BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 12:02 PM

Michael Moore: "There is no terrorist threat in this country. This is a lie. This is the biggest lie we've been told."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 11:57 AM

Me too. I think he clearly identifies all the key problems in this first year of the Obama administration...and the likely repercussions of same.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: number 6
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 11:55 AM

It's an excellent commentary L.H.

I strongly suggest everyone posting to this thread listen to it .... and listen to the complete interview from start to end.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 11:50 AM

Very good commentary by Michael Moore in the video.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 11:37 AM

A better balance of power help this quagmire. Looking back at Clinton, he did not do too bad and I think the Impeachment made this power struggle what it is today.

ABC News Jan. 27, 2010:

Candidate Obama pledged that no lobbyists would work in his White House. As a newly-arrived president, he reiterated [others say he broke] that promise.

Announcing "firm rules of the road for my administration and all who serve in it" in January 2009, the president said, "We need to close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely and lets them use their time in public service as a way to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people when they leave."

Obama's executive order mandated that lobbyists who became members of the administration will not be able to work on matters they lobbied on for two years, or in the agencies they lobbied during the previous two years. Anyone who leaves the Obama administration will not be able to lobby his administration.

But there have been notable exceptions to that rule.

Obama waived it for Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who was a registered lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon before being appointed in January.

"I have determined that it is in the public interest to grant the waiver given Mr. Lynn's qualifications for his position and the current national security situation," Director of the Office of Management of Budget Peter Orszag said in a statement at the time.

There are several other lobbyists also serving in the Obama administration, including Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative; Cecilia Munoz, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House; and Jocelyn Frye, who is now director of policy and projects in the Office of the First Lady.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 08:43 AM

Correction:

Technically, the Dems in the Seante could end the quaqmire by electing to use the "nuclear option" which both parties are scared to death of doing but Obama has no control over the Senate rules...

So I retract my "100%"... The Repubs are still responsible for 100% of the fillibuster since Obama took office, however...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 08:23 AM

How do you go about ending quagmire, Sawz, without both parties wanting to end it??? It's down to the chicken and egg thing... These are Senate rules here... Obama isn't in the Senate and nor can he order the Repubs not to fillibuster anything that resembles the changing of the rules...

This is all on the Repubs... 100%!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: number 6
Date: 27 Jan 10 - 07:29 AM

I'm not a big fan of the big guy Michael Moore ... but when he is on to something he does have some very valid points.

Listen to this .... I think it is appropriate for this thread

Continual and Historic Failure of the Democratic Party

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 11:24 PM

Quagmire that Obama was going to end. And he had all the power he needed but he blew it on the wrong projects.

What was needed was Jobs Jobs Jobs.

'Ol Bobert is still campaigning against Bush, front wheel drive and unleaded gas. It's too late. ;)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 04:44 PM

Count me in the Eugene Robinson...

But let's get real here... What is broken is the government and not the players... Bush was able to exert his will over the broken-ness of the government because he used 9/11 as his ramming rod but had it not been for 9/11 then after the tax cuts Bush wouldn't have had any success with it either...

Now that the Senate Repubs have taken fillibuster to a level unheard of the future is fairly predictable regardless which party controls it... The Minority has never heard so much power and you can take it to the bank that the dems are taking notes here...

Welcome to endless quagmire and a further downward spiril of the country...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 04:15 PM

So each person must be wise enough to filter the truth from the bullshit and not judge the validity of what is said based on the speaker's skin color, social status, education, religion, ethnicity, political party, etc.

Just use logic and common sense.

So many people will agree to something simply because it supports their agenda even if they don't believe it themselves.

Or they are afraid to disagree with what what the majority believes because they might be perceived as stupid. Group think. The bandwagon logic. The Emperors new clothes effect.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 12:10 PM

No kidding. Look, it's just standard political salesmanship, Sawzaw. It's the outward gyrations and maneuverings of an utterly corrupt system. The Democratic and Republican parties basically work for exactly the same interests, that is they work for the largest financial powers in society which would be the biggest banks, the biggest insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, the major corporations, the military-industrial complex....the whole giant octopus of major money interests that controls big business, mass media, the flow of commerce, the creation of money, the formation of domestic and foreign policy, etc.

