BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 09:52 AM

The Next Guantánamo

Published: April 12, 2009

The Obama administration is basking in praise for its welcome commitment to shut down the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay. But it is acting far less nobly when it comes to prisoners held at a larger, more secretive military detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

In February, the new administration disappointingly followed the example of the Bush White House in opposing judicial review for prisoners who have been indefinitely detained at Bagram without any charges or access to lawyers. The administration has now added to that disappointment by appealing a new federal court ruling extending the right of habeas corpus to some Bagram detainees.

The ruling was issued by Judge John Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Narrowly crafted, the ruling essentially grants all non-Afghan Bagram detainees captured outside Afghanistan and held over six years without due process the same right to federal court review that the Supreme Court gave last year to similarly situated prisoners at Guantánamo.

Bagram differs from Guantánamo in that it is located in an active theater of war. Historically, habeas corpus has not extended to detainees held abroad in zones of combat. But the evidence suggests it was the prospect that Guantánamo detentions might be subject to judicial oversight that caused the military to divert captives to Bagram instead....". (NYT)

---

I would really love to get to the bottom of this. IF true, it is very disappointing.

Is the the corruptive influence of power? Or a problem in missing data?


A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 12:46 PM

WASHINGTON, April 13 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday that a raft of major infrastructure projects being undertaken as part of his economic stimulus plan were coming in "ahead of schedule and under budget."

"What is most remarkable about this effort ... isn't just the size of our investment or the number of projects we're investing in. It is how quickly, efficiently and responsibly those investments have been made," Obama said at an appearance at the Transportation Department

"This government effort is coming in ahead of schedule and under budget," Obama said.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 07:03 PM

"The pesticide peddlers are not happy with Michelle Obama.


The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA) represents chemical companies that produce pesticides, and they are angry that — wait for it — Michelle Obama isn't using chemicals in her organic garden at the White House.

We are not making this up.

In an email they forwarded to their supporters, a MACA spokesman wrote, "While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made [us] shudder." MACA went on to publish a letter it had sent to the First Lady asking her to consider using chemicals — or what they call "crop protection products" — in her garden.

Michelle Obama has done America a great service by publicizing the importance of nutritious food for kids (she's growing the garden in partnership with a local elementary school class) as well as locally grown produce as an important, environmentally sustainable food source.

MACA's letter is part of a larger propaganda effort to convince people that chemicals are a necessary part of produce growth — when we know that's not true. ..."

(Campaign letter from CREDO)

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 07:21 PM

"The pesticide peddlers are not happy with Michelle Obama."


                   She looks at the pests, it scares them to death, and nobody needs the poison.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 07:28 PM

But you continue to provide it anyway, for reasons only you could explain.


A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 07:45 PM

Hey, I wasn't the one to bring up Mrs. Obama and pesticide peddlers.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 09:44 PM

Larry Summers, Obama chief economic advisor 1999: "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage countries is impeccable and we should face up to that . . . I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are also vastly under-polluted."

In 1998, in blocking attempts to regulate the derivatives market:
"The parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counter party insolvencies and most of which are already subject to basic safety and soundness regulation under existing banking and securities laws."

As Treasury Secretary in 1999 Summers played a decisive role in pushing through the repeal of the Glass Steagall Act of 1933 that was instituted to guard against just the kind of banking abuses taxpayers now are having to bail out. Not only Glass-Steagall repeal. In 2000 Summers backed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act that incredibly mandated that financial derivatives, including in energy, could be traded between financial institutions completely without government oversight

Summers hailed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which lifted more than six decades of restrictions against banks offering commercial banking, insurance, and investment services (by repealing key provisions in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act): "Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century" "This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy."

But Sawzaw, we had that all blamed on McCain and Phil Gramm. Are you trying to tell us that an Obama appointee is involved the meltdown?

In 2000 in praise of the derivatives market: "The over-the-counter derivatives market is an important component of the American capital markets and a powerful symbol of the kind of innovation and technology that has made the American financial system as strong as it is today."

During the California energy crisis of 2000, then-Treasury Secretary Summers teamed with Alan Greenspan and Enron executive Kenneth (Enron) Lay to lecture California Governor Gray Davis on the causes of the crisis, explaining that the problem was excessive government regulation.


Yer doin a heckuva job there Larry.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 10:04 PM

Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn't he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton's treasury secretary? No one has been more persistently effective in paving the way for the financial swindles that enriched the titans of finance while impoverishing the rest of the world than the man who is now the top economic adviser to President Obama.

It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most off the Obama administration's plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the hedge funds, thanks to Summers.

