
While everybody’s obsessing over The President of the Perpetual Press Conference’s Very Big Most Impressive First Day of sternly issuing orders for people to get around to doing stuff later right away, and do-overs, I’ve been watching developments concerning the sneaky Peetes that are flying under the radar to all our detriment, and one that’s flying crash bang into the radar, and the tower, and everything else in his way, like the big jet in “Airplane!” presumably just for the hell of it.
First, Barack the Magnificent (He Is) is getting journalistic high fives for announcing in one of his many press conference/availability/chance to be on camera and talk again, yay! thingies, that he, fer sher, was gonna tell those people to start looking right now into closing Guantanamo Bay sooner, rather than later because, they do bad stuff to good prisoners there and you can’t do bad stuff to good prisoners anywhere else ‘cuz waterboards are not portable, and besides if you could, and you did, you’d have to sell tickets and let us all watch. So, I guess now all they’ve gotta figure out is how to make it look like the people they’re holding because they feel like it are going to get a fair trial whenever they get to their new digs, ‘cuz that’s important to some people. We know they’re going to figure out what it is they should be most concerned with figuring out within a year, ‘cuz Obie said so on His Very Big Most Important First Day and he wasn’t smiling ear to ear, which is a long way for him.
Anyway, the TelePrompterReaderInChief also spouted proudly that the people who started working for him yesterday, would now get the salaries they had agreed to start with from now on. Again, the Propped Up President is getting major media style points for cutting the salaries of people who haven’t even started yet, which sends a “fart in the wind” belt-tightening message to Big Business, so, it must be as important as knowing that when he signs one of these executive order thingies we know he did it himself after talking to his lawyers.
Another thing he promised was that lobbyists can’t work for him as lobbyists, and people who work for him can’t lobby, which is the same thing, but different, and which I guess is a big deal for the few guys willing to give up their lucrative lobbying jobs to take a pay cut before they even start a crappy government job they never wanted anyway since Obie’s show order doesn’t stop lobbyists from…lobbying, and doesn’t say anything about the firms they work for, as far as I know, and, it’s limited to the executive branch, and they have to take another pay cut on Day One. But, like the pay cut thing, Barry’s Boyz knew it was coming which gave people who aren’t even lobbyists on his staff like David Axelrod, time to give up not being a lobbyist in advance. Whew!
But, while all this is going on, the more evil aspects of Obalization are going on right under our noses. Timothy Geithner, the Teflon Top Trainee’s staunchly defended choice for Secretary of the Treasury, and tax cheatWHOA! Did I just type that the President of the United States, though referred to derisively, seriously supports a tax cheat who only ‘fessed and paid up when he found out he was up for the job, for Secretary of the Fucking Treasury? Yup,uhdee-ud. ‘Cuz, he dee-ud. And the Finance Committee approved him after he blamed Turbo-fucking-Tax, and are now sending him to the fucking United States Senate for rubber stamp approval, and this makes sense? Obviously, the reason WeaselBoy has not backed down is he knows they can’t make him since he’s the only one who knows where the bailout money went ‘cuz he’s part of the reason one was needed. And, he’s not telling where the rest of the bailout money is going until they give him the fucking keys to the fucking vault. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Since everybody is supposedly too busy basking in the afterglow of two, count ‘em, two administrations of the Official Oath of Office for the obscenely expensive price of one to pay any attention, the flufferMedia can obey orders and largely ignore it, or otherwise minimize it, too.
On another sour note, the Let ‘Em Eat Cake Crowd has been quietly preparing to stick it to the ever-increasing ranks of the poor for the benefit of the Pretender President’s vaunted “Middle Class.” (insert celestial Hallelujahs here) Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education and Shaun Donovan, HUD Secretary, can now go about the business of kicking under-performing kids out of inner city schools and tearing them down (the schools) while militarizing the wild, out of control kids without fathers so the test numbers look good once you get rid of the really stupid and bad ones, (the kids) and tearing down government subsidized housing and replacing it with mixed income housing with 33% available for about 5 % of the now homeless people you kicked out of the projects since gazillions of people live in the projects and only googobs of “mixed income housing” can go up at one time, respectively.