Government decisions are made to satisfy the desires and requirements of that group of people...NOT the desires and requirements of the ordinary public.

Do you think Rome was run on behalf of the ordinary public? No. It was run on behalf of the few rich people at the top. When the ordinary public got restless (as often happened) the rich people at the top would put on some gladiatorial games...or give out some free bread and wine...or fix the public's attention on a foreign war and raise a frenzy of patriotism to distract people...etc.

And that's what is done in the USA. Same basic approach.

Obama had to sell himself effectively to get elected. Selling yourself effectively can best be done by appealing in a passionate way to the hopes and dreams of the ordinary people. So that is what he did. McCain tried to do that too...far less successfully, because he's a dinosaur. Sarah Palin tried to do it too...and she did it fairly well, but to a narrower constituency than Mr Obama, and at a far less fortuitous time, following 8 disastrous years of Republican misrule. It was time for a Democratic phony government to replace a Republican phony government...as happens in a cyclical fashion at various intervals...but it's like changing the curtains on the windows of your jail cell.

Well, get ready now for at least 4 years of Democratic misrule, because those 2 parties are both as phony as a 13 dollar bill, they lie to get elected, they lie after they are elected, and they do NOT serve the ordinary public. They serve a rich oligarchy of established interests.

They will throw a few crumbs to the public now and then, they must do it now and then to maintain some degree of social confidence, but that's all, just a few crumbs. Meanwhile, the big phony game goes on, and the game is run by the owners, and the owners answer to no one but themselves. Their front men (the presidents) come and go. They remain. Their sons (and a few daughters here and there) will continue their rule when they are gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 12:04 PM

DAVID BROOKS The New York Times January 25, 2010

The populists have an Us versus Them mentality. If they continue their random attacks on enterprise and capital, they will only increase the pervasive feeling of uncertainty, which is now the single biggest factor in holding back investment, job creation and growth. They will end up discrediting good policies (the Obama bank reforms are quite sensible) because they will persuade the country that the government is in the hands of reckless Huey Longs. They will have traded dynamic optimism, which always wins, for combative divisiveness, which always loses.

Politics, some believe, is the organization of hatreds. The people who try to divide society on the basis of ethnicity we call racists. The people who try to divide it on the basis of religion we call sectarians. The people who try to divide it on the basis of social class we call either populists or elitists.

These two attitudes â€" populism and elitism â€" seem different, but they’re really mirror images of one another. They both assume a country fundamentally divided. They both describe politics as a class struggle between the enlightened and the corrupt, the pure and the betrayers.

Both attitudes will always be with us, but these days populism is in vogue. The Republicans have their populists. Sarah Palin has been known to divide the country between the real Americans and the cultural elites. And the Democrats have their populists. Since the defeat in Massachusetts, many Democrats have apparently decided that their party has to mimic the rhetoric of John Edwards’s presidential campaign. They’ve taken to dividing the country into two supposedly separate groups â€" real Americans who live on Main Street and the insidious interests of Wall Street.

It’s easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs.

Second, it absolves voters of responsibility for their problems. Over the past few years, many investment bankers behaved like idiots, but so did average Americans, racking up unprecedented levels of personal debt. With the populist narrative, you can accuse the former and absolve the latter.

Third, populism is popular with the ruling class. Ever since I started covering politics, the Democratic ruling class has been driven by one fantasy: that voters will get so furious at people with M.B.A.’s that they will hand power to people with Ph.D.’s. The Republican ruling class has been driven by the fantasy that voters will get so furious at people with Ph.D.’s that they will hand power to people with M.B.A.’s. Members of the ruling class love populism because they think it will help their section of the elite gain power.

So it’s easy to see the seductiveness of populism. Nonetheless, it nearly always fails. The history of populism, going back to William Jennings Bryan, is generally a history of defeat.

That’s because voters aren’t as stupid as the populists imagine. Voters are capable of holding two ideas in their heads at one time: First, that the rich and the powerful do rig the game in their own favor; and second, that simply bashing the rich and the powerful will still not solve the country’s problems.

Political populists never get that second point. They can’t seem to grasp that a politics based on punishing the elites won’t produce a better-educated work force, more investment, more innovation or any of the other things required for progress and growth.