It was Summers, as much as anyone, who in the Clinton years prevented the regulation of the hedge funds that are at the center of the explosion of the derivatives bubble, and the fact that D.E. Shaw, a leading hedge fund, paid the Obama adviser $5.2 million last year does suggest a serious conflict of interest. That sum is what Summers raked in for a part-time gig, in addition to the $2.77 million he received for forty speaking engagements, largely before banks and investment firms, and on top of the $587,000 he was paid as a professor at Harvard.

Summers was a top adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate last year, and that might have enhanced his speaking fees, which seem to have a base rate of $67,500, the amount he received on each of two occasions when he appeared at Lehman Brothers before that company went bankrupt. Lehman had purchased a 20 percent stake in D.E. Shaw while Summers was employed by the hedge fund, and it would be interesting to know if the subject of the overlapping business came up during Summers' visit to Lehman.

Lehman was only one on an impressive list of top financial firms that consulted Summers during a troubled period. Goldman Sachs was so interested in his thoughts that it paid him more than $200,000 for two talks, even though it soon needed $12 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. Citigroup, which has been going through hard times, managed only a $54,000 fee for a Summers rap. Merrill Lynch could pony up only a scant $45,000 for a Summers appearance last November 12, but that was at a point when Merrill was in deep trouble, with the government arranging its sale. Summers, anticipating an appointment in the administration of the newly elected Obama and perhaps wanting to avoid any embarrassment the fee might bring, decided to turn over the $45,000 to a charity.

Why was someone as compromised as Summers made the White House's point man overseeing $2.86 trillion in bailout funds to the financial moguls whom he had enabled in creating this mess and many of whom had benefited him financially? Will no congressional panel ever quiz Summers about his grand theory that the derivatives market required no government supervision because, as he testified to a Senate subcommittee in July of 1998: "the parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies...."

Think of the sophisticates at AIG when you read that sentence, and then ask why Summers is once again at large in the public sector. Or take White House spokesman Ben LaBolt's word for it that "Dr. Summers has been at the forefront of this administration's work...to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight--all in an effort to help the families across America who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street executives."

The very same executives that Summers had previously assured us could be trusted without any regulation. Why should we now trust Summers any more than we trust them? Couldn't Summers just take his ill-gotten gains and go hide out in some offshore tax haven? If this was happening in a Republican administration, scores of Democrats in Congress would be all over it, asking tough questions about what exactly did Summers do to earn all that money from the D.E. Shaw hedge fund. As it is, with their silence they are complicit in this emerging scandal of the banking bailout.


"The parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies."

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 09 - 11:35 PM

Bill Moyers drills down on the mutual coverup on the banking collapse, including the roll of Gethner and the missed opportunity for injecting integrity by the Obama administration, in a discussion with William Black.



A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 12:33 AM

From: Amos
Date: 13 Apr 09 - 09:52 AM

The Next GuantánamoI would really love to get to the bottom of this. IF true, it is very disappointing.

'.....Is the the corruptive influence of power? Or a problem in missing data?'

Reality strikes!

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: TIA
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 12:37 AM

Reality struck Dear Amos long ago I think.

The grasp on reality is slippery for the delusional, the insecure, and those with multiple online personalities.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Apr 09 - 06:31 PM

Posted at 12:10 PM ET, 04/15/2009
Obama's Power Grab
Obama in explanation mode yesterday. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

President Obama yesterday showed the nation once again how good he is at explaining complicated things. Next up on his agenda should be an explanation -- or, rather, a clarification -- of his views on presidential power and George W. Bush's counterterrorism legacy.

It's past time for Obama to address his apparent adoption of positions he formerly characterized as extremist, and his suddenly cooling commitment to transparency when it comes to embarrassing secrets left over from the Bush era.

In the past few weeks, we've seen the Obama Justice Department make absurdly broad invocations of the state secrets privilege to protect Bush's spying programs from judicial review. We've seen the administration argue that foreign detainees -- as long as they are being held in Afghanistan rather than at Guantanamo -- can be imprisoned indefinitely without formal charges. We've seen how Obama, after staying out of the debate over accountability for torture and other unlawful legacies of the Bush administration, is now, apparently, taking sides by balking at requests from his own top legal advisers to release incriminating memos.

It's getting increasingly hard to reconcile candidate Obama, who eloquently criticized Bush's executive power overreach, with President Obama. This is especially true because his underlings consistently duck questions, leaving it entirely unclear why he's taking the positions he now takes and what, if anything, made him change his views.

So an explanation is called for from the man himself. And since the first 100 days of an administration are so defining, he ought to do it sometime in the next two weeks.

Supporters who put faith in Obama's campaign pledges to restore the nation's moral authority were heartened by his actions on his first and second full days in office. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," he declared on Jan. 21. On Jan. 22, he banned torture and ordered the eventual closure of Guantanamo.

