Prelude to Doom Looking in the Lion’s Mouth before it Bites End of July 2009 It's the end of the world as we know it. Some of us understand and appreciate this fact and others have their heads stuck in the sands desperately hoping that things can just continue on as they have, certainly we don’t want things to get worse. Only a madman would be hoping things would get worse for himself and his loved ones. But a madman he would not be if the truth be it that the only way a future can be guaranteed, in terms of quality and security, is through going through a purge of many wrongs needing to be made right. System restart, everyone with a computer knows that’s inevitable. Occasionally we have to purge the confusion and denial and everything else that is a lie against the truth. Only then can things return to normalcy.
There is so much wrong with our modern civilization it will be a miracle if we can ever make it right. We have accepted the madness of modern day life mostly because we have been addicted to promises and dreams of riches. Also because we are afraid to lose what it is we have. But what is it modern man has that is worth so much? Freedom to drown in debt or to live beyond ones means? The freedom of individuals, companies, banks and nations to feed off the life of other individuals and nations?
There is already, and there has always been, a huge amount of suffering on our earth and one of the only things we can be truly certain about is the eventuality of death for everyone and the universal fact that everything does change, except people perhaps. Add to this list of certainties is 8,000 families in America will lose their homes tomorrow (and just about everything else) and that a billion people will go to bed tonight hungry.
The US Dollar is suffering from an image problem, tied to the harsh reality of lingering insolvency, growing federal indebtedness, continued syndicate control, and deep fraud. Jim Willie
We can also be certain that the US government is broke and does not have the financial muscle to help out its own states many of who feel the noose tightening around their necks. A crisis is brewing in California and other places where too many people are becoming too poor too quickly. The politicians have come to a budget agreement in California but it will drive their state even deeper into crisis. The pain that the settlement will cause its citizens and the national economy is just beginning.
California will probably never recover its former glory and if California fails so will the entire US. There is no stopping the downward spiral especially with the fact that policy response to the crisis is a total catastrophe. And the majority of all government budgets rely on far too rosy predictions of tax revenues and other sources of income. States, counties, municipalities, they're falling apart all over the place, and there's no way back for them in their present forms. We are not going back to the unlimited growth scenario with its accompanying unlimited debt model yet most everyone is still planning or pretending it will happen. The tax base will continue to collapse and the states cannot counterfeit (print) money like the federal government can.
Dr. Marc Faber says, “The purpose of any crisis is to clean the system. But nothing has been cleaned; it’s gotten worse and worse and worse. This is not the final crisis. The final crisis is one where the whole system will collapse and the whole system will be cleaned.” This week the United States treasury will try to sell 250 billion – that’s a quarter trillion in bonds. At this run rate we would be trying to sell twelve trillion dollars over one year's time, an obviously ridiculous and impossible amount of debt to peddle at any price. Yet the stock market hit 9,000 today meaning, if you have not noticed, now the market goes up with the really bad news. But importantly, bond prices slid meaning interest rates went up and that is real bad news if that kind of movement persists.
The financial laws of gravity are exactly that: laws. The narcotics of hope and denial cannot repeal them, just as they cannot make a butterfly turn into a 747. Stewart Dougherty
The true scale of the crisis has remained hidden behind a veil of constant and ongoing deliberate distortion of reality. The world we are living in is falling apart at the seams and yet the band plays on for those with money still in their pockets. “This is the biggest Crack-up Boom in history as the whole world is aboard, rather than one irresponsible government. We are looking at mass insanity at the highest levels of leadership and central banks in the world, as well as the broad public sector,” writes Ty Andros. The skies are darkening giving us all indications that it will be a bitter, dangerous, harsh time for all Americans and many people around the world.
The German export association BGA has warned of a "massive credit squeeze" by late summer. 1 Forbes
Nobody in all of history has been able to find a solution to the problems of a malignant, distorted, big-government “services” economy choking on obscene levels of both public and private debt. Sheer incompetence and unlimited greed has all but destroyed The United States of America and the global fabric of the financial system but everything is still ok if you talk to most Americans. But some are starting to get angry and for good reason.
State expenses are tough to cut dramatically without having serious effects on public services and the public lifestyle. John Paul Mitchell
Collapsing financial fundamentals are strangling countries, states, counties and cities in the USA and elsewhere around the world. California has already passed the point of no return with an uncertain future and an economy larger than most countries and other states are not far behind. The contraction in economic activity is about to accelerate as states start cutting back on just about everything in a rush to balance their budgets. This is going to be a subject more frequently reported in the coming months. Municipal bankruptcies and service interruptions will be the most significant factor to affect American citizens over the next few years but that still hard for most to imagine.
Things are really bad, about to get worse, then terrible and then the real crisis and panic will set in and then we are in for a real nightmare.
America’s financial position with the rest of the world has deteriorated dramatically as of late. Three decades of massive trade deficits have turned the United States from the world’s top lender to the world’s largest debtor and now it cannot possibly pay its debts and its economy is dropping like a stone and deflating like a hot air balloon. Only in the world of fantasy can the American government go on with its fiscal madness yet that is exactly what it will continue to do until the last possible moment. Then it too will have to cut its budget and that’s when the end game time will come.
Before that happens it will be the States that fold. If states begin to file for bankruptcy then we have to anticipate widespread panic as state funded services and programs will be closed down quite quickly. Confusion amongst political leadership and the citizenry could easily flourish and then it would be no surprise, not long after the states file bankruptcy, that we would see martial law declared by the President of the United States, as a means to bring order and peace.
Banks are aggressively cutting credit lines back while at the same time increasing interest rates at the flimsiest excuse, all in an attempt to cut their exposure to people who would otherwise "charge and run" as a last act of desperation before they sink under the waves. If you can get away with it like the federal government can it’s a good moment, if one has no hope to pay ones debts, to "charge and run," especially if you have somewhere to run to. Sooner or later, or already - creditors will begin to cut back on the biggest credit line on the planet, the one extended to the US Federal Government. Meanwhile it is still running like a mad dog let go from its leash and just cannot seem to manage without at least one or two wars to fight.
Whether it is countries, states or individuals, the more in denial we remain the worse the consequences will rain down on us as we are caught unprepared to face reality.
Throughout this financial crisis the United States is accumulating a huge amount of debt (even though consumers are paying down a bit on their personal debts) and that’s crazy since the problem was mountains of debt in the first place. Thus the crisis is only threatening more intensely as time goes on as the amount of debt that will eventually have to be defaulted on staggers on to levels that are incomprehensible even to minds familiar with mathematics and the laws of gravity. America’s gold cannot protect it from the national wealth wipeout that intensifies each and every day as $5,479,000,000.00 is borrowed (5.479 billion) to fund the federal deficit.
Vallejo, a city on San Pablo Bay just north of San Francisco, has reduced its police force from 155 to 115, closed three fire stations, and halted capital projects that include road and sidewalk maintenance. Christian Science Monitor
During this entire crisis a small group of men and women have amassed enormous wealth and power at the expense of the millions who are now unemployed and whose homes have been foreclosed. To be specific here lets mention the news that Goldman Sachs made more money this last quarter then at any other time in its 140 year old history earning 3.4 billion, which it will promptly share with its employees in the form of lush bonuses. Yes it is literally raining money on certain people’s lives.
“The entire world notices the circus acts under the US Government and Wall Street tents. Goldman Sachs sits in position as parasitic octopus, public serpent, sponsored vampire, take your pick on the description. The Wall Street syndicate openly denies the people, the states, and almost all but the largest businesses,” writes Jim Willie.