In fact, this country was built by anti-populists. It was built by people like Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln who rejected the idea that the national economy is fundamentally divided along class lines. They rejected the zero-sum mentality that is at the heart of populism, the belief that economics is a struggle over finite spoils. Instead, they believed in a united national economy â€" one interlocking system of labor, trade and investment.

Hamilton championed capital markets and Lincoln championed banks, not because they loved traders and bankers. They did it because they knew a vibrant capitalist economy would maximize opportunity for poor boys like themselves. They were willing to tolerate the excesses of traders because they understood that no institution is more likely to channel opportunity to new groups and new people than vigorous financial markets.

In their view, government’s role was not to side with one faction or to wage class war. It was to rouse the energy and industry of people at all levels. It was to enhance competition and make it fair â€" to make sure that no group, high or low, is able to erect barriers that would deprive Americans of an open field and a fair chance. Theirs was a philosophy that celebrated development, mobility and work, wherever those things might be generated.

The populists have an Us versus Them mentality. If they continue their random attacks on enterprise and capital, they will only increase the pervasive feeling of uncertainty, which is now the single biggest factor in holding back investment, job creation and growth. They will end up discrediting good policies (the Obama bank reforms are quite sensible) because they will persuade the country that the government is in the hands of reckless Huey Longs.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 11:50 AM

Jonathan Capehart - The Washington Post - January 26, 2010

Still wondering who President Obama is

Something's not right. Back on Oct. 6, I marveled at four opinion pieces on President Obama's character that essentially asked, "Who is this guy?" Four months later -- one year into his presidency and on the eve of his first State of the Union address -- the question is still being asked. Both Gene Robinson and Bob Herbert today make this nettlesome inquiry in their columns today.

Robinson wants the president to resist the calls for him to don the cloak of populism while addressing the mounting national anger. "What's important is that he speak in a clear voice, a definitive voice," he writes. "When he draws a line in the sand -- about health care, jobs, energy, whatever -- he should do everything in his power to defend that line, even if it means bruised feelings and ruffled feathers."

But that's part of the problem. On health care, jobs, energy, whatever, Obama has been consistent in his push to address these issues. Yet he has been irritatingly inconsistent on the details of those policies. That line in the sand seems to move every time the tide changes. And that's why the last lines of Herbert's critical column today resonates."Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he’ll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation," he writes. "They want to know who their president really is."

That the American people don't feel they have the answer to that question is driving the president's poll numbers down and feeding the smoldering panic in the Democratic Party. If Obama doesn't want it to become an inferno as we head to the November midterm elections, he's got to show the American people who he is.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 26 Jan 10 - 11:18 AM

Bob Herbert in the New York Times January 25, 2010:

..."Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.

Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won't be able to close it.

Mr. Obama's campaign mantra was "change" and most of his supporters took that to mean that he would change the way business was done in Washington and that he would reverse the disastrous economic policies that favored mega-corporations and the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor.

"Tonight, more Americans are out of work, and more are working harder for less," said Mr. Obama in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008. "More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach."

Voters watching the straight-arrow candidate delivering that speech, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, would not logically have thought that an obsessive focus on health insurance would trump job creation as the top domestic priority of an Obama administration.

But that's what happened. Moreover, questions were raised about Mr. Obama's candor when he spoke about health care. In his acceptance speech, for example, candidate Obama took a verbal shot at John McCain, sharply criticizing him for offering "a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits."

Now Mr. Obama favors a plan that would tax at least some people's benefits. Mr. Obama also repeatedly said that policyholders who were pleased with their plans and happy with their doctors would be able to keep both under his reform proposals.

Well, that wasn't necessarily so, as the president eventually acknowledged. There would undoubtedly be changes in some people's coverage as a result of "reform," and some of those changes would be substantial. At a forum sponsored by ABC News last summer, Mr. Obama backed off of his frequent promise that no changes would occur, saying only that "if you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don't want you to have to change."

These less-than-candid instances are emblematic of much bigger problems. Mr. Obama promised during the campaign that he would be a different kind of president, one who would preside over a more open, more high-minded administration that would be far more in touch with the economic needs of ordinary working Americans. But no sooner was he elected than he put together an economic team that would protect, above all, the interests of Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance companies, and so on. How can you look out for the interests of working people with Tim Geithner whispering in one ear and Larry Summers in the other?