Some of those same supporters still hope that the administration's more recent actions can be chalked up to bureaucratic inertia and a steep learning curve. Perhaps Obama has a compelling explanation for the evolution of his thinking on these issues. Or perhaps the president, who has on many occasions admitted that he will inevitably make mistakes, could admit he's made some here.

Every day seems to bring more signs of Obama's retreat from his previously stated goals.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/white-house-watch/?hpid=opinionsbox1

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 03:34 AM

Bruce, Great post!..But do you think it will get any traction on here?? Especially your fourth paragraph: ..."It's getting increasingly hard to reconcile candidate Obama, who eloquently criticized Bush's executive power overreach, with President Obama. This is especially true because his underlings consistently duck questions, leaving it entirely unclear why he's taking the positions he now takes and what, if anything, made him change his views." .....It happens all the time on here. ..or to quote TIA:..."The grasp on reality is slippery for the delusional, the insecure, and those with multiple online personalities." (I don't think he(?) meant it quite that way, but it's also telling, that should come from him..or her, whatever persona, 'it' is promoting this week!)
   I'm sure...quite sure, that when common sense prevails, beyond a shadow of a doubt, those ideologues(read:idiot-logs), find it much akin to the sound of scraping one's fingernails on a chalk board, then, cluelessly resort to name calling....Sorta makes you wonder, what happened to the Democratic party, whose more conservative President, who said, "Ask NOT what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"...to a bunch of whiny, Monica Lewinsky-types, on their knees, before the president,trying to get in line for a big suck!!!...Jeez!, they should take a good look at themselves...and with one ounce of moral integrity, ask themselves.."what the fuck happened to us(or me)..what have I become??!!!" .....Then ask, "Why?"

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Apr 09 - 09:56 PM

"Popular Views: the Obama Administration"


                   Awful, simply awful!

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 Apr 09 - 10:04 AM

The Sting, In Four Parts

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, April 17, 2009

Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. John Kennedy gave us the New Frontier. In a major domestic policy address at Georgetown University this week, Barack Obama promised -- eight times -- a "New Foundation." For those too thick to have noticed this proclamation of a new era in American history, the White House Web site helpfully titled its speech excerpts "A New Foundation."

As it happens, Obama is not the first to try this slogan. President Jimmy Carter peppered his 1979 State of the Union address with five "New Foundations" (and eight more just naked "foundations"). Like most of Carter's endeavors, this one failed, perhaps because (as I recall it being said at the time) it sounded like the introduction of a new kind of undergarment.

Undaunted, Obama offered his New Foundation speech as the complete, contextual, canonical text for the domestic revolution he aims to enact. It had everything we have come to expect from Obama:

The Whopper: The boast that he had "identified $2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade." It takes audacity to repeat this after it had been so widely exposed as transparently phony. Most of this $2 trillion is conjured up by refraining from spending $180 billion a year for 10 more years of surges in Iraq. Hell, why not make the "deficit reductions" $10 trillion -- the extra $8 trillion coming from refraining from repeating the $787 billion stimulus package annually through 2019.

The Puzzler: He further boasted of his frugality by saying that his budget would reduce domestic discretionary spending as a share of GDP to the lowest level ever recorded. Amazing. Squeezing discretionary domestic spending at a time of hugely expanding budgets is merely the baleful residue of out-of-control entitlements and debt service, which will increase astronomically under Obama. To claim these as achievements in fiscal responsibility is testament not to Obama's frugality but to his brazenness.

The Non Sequitur: "To make sure such a crisis [as we have today] never happens again," Obama proposes his radical health-care, energy and education reforms, the central pillars of his social democratic agenda. But Obama's own words contradict this assertion. Notes The Post: "But as his admirable summation of recent history made clear, these pursuits have little to do with the economic crisis, and they are not the key to economic recovery." Obama rarely fails to repeat this false connection. A crisis -- and the public's resulting pliability to liberal social engineering -- is a terrible thing to waste.

The Swindle: The Obama administration is spending money like none other in peacetime history. Obama is smart. He knows this is fiscally unsustainable. He has let it be known privately and publicly that he intends to cure the imbalance with entitlement reform.

An excellent strategy. If it takes throwing nearly $1 trillion of "porky" (to quote Sen. Charles Schumer) stimulus spending to soften up a Democratic Congress and make it amenable to real entitlement reform, then fine. Reforming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would save tens of trillions of dollars, and make the current money-from-helicopters spending almost trivial by comparison.

In the New Foundation speech, Obama correctly (again) identifies the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid as the key fiscal problem. But then he claims that Medicaid and Medicare reform is the same as his health-care reform, fatuously citing as his authority a one-day meeting of handpicked interested parties at his "Fiscal Responsibility Summit."