“The financial events of the past year demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that the United States government is now of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street, in general, and of, by and for Goldman Sachs, in particular. This inversion of power and privilege was partly brought about by an explosion in government debt. The government relies on Wall Street to roll over existing and sell new debt issues. Debt is now hitting the market like a tidal wave, given the country’s record-shattering deficits and costly Wall Street bailouts. If the paper cannot be sold at expected interest rates, then the debt-addicted system will go into seizure,” writes Stewart Dougherty.
The worst of the economic crisis has not yet hit. Paul Craig Roberts
Actually you have to be an astrophysicist and understand black holes and how you cannot see them even when they are right next to you because they don’t emit light. There is a black hole eating the entire financial system and there is no stopping it. You get too close to a black hole and it becomes impossible to escape its gravity. This process is most visible in the moment with the US fiscal deficit running into falling tax revenues yielding the need to borrow trillions of dollars that few and fewer investors and countries want to lend. But it’s invisibly sucking in planets of banks and loans and credit and with them everything and eventually everyone else.
The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape. Associated Press
The crisis staring America in its face and threatening to bring it to its knees are the astounding unemployment numbers that are building up month by month. The employment situation is an unmitigated disaster with things about to get worse. Forget about the numbers the government publishes or at least double them to begin to get an idea of how bad things already are. The roof is caving in on struggling American families that have already seen the value of their homes and retirement accounts decimated. Those thousands of American families a day going into foreclosure are ripping the guts out of America.
Foreclosures. I’ve never been foreclosed on. I can only imagine what it must feel like, be like. Having to tell your little children that they will never see their home again. That they will now live with grandma, or in a smaller place, or a tent.
No one will say it but sooner or later the federal government is going to have to cut back on its own employment as even its unhinged printing press and Federal Reserve System cannot continue to support its megalomania. The federal government has devoted $4.7 trillion to help the financial sector through its crisis, a level of assistance equal to about one-third of the overall U.S. economy, special inspector general Neil Barofsky reported in July. Under the worst of circumstances, the report said, the government's maximum exposure could total nearly $24 trillion or $80,000 for every American. What is presently occurring will soon blow up in America’s and the world’s face with the press no longer able to hide the elephant stampeding around the living room. But the boys at Goldman Sachs are happy making new fortunes and giving bonuses like there is no tomorrow. For them it’s a wonderful time to get richer.
Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain. Napoleon Bonaparte
There is no avoiding the necessary contraction in GDP to bring the system back into balance, and the longer we continue to allow our government and media to lie about what has happened, who is responsible, and what has to happen before the economy can clear and recover the worse off we will be. At some point reality must be faced, and we may as well do it now while we still have civil order but that’s not the way its going to be so reality will continue to darken until what is fragile, the entire financial system, shatters.
James Corbett says, “The banksters and bureaucrats are sharpening their knives, preparing to butcher what's left of the carcass of the United States,” and that is true as they cut the skin right off the taxpayers back. This is nothing new. Many years ago Congressman Louis T. McFadden who, for more than ten years, served as chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee, stated that the international bankers are a "dark crew of financial pirates who would cut a man's throat to get a dollar out of his pocket... They prey upon the people of these United States."
When interest rates rise the stage will be set for the next colossal bust. The US economy is lurching towards economic Armageddon with long-term interest rates on course to double, crippling the country’s ability to pay its debts and potentially plunging it into something deeper and blacker than the Great Depression. Think I am exaggerating? In a 2003 paper, Thomas Laubach, the US Federal Reserve’s senior economist, calculated the impact on long-term interest rates of rising fiscal deficits and soaring national debt. Applying his assumptions to the recent spike in the US fiscal deficit and national debt, long-term interest rates will double from their current 3.5pc.2
We are on the brink of something far worse than the Great Depression.
We are at one of those moments of history where many people’s destinies will change. Our horizons will contract drastically as we move towards a far more local world than we have now. The mass media has been able to successfully calm the masses these last six months but the fundamental crisis is building behind the curtains and ready to explode into full view. It is the end of July and the unfolding story presented here is like looking into a lions mouth just before he is about to bite.
China knows the dollars’ days are numbered and they must liquidate the once preferred reserve asset before it eventually collapses leaving them with nothing but worthless paper.3 Mike Hoy
The only thing holding up America at this point is the continued willingness and need of China, Japan, Brazil and Russia’s to continue to buy US Treasuries to fund the federal budget deficit, which has gotten truly obscene. There are even rumors going around that the Federal Reserve is so desperate that they are lending money to foreign central banks so they can use these funds to buy treasury notes that no one else wants to buy. The congress recently confronted Helicopter Ben to no avail, about the half a trillion dollars loaned out by the Federal Reserve to central banks of other countries so they could turn around and lend that money to their local banking systems.
One easily gets dizzy trying to follow the labyrinths, the money trails and financial instruments stacked to the stratosphere of hundreds of trillions. Derivatives are what line the walls of financial black holes. They have appropriately been described as weapons of mass destruction; they are something that just cannot be maintained. Their very existence is a blasphemy against sanity. They were used to destroy.
And the news is China is turning its back on the United States and no one was ever under the illusion they were really friends.
Reality already looks like an advancing line of thunderstorms ready to break loose yet no one can predict exactly how and when events will rain down on us in full force. It makes sense that this next drop off the cliff will make the 2008 journey down look like a walk around the park. More than several people are predicting the financial system will crumble again in the September/October period.4
Without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilization will collapse.” This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet – obtained by The Independent ahead of its official publication in August. Backed by a diverse range of leading organizations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. We are not going to go back to the sustainable growth model but into constant contraction with no bottom in site. The growth model of the world economy is broken and steadily contracting though not quite in free fall as it was at the end of 2008. So the big boys are telling us about a civilization collapse so don’t be surprised if that is exactly what we get.
Paul Krugman asks, “Is America on its way to becoming a boiled frog? I’m referring, of course, to the proverbial frog that, placed in a pot of cold water that is gradually heated, never realizes the danger it’s in and is boiled alive. Real frogs will, in fact, jump out of the pot — but never mind. The hypothetical boiled frog is a useful metaphor for a very real problem: the difficulty of responding to disasters that creep up on you a bit at a time. And creeping disasters are what we mostly face these days.”
"Unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently told Congress. And of course the last thing you will see from the federal government in the United States is a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability so truly we can expect the worst.
One thing has become crystal clear during this crisis - the monetary elite take care of its banking system and largest corporations first and foremost. This is done to "save the system" - but it becomes clear, if one looks closely, that the banking system is in a long-term bubble, worldwide, and this is what central bankers are desperately blowing back up. Not the system nor the economy, but the bank distribution system that facilitates fiat money.
All of the world’s paper currencies will eventually be inflated away, and in this case that will happen once the credit bubble has finished deflating and the international debt financing model is broken. Meaning expect continued deflation before the monster of hyperinflation takes over. It is going to be a hairy ride but we should allow some time as deflation and depression are self-reinforcing, and during that downward spiral it will be impossible to inflate though the Federal Reserve will try to do so in absolute desperation.
If the state takes more of our money, we will be forced to make decisions on street lights or more public safety or other untenable forces. Craig Whittom Assistant city manager of Vallejo Ca.
We are in new and unchartered territory though with both inflation and deflation forces at war and we are likely to get punched where it really hurts with food prices that are going to soar into the stratosphere as world agricultural production goes through its own independent crash. We have a lot more to worry about than a financial collapse.
Strauss & Howe offer a chilling warning: “History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin.”
Some people waste time trying to decide whether politicians will wake up from their madness and have the strength to face the truth, or not. They will not because they cannot since they are not of the truth, they don’t live it. If you can see the truth about denial and the fact that the world’s leadership are all doing exactly the wrong thing you will begin to understand that we will soon enter a period of personal and financial survivalism.