Now with his poll numbers down and the Democrats' filibuster-proof margin in the Senate about to vanish, Mr. Obama is trying again to position himself as a champion of the middle class. Suddenly, with the public appalled at the scandalous way the health care legislation was put together, and with Democrats facing a possible debacle in the fall, Mr. Obama is back in campaign mode. Every other utterance is about "fighting" for the middle class, "fighting" for jobs, "fighting" against the big bad banks.

The president who has been aloof and remote and a pushover for the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, who has been locked in the troubling embrace of the Geithners and Summers and Ben Bernankes of the world, all of a sudden is a man of the people. But even as he is promising to fight for jobs, a very expensive proposition, he's proposing a spending freeze that can only hurt job-creating efforts.

Mr. Obama will deliver his State of the Union address Wednesday night. The word is that he will offer some small bore assistance to the middle class. But more important than the content of this speech will be whether the president really means what he says. Americans want to know what he stands for, where his line in the sand is, what he'll really fight for, and where he wants to lead this nation.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 25 Jan 10 - 11:59 PM

Amos: Please read again:

Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple. There are only at most perhaps five US banks which are the source of the toxic poison that is causing such dislocation in the world financial system. What Geithner is desperately trying to protect is that reality. The heart of the present problem and the reason ordinary loan losses as in prior bank crises are not the problem, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives, most especially so-called Credit Default Swaps.

In 2000 the Clinton Administration then-Treasury Secretary was a man named Larry Summers. Summers had just been promoted from No. 2 under Wall Street Goldman Sachs banker Robert Rubin to be No. 1 when Rubin left Washington to take up the post of Vice Chairman of Citigroup. As I describe in detail in my new book, Power of Money: The Rise and Fall of the American Century, to be released this summer, Summers convinced President Bill Clinton to sign several Republican bills into law which opened the floodgates for banks to abuse their powers. The fact that the Wall Street big banks spent some $5 billion in lobbying for these changes after 1998 was likely not lost on Clinton.

One significant law was the repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. A second law backed by Treasury Secretary Summers in 2000 was an obscure but deadly important Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That law prevented the responsible US Government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC), from having any oversight over the trading of financial derivatives. The new CFMA law stipulated that so-called Over-the-Counter (OTC) derivatives like Credit Default Swaps, such as those involved in the AIG insurance disaster, (which investor Warren Buffett once called 'weapons of mass financial destruction'), be free from Government regulation.

At the time Summers was busy opening the floodgates of financial abuse for the Wall Street Money Trust, his assistant was none other than Tim Geithner, the man who today is US Treasury Secretary. Today, Geithner's old boss, Larry Summers, is President Obama's chief economic adviser, as head of the White House Economic Council. To have Geithner and Summers responsible for cleaning up the financial mess is tantamount to putting the proverbial fox in to guard the henhouse.

And Mac is guilty too.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 08:42 PM

I hope you're right. I want to see those banks taken on.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 08:37 PM

I think Bobert got it right. Obama is a peaceful guy, but he is not one to push around too much; he's a playah.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 06:41 PM

Henry Ford also wrote a pamphlet about international banking cartels. He called in "The International Jew."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 06:32 PM

The problem here with the banks (and the wealthy class of which they are entertwined) is the theory that Henry Ford put forth when he opened his assembly plants and paid, for the times, very good wages... Henry said, "If I don't pay my people well then they won't have enough money to buy my cars"...

That seems to make alot of sense...

But what we have now is 5% controlling 80% of the wealth and they are hoarding it???

This is a formula fir disaster for everyone... History is littered with such situations and the rich always end up paying for their wealth... It won't be any different this time either... What Obama is beginning to do is paint the picture and the scarey thing for the rich is that he has another 3 years to use his bully pulpit and that he is saying stuff that the tea-baggers can relate to...

If I were part of the 5% I think I'd be gettin' the boys together and figure out how share peacefully...

But rich people aren't any smarter than anyone else... Most are rich because they picked the right families to to be born into...