Here's the problem. The heart of Obama's health-care reform is universality. Covering more people costs more money. That is why Obama's budget sets aside an extra $634 billion in health-care spending, a down payment on an estimated additional spending of $1 trillion. How does the administration curtail the Medicare and Medicaid entitlement by adding yet another (now universal) health-care entitlement that its own estimate acknowledges increases costs by about $1 trillion?

Which is why in his March 24 news conference, Obama could not explain how -- when the near-term stimulative spending is over and his ambitious domestic priorities kick in, promising sustained prosperity and deficit reduction -- the deficits at the end of the coming decade are rising, not falling. The Congressional Budget Office has deficits increasing in the last seven years of the decade from an already unsustainable $672 billion annually to $1.2 trillion by 2019.

This is the sand on which the new foundation is constructed. Obama has the magic to make words mean almost anything. Numbers are more resistant to his charms.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 12:34 AM

But Bruce...(sighs..and batting my eyes)..Obama is so charming. Who cares about reality??..(gasps an gasp of adoration).....Just listen to his 'cool' when he talks!....and he's so cute, too......(rocks from side to side, on the outer sides of my shoes)....Don't you just love him??..the way I do??...(fans side of face, with other hand)..I think I'm so in love with him,...I'm about to pass out. Wake me when it's over. I'll go along with whatever he says!....(Collapses,...in heat)

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 12:36 AM

AHA!!!

I noticed that the last post by GfS was number 666 on this thread!

Does that tell youoooo something???? Hmmm???

(I'm joking, okay?) ;-)

Am I mistaken or are some people arguing with each other here?

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 01:59 PM

Well, Little Hawk, welcome back!..and as No. 666, I heartily endorse Barrack Obama!..(that should make Amos smile)

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 03:53 PM

BB started this thread mainly to bug Amos, didn't he? ;-) I wonder if he has succeeded as well as he had hoped to?

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 10:23 PM

If BB started this thread to bug Amos, well all he had to do was say that he had better sexual fantasies about Obama, than Amos does!

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 10:37 PM

Ha! Ha! Oh, now you're getting nasty...

I like Obama rather well on a personal basis, I like his whole family actually...and he's vastly more popular in Canada than our own prime minister, partly because he's a fresh face on the political scene, partly because he's just a lot more likeable, period than Steven Harper.

However, the candidates in the last election I really liked the best were:

1. Dennis Kucinich
2. Ron Paul
3. (and in some respects) Mike Huckabee

Obama has enough goodwill right now in the world and at home that he could actually return the USA to being a fairly well-liked nation internationally and really change things...IF he makes the right moves and follows through.

I am sad to think that, realpolitik and corporate policy being what it is in the USA, he will do nothing of the sort in the next four years, but I could be wrong. I've been wrong before. It happened just once back in 1965. I said it was going to rain on Saturday and it didn't. (grin)

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 11:54 PM

It is correct that BB's motive was revenge for the drubbing I gave his favored candidate throughout the years of the Bush administration. He is intransigent and intractable in his assertion he is doing exactly the same things as I did. My assertions about the differences have fallen on dulled ears.

GtS, thanks for your endorsement of Obama in your role as 666 representative. I now have a perfect fall-back explanation in case he gets sucked under.



A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 02:13 AM

Yes, even you can join in on the satire!
(Wow!..That last fantasy I had was a dilly!)

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 02:49 AM

From: Amos
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 11:54 PM

" ...I now have a perfect fall-back explanation in case he gets SUCKED under."......In your most sacred dreams...Dream on!
(Told you!)

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Ed T
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 11:10 AM

Consider the following Article:

Right-wingers have run U.S. into the ground
HARRY BRUCE:Halifax Chronicle Herald
Sun. Apr 19 - 5:17 AM


WHILE self-righteously denouncing "Big Government" as a brother-in-crime of Commun-ism, the U.S. champions of "market-based solutions" certainly found solutions to their own financial problems.

Their ideology, in which deregulation and privatization were holy doctrine, amounted to a religion for the greedy. In the past quarter-century, this faith so dominated business and politics down there that its priests piled up enormous wealth for themselves and, at the same time, complacently watched a deterioration of the well-being of tens of millions of their fellow Americans.

"The modern conservative," wrote the Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith, "is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Not only in the U.S. but among the meaner varieties of conservatives in Canada, that search, which includes the cursing of Big Government, has been vigorous and influential. Most Canadians, however, at least know that it was Big Government that gave them railroads, air travel, radio, TV, unemployment insurance, pensions, medicare, and a whole lot more.