Stewart Dougherty writes, “If you believe that the nation will not face reality, then you must immediately begin to put your affairs in order. Those who think ahead will be able to survive the whirlwind that denial will unleash. But those who stand before such a tornado, unprepared, have poor and more likely tragic prospects.” Yes get ready to get local, go local. We will be lucky if we still have the World Wide Web after all the dust clears. Travel will certainly be curtailed and resources and overall wealth will be even further concentrated in few and fewer hands. Clearly we could see a sea of have-nots pitted against a receding island of the upper middle class.
On the FOFOA site we read, “Through the process of watching this slow-motion train wreck (still ongoing), the consensus opinion about danger in the system has shifted from an imminent threat to a long-term threat but all signs are pointing to a crisis moment coming down the tracks in the fall of 2009. When the rubber band breaks this time it will snap back with a speed and fury that will make your head spin. In fact, I think that the longer this drags out (and I'm only talking weeks and months now), the more abrupt the correction will be. While at one time it may have happened over a month, it could now happen overnight! The laws of economics can only be violated for a limited time frame. I look forward to a new beginning for the entire system. A healthy start like we have not seen in generations.”
Bill Bonner concludes, “In our book, recovery is impossible anyway. Because the pre-crisis economy had reached the terminal stages of the credit cycle. It was like someone in the terminal stages of a fatal illness. After they have died, you don't wish that they could recover...and be just like they were before they died. They were sick and dying then! No, you sign the book of memories and condolences and turn the page. You let new life take the place of the dead. You move on. But the feds have their ghoulish agenda. They have the poor thing on life-support. One tube feeds the oxygen of easy credit. Another drips in more 'stimulus.' The economy rattles every time it breathes. Dead companies, such as GM, say they are reborn. But take away the tubes...and they collapse.”
Mark Sircus Ac., OMD Director International Medical Veritas Association publications.imva.info
Special Note: In the spirit of my compendium Survival Medicine for the 21st Century I would tell people it’s a good time to stock up on medical basics like magnesium chloride, iodine, sodium bicarbonate, clay and other basic items like lots of vitamin C in the best form possible. The millions of people who are going to be forced into swine flu vaccines in the near future had better know and have on hand these substances that can mitigate the damages these vaccines will bring. It’s essential to have on hand a well stocked medicine cabinet. Spirulina can double as a nutritional medicine and a survival food and there has never been a time like now to plant a garden and learn how to use probiotics and magnesium oil to treat and fertilize the soil. It’s also a good time to buy gold and stash some cash and to communicate with people around you that you trust about what is going on.
I listened to Glenn Beck this morning. He brought up some interesting points. By Obamas OWN definitions of Racist and Discrimation (via dictionary)....he fits in perfectly by things he says and does. Obama is Racist. He points out these definitions when he wants to show whites are all racist and discriminate against blacks and latinos. Cant have it both ways bama baby.
The lowest to date 7/30/2009.....how low will he go?
Wait until all of these programs he's pushing get passed and implemented. After ten million more jobs are lost as a direct result, after the country is literally bankrupt, we'll see how popular he still is.
Oh, but just think...Neptune will still be celebrating!
Wait until all of these programs he's pushing get passed and implemented. After ten million more jobs are lost as a direct result, after the country is literally bankrupt, we'll see how popular he still is.
Oh, but just think...Neptune will still be celebrating!
Grim news for the White House in today's Rasmussen Poll as Obama's overall approval rating drops to a new low of 48%. Ditto for his Approval Index, which stands, today, at -12, also a new low.
These new figures come in the milieu of press conferences and public appearances. Whereas, in the past, such events tended to boost Obama's ratings, they clearly are not doing so today. One might even argue that they are having the opposite effect, but the audience figures from Obama's last presser offers an alternative explanation (emphasis mine):
Audience interest in Barack Obama's news conferences seems to be falling, with Wednesday's press event drawing the president's smallest primetime audience since his inauguration.
The telecast to mark Obama's 100th day in office was viewed by 28.8 million people, according to Nielsen. That's a 29% drop from the president's last press conference, on March 24, and a 42% fall since his first, on Feb. 9.
Apparently, for a large number of Americans, matters have deteriorated beyond the point of not liking what they hear from the president, to the point where they no longer listen to him at all.
Richard Baehr comments; "He may need that beer tonight."
How long until Obama implodes? It looks like all we have to do is turn up the heat on him, hold him accountable for his own mistakes and failing policies, and he'll fold. The news media is already showing signs that it is tired of coddling him. Just wait until they turn...it's gonna be UGLY for him, and (finally) good for us that he stops getting propped up.
Enduring nasty criticism as president is right at the top of the list under "Job Requirements." There's just no getting around it and every president - even George Washington - was forced to see his character, his reputation, his integrity challenged in the most personal way imaginable.
According to Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard Blog who has read WaPo political reporter Dan Balz's book on the 2008 campaign, President Obama was unprepared for this kind of criticism. And, the way David Axelrod describes it in a memo to Obama prior to the start of the contest, the candidate was hypersensitive to any criticism at all:
Obama's always talking tough...he's from Chicago, he brings guns to knife fights, he was editor of the Harvard Law Review, etc. But it seems not everyone inside his campaign was terribly convinced that Obama had what it takes to survive the rough and tumble of a national political campaign. From Dan Balz's new book, a memo from Axelrod to Obama before he announced in 2006:
Axelrod also warned that Obama's confessions of youthful drug use, described in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father," would be used against him. "This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience," he wrote. "It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you. You don't relish combat when it becomes personal and nasty. When the largely irrelevant Alan Keyes attacked you, you flinched," he said of Obama's 2004 Senate opponent.
You can see it at his press conferences now. Even though most reporters fall all over themselves trying not to ask questions that imply criticism of his policies or his abilities, the very nature of the questions seem to rile our president. He stiffens as if someone rammed a board against his spine. His face tightens up, his jaw begins working, and his lips spread out in a straight line. He then uses sarcasm that sometimes sounds a little bitter to try and defuse the tension while his adoring sycophants laugh nervously in the background.
He carries this attitude over to foreign leaders as well. His relations with French President Nikolas Sarkozy cooled considerably after he criticized Obama's Iran policy and took him to task for his suggestion that the EU stimulate their economies as he was bankrupting ours. Sarkozy also had some choice words about Obama's relative youth and inexperience.
In response, Obama snubbed the French President's request for a lunch when he was in Europe in June, and distanced himself generally from the Frenchman. Was this spite? It can certainly be interpreted that way.
I'm sure no president likes to be attacked. But it's how one handles such adversity that reveals the true character of the man in the Oval Office. And to my eyes, Obama has shown himself to be small, petty, and much too sensitive to criticism to handle a job where a bullseye is imprinted on your chest every day of the week.
It seems Michelle Obama isn't afraid to spend taxpayers money too. http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/london.asp and Recession, Depression, What, Michelle Worry? July 7, 2009 Dr. Paul L. Williams
“In my own life, in my own small way, I have tried to give back to this country that has given me so much,” she said. “See, that’s why I left a job at a big law firm for a career in public service, “ Michelle Obama
No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn’t perform any official duties. But this hasn’t deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every request in the midst of the Great Recession. Just think Mary Lincoln was taken to task for purchasing china for the White House during the Civil War. And Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salary for her personal secretary.