Outta be interesting now that Obama has been roughed up a little and ready to fight...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 06:11 PM

You're right, LH, if things don't change humanity will suffer world wide. The problem is, as I see it, the financial giants are international in scope, and Obama doesn't have any authority outside of the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 07:39 AM

I think the essential matter here is the way the largest banks have ripped off the entire society...on a world level, not just on a national level...to enrich themselves. And the way they have controlled government agendas through the power of money that THEY create out of nothing. Will Obama take them on and fight them? Can he? If he can and if he will, then we can have genuine and useful change. If the few largest banks just continue in their present role as the puppetmasters of the politicians, then very little will change...but things will keep getting worse for humanity and for the planet.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 22 Jan 10 - 02:30 AM

Amos: "Despite the focus on Volcker's proposal, the paper makes the curious note that Timothy Geithner will appear with the president during the announcement." (Reuters)

Amos, dear ol' pal, and keyboard sparring partner....Why wouldn't Geithner appear with the President??...As told to you before, Geithner is Kissinger's boy, who represents the puppet masters, of the string pullers, and 'their' boy, making all the shady deals for the financial institutions that have been ripping us all off, and who also has been Obama's right hand crook!~

We've discussed that before, at length. Too bad your political eye sight was blurred....(though I think you're a good cat!).
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 12:35 PM

Sure to dominate the media cycle today is the Obama administration's surprise announcement of what some observers are already calling Glass-Steagall II, after the late, oft-lamented law that separated investment and commercial banking activity, whose repeal under President Clinton has been blamed in part for the financial crisis. The New York Times reports, and the Wall Street Journal details, that Paul Volcker, an Obama adviser who was reported as being marginalized in the White House just a week ago, is behind this sudden and unexpected announcement.

"The proposal will put limits on bank size and prohibit commercial banks from trading for their own accounts—known as proprietary trading. ... Only a handful of large banks would be the targets of the proposal, among them Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), and Wells Fargo. Goldman Sachs (GS), the Wall Street trading house, became a commercial bank during this latest crisis, and it would presumably have to give up that status," the paper said. "On the one hand, they are commercial banks, taking deposits, making standard loans and managing the nation's payment system.

On the other hand, they trade securities for their own accounts, a hugely profitable endeavor. This proprietary trading, mainly in risky mortgage-backed securities, precipitated the credit crisis in 2008 and the federal bailout."

That's not to mention, of course, that investment banks, with Goldman being the prime example, used prop trading to bet against some of the very securities products they were selling to customers. Despite the focus on Volcker's proposal, the paper makes the curious note that Timothy Geithner will appear with the president during the announcement." (Reuters)

About time someone noticed this glaring hole and took action.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 11:05 AM

Al Jazzera:

Obama's popularity has fallen dramatically in the streets of Pakistan

When Barack Obama, the US president, closes his eyes and thinks of Pakistan, he might just picture the city of Gujrunwala. It is what everyone expects of a city in this part of the world, busy, loud and colourful. In the markets, people haggle for the best prices for everything.

But it is this place, an hour's drive from Lahore, which ties Obama closer to Pakistan than any other US president. For five years, Ann Dunham, his mother, worked in this area as a consultant to the Asian Development Bank, helping with microfinance projects before they became famous or widespread.

She traveled regularly to the city, walked the streets, met the people and when she talked to her son, she told him what she saw. He came to visit, and that was when he developed what he calls his "personal bond" with Pakistan. When he took the oath of office a year ago, many Pakistanis were convinced that they had a friend in the White House.

In our entirely unscientific poll in one of the city's busy markets, it is hard to find anyone who now thinks that is true. One man told me: "As far as Obama is concerned only the face has changed, the policies are still the same. He just sent 30,000 troops in to Afghanistan. It's just a continuation of what Bush did." Watching us work was a young man who said simply: "I am a Muslim man, and he is against me."

Obama has often promised Pakistan America's lasting friendship. In his speech at the West Point Military Academy on December 1, where he outlined his future policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, he said: "The Pakistan people must know America will remain as strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity, long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people could be unleashed."   It is a message the Americans are keen to get across.

One of Obama's first appointments was Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat, to act as his coordinator in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Af-Pak as it has unfortunately become known. Holbrooke repeated his boss' words last week at a news conference in Islamabad. So I asked him if things were different now.

He listed a number of areas where the two were working more closely together but accepted there were tensions. "It is our assessment that we are in a better place in our relations with Pakistan than we were a year ago", he said. The tensions he talks about are the issue of drone attacks which eats away at America's popularity in Pakistan.