Who knows, maybe one day, one of those homeless militarized kids will become so good at surviving the warfare of the streets, or XBOX 360, that he, or she, will figure out a way to killzap all the bad guys humanely before you have to take them to GuantanamoPelican Green Bay or someplace and read ‘em Elizabeth Alexander poetry until they beg for waterboarding.
If the story first reported by the National Review’s Byron York is true, that President-elect Obama’s choice for Secretary of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, not only neglected to pay his taxes but was reimbursed for the taxes he didn’t pay, it seems hard to justify anybody’s continued support for his confirmation.
The IMF did not withhold state and federal income taxes or self-employment taxes — Social Security and Medicare — from its employees’ paychecks. But the IMF took great care to explain to those employees, in detail and frequently, what their tax responsibilities were. First, each employee was given the IMF Employee Tax Manual. Then, employees were given quarterly wage statements for the specific purpose of calculating taxes. Then, they were given year-end wage statements. And then, each IMF employee was required to file what was known as an Annual Tax Allowance Request. Geithner received all those documents.
The tax allowance has turned out to be a key part of the Geithner situation. This is how it worked. IMF employees were expected to pay their taxes out of their own money. But the IMF then gave them an extra allowance, known as a “gross-up,” to cover those tax payments. This was done in the Annual Tax Allowance Request, in which the employee filled out some basic information — marital status, dependent children, etc. — and the IMF then estimated the amount of taxes the employee would owe and gave the employee a corresponding allowance.
At the end of the tax allowance form were the words, “I hereby certify that all the information contained herein is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and that I will pay the taxes for which I have received tax allowance payments from the Fund.” Geithner signed the form. He accepted the allowance payment. He didn’t pay the tax. For several years in a row.
Michelle Malkin has a follow-up which seems to corroborate York’s interpretation, and the story has also been picked up by AOL. A Wall Street Journal opinion piece questions the wisdom of allowing a man so incompetent with his own taxes to oversee everybody else’s. While some may dismiss these allegations as mere partisan griping, the questions, in my mind, seem fair. The New York Times‘ assertion that Geithner’s “skill” may trump concerns because if he were a bank he would be considered “too big to fail,” just sounds silly:
In better economic times, Mr. Geithner’s confirmation to be President-elect Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary might be in danger after the disclosure this week that he had paid more than $48,000 in delinquent taxes and interest. But with the economy so fragile, many senators are loath to rattle financial markets by rejecting someone with Mr. Geithner’s qualifications and international respect. By late Wednesday, Republicans as well as Democrats were predicting he would survive the controversy and be confirmed next week.
So, with the economy in the tank, what we really need is a tax cheat in charge of the government’s money? The 350 million bailout dollars Obama is fighting tooth and nail for should be turned over to this guy to spend? U.S. News and World Report’s Michael Barrone, who had dinner with the Obamessiah, (who promised to Astroturf Geithner through) seems to think so, even though he admits that he can understand why some Senators might be a little miffed:
If I were a senator, I’d be inclined to vote for the nomination of Timothy Geithner to be treasury secretary, for reasons suggested by Nina Easton. By all accounts, he’s very able and knowledgeable, and he’s already been part of the nation’s lead economic team as chairman of the New York Fed. And it’s very important to have a treasury secretary in place these days. But I have to say that his failure to pay self-employment tax is troubling and could certainly provide a reasonable basis for a senator to vote no. I have income from which no taxes are deducted and I make sure to pay my taxes on it (today, by the way, is the deadline for filing your quarterly returns). I can’t imagine what he was thinking when he didn’t pay.