How things have changed! If you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans facing certain destitution, earning less than subsistence wages stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart or serving up McDonald cheeseburgers, prepare to scream and then come to realize that the benefit package for these servants of Miz Michelle are the same as members of the national security and defense departments and the bill for these assorted lackeys is paid by John Q. Public:
1. $172,2000 - Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff) 2. $140,000 - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Policy And Projects For The First Lady) 3. $113,000 - Rogers, 20 Desiree G. (Special Assistant to the President and White House Social Secretary) 4. $102,000 - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the First Lady) 5. Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady) 6. $90,000 - Medina, David S.. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady) 7. $84,000 - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary to the First Lady) 8. $75,000 - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the First Lady) 9. $70,000 - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady) 10. $65,000 - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary) 11. Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social Secretary) 12. $62,000 - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and =2 0Events Coordinator For The First Lady) 13. $60,000 - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for the First Lady) 14. Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First Lady) 15. $52,500 - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press Secretary To The First Lady) 16. $50,000 - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special Assistant for Scheduling and Traveling Aide To The First Lady) 17. $45,000 - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence For The First Lady) 18. Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office) 19. $40,000 - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to the First Lady) 20. $36,000 - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary) 21. Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant) 22. Jackson, Deilia A. (Deputy Associate Director of Correspondence for the First Lady)
Copyright 2009 Canada Free Press.Com
canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12652
There has never been anyone in the White House at any time that has created such an army of staffers whose sole duties are the facilitation of the First Lady's social life. One wonders why she needs so much help, at taxpayer expense, when even Hillary, only had three; Jackie Kennedy one; Laura Bush one; and prior to Mamie Eisenhower social help came from the President's own pocket.
Note: This does not include makeup artist Ingrid Grimes-Miles, 49, and "First Hairstylist" Johnny Wright, 31, both of whom travelled aboard Air Force One to Europe. "Beware of the enemy from within!!!"
1. The American people elect a black president with a total of 142 days experience as a US Senator from the most politically corrupt state in America whose governor is ousted from office. The President's first official act is to order the close of Gitmo and make sure terrorists civil rights are not violated. (He screwed up!!).
2. The U.S. Congress rushes to confirm a black Attorney General, Eric Holder, whose law firm we later find out represents seventeen Gitmo Terrorists. (An honest mistake??)
3. The CIA Boss appointee, Leon Panetta, has absolutely no experience, has a daughter Linda, we find out, who is a true radical anti-American activist and a supporter of all the Anti-American regimes in the western hemisphere. (There were socio-economic factors involved!)
4.. We got the second most corrupt American woman (Pelosi is #1) as Secretary of State; bought and paid for. (You can put lipstick on a pig, but it still stinks!)
5. We got a Tax Cheat for Treasury Secretary who did not properly file his own taxes for 12 years. (He mispoke!)
6. A Commerce Secretary nominee who withdrew due to corruption charges. (Another honest mistake???)
7. A Tax cheat nominee for Chief Performance Officer who withdrew under charges. (Hmmm... another screw-up?)
8. A Labor Secretary nominee who withdrew under charges of unethical conduct. (Ok, maybe this person was just plain stupid.)
9. A Secretary HHS nominee (Daschle) who withdrew under charges of cheating on his taxes. (I'm running out of excuses for these idiots!!)
10. Multiple appointments of former lobbyists after an absolute campaign statement that no lobbyists would be appointed. (Dear God, I need a drink!) All this occurred just during the first three weeks. . . but who's counting? America is being run by the modern-day Three Stooges ; Barry, Nancy and Harry and they are still trying to define stimulus..."it's spending!!!"
The congress passes the $800,000,000,000 (that's $800 billion) pork-loaded spending bill where the government gives you a smidgen of your tax dollars ($13) per week), making you feel so good about yourself [stimulated], that you want to run out to Wal-Mart and buy a new Chinese-made HDTV and go home and watch Telemundo! Only in America , what a country...
Pray for our country. Here's the good news though - Obama took Air Force One to Denver to sign the stimulus package, wasting as much as 10,000 gallons of fuel OR 24 JOBS FOR ONE YEAR. Don't you just love this hypocrite? Speaking of praying, Obama has now been president for seven months and yet he & wife (first lady) Michelle, the Christian family they claim to be, have not attended church since the inauguration. He must miss Reverend Wright! In these times 'I'll keep my God, my freedom my gun and my money.
Anyone that supports this insanity can keep "THE CHANGE".'
P.S. Forgot, he recently let his racist side emerge.
Well, at least our government is smart enough to sell our Treasury's before Obama accomplishes his goal of bankrupting the US. Looks like Barry's plans for a socialist United States is not too popular with other nations. Heck, even France, the poster boy for socialisim, seems concerned by how far left the US has swung and is also selling of its treasuries.
Making the Same Mistake Twice Obama's missteps in the health care debate mirror his missteps in last year's campaign. By John Dickerson Posted Thursday, Aug. 6, 2009, at 6:53 PM ET The Battle for America 2008 feels familiar—but not because it's about last year's election. Authors Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson report a lot of new behind-the-scenes details, so the story feels fresh. What feels familiar are the problems Sen. Obama faced on the campaign trail, which mirror the ones President Obama faces today in selling health care reform.
Now that Barack Obama is president, it's easy to forget how tough it was for him at times during the presidential campaign, particularly during the primaries. It wasn't just that he was often behind in the polls. It's that he sometimes just wasn't very good. He stumbled in debates. He made distracting gaffes. Frequently professorial, he failed to connect with voters. These are the same criticisms we hear today.
Obama talked to the authors about the messy process of finding his voice. "I'm actually sort of a slow starter," he said. "In those first couple of months I wasn't operating on this tight script. [I was] still sort of working out my riff."
On health care, it's clear that Obama is still working out his riff. He's been talking about the subject for months and yet the number of people who disapprove of his handling of the issue continues to rise. In several polls, people now disapprove of his performance more than they approve. He has pushed the idea that health care reform will not increase the deficit—to the exclusion of other arguments he might make—and yet the message is not getting through. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, voters did not believe, by a margin of 72 percent to 21 percent, that Obama will keep his promise to overhaul the health care system without adding to the deficit.
With Congress leaving Washington for the month of August, Obama says he is looking forward to getting the health care conversation out of the back rooms of Washington and into the country. He may be the only one. The conversation in the country sounds pretty ugly. It's distorted and full of misinformation as partisans from both sides try to whip up their troops. Town halls have turned into shouting matches, and they're likely to get worse as groups from the left prepare to shout down the shouting groups from the right. There's even meta-shouting, as the left and right debate the authenticity of the various shouters.
Whatever the outcome of that debate, this much we know: It's still shouting. If over the last several months, through congressional debates, presidential press conferences, and White House-sponsored town halls, people were unable to hear Obama's message, they're not likely to hear him any better now. The passages in Battle for America in which Obama promises to end the partisan rancor and bring a new way of doing business feel very distant in this period of bickering and spitting.
There's a consensus both inside and outside the administration that Obama has to take control of this conversation. "This is the most precarious time for this legislation," says former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. "The president's going to have to stay connected. He must communicate. He can't afford to lose one day." The job, says Daschle, is to educate the American people and communicate with the lawmakers who have to defend health care reform back home. Obama needs to give members of Congress public cover—but also ammunition for their local battles.
But how? Obama's first problem is that there isn't a single piece of legislation but, rather, five. He can pound on Republicans for delay, but the main holdup right now is the Senate finance committee, which is run by a Democrat. Congress left town having made progress, arguably historic progress, but the five remaining bills, all different, amount to thousands of pages. No wonder the public is confused.
The president will continue to push his emphasis on "health insurance consumer protections" that will improve life for those who already have insurance. And he'll continue to emphasize that those who have insurance won't lose it. That's a tough sell. A recent CBS News/New York Times poll says that 69 percent worry that a government plan will affect the quality of their care. Almost three-quarters think it will limit their access. They also worry about the affect on the economy, with 81 percent saying it will lead to job cuts.