There are those who suspect that the military and intelligence services privately back this infringement on Pakistan sovereignty, even though they kill more innocent people than militants. "This is something which is not acceptable to the people of Pakistan," Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, a political analyst, said.

"Part of the anger is directed at their own government too because of this suspicion but of course the bulk of the anger is directed at the US government." Mushahid Hussain, a former information minister and now a senator in the country's parliament, has followed developments in the US closely and wonders if the president can make the changes he believes he needs.

He told me: "I hope that Mr Obama realises that this so-called war on terror is an unwinnable war without end against a nameless, faceless, stateless enemy. And he better reverse the wrong and he should realise that the military option is not the answer to winning this war.

"He should not repeat the mistakes of the Bush administration. If he has to make mistakes I would suggest Mr Obama makes new mistakes." Twelve months in, it is perhaps true that Pakistan's government is closer to Washington.

But it is also true that many people feel let down and disappointed that the hope generated by Obama has not made their lives better, has not made their country safer. His challenge in the year ahead and beyond is to take his "personal bond" with this country into something more than warm thoughts of a remembered past in a distant land.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 10:39 AM

Mouse:

I would rather not be so adversarial but facts are facts, David Duke is an asshole but that does not mean anything on the same site as a DD article or a bunch of other propaganda does not invalidate everything on the site.

It says on the site: "If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." -- Noam Chomsky Does that Mean Noam Chomsky is now discredited?

It also says on the site: "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to deal with it." - Patrick Henry Does that Mean Patrick Henry is now discredited?

You are welcome to disagreeable but my opinion of Geithner is that he is a doof that is involved in the financial fiasco up to his ears, can't fill out an income tax form correctly and has no business being involved with the recovery.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 21 Jan 10 - 01:40 AM

Amos: I think some of his declining favor has been attributable to mismanagement on one front or another, but a significant part of it has come from the endless spew of distortions from Replugican uglies with hatred on their minds."

No, just some of the hype, that played on a lot of the "pie in the sky' optimist's emotions, made up mostly of simpletons, is wearing off.
Meanwhile, while everyone is distracted with 'health care' deform, and the election of Scott Brown, he's asking for another $1.4 TRILLION. Just print it up, we need to make our dollar worthless. We need to get out of debt by borrowing more! We should give junkies more heroin, too!...Jeez, Approaching 14 Trillion in 'stimulus' doublespeak and who got it? Did you? Me? The public? Did you get any to pay off your debts?...Let's do the math, now....umm...how much would every American citizen get, if you divide that number into 12,000,000,000,000?? Well, at least the economy should be back on it's feet, shouldn't it?...hmmm, its not??(scratches chin), gosh I wonder what went wrong???? Gosh, could it possibly be that this was the agenda he had all along? Was he fooled? Nawww, he's too smart for that!!....He isn't?..Shouldn't he be?...No, he knew it all along...he's just too smart. Rest assured! That's what he wants you to think. Gee, he's really brilliant!(*Sigh*)

You better stockpile guitar strings!...picks too!

Sawzaw, you're only revealing the tip, (well, a little more of the tip), of an iceberg! You've done your homework. Wait till they get hip to the rest of it, and why!!!!
GfS

P.S, I wonder if the sheep have any idea where the wolves are leading them.

P.P.S Amos, remember the things I posted during the 'election'?
I also promised a 'Wait and See', as to give him a chance? Is anything coming into focus for you, yet?.. You should re-read that stuff, again.....being a little ahead of the curve, says I.

(of course, that's only for those in 'Sanity-Land') -QQ-
                                                      ^)
GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 11:54 PM

Interesting website you've found. Here are some other stories currently on the site:

• MA Voters Reject Obama's Fascism


• 'Defamation' - Astonishing New Film On Anti-Semitism Reviewed


• Russian Mind Control Discoveries Given To US


• Zionist Israeli Thermonuclear Worldwide Blackmail


• Global Warming - Biggest Science Hoax Ever Exposed


• Simon Wiesenthal - Holocaust Fabricator Deluxe


• (by) David Duke - The Matrix Of Zionist Power In America

Okay that's enough. (DAVID DUKE?!?!?!?) This guy is a Holocaust denying anti-Semitic nutjob who believes in mind control! Give me a better source, please.