CQ Politics claims that the Senate’s wussy response to charges, some of the sort that caused immediate outrage derailing other appointees in the past, is due to the overall wussiness of the current Congress and the Obama transition teams’ tap dancing ability. And, according to a David Brooks/Gail Collins New York Times article, the Astroturfing of the MSM to promote the president-elect’s Obamacanacracy philosophy is working way beyond anybody’s wildest expectations. From David Brooks:
As for me, My O-Meter is in the ascendant. I was very high on him about a year ago, then I soured a bit last summer, but now we’re peaking again. Not because he was thoughtful enough to have dinner with some of us right-leaners this week, but rather because his transition has surpassed all my expectations.
edit
It’s true, I did break bread with Obama. It was amazing. He was carried into the house by cherubs, Bruce Springsteen and Oprah Winfrey spread rose pedals on the carpet where he was about to walk and he very considerately asked me what vintage of wine I wanted my water turned into.
It’s not as clear that the last quote was as snarky as you would expect a right-winger’s comments to be, since Brooks basically waxes poetic about how impressed and comfortable he is with Obama. While Obama’s smartest pick, Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, rightfully sails through the confirmation process, and Tom Daschle’s appointment is quietly being held up in committee, look for the handiwork of Obama’s brain, political ventriloquist and Astro-gardener, David Asselfuck’s handiwork in smoothing the way for Geithner and Attorney General wannabe, Eric Holder, as well as in the media response to Obama’s stimulus plan and TARP request. Roland Burris will likely esacape any further Asslefuck media influence manipulation, now that he’s been sworn in, but the man who appointed him to the Senate, Rod Blagojevich, will continue to be Asslefucked into perdition.
There’s something charming about the gleefully delusional. Wide-eyed innocence can be a wonder to behold. But, the current spectacle of masses of supposedly sophisticated Americans delightedly slapping metaphorical “kick me” signs on their own backs as they happy-dance the jester’s jig to their place in line for the ramp that rolls them to their assigned place under the speeding Obabus to Hell, is an event unwitnessed and unrivaled since Aaron smelted all the gold and made a calf. Where’s the Hand of a vengeful God when you need it?
Now, the Wily Wizard of Words, David Asslefuck, and his favorite black man puppet, have both endeavored to stick their hands up the butts of the Merlins of the Main(and Minor)Stream Media and manipulate them into fertilizing their Astroturf (fake grassroots support) by spreading their “Geithner is Good” mantra to the maniacal minions. To hide the fact that smearing Astroturf with a different brand of fertilizer to cover the stench of the original layer won’t make it grow, Asslefuck and Co. have patented the Massengill “Dewy Fresh” scented ObaGrow.
Timothy Geithner, a man who cannot do his own taxes, has been tapped by the largely inept-when-left-to-their-own-devices Obanauts, to be Secretary of the Treasury, a body that oversees the Internal Revenue Service. He has also admitted to employing an illegal immigrant at the height of Lou Dobbs-esque “illegal aliens are killing the economy” mania. His only offered excuse being incompetence; he didn’t know; it was an “honest mistake,” and he paid up once the transition team brought it to his attention. From Politico:
Democratic and Republican senators say a full-court press by Barack Obama’s transition team is likely to keep ethical questions from sinking the nomination of Treasury Secretary-designee Timothy Geithner.
As Obama pressed senators on his economic recovery plan Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Geithner had failed to pay $42,000 in taxes and had employed a housekeeper whose work permit had expired.
But minutes after the news broke, the Obama transition team pushed back with talking points — distributed to Capitol Hill, K Street and congressional reporters — in which it portrayed the problems as simple mistakes or oversights.
No, the mistake was picking him as the guy to handle billions in bailouts and all the rest of America’s money to begin with. Hard to argue that a guy who can’t proof the work of H&R Block should be in charge of anything tax related. Never mind that similar charges have derailed other nominees, and they weren’t even in line for jobs handling the nation’s money. And, as far as Asslefraud’s current fake-assed “The Oba-Mess-iah needs this guy” media push is concerned, America’s most successfully mass-marketed president and his public relations oriented staff are just up to their old tricks, on familiar territory, trying to “manage” perceptions about yet another nerve grating “Blagojevich, Warren, Richardson, FISA, Lieberman, Rezko, above his pay grade” fiasco of the “No Drama Obama” illusion factory. Though the Magical Mystery PR Machine has a history of successfully “manging the media” and “massaging the message,” somebody should tell the poor man’s Jeff Dunham he needs a new act.