In a Thursday meeting with the Senate Democratic caucus, the president's advisers also promised that the president and his aides would be going on the offensive in August. Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina first emphasized how well the health-insurance consumer protections polled with voters, continuing the message shift away from focusing on the cost savings from reform. The White House aides also promised that the president and administration aides would be providing political cover for Democrats. That, according to one who was there, means increased attacks on Republicans and a continued effort to single out insurance companies.
Does Obama's success in the campaign offer any lessons for his health care battle? There are lots of ways that being president is different from running a campaign—you have to deal with Congress, and you don't always have a ready-made opponent you can rally your supporters against. And you have to make deals you never would have contemplated while trying to court your party's activists. The New York Times reports, for example, that the White House made a deal with the drug lobby in an effort to sell health care reform.
And in this debate, unlike in the campaign, Obama is not lucky in his opponents (though plenty of his allies think conservatives are overreaching by stirring up confrontation at the town halls of Democratic members of Congress). Republicans may be in bad shape now, but they're not as dysfunctional as the Clinton and McCain campaigns portrayed in the book.
White House aides know they can't duplicate many of the stratagems of the campaign. They can't galvanize their supporters the way they could in the immediate post-Bush era—though they're trying. But what helped Obama the most during the campaign, Balz and Johnson show, was his ability to learn on the fly. They detail regular acts of self-assessment. There were several candid meetings in which Obama called on his team (and himself) to improve their performance: "The New Hampshire loss revealed characteristics in Obama that served him well through the long campaign—his facility to stay calm under pressure, his capacity for self reflection, his willingness to take corrective action, his determination to keep his team focused."
The question is how Obama finds this focus, and his voice, on health care. Reading the passages of his stump speeches from the campaign immediately reminds you what's missing from the campaign to sell reform: the passion and the stories. "I tend to be a storyteller," Obama tells the authors, explaining how he felt hemmed-in during the quick-answer debates. "The aspirational aspects of my message are rooted in people's stories and stories about this country." He's yet to find his story on health care.
Pollster Stan Greenberg thinks this is a key to Obama's successful salesmanship of reform. "The Congress can't win the country for health care reform," he says. "It's got to be the president. He's the leader. … You can't get there on analysis alone. You gotta get there on emotion."
One way Obama has been trying to recapture the emotion that made him so powerful during the campaign is to slip back into campaign mode. In New Jersey last month at the end of a campaign stop for Gov. John Corzine, he demonstrated some of the rallying fire he showed so regularly in the last two years. But while Obama knows what he's fighting against—gridlock, cynicism, lobbyists—he still has to wait for Congress to return in the fall and give him a bill he can fight for. He'll have to hope that by that time, the American people are still willing to listen.
by Pam Geller I am a student of history. Professionally, I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied history all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis.Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past year or two.
We demanded and then codified into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we knew could never pay back! Why We learned recently that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has "loaned" two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months,but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.
Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of "We the People," who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy.Why?
We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke... (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth.. It is potentially 1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.
And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska . All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary. Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders No?? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.
Mr.. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word:? Change...radical change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same Nation of Freedom, again.
And that is only the beginning.
I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets,about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his "brown shirts" would bully them into submission.
And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world.
He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that?? And he did this all in the name of justice and...change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right and everyone would know that eventually.
Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe at this time. It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors.? All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.<= FONT face=Arial color=black size=2>
Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. But, I do not think I am.
About the author via Google...
Pamela "Atlas" Geller began her publishing career at The New York Daily News and subsequently took over operation of The New York Observer as Associate Publisher.? She left The Observer after the birth of her fourth child, but remained involved in various projects including American Associates, Ben Gurion University and being Senior Vice-President Strategic Planning and Performance Evaluation at The Brandeis School. After 9/11, Atlas had the veil of oblivion violently lifted from her consciousness and immersed herself in the education and understanding of geopolitics, Islam, terror, foreign affairs and imminent threats the mainstream media and the government wouldn't cover or discuss
Since many of you enjoy senior citizen status or will sometime in the not too distant future, I thought you might be interested in this information.
Most Seniors know by now that the Senate version (at least) of the "stimulus" bill includes provisions for extensive rationing of health care for senior citizens. The author of this part of the bill, former senator and tax evader, Tom Daschle, was credited by Bloomberg with the following statement.
Bloomberg: "Daschle says health-care reform will not be pain free. Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them."
If this does not sufficiently rise your ire, just remember that our Senators and Congressmen have there own health care plan that is first dollar or very low co-pay which they are guaranteed the use of for the rest of their life and which is not subject to the new law.
Alinsky's 12th Rule of Tactics: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
You cannot risk being trapped by the enemy in his sudden agreement with your demand and saying, ‘You're right - we don't know what to do about this issue. Now you tell us.'
Why is President Barack Obama suddenly drowning in a sea of widespread resistance to his centerpiece legislation? Because it has now become quite clear to Harry & Louise Q Citizen that this was a man without a "constructive alternative" to the out-of-control healthcare system he has badgered and rhetorically beaten bloody to a pulp.
Obama himself, Organizer in Chief, had no plan. He proposed no plan to Congress. He has let committee after committee of witless tax-and-spend, haggard old liberals write the convoluted mess they're calling healthcare reform, and has virtually done nothing for own his part but bash the insurance companies, the doctors and even the patients, who ask for individual control over their own life-and-death choices.
This, dear readers, is the fundamental difference between an empty-suited celebrity and a nuts-and-bolts executive: flim-flam artistry vs. substance and real results.
Barack Obama, the eternal campaigner, held a healthcare townhall, which even Helen Thomas and her just-as-liberal cohort, Chip Reid of CBS, called "orchestrated," "tightly-controlled," and seemingly "less transparent" than any previous White House occupants had ever dared. The questions posed to the President, it's now quite obvious, must indeed be orchestrated because he is tasked with selling legislation that he himself has neither read nor understands. And the worst of this becoming-nastier-by-the-day conundrum is that the whole cockamamie plan is built upon a disastrously failed European-socialist model, which has proven again and again and again to raise costs, lower quality and ration care. The only real difference seems to be that the Democrats' plan will allow those already at the table to reap even more profits than before, and we will be the ones footing the outrageous tab.
The President trips over his explanations with one real gaffe after another because he utterly failed to master Alinsky #12 before we allowed his ascension to the power-perch in the highest office in the land.
This Obama failure to form workable solutions to gigantic problems should come as no surprise to any American. When a supposedly literate public elects a man to the most powerful position in the universe upon a resume that would fit neatly upon the back of a postage stamp, the result is easily predicted long before Inaugural Day.
Honey, even a nitwit knows that when a president must hire out his real job to 32 czars, he was never CEO material.
When Saul Alinsky's early observers voiced the concern that he was building a host of agitated mobs, who could be overtaken and controlled by a skillful "fascist demagogue," those fears were well-founded.
What happens when a stranger to one's community comes in from nowhere and begins to ingratiate himself with the locals, with the sole intention of forming a political body of disgruntled folks, ready to demand from their government whatever the organizer tells them they really need?
The result of such a deceitful maneuver is a lot of very angry people, making demands without a single clue that the organizer knows what he's talking about. If he were truly one of them, if they had known him all his life, if he lived down the street and had grown up among them, they would know whether his words could be trusted, whether his intentions were truly good and whether he had the real smarts to lead them.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a perfect example of a true leader, and the antithesis of an Alinskyite community organizer. Dr. King wasn't leading a movement of complete strangers. Nor was he dropped into Atlanta by a gang of professional troublemakers, intent on gaining political power. Dr. King, and his father before him, were echelons of the black, upper-middle-class community in Atlanta. They had lifelong friends in every black community south of the Mason-Dixon. They were so well-known, so utterly respected by all, that when Martin spoke, people - black and white alike - knew there was absolute substance behind his thunderous voice. Even the Democratic Party racists who opposed him, gave him grudging private respect.