Going to shower off now.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 11:37 PM

Who formed any conclusions? Jay-zoos, you have a guilty conscience.

Nevertheless: If you put forward an argument, it is YOUR job, not mine, to justify your sources. I might do "fact checking" to prove them unreliable. But it's your job to show them reliable. Not mine.

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 11:24 PM

Mouse:

Are you pissed because I questioned the WGMS?

I suggest you do a little fact checking of the above before you form a conclusion about the accuracy based on me or the author.

And I am willing to discuss anything you find that is nonfactual.

http://www.rense.com/general85/dirrty.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: mousethief
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:50 PM

Sawzaw, what's your source?

O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:34 PM

Geithner's 'Dirty Little Secret'

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has unveiled his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order. In doing so, he has refused to tell the 'dirty little secret' of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.

The Geithner Plan, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program or PPPIP, as we have noted previously is designed not to restore a healthy lending system which would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets without demanding they change their business model. Yet, one might say, won't this eventually help the problem by getting the banks back to health?

Not the way the Obama Administration is proceeding. In defending his plan on US TV recently, Geithner, a protégé of Henry Kissinger who previously was CEO of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, argued that his intent was 'not to sustain weak banks at the expense of strong.' Yet this is precisely what the PPPIP does. The weak banks are the five largest banks in the system.

The 'dirty little secret' which Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple. There are only at most perhaps five US banks which are the source of the toxic poison that is causing such dislocation in the world financial system. What Geithner is desperately trying to protect is that reality. The heart of the present problem and the reason ordinary loan losses as in prior bank crises are not the problem, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives, most especially so-called Credit Default Swaps.

In 2000 the Clinton Administration then-Treasury Secretary was a man named Larry Summers. Summers had just been promoted from No. 2 under Wall Street Goldman Sachs banker Robert Rubin to be No. 1 when Rubin left Washington to take up the post of Vice Chairman of Citigroup. As I describe in detail in my new book, Power of Money: The Rise and Fall of the American Century, to be released this summer, Summers convinced President Bill Clinton to sign several Republican bills into law which opened the floodgates for banks to abuse their powers. The fact that the Wall Street big banks spent some $5 billion in lobbying for these changes after 1998 was likely not lost on Clinton.

One significant law was the repeal of the 1933 Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that prohibited mergers of commercial banks, insurance companies and brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs. A second law backed by Treasury Secretary Summers in 2000 was an obscure but deadly important Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. That law prevented the responsible US Government regulatory agency, Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC), from having any oversight over the trading of financial derivatives. The new CFMA law stipulated that so-called Over-the-Counter (OTC) derivatives like Credit Default Swaps, such as those involved in the AIG insurance disaster, (which investor Warren Buffett once called 'weapons of mass financial destruction'), be free from Government regulation.

At the time Summers was busy opening the floodgates of financial abuse for the Wall Street Money Trust, his assistant was none other than Tim Geithner, the man who today is US Treasury Secretary. Today, Geithner's old boss, Larry Summers, is President Obama's chief economic adviser, as head of the White House Economic Council. To have Geithner and Summers responsible for cleaning up the financial mess is tantamount to putting the proverbial fox in to guard the henhouse.

The 'Dirty Little Secret'

What Geithner does not want the public to understand, his 'dirty little secret' is that the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000 allowed the creation of a tiny handful of banks that would virtually monopolize key parts of the global 'off-balance sheet' or Over-The-Counter derivatives issuance.

Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.

The five are, in declining order of importance: JPMorgan Chase which holds a staggering $88 trillion in derivatives (¤66 trillion!). Morgan Chase is followed by Bank of America with $38 trillion in derivatives, and Citibank with $32 trillion. Number four in the derivatives sweepstakes is Goldman Sachs with a 'mere' $30 trillion in derivatives. Number five, the merged Wells Fargo-Wachovia Bank, drops dramatically in size to $5 trillion. Number six, Britain's HSBC Bank USA has $3.7 trillion.

After that the size of US bank exposure to these explosive off-balance-sheet unregulated derivative obligations falls off dramatically. Just to underscore the magnitude, trillion is written 1,000,000,000,000. Continuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.