The Obamessiah’s bullshit ain’t nothin’ but chewed up Astroturf.
In other, non-related news of the delusional, Elizabeth, New Jersey funeral home owner and Obagroupie wannabe, Kim Nesbitt-Good, has a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the president-elect in the lobby of her establishment that people clamor to take pictures with.
Obama’s biggest fan is having a ball. There is a life-size cardboard cutout of Barack Obama in the foyer of the Nesbitt Funeral Home in Elizabeth.
The president-elect looks out at Madison Street through double-glass doors. People stop, ring the funeral home bell and ask to take pictures with the cardboard Barack. So do mourners and friends and family of the deceased, either before or after they’ve paid their respects.
What is it with Obafolks and cardboard? Lastly, the photo up top is the brand new official Obaportrait. It’s the first digital presidential portrait ev-er. I guess digital photographers don’t use make-up or PhotoShop, ‘cuz Obie needs a shave, a chin, and a haircut. Old-fashioned airbrushing has it’s place.
*UPDATE: FOX News, among others is reporting that Barack Obama has met with certain members of the press, off the record. Look for positive stories about the Geithner appointment from these sources in the near future.
Notable guests at Will’s home included the National Review’s Rich Lowry, columnist Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, U.S. News & World Report’s Michael Barone, The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan and Paul Gigot, The New York Times’ David Brooks and columnist Larry Kudlow. Several of the guests are frequent FOX News guests and contributors.
An Obama transition aide said the president-elect plans to attend “similar gatherings” in the months ahead.
Indeed, Obama met with a group of liberal columnists and commentators Wednesday morning, Politico.com reported. They included The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Hillary Clinton, designated Lightning Rod Du Obacracy, was supposed to provide cover for all the other Obacrats having confirmation hearings this week by deflecting the wrath of the Mean Ol’ Republicans and any random remaining Democratic contrarians who might be looking for a way to tarnish the Obamessiah by seriously questioning their credentials. By all reports, Clinton held up her end of the bargain admirably, though her fellow Senate members, by and large, showed her the love she’s due. Sure, there were some “tough” questions about the Clinton Foundation for show, but no really tense moments; nothing she couldn’t handle. But, the dogs did find a scent to sniff, coming from a guy whose confirmation hearings are two days away. According to Politico, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary-designate, has some issues about his personal taxes to ’splain:
Senators gathered Tuesday in an emergency meeting discussing the fate of Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner, who is under fire after a report that he neglected to pay payroll taxes for himself and employed a housekeeper whose immigration status had expired
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) raised questions today about the immigration status of the housekeeper, and is also questioning why Geithner did not pay Social Security and Medicare taxes when he worked at the International Monetary Fund, The Wall Street Journal first reported this afternoon.
The Senate Finance Committee has known about Geithner’s tax problems since Dec. 5, but the details are just being made public now, Senate aides said. Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus says Geithner made a “serious mistake” but adds that the allegations are not enough to “disqualify” Geithner from consideration.
Since the Finance Committee has known about these problems for over a month, the obvious question is, why was the information withheld until now? The equally obvious answer, of course, is that with the controversy surrounding Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and the brewing scandal swirling around New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson’s own “pay-to-play” allegations, it just never seemed like a good time. Then again, to be fair, it’s not like a Treasury Secretary who doesn’t pay his own taxes is any more of a big deal than, oh, say, a Secretary of State who likes to fight, or an Education Secretary whose kids couldn’t read, or a homeless Housing and Urban Development guy would be, right? Besides, it’s not like getting out in front of a controversy is ever really a smart thing to do, is it? After all, little problems with domestic help have never bothered anybody before. A candidate for Attorney General who has legal issues might have a lot more ’splainin’ to do.