King had no need of deceptive Alinsky tactics; he had moral authority steeped in roots going back generations in the same home town.
Such is not at all the case with what Alinsky euphemistically called the "community organizer." A community organizer is by definition an outsider, someone hired not by the community itself, but by outside political operatives attempting to gain a foothold in the community.
Precisely the way a young Barack Obama was hired by outsiders to infiltrate a Southside Chicago community in the late 1980s.
Barack Obama dropped in for a few years on the Southside of Chicago. Rather than actually doing anything to improve the community where he was sent to "work," he made political friends and established a political base from which to launch his Organizer in Chief presidential campaign. His chief liaison from those days was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., a very influential friend of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington.
By the time Barack Obama returned from his sojourn at Harvard Law to his adopted home base of Chicago, he was no longer a man who wasn't sent by anyone. He was a political somebody, about to launch a meteoric rise to a job for which he is utterly unprepared. And this sad fact shows itself more apparent with every passing day.
When Bill Clinton put forth the notion of Barack Obama as a "fairytale" and was trounced for it, Democrats should have listened. They now have a man in the office of the presidency, for whom they must provide cover every single day. Why? It's simple. Barack Obama mastered Alinsky tactics of campaigning for power and working the crowds down to the last little letter, but he absolutely has no plan of governance, no workable solutions, and can't even talk about such things without a live-feed teleprompter glued to each hip.
Leaders don't fall from the sky without proof they ever made friends and dated girlfriends and earned grades and had businesses and wrote papers, folks. Leaders have visible trails; they have made a record of their successes and proudly show them whenever asked. Barack Obama resides in the White House without ever showing a shred of genuine evidence that he is the greatly-gifted man he and his media sycophants say he is. And 52% of the American electorate has bought this faster than they would buy a used car from a slick-suited salesman on a shady lot.
cognitive dissonance: noun : psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously
Yesterday at a softball town hall meeting stuffed with pre-screened supporters, President Obama said the following: "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine; it's the post office that's always having problems."
Oh the irony! That the President would, in so simple and clueless a fashion, utter the most crystalline sentence I could imagine to debunk his own absurd policies. Private postal industries, performing in ways a government run enterprise cannot, are doing fine, while the Post Office, the eternal taxpayer money pit, is not. That simple truth should be broadcast far and wide, in the Presidents own words. Even the first Socialist American President, a man who is attempting to transform us into a nanny state identical to our European allies, understands at some level, that private enterprise is the most successful way to prosper as a nation. So why is he working so hard to undermine it?
Perhaps he is able, in his arrogance and narcissism, to actually hold two conflicting ideas in his head and not suffer the psychological conflict of cognitive dissonance. The ideological indoctrination of so many years of mentoring by radicals and leftist academics may have shaped an intellect so acrobatic in its logic and so convoluted in its cognitive processes that it does not see the contradiction, or is incapable of perceiving itself as hypocritical. Either way, the monumental hypocrisy of the statement in the context of his actions is abundantly clear for all to see. Americans are waking from their stupor.
One simple thoughtless delicious sentence could undo months of political manipulation and maneuvering. The Democrats will tie themselves up in knots trying to bury it. The spin that will come about this sentence will be a wonder to behold.
Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign The president shouldn’t worry about the protestors disrupting town hall meetings. He should worry about the Americans who have been sitting at home listening to him. By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
It didn’t take chaotic town-hall meetings, raging demonstrators and consequent brooding in various sectors of the media to bring home the truth that the campaign for a health-care bill is, to put it mildly, not going awfully well. It’s not hard now to envision the state of this crusade with just a month or two more of diligent management by the Obama team—think train wreck. It may one day be otherwise in the more perfect world of universal coverage, but for now disabilities like the tone deafness that afflicts this administration from the top down are uninsurable.
Consider former ABC reporter Linda Douglass—now the president’s communications director for health reform—who set about unmasking all the forces out there “always trying to scare people when you try to bring them health insurance reform.” People, she charged, are taking sentences out of context and otherwise working to present a misleading picture of the president’s proposals. One of her key solutions to this problem—her justly famed message encouraging citizens to contact the office at flag@whitehouse.gov if they got an email or other information about health reform “that seems fishy”—set off a riotous flow of online responses. (The word “fishy,” with its police detective tone, would have done the trick all by itself.)
These commentaries, packed with allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell, were mostly furious. Others quite simply hilarious. Ms. Douglass, who now has, in her public appearances, the air of a person consigned to service in a holy order, was not amused.
Neither has she seemed to entertain any second thoughts about the tenor of a message enlisting the public in a program reeking of a White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president’s health-care program from the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness.
She intended no such outcome, doubtless. That this former journalist, now a communications director, failed to notice anything amiss in the details of that communiqué is a bit odd but not altogether surprising.
Crusades are busy endeavors, the enlistees in this one, like those in every undertaking of this White House, concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama administration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed to those answers and that vision are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.
It shouldn’t have been surprising, either, that the tone of much of the commentary on the town-hall protests was what it was. There was Mark Halperin for one, senior political editor for Time, bouncing off his chair, Sunday, in agitation over all the media coverage of this rowdiness—“a horrible breakdown of our political culture, our media culture” and so “bad for America,” as he told CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “I’m embarrassed about what’s going on, as an American.” The disruptions and coverage thereof distorted serious discussion, he explained. Mark Shields said much the same on Friday’s PBS NewsHour, if with less excitation, pointing out that these events were “not good for the democratic process,” and were a breakdown of civil debate.
There was no such hand-wringing over the decline of civil debate, during, say, election 2004, when cadres of organized demonstrators carrying swastika-adorned pictures of George W. Bush routinely swarmed about, and packed rallies. There was also that other “breakdown of our media culture,” that will dwarf all else as a cause for embarrassment, the town-hall coverage included, for the foreseeable future. That would be, of course, the undisguised worshipful reporting of the candidacy of Barack Obama.
That treatment, or rather its memory—like the adulation of his great mass of voters—has had its effect on this president, and not all to the good. The election over, the warming glow of those armies of supporters gone, his capacity to tolerate criticism and dissent from his policies grows thinner apace. His lectures, explaining his health-care proposals, and why they’ll be good for everybody, are clearly not going down well with his national audience.
This would have to do with the fact that the real Barack Obama—product of the academic left, social reformer with a program, is now before that audience, and what they hear in this lecture about one of the central concerns in their lives—his message freighted with generalities—they are not prepared to buy. They are not prepared to believe that our first most important concern now is health-care reform or all will go under.
The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.
He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.
Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning.
It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.
An Economic Time-Bomb Being Mishandled by the Obama Administration?
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Is there a ticking time-bomb for the US economy? And is the Obama administration, Congress, and the media not paying it sufficient attention? That seems to be the message of a government report released this week that drew not as much notice as it deserves.
This is all about those toxic assets--now euphemistically referred to by the US government as "legacy assets"--that were at the core of the economic meltdown. Though some economic news of late has been not so bad--economic contraction slowing, job losses leveling off, banks passing stress tests--these toxic assets still pollute the nation's financial system and endanger it.
On Tuesday, the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was set up to monitor the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (aka the Big Bank Bailout), put out another of its monthly reports, and this one notes that the Treasury Department has not used its TARP billions to purchase this junk--which includes both lousy commercial and residential mortgages and securities based on lousy mortgages--and that billions of dollars of toxic assets remain on the books, threatening the security of numerous financial institutions.