Were it not for huge spending initiatives by government, over several generations, we would be nowhere near as well off as we are. As economist Jeff Madrick proves in his new book, The Case for Big Government, Americans, too, owe much of their prosperity to almost two centuries of enormous public spending.

Such talk is heresy to the conservative ideologues who've held power in Washington for three decades. But what did these vicious crackpots and money-grubbers bequeath to President Barack Obama?

By comparison with the rest of the industrialized world, the U.S. now has the biggest income gap between the rich and poor, the highest rate of infant mortality, the highest rate of poverty among minors, the highest percentage of children unlikely to reach 60, and by far the highest percentage of its own people languishing in jail.

While setting these dubious records, the U.S. allowed its infrastructure to collapse like an old wooden house infested with termites. "For decades now, we have been witnessing the slow, ruthless dismantling of the nation's urban infrastructure," the New York Times recently reported. "The crumbling levees in New Orleans are only the most conspicuous evidence of this decline: it's evident everywhere, from Amtrak's aging track system to New York's decaying public school buildings."

If the neglect of dikes, bridges, highways and sewers is a grim reality for America, the erosion of its standards of education is even grimmer.

"All signs point to a deterioration in the quality of American schools," Harvard professor Henry Lee Shattuck writes. "Europeans and Asians alike have rapidly expanded their educational systems over the past 50 years. In the U.S., stagnation if not decline has been apparent at least since the 1970s. Even our high school graduation rates are lower today than they were a decade ago."

Today's Americans work harder and longer than both today's Europeans and yesterday's Americans, but their wages, on average, have been stuck in a rut for decades. Since the 1970s, writes Harvard lecturer Richard Parker, "the U.S. economy has grown more slowly than in the 30-year period after the end of World War II, but also very likely more slowly than in any other period in the nation's history."

"Real wages stagnant as corporate profits soar," read a headline in the Oakland Tribune. That was in 2006, but the reality it describes began to take shape when American voters, suckers that they were, in 1980 elected as their president that smiling, avuncular, and faithful ally of the rich, Ronald Reagan.

While scorning Big Government, his administration and those of his successors went about ruling the home of the brave and the land of the free as though they didn't really care how big government got — just as long it was government of the affluent, by the affluent, and for the affluent.

This is hard to believe, but some champions of the conservative ideology still think they were right. To mark the ascension of Obama to the presidency, William Kristol of the New York Times actually wrote, "All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20 marked the end of a conservative era. Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too!"

Oh, please, Mr. Kristol. If the dominance of conservatives was a good thing for the U.S., so was the attack on the World Trade Centre, the war in Iraq, hurricane Katrina, and the hatred of America that has blossomed all around the world.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 01:44 PM

We had a freeway fall down on an underpass here in San Diego last week, I have now heard. The Republican San Diego Tribune barely carrie dthe story. None of the newsfeeds carried it. Interstate Five is falling down, falling down, falling down...



A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 03:44 PM

So, IF Galbraith is correct, why is the Obama administration bailing them out????...Because Geithner is in bed with them????..OR...Who is telling who, what to do???

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 06:28 PM

...He closes in on 100 days as president, having handled the highs and lows with a sense of urgency and his characteristic calmness.
By Faye Fiore and Mark Z. Barabak, reporting from Washington
April 19, 2009

On the last Friday in March, President Obama summoned leaders of the banking industry to the White House, where they gathered around a mahogany table in the State Dining Room, site of many a feast. On this day there was not a piece of fruit nor can of soda in sight. At each place was a glass of water. No ice. No refills.

The president's message was hard and crusty as a slab of day-old bread.

He urged the bankers to view corporate excess through the eyes of Americans who are belt-tightening their way through the recession. Obama mentioned the carpet stains in the Oval Office, to make a frugal comparison with $1-million suites decorated with $8,000 trash cans.

The corporate chieftains protested, citing the specialization of their field and the need to pay handsomely to avoid a brain drain. Obama cut them off: "Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn't buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

Direct, assertive and utterly self-assured, Obama has used his broad popularity, a driving ambition and a sweeping agenda to move America in a wholly new direction.

Just shy of 100 days in office, he has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay military prison and a troop withdrawal from Iraq; made it easier for women to sue for job discrimination; eased a ban on stem cell research; extended healthcare coverage to millions of children; ousted the head of General Motors; reached out to the Muslim world; moved to ease tensions with Cuba; traveled to Canada, Europe, Turkey and Latin America; and set aside huge tracts of wilderness for federal protection.

More broadly, Obama has seized on the worst economic crisis since the 1930s -- exploiting it, critics say -- and set out to reshape major aspects of everyday life: the price we pay to see a doctor, the size of our children's classrooms, the fuel we put in our cars.