Straight from the office of the president-elect, the official announcement of the financial team you’ve been hearing about for weeks now! Okay, so, either the tight ship run by the No Drama Obama Bestest Campaign/Transition Team Ever has sprung an “iceberg to the Titanic” sized leak, or, today’s chance to stand behind the shiny new podium with the cool seal was entirely gratuitous. But, who cares? He spoketh! Now, if we could just figure out who he taketh orders frometh, we’d have a much better handle on just how screwedeth we areth. Because, like The Man says, it’s going to get (much, much) worse before (we can even think about) it gets better:
With the economy in crisis, President-electBarack Obama urged the new Congress to pass a quick economic stimulus bill, pledged help for the troubled auto industry and blessed the Bush administration’s bailout of the financial industry.
Even so, he conceded, “The economy is likely to get worse before it gets better,” a downbeat forecast, delivered 57 days before he takes the oath of office and as Americans headed into the year-end holiday season.
Barring swift action, “most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year,” he said, urging the newly elected Congress to act quickly on his plans after opening its session on Jan. 6.
I know, I know, nothing new was revealed during the desperate attempt to appease the stock market by reannouncing financial team coming out party, but, didn’t seeing our Junior President In Training standing up there behind his big-boy Fisher Price podium looking just cutely adorable make you feel better knowing that he’s going to be an absolutely darling world leader when he grows up, and the training wheels and braces come off?
Obama made his comments as he unveiled the top members of his economic team, beginning with New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner to be his treasury secretary. Geithner, 47, is a veteran of financial crises at home and overseas and has worked closely with the Bush administration in recent months.
Obama chose Lawrence Summers as director of his National Economic Council. Summers was treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton.
Obama said his newly minted economic team offered “sound judgment and fresh thinking” at a time of economic peril.
He expressed confidence the nation would weather the crisis “because we’ve done it before.”
Obama also announced two other members of his economic team in the making: Christina Romer as chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, and Melody Barnes as director of his White House Domestic Policy Council.
Isn’t that sweet? And so smart of him to offset the sexism of Summers by appointing two chicks. You just wait until the training wheels come off. It’ll be, “look Ma, no hands!” before you know it. And on that day, in our moment of shared national parental pride, we can look back at the photo above and blame ourselves be fulfilled.
In the mainstream media’s attempt to boost it’s deservedly shrinking profile, the battle of the “unnamed sources” vs. the absolute truth rages on. The Reuters headline quoting the New York Times screams “Clinton Accepts Obama Secretary of State Offer: NY Times.” Citing Clinton “confidants,” when they’re not citing each other, both articles are basically rehashing variations of the same themes everybody’s been pushing since Clinton and the president-elect met in Chicago. The only “twist” is that now she’s said to have “decided.” Right.
Mrs. Clinton came to her decision after additional discussion with President-elect Barack Obama about the nature of her role and his plans for foreign policy, said one of the confidants, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the situation.
Mr. Obama’s office told reporters on Thursday that the nomination is “on track” but this is the first word from the Clinton camp that she has decided.
So, Clinton and Obama talked, but she didn’t tell him she’d accepted an offer he hasn’t officially made yet? And this is news? Now, in another “unnamed sourced” article, Reuters is walking it back from the edge of satire in a new article claiming that Obama has now unofficially selected Timothy Geithner as Secretary of Treasury.
A senior Democrat told Reuters in Washington that Obama wanted Geithner for the Treasury job, but had yet to make a offer. He did confirm that Summers was no longer under consideration.
Reuters is also quoting NBC as saying that Bill Richardson might “officially” be offered Secretary of Commerce:
NBC also reported that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson — who was one of a crowded pack of Democratic presidential early this year — could receive Obama’s nod to become commerce secretary.
Associated Press says Geithner is “likely” and Clinton is “on track.” In other words, nobody knows nothing, but they’ve got deadlines and phony-baloney jobs to justify. To put my two cents worth of speculation in the mix, absolutely nothing has changed since Obama offered the job to Clinton in Chicago and she accepted. In fact, an equally plausible case could be made that they worked out the deal when they met at Dianne Feinstein’s house back in June after Robert Gibbs played “hide the candidate” with the press on Obama’s campaign plane. Everything reported since the Chicago face-to-face has been mainstream media gossip and blogger bully bullshit. He offered, she accepted, done deal, game over, it’s a wrap.