In other words, whoops.
What's happened is that accounting changes have made it easier for banks to contend with these assets. But this bad stuff hasn't gone anywhere. It's literally been papered over. And it still has the potential to wreak havoc. As the report puts it:
If the economy worsens, especially if unemployment remains elevated or if the commercial real estate market collapses, then defaults will rise and the troubled assets will continue to deteriorate in value. Banks will incur further losses on their troubled assets. The financial system will remain vulnerable to the crisis conditions that TARP was meant to fix.
So all those hundreds of billions spent by TARP were for naught? Treasury officials will tell you that they used the money to pump capital into banks--rather than buy their garbage--and this stabilized the financial system. Perhaps that worked. But, as the report makes clear, the original sin still stands.
In a conference call with a few reporters (myself included), Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor heading the Congressional Oversight Panel, noted that the biggest toxic assets threat to the economy could come not from the behemoth banks but from the "just below big" banks. These institutions have not been the focus of Treasury efforts because their troubled assets are generally "whole loans" (that is, regular loans), not mortgage securities, and these less-than-big banks have been stuck with a lot of the commercial real estate loans likely to default in the next year or two. Given that the smaller institutions are disproportionately responsible for providing credit to small businesses, Warren said, "if they are at risk, that has implications for the stability of the entire banking system and for economic recovery." Recalling that toxic assets were once the raison d'etre of TARP, she added, "Toxic assets posed a very real threat to our economy and have not yet been resolved."
Yes, you've heard about various government efforts to deal with this mess. With much hype, Secretary Timothy Geithner in March unveiled a private-public plan to buy up this financial waste. But the program has hardly taken off, and it has ignored a big chunk of the problem (those "whole loans"). As the WhyYouCare.com website, which tracks news at the intersection of politics and finance, points out, "The regulators have started to move to make financial institutions address these troubled assets, but their efforts have been tenative."
The Congressional Oversight Panel warned that "troubled assets remain a substantial danger" and that this junk--which cannot be adequately valued--"can again become the trigger for instability." Warren's panel does propose several steps the Treasury Department can take to reduce the risks. But it's frightening that Treasury needs to be prodded by Warren and her colleagues, who characterized troubled assets as "the most serious risk to the American financial system."
It's also frightening that this fundamental issue barely registers a blip on our collective Attention-O-Meter. The panel's report warranted merely a small article on the second page of The New York Times' business section. White House reporters didn't ask press secretary Robert Gibbs about it. Sarah Palin's stupid comments about health care reform certainly light up the blogosphere. But Treasury not taking all necessary steps to avert another financial collapse? That's a yawner. The Obama White House--and all of us--better hope that this panel is worrying needlessly.
Rasmussen's latest overall approval rating for President Obama: 47% -- a new low for him.
Left-wing Bush-haters who soooooo despised him and felt, believe, just knew that Obama would be soooooo much better, would bring closure, unity, peace, love -- and above all, socialism -- to the oppressed and benighted American masses, will note that "the Messiah's" current approval rating, midway through His eighth month, is a mere twelve points above Bush's number, 35%, when Bush left office. And need I mention that Bush's number came after eight years of "objective press" savagery. Obama's comes after eight months of "objective press" puffery.
In other Rasmussen Poll news, Pat Toomey, predicted, a mere weeks ago, to be toast in 2010, now holds a double-digit lead over Arlen Specter, who, if these numbers hold, has as much chance of being re-elected senator of Pennsylvania, as that other traitor, Benedict Arnold, had of being elected prime minister of England. Maybe less. Add in Christopher Dodd's, Henry Reid's and (dare we dream?) Barbara Boxer's increasingly dismal prospects, and it appears that James Carville's prediction of 40 years of Democratic dominance might be a tad premature.
Republicans lead Democrats on Rasmussen's Generic Congressional Ballot for the seventh week in a row.
And now even the ACLU is starting to become a bit wary of Barry. It's almost like Hamas criticizing a terrorist group for taking things too far. Obama is now trying to turn over laws that prevent the government from harvesting information regarding what websites people visit and their actions online. He says that doing so would be necessary to allow the government to function with greater transparency. :rollseyes: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15955
[This message has been edited by loafer87gt (edited 08-13-2009).]
And now even the ACLU is starting to become a bit wary of Barry. It's almost like Hamas criticizing a terrorist group for taking things too far. Obama is now trying to turn over laws that prevent the government from harvesting information regarding what websites people visit and their actions online. He says that doing so would be necessary to allow the government to function with greater transparency. :rollseyes: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=15955
Uh, oh. If the ACLU is after him, then he REALLY musta screwed up! I'd like to have the antacid concession at ACLU headquarters!
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Indexrating of -9 (see trends).
Today’s update marks the highest level of Strong Disapproval for President Obama. Previously, the number who Strongly Disapprove had reached 40% three times in late July. Most Americans would prefer no health care reform this year rather than passage of the legislation currently working its way through Congress.
After a rough week for health care reform, Democratic leaders appear to be pulling back on their demand for a public option. It remains to be seen whether liberal Democrats, especially in the House where they are more numerous, will go along with this. But this is still a step in the right direction to get something passed this year.
The public option was an overreach. The White House's erroneous belief that it could get it through the legislature - or at least that it could let four out of five congressional committees push it - was a misinterpretation of last year's election results. It has already made a similar mistake with cap-and-trade, backing a House bill that appears to have no chance of success in the Senate.
Bismarck once commented that politics is the art of the possible. So far, the White House has not exhibited a good understanding of exactly what is possible in this political climate. It has been acting as though the President's election was a major change in the ideological orientation of the country.
A lot of liberals certainly saw it as such. All the strained comparisons of Obama to Franklin Roosevelt were a tipoff that many were talking themselves into the idea that the 2008 election created an opportunity for a substantial, leftward shift in policy. Yet the election of 2008 was not like the 1932 contest. It wasn't like 1952, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984, or even 1988, either. Obama's election was narrower than all of these. FDR won 42 of 48 states. Eisenhower won 39, then 41. Johnson won 44 of 50. Nixon won 49. Reagan won 44, then 49. George H.W. Bush won 40. Obama won 28, three fewer than George W. Bush in his narrow 2004 reelection.
This makes a crucial difference when it comes to implementing policy. Our system of government depends not only on how many votes you win, but how broadly distributed those votes are. This prevents one section or faction from railroading another. It is evident in the Electoral College and the House, but above all in the Senate, where 44 senators come from states that voted against Obama last year. That's a consequence of the fact that Obama's election - while historic in many respects, and the largest we have seen in 20 years - was still not as broad-based as many would like to believe. Bully for Obama and the Democrats that they have 60 Senators, but the fact remains that thirteen of them come from McCain states, indicating that the liberals don't get the full run of the show.
For whatever reason, the Obama administration has acted as if those hagiographical comparisons to FDR were apt. It let its liberal allies from the coasts drive the agenda and write the key bills, and it's played straw man semantic games to marginalize the opposition. For all the President's moaning in The Audacity of Hope about how the Bush administration was railroading the minority into accepting far right proposals - he was prepared to let his Northeastern and Pacific Western liberal allies do exactly the same thing: write bills that excite the left, infuriate the right, and scare the center; insist on speedy passage through the Congress; and use budget reconciliation to ram it through in case the expected super majority did not emerge.
This might have flown during FDR's 100 Days. But this is not 1933 and Barack Obama is no Franklin Roosevelt.