If Obama's history-making campaign offered hope, the nation's first black president has delivered audacity; his vision of an activist government has been so vast, Washington now guarantees not only savings accounts but brakes on a Buick.

"You can carp and gripe," said Allan Lichtman, a historian at Washington's American University. "But you really have to go back as far as Franklin Roosevelt for this much coming out of a newly elected president." (snip)


here in the LAT

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 06:48 PM

Good article, Ed T.

Here's an extraordinary thing. Look at this link about comparative health care systems in developed countries: Comparative National Health Care Systems

The USA is the ONLY country on the list which does NOT have a publicly funded national health insurance program. It is also the country which spends the largest percentage of its GDP by far on health care and where its citizens can least afford to meet their health care expenses! Astounding. The chart is from 1997. Costs have gone up since then in every country, and the USA is still the country with the highest % of GDP cost of health care...and the least result for it. Something is seriously wrong in America. Your public is at the mercy of your private enterprise system which exists not to serve the public, but to line its own pockets.

We presently spend about 10% of our GDP (from taxation) on health care in Canada...and its universal and free to every citizen. The USA presently spends about 17% of its GDP (from taxation) on health care, and it's cripplingly expensive to anyone who needs treatment, but doesn't have insurance coverage from an employer. A busted ankle with complications cost Mike Huckabee's daughter about $12,000 in hospital fees over a period of one year. In Canada it would have cost her absolutely nothing in medical fees...but she still pays her taxes into that 17% of the USA GDP!

Yet Huckabee is terrified by what "socialism" could do if allowed into the USA Medicare system. He has no idea when it comes to that. (He does have some excellent ideas about various other things, but not about that. I've been reading his book, and there's some very good stuff in it, but he has no idea what socialism is at all.)

If he had been born in Canada or Europe, he'd see it very differently. The one thing the Canadian electorate WILL NOT see threatened is our national health plan, and our politicians know it.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 02:51 PM

A World Of Trouble For Obama
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, April 20, 2009

New American presidents typically begin by behaving as if most of the world's problems are the fault of their predecessors -- and Barack Obama has been no exception. In his first three months he has quickly taken steps to correct the errors in George W. Bush's foreign policy, as seen by Democrats. He has collected easy dividends from his base, U.S. allies in Europe and a global following for not being "unilateralist" or war-mongering or scornful of dialogue with enemies.

Now comes the interesting part: when it starts to become evident that Bush did not create rogue states, terrorist movements, Middle Eastern blood feuds or Russian belligerence -- and that shake-ups in U.S. diplomacy, however enlightened, might not have much impact on them.

The first wake-up call has come from North Korea -- a state that, according to established Democratic wisdom, would have given up its nuclear weapons years ago if it had not been labeled "evil" by Bush, denied bilateral talks with Washington and punished with sanctions. Stephen Bosworth, the administration's new special envoy, duly tried to head off Pyongyang's latest illegal missile test by promising bilateral negotiations and offering "incentives" for good behavior.

North Korea fired the missile anyway. After a week of U.N. Security Council negotiations by the new, multilateralist U.S. administration produced the same weak statement that the Bush administration would have gotten, the Stalinist regime expelled U.N. inspectors and announced that it was returning to plutonium production.

When the inspectors were ousted in 2002, Democrats blamed Bush. Now Republicans blame Obama -- but North Korea's strategy hasn't changed in 15 years. It provokes a crisis, then demands bribes from the United States and South Korea in exchange for restoring the status quo. The Obama team now faces the same dilemma that bedeviled the past two administrations: It must judge whether to respond to the bad behavior by paying the bribe or by trying to squeeze the regime.

A second cold shower rained down last week on George Mitchell, Obama's special envoy to the Middle East. For eight years Democrats insisted that the absence of progress toward peace between Israel and its neighbors was due to the Bush administration's failure at "engagement." Mitchell embodies the correction. But during last week's tour of the region he encountered a divided Palestinian movement seemingly incapable of agreeing on a stance toward Israel and a new Israeli government that doesn't accept the goal of Palestinian statehood. Neither appeared at all impressed by the new American intervention -- or willing to offer even token concessions.

Those aren't the only signs that the new medicine isn't taking. Europeans commonly blamed Bush for Russia's aggressiveness -- they said he ignored Moscow's interests and pressed too hard for European missile defense and NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. So Hillary Clinton made a show of pushing a "reset" button, and Obama offered the Kremlin a new arms control agreement while putting missile defense and NATO expansion on a back burner. Yet in recent weeks Russia has deployed thousands of additional troops as well as tanks and warplanes to the two breakaway Georgian republics it has recognized, in blatant violation of the cease-fire agreement that ended last year's war. The threat of another Russian attack on Georgia seems to be going up rather than down.