Okay, it’s time to start looking for the truth in some of these outlandish myths regarding health, “you say care, I say insurance,” reform. If the kinds of spurious claims being spouted by “concerned” citizens, “real” Americans about a plan that doesn’t yet exist, in true bipartisan democracy-at-work fashion, are allowed to stand uncountered, why, we could find ourselves looking at a debacle the likes of which we haven’t seen since…well…the last time we saw a health care/insurance reform debacle. (Sorry, Hillary, I had no choice but to bring that up).
For months now, (since at least 
News
Cutting through the crap is not as easy as it should be nowadays, not because it has suddenly become perfumed chocolate, but because so many people get paid so much to tell you it is. Pay no attention to the stench, either your eyes are going because you’re old, or you’re too young to know crap when you see it. The fact that neither proposition could ever possibly be true is irrelevant, that’s the premise everything in the media is predicated upon, so, sadly that is their, and our, basis for “truth.” It’s still bullshit, though.
This is a rant.
Boy, oh, boy, reading the news can destroy lickety-split any sense of confidence unintentional proximity to residual whiffs of Hopium might inspire. Not that I’ve been so influenced, but I can certainly sympathize with the unfortunate souls who might have been unduly charmed by the relentless barrage of happy-hopeyness from the Changelings of Obamedia, only to have any semblence of Obamaptomism dashed by actually reading past the Headlines of Hype. Take, for example, today’s 
The “dirty little secret” regarding the firing of 
On the day when the Superman of Spokesmodel-in-Chief’s Boy Wonder, Treasury Secretary, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat (TTTG,tc) was all over television promoting his plan to 
As I watch the ill-prepared Pretendident try to advance his fauxgressive, pseudo-centrist, Republican-lite brand of quasi-liberal 
Just Barely President, Baracus Hubris Maximus, (Hail Ceasar!) forced the networks to give him a hunk of their prime time last night because…well, he really, really wanted to go on TV again. It wasn’t like he had anything earth-shattering, or even new, to share with the nation; he just must have felt, just like the rest of us did, that his last few 
On a day when Chairman of the Federal Reserve, 
As the past two years’ Interminable Campaign of the Candidate Then Known As Obamessiah morphs into the Perpetual Campaign of Just Barely President Baracus Hubris Maximus (Hail Ceasar!) great pains have been, and continue to be, taken to ensure that the Commander-in-Training always appears “presidential.” Who can forget the Multi-Flag Backdrop in Lieu of Lapel Pin constantly on display at the Incessant Inspirational Best Speeches Ever, brilliantly read by the eye-squinching, head swiveling, nose-in-the-air Teflon TelePrompTer Reader that we’ve all endured, often three, four, five times a day since 2006? Or, the Not Quite Presidential 
Donna Brazile
The whole “
While conspiracy theorists and other befuddled Americans are searching for hidden agendas to justify, or at least, explain, the media-driven election of an inexperienced junior Senator who can’t form complete sentences without the use of a TelePrompTer, they’re missing the 
When it comes to 
While there are many tangled webs to unravel in the current 
Watching 
There’s a lot to be mad at about the nation’s current financial situation, but most of it is not quite what the yammering yakkers in the media would like for you to focus on. The 
Change.
Alfred E. Urkel, the man who pulled out all the stops, even questionable ones he invented, to become President of the United States with a resume barely as long as a fleeting memory, and whose primary qualification for the job was the ability to read ghostwritten speeches from a TelePrompTer about how his inexperience was so “transformative” that he embodied “
What’s the difference between American International Group (AIG) and any other garden variety extortionist? Not much. In fact, your average “gimme $1,000, or I tell your wife about the weekend with the monkey,” slimeball could take a lesson from these guys. According to 
Though I make no claims of being a financial wizard, or a political maven, even I can see that all is not right on Wall Street, D.C. where the heart and soul of our country is on life support, currently being administered to by second graders who want to be doctors when they grow up. And, I’m sophisticated enough to recognize that a lot of what I read about our dire 
Okay, girls and boys, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. As regular readers are well aware, Yours Truly is not afraid to don protective clothing and venture forth into the nether regions of TinFoilVille, Obamerica. Today, I ask you to set aside your skepticism, grab your shiny chapeau, and join me on yet another trek into another dimension, across the line to the Dark Side. Nothing more is required of you than to sit right back and hear a tale; just mentally follow me as I wind up the Way Back Machine to a land far, far, away, once upon a time, back to the future. Be not afraid, my pretties, this won’t hurt a bit. So, put on your high heel sneakers and your red dress, baby; slap that foil-wrapped wig-hat on your head and…okay, enough. You get the idea; hell, you’ve had it all along, I just felt like messing with you.