Now that his legislative agenda is stalling, we're seeing the predictable critiques about the outdated United States Senate, which is the real source of the bottleneck: the Connecticut Compromise was meant to protect the interests of small states, but not states that are this small. Rhode Island, yes. Wyoming, no! These arguments will be conveniently tabled whenever the Democrats return to minority status, so I won't bother to address their merits. The bigger question is: what did they think was going to happen? It's one thing to bemoan the fundamental unfairness of the Senate; it's another thing to overlook it when you're formulating your legislative program. The map is what it is: that big swath of red that runs through the middle of the country then swings right through the South should have been a tipoff that the stage was not set for coastal governance.
The President should have realized what was possible and what wasn't, and he should have used his substantial influence to push the House toward the kind of centrist compromise the Senate will ultimately require. That's called building a consensus - something he promised he'd do but has not yet made a serious effort at.
Some Obama promises must wait 'No Child Left Behind,' Gulf Coast revitalization, immigration on back burner
WASHINGTON - President Obama sounded a bit like a weary air traffic controller on Aug. 10, when he was quizzed during a three-way summit with leaders from Mexico and Canada about a promised overhaul of U.S. immigration laws.
“I’ve got a lot on my plate, and it’s very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way where they don’t all just crash at the same time,” the president said in response to a reporter’s question.
While Obama said he expects Congress to send draft legislation his way later this year, the issue, at least for the moment, has been relegated to the back burner.
Triage is a necessity in an administration confronted by a deep recession, with a president who is simultaneously shepherding big initiatives addressing health care, climate change, education and financial regulation.
Obama and his aides understand there is only so much bandwidth to accommodate these efforts — and to complete work on fiscal 2010 spending bills and second-tier issues, such as a proposed rewrite of the rules for student lending.
But that means a large number of political promises Obama made during his historic campaign have been pushed to the back of the agenda. Most, in fact. The PolitiFact.com Web site, which compiled a list of 515 Obama pledges, lists 374 under the category of “no action.”
To be sure, Obama has begun to make good on some of his most prominent promises.
Just days after he was sworn in, he issued orders to shut the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and limit harsh interrogation methods. Initiatives to overturn federal funding curbs on embryonic stem cell research, deliver a major address to the Islamic world and stem mortgage foreclosures, to cite just three others, followed suit.
Many other high-profile issues have been deferred, either because they involve time-consuming negotiations with Congress or because Obama simply doesn’t want to expend the political capital. Here are five that are not likely to be acted on before year’s end:
Revising ‘No Child Left Behind’ The 2002 education law (PL 107-110) was passed with bipartisan fanfare and promoted by former President George W. Bush as one of his most important domestic policy achievements. But its focus on standardized testing as the measure of achievement and the way it expanded the federal government’s role into what has been traditionally a local issue prompted heated calls for revision.
During his campaign, Obama said he would overhaul the law “so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them” and pledged to find innovative ways to recruit and reward good teachers.
However, a planned reauthorization has been crowded out by other domestic priorities, particularly Obama’s push to retool the U.S. health care system, making it unlikely that a planned reauthorization will move quickly. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants to complete a nationwide listening tour before submitting a proposal to Congress. His department is also overseeing the expenditure of about $100 billion in new funding.
Confronting China Obama stated last year that China’s rise posed one of the most important foreign policy challenges to the United States in the coming decade. He promised to discourage China from manipulating its currency, the yuan, to keep the prices of its goods cheap and generate trade surpluses. And he pledged to discourage China’s support for genocidal and repressive regimes in Sudan, Burma, Iran and Zimbabwe.
Though Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said during his confirmation hearing that the administration would act “aggressively” using “all the diplomatic avenues” to change China’s currency practices, the White House has stopped short of making a formal declaration to Congress that China is manipulating the yuan to gain an unfair trade advantage. Such a move could spark punitive action and countermeasures from China. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao instead launched a “strategic and economic dialogue” in April. Experts such as Brookings Institution visiting fellow Dennis C. Wilder sense there is more continuity than change in the administration’s approach to engaging China — characterized by non-ideological dialogue that stresses positive areas for cooperation.
One difference is the administration’s elevation of climate change to a top-tier issue. The administration understands that efforts to pass climate change legislation in Congress hinge, in part, on getting China to do its part in reducing the global carbon footprint.
Funding veterans’ programs Obama, who as a senator served on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, spoke during the campaign about the “sacred trust to care for our nation’s veterans” and complained about years of chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration medical care system.
He pledged to fully fund the VA and make the VA budget must-pass legislation.
But it’s Congress that is doing most of the heavy lifting to make the promise reality. The House in June passed a measure (HR 1016) that would put veterans’ health care programs on a two-year budget cycle and make funding more predictable. The VA would receive $108.9 billion, about 15 percent more than in fiscal 2009 (PL 110-329) and equal to President Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget request.
Once money is released, the VA would detail to Congress any impediments to estimating future budgetary needs. The Office of Management and Budget would then request advance funding a year ahead of time and make the VA submit to Congress detailed explanations of those spending figures. The agency then would have to update Congress by July 31 of each year on whether the advance appropriations would be sufficient to meet the department’s needs.
This would give the VA more certainty, but not as much as Obama pledged.
Rebuilding the Gulf Coast During the campaign, Obama said he would “keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast” and take steps to prevent failures in emergency planning and response seen during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Specifically, Obama would ensure New Orleans has a levee and pumping system to protect the city against a 100-year storm by 2011, free up rebuilding funds that had been allocated but not released and to rebuild hospitals and schools.
Much of the work remains on the drawing boards. The administration got into a tussle with Sen. David Vitter, R-La., after he briefly stalled the nomination of Craig Fugate to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency because new federal flood maps included areas that were not previously designated flood zones, including much of Louisiana’s Cameron Parish, Grand Isle, and Lafourche Parish.
Federal regulations prohibit FEMA recovery funds from being used for rebuilding in areas designated as “V-Zones” because of their risk for future flooding.
An August 2009 report from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program concludes the region still faces major challenges due to blight, unaffordable housing and vulnerable flood protection.
Though New Orleans’ economy is weathering the recession fairly well, the report says some districts continue to have high numbers of vacant and blighted residences, and that essential service workers can’t afford fair market rents. And while 16 additional schools opened in the New Orleans area in the previous 12 months, the entire area remains vulnerable to storm-related flooding. A storm-surge protection system now being built by the Army Corps of Engineers would not adequately protect against another storm of Katrina’s magnitude, the report states.
Importing prescription drugs In spite of its overwhelming focus on overhauling the health care system, the administration has been silent on one of Obama’s signature health care promises: allowing consumers to import drugs made in FDA-approved facilities in countries where they are often sold for less.
During the campaign, Obama charged that some drugmakers were exploiting Americans by charging premiums of as much as 67 percent higher than the prices they charge for the same medicines in Europe and Canada.
But Obama’s administration has since cut a deal with the pharmaceutical industry in which drugmakers promised to provide $80 billion in discounts to seniors and the government over 10 years to help pay the cost of a health system overhaul.
Ironically, Obama’s 2008 presidential opponent, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., offered an amendment during debate on a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee health plan that would have written such an importation provision into law. Democrats helped defeat it by a 10-12 vote, arguing that allowing access to the cheaper drugs from abroad was potentially dangerous in light of all the hazards Americans have faced in recent months from risky imported products. More from msnbc.com
Is there nothing our Kenyan friend can't do? Now he has gone and even pissed off his union backers.
"With all of these efforts underway within the Postal Service community, it was a kick to the chest to have you take a shot at a group of federal employees who are working hard every day to support this country.
"Employees of the Postal Service are largely represented by unions and management associations, all of whom strongly supported your candidacy last year. For our support we do not expect any special consideration. However, we would like to be treated fairly and not have our current situation misrepresented, especially by the Commander-in-Chief."