Obama sent a conciliatory public message to Iranians, and the United States joined in a multilateral proposal for new negotiations on its nuclear program. The regime responded by announcing another expansion of its uranium enrichment facility and placing an American journalist on trial for espionage. Obama told Iraqis that he would, as long promised, use troop withdrawals to pressure the government to take over responsibility for the country. Since he made that announcement, violence in Iraq has steadily increased.

Obama is not the first president to discover that facile changes in U.S. policy don't crack long-standing problems. Some of his new strategies may produce results with time. Yet the real test of an administration is what it does once it realizes that the quick fixes aren't working -- that, say, North Korea and Iran have no intention of giving up their nuclear programs, with or without dialogue, while Russia remains determined to restore its dominion over Georgia. In other words, what happens when it's no longer George W. Bush's fault? That's what the next 100 days will tell us.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 04:20 PM

DIehl is fighting a paper tiger, Bruce; even you should see the illogic in his assertions. "Bush did not create rogue states, terrorist movements, Middle Eastern blood feuds or Russian belligerence" is a shallow porosition, as no-one in his right mind could assert these things were not around before Bush. Bush's offences were more specific, equally deleterious, and did not consist of these fabrications. What hogwash.


A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 05:10 PM

Sorry, Amos. As usual, you fail to address the point of the article.

"Yet the real test of an administration is what it does once it realizes that the quick fixes aren't working -- that, say, North Korea and Iran have no intention of giving up their nuclear programs, with or without dialogue, while Russia remains determined to restore its dominion over Georgia. In other words, what happens when it's no longer George W. Bush's fault? That's what the next 100 days will tell us. "


You are now jumping down the throats of the people that you quoted from ( against Bush) because you don't like what they say. Instead, try to reply to the facts presented in those comments, rather than attacking the writer for your imagined "insults" to Obama. I find this article to be somewhat timid, and NOT to hold Obama to the fire- it never even mentions that most of what Obama is now doing was tried by Bush, with poor results.

What was that comment about insanity being to keep trying the same solutions, and expecting different results? Or, again, do you only apply negative criticsm to Bush, and only allow positive statements about AObama?

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 06:59 PM

"What was that comment about insanity being to keep trying the same solutions, and expecting different results? Or, again, do you only apply negative criticism to Bush, and only allow positive statements about Obama?"......BB
Ah!..A a question for your 'resident' psychologist(among other things)..me.
Trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, and NOT learning from experience...is the symptom of a psychotic. That being said, I don't think Obama is a psychotic....He's just doing what he is told to do, by the same people who told Bush. The PR is different...but the results are the same.
Same with the financial problem. This started long before 'W'...in fact, it was Clinton's pressuring of the banks to give loans to those who couldn't pay them back, that started this bubble to inflate...BUT WAIT...remember the '.com bubble'...and the 401K policy....you know, your 401K was to be invested??...That wasn't to help you for retirement, That was just an earlier attempt to bolster the stock market, that was beginning to fail back then, and needed to be 'funded back up'. We were in serious trouble back then. This problem is not a 'new' problem, starting with Baby Bush...this is a sries of problems, spanning several presidents....who take their marching orders from the same band of international bandits...Obama, just being the latest. This is the same thing I've been saying from the beginning..and now, as the news comes out, it is more than proving me right AGAIN!...But because some of you think I'm a 'right winger' you obliviously dismiss it...and yet, I'm not a 'right winger' at all! IT IS THOSE, WHO ADOPT A SIDE(Right wing or left), WHO END UP BLOCKING THE OTHER HALF OF THE INFORMATION YOU NEED TO KNOW!...and, because of it, WE become divided, and are being played for fools!!!! Neither side, has their fingers on the pulse, in its entirety! Both have right..both have wrong. This national debate that is being force fed us,(to divide us), is NOT about business, nor politics. IT is about control...and its the same very few, at the top, who hide behind whatever administration that is propped up,(bought and paid for...even threatened)..who are the ones making the policies to benefit themselves...NOT YOU or THE PARTY LINE both sides spout off.

NOW, knowing that....just WHO are the PSYCHOTICS out there????????

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 09:18 PM

BB - You said "American presidents typically begin by behaving as if most of the world's problems are the fault of their predecessors"

Well, yeah!!! ;-) Given the normal role of the USA in the world in the world for the past few decades (since the 1950's), that would be almost a foregone conclusion, wouldn't it?

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Apr 09 - 10:17 PM

Your foregone conclusion, as reflected in your somewhat bitter posts is that in less than 100 days Obama has tried all his solutions and they have failed. I submit you are not looking at the actual scene, but at a crystallized, frozen, and quite embittered version of it.

