Day: May 2, 2009

The President Cannot Win

First, the GOP was all over Obama for his stim plan, calling it a tax and spend proposal.  They also were all over his budget, which by the way was not totally his, saying that we , as a country, were bankrupting our children’s future.

The GOP had little to no effect on the national conversation and now they will bitch about the budget cuts that the president has told his cabinet they must come up with in 90 days.

Sorry to my conservative friends, but you guys need to get your stuff together….pick a position and stick with it…the American people are listening less and less to whatever it is you guys are trying to say.

The first one I heard after the announcement of the cuts was one Glen Beck of FOX News.

One hundred million dollars is a joke — a joke that gets even less funny when you consider that we’re spending more than $100 million every 2 hours in interest on our debt alone!

It’s also reportedly going to take President Obama’s Cabinet 90 days to make these deep, painful cuts — something that would take you and I about 10 seconds to do. Cutting programs that even the government admits aren’t working like: $83 million for educating migrant workers; $169 million for “air quality grants” or $900 million dollars on Amtrak.

Beck said on his FOX News show and he was talking about the order that the Pres. gave to his cabinet members to cut their budgets wherever they could.

Framed by members of his Cabinet, the president himself acknowledged that the goal amounts to a drop in the bucket. “It is, and that’s what I just said,” he told reporters. “None of these things alone are going to make a difference. But cumulatively they make an extraordinary difference because they start setting a tone. And so what we are going to do is, line by line, page by page, $100 million there, $100 million here, pretty soon, even in Washington, it adds up to real money.”

Is it just me or is the Right looking ever more pathetic and rudderless?  I think the American people are more and more finding the conservatives just comical and less effective…it is a dying party and the members are doing little to save it.  JUst once maybe they should have a “real” plan before they go about their mindless attacks and then their “NOs” might have some validity.

Rice Invokes Nixon

Condoleezza Rice did something recently that few Republicans seem willing to do…she invoked the memory of Nixon.

Asked whether waterboarding is torture, Rice replied, “The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

Many readers will recall that Nixon had a similar response when asked about Watergate, and told the reporter David Frost, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Rice also insisted that she did not authorize waterboarding: “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department’s clearance. That’s what I did.”

Maybe she should have spent a few semesters studying law.  Or better yet, just keep her mouth shut.  Does she realize that she has admitted to conspiracy?

Is The Bank Crisis Deepening?

Two reports warning of the enormous cost to taxpayers of insolvent banks were released this week. They fueled stronger calls for bank nationalization as the only solution to the paralysis in the nation’s financial system.

The first, a 250-page report released April 19 by Neal Barofsky, inspector general of the Toxic Assets Relief Program (TARP), revealed that his agency has launched 20 criminal investigations of fraud, insider trading and illegal mortgage modification in the $700 billion program.

“The sheer size of the program … is so large and the leverage being provided to the private equity participants so beneficial that the taxpayer risk is many times that of the private parties thereby potentially skewing the economic incentives,” the report states. “In light of the fact that the American taxpayer has been asked to fund this extraordinary effort to stabilize the financial system, it is not unreasonable that the public be told how these funds have been used by TARP recipients.”

The second report came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warning that the U.S. financial system is likely to lose $2.7 trillion this year from the global credit crisis.

Even so, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gamely testified April 21 before the TARP Congressional Oversight Committee that he sees light at the end of the tunnel. He reminded the lawmakers that more than half the $700 billion TARP money was spent by the Bush administration even before President Obama took office. “Today,” he testified, “Treasury estimates there is at least $134.6 billion in resources … still available.”

He argued that the “vast majority” of banks have enough capital and that frozen credit markets are showing signs of thawing.

Really?