As I watched last week’s PBS special about the financial crisis, “
Looks like Obama the Candidate was really serious about “
Barack Obama is a mild-mannered college professor playing at being a politician pretending to know what the hell he’s talking about when he reads other people’s ideas written up by the Cardboard Titty Groper from a TelePrompTer, or, Heaven forbid, note cards. As such, he has yet to settle on a comfortable persona, or alter-ego, if you will. Is he an affable, 
Let’s face it, most PUMAs are sick to death of Barack Obama. We recoil from the sight and sound of him stumbling through ghost-written, TelePrompTer read speeches on our television screens, tens, that feel like thousands, of times a day, droning incessantly about something that only he can so successfully make seem like nothing. And vice-versa. However, where we once railed against the excessive exposure, shouting at our computers and TVs every time he, his name or likeness popped up in yet another puff or fluff piece of a sad excuse for a print “news” article or op-ed column, or tedious You Tube lecture, or “get your very own useless Obama trinket” commercial, we now just sigh.
President Black Obama is crowing like a bantam rooster about his 
Now that President Black Obama’s huge “stimulus plan” down payment on the country’s economic recovery has 
What’s up with the Most Transformational Super Fantastic Bombastic Charismatic Political Figure Who Happened To Be Black And Blessed, that he can’t pick a cabinet for shit? According to 
enough, killing two racial birds with one stone by 
A slew of America’s toniest Captains of Capitalism were hauled onto the House of Representatives’ carpet to justify to their bailout benefactors, Big Daddy Ourbucks, why they took taxpayer money just because the government told them to, and exactly what they thought they were doing with it. On the whole, they took their hand slapping like big boys, though. Here’s the CliffsNotes version:
Geithner Plan
The latest trumpeter of the “Obama Drama Equals Bad PR” song, 
Poor President Black Obama. Life as leader of the free world must be so very much different than he thought it would be back in the days when he read about it in the news and decided that gosh darnit, things needed to change. I mean, how was he to know that getting people to give up old ways that worked fine for them all their lives 
Ever have two distinct and separate ideas rolling around in your head suddenly come together with the force of an electron smashing an atom in a particle accelerator? Probably not; it was a stupid analogy. Bear with me, I’ll try to explain where I’m coming from.
No lobbyists! Change Washington! The old ways must go! Blah, blah, blah. The Spokesmodel-In-Chief, Black Obama, has used, and, continues to use, these and other similar rah-rah phrases as his stock-in-trade bamboozle shtick, reading variations of them from cards and TelePrompTers, ad nauseum, throughout his national career, riding them to the White House like a gangster rapper in a pimped out Escalade,(or a good old boy in a cherry F-350, or a bailed out executive in a fully appointed private jet, or…you get the idea). And, to paraphrase Steely Dan, the 
America, gotta love her. While everybody dances to the 
While everybody’s obsessing over The President of the Perpetual Press Conference’s Very Big Most Impressive First Day of sternly issuing orders for people to get around to doing stuff later right away, and 
If the story first reported by the 
There’s something charming about the gleefully delusional. Wide-eyed innocence can be a wonder to behold. But, the current spectacle of masses of supposedly sophisticated Americans delightedly slapping metaphorical “kick me” signs on their own backs as they happy-dance the jester’s jig to their place in line for the ramp that rolls them to their assigned place under the speeding Obabus to Hell, is an event unwitnessed and unrivaled since 
Hillary Clinton
In the mainstream media’s attempt to boost it’s deservedly 