Fortunately, the President is a little less bruised and a little less inclined toward disdain and violence.


What e actually does, and the degree to which it works, is an evolving picture.

A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:02 AM

I'm sure his controllers have it in their plans, how and what needs to be 'evolved', and at what pace. It is only we, that watches the movie, as it plays..The script is already written...The rest is just 'the ratings'.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 09:37 AM

Sigh. How can so much bull and poppycock come forth so rap[idly from one small-mouthed lass?


A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 01:18 PM

Huh? GfS is female?

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 01:33 PM

I imagine she is, yes. IS that an error?


A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 02:03 PM

I don't know. I always thought GfS was male. Maybe we should ask him? her? whatever?

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 03:01 PM

No guarantess it will answer questions posed to it. It is precious and given to moods, yessssss.



A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 03:32 PM

EXCLUSIVE: Senator's husband's firm cashes in on crisis
Feinstein sought $25 billion for agency that awarded contract to spouse

By Chuck Neubauer (Contact) | Tuesday, April 21, 2009

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband's real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.

Mrs. Feinstein's intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn't a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments - not direct federal dollars.

Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) - the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman - had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.

About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum's private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE's stock closed Monday at $5.14.

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/21/senate-husbands-firm-cashes-in-on-crisis/

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 03:36 PM

PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama and black farmers

By BEN EVANS – 12 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — As a senator, Barack Obama led the charge last year to pass a bill allowing black farmers to seek new discrimination claims against the Agriculture Department. Now he is president, and his administration so far is acting like it wants the potentially budget-busting lawsuits to go away.

The change isn't sitting well with black farmers who thought they'd get a friendlier reception from Obama after years of resistance from President George W. Bush.

"You can't blame it on the Bush administration anymore," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association, which has organized the lawsuits. "I can't figure out for the life of me why the president wouldn't want to implement a bill that he fought for as a U.S. senator."

At issue is a class-action lawsuit known as the Pigford case. Thousands of farmers sued USDA claiming they had for years been denied government loans and other assistance that routinely went to whites. The government settled in 1999 and has paid out nearly $1 billion in damages on almost 16,000 claims.

Farmers, lawyers and activists like Boyd have worked for years to reopen the case because thousands of farmers missed the deadlines for participating. Many said the filing period was too short and they were unaware of the settlement until it was too late.

The cause gained momentum in August 2007 when Obama, then an Illinois senator, introduced Pigford legislation about six months into his presidential campaign.

Although the case was hardly a hot-button political issue, it had drawn intense interest among African-Americans in the rural South. It was seen as a way for Obama to reach out in those areas, where he was not well-known and where he would need strong support to win the Democratic primary.

The proposal won passage in May as sponsors rounded up enough support to incorporate it into the 2008 farm bill. The potential budget implications were huge: It could easily cost $2 billion or $3 billion given an estimated 65,000 pending claims.

With pressure to hold down costs, lawmakers set an artificially low $100 million budget. They called it a first step and said more money could be approved later.

But with 25,000 new claims and counting, the Obama administration is now arguing that the $100 million budget should be considered a cap to be split among the successful cases.

The position — spelled out in a legal motion filed in February and reiterated in recent settlement talks — would leave payments as low as $2,000 or $3,000 per farmer. Boyd called that "insulting."

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 03:44 PM

Anybody who thinks farming is easy for white people has never been a farmer.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 03:54 PM

Amos,

Please at least try to read what is being said, instead of telling us what YOU wanted us to say:

""Yet the real test of an administration is what it does once it realizes that the quick fixes aren't working -- that, say, North Korea and Iran have no intention of giving up their nuclear programs, with or without dialogue, while Russia remains determined to restore its dominion over Georgia. "

Waiting to see what Obama does, and how effective it is.

Now go off and eat that raw fish, like a good Gollum.. I mean Amos.

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 04:40 PM

Ummm...let me check........

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 05:54 PM

Bruce:

You will find, if you look, that I addressed precisely what Diehl said, in his windy fashion, and took exception to it.

If--as he predicts from his embittered opinion--it turns out that Obama's strategies do not work, it is a good bet he will modify them, unlike some presidents I could name. His proposition about hypothetical failure and the dramatic contradistinction with claims no one has made is , in summary, a semantically null posturing.


A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:00 PM

STILL waiting to see what Obama does, and how effective it is

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:11 PM

That's the right action--keep your eyes open, and other openings not.



A

Subject: RE: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Apr 09 - 06:28 PM

But your example throughout the Bush administration demands otherwise- I should make a fuss oover everything, real or imagined, and demand that all agree with me or else I will attack them as the low-life scum-pond slime that they must be, for disagreeing with me.