The Government bailouts of AIG to over $180 billion to date has primarily gone to pay off AIG's Credit Default Swap obligations to counterparty gamblers Goldman Sachs, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, the banks who believe they are 'too big to fail.' In effect, these five institutions today believe they are so large that they can dictate the policy of the Federal Government. Some have called it a bankers' coup d'etat. It definitely is not healthy.

This is Geithner's and Wall Street's Dirty Little Secret that they desperately try to hide because it would focus voter attention on real solutions. The Federal Government has long had laws in place to deal with insolvent banks. The FDIC places the bank into receivership, its assets and liabilities are sorted out by independent audit. The irresponsible management is purged, stockholders lose and the purged bank is eventually split into smaller units and when healthy, sold to the public. The power of the five mega banks to blackmail the entire nation would thereby be cut down to size. Ooohh. Uh Huh?

This is what Wall Street and Geithner are frantically trying to prevent. The problem is concentrated in these five large banks. The financial cancer must be isolated and contained by Federal agency in order for the host, the real economy, to return to healthy function.

This is what must be put into bankruptcy receivership, or nationalization. Every hour the Obama Administration delays that, and refuses to demand full independent government audit of the true solvency or insolvency of these five or so banks, inevitably costs to the US and to the world economy will snowball as derivatives losses explode. That is pre-programmed as worsening economic recession mean corporate bankruptcies are rising, home mortgage defaults are exploding, unemployment is shooting up. This is a situation that is deliberately being allowed to run out of (responsible Government) control by Treasury Secretary Geithner, Summers and ultimately the President, whether or not he has taken the time to grasp what is at stake.

Once the five problem banks have been put into isolation by the FDIC and the Treasury, the Administration must introduce legislation to immediately repeal the Larry Summers bank deregulation including restore Glass-Steagall and repeal the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that allowed the present criminal abuse of the banking trust. Then serious financial reform can begin to be discussed, starting with steps to 'federalize' the Federal Reserve and take the power of money out of the hands of private bankers such as JP Morgan Chase, Citibank or Goldman Sachs.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 10:32 PM

New York Times:

Even in the best of economic times, it would be hard to accept a Treasury secretary â€" who, after all, is in charge of the Internal Revenue Service â€" with a cavalier attitude toward paying his taxes. Today, in a time of economic peril, the nation cannot afford a Treasury secretary with a tainted ability to command respect and instill confidence.

According to the report, when Mr. Geithner’s tax returns for 2003 and 2004 were audited by the I.R.S. in 2006, the auditors found that he had failed to pay self-employment tax in those years. To make good, he paid the back taxes, plus interest â€" $16,732.

Obama officials say Mr. Geithner, who worked for the International Monetary Fund, had made a common error among international employees in Washington. But as The Journal reported on Wednesday, failing to pay the self-employment tax is not necessarily common among sophisticated I.M.F employees. Rather, one of the reasons such noncompliance is widespread is that it includes household embassy workers and other lower- level contractors. And regardless, the Finance Committee found that Mr. Geithner had signed paperwork at the I.M.F. that acknowledged his self-employment tax obligation.

The story does not stop there. Mr. Geithner also failed to pay the self-employment tax in 2001 and 2002. Those returns, which the report says Mr. Geithner prepared himself, were not audited and so the I.R.S. did not order him to pay up â€" which raises the question of why he did not voluntarily amend those returns and pay the taxes and interest at the time of the 2006 audit. Instead, he waited until after vetting by the Obama team late last year revealed the shortfall â€" $19,176 in taxes and $6,794 in interest.

A similar lapse occurred on another tax issue. On returns for 2001, 2004 and 2005, Mr. Geithner wrongly claimed expenses for sleep-away camps in calculating his dependent care tax credit. The accountant who prepared his 2006 return informed him that payments to overnight camps were not allowable expenses, but again, he did not file amended returns for the previous years at that time. The report does not break out the taxes and interest on that item alone, but along with other adjustments, Mr. Geithner owed an additional tax of $4,334 and interest of $1,232.

Many people find taxes baffling, but before his job at the I.M.F, Mr. Geithner was a senior official in the Treasury Department under President Clinton, and for the past five years he has been the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. With that professional profile, tax transgressions are tough to excuse.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 06:41 PM

"Bayh then added: "If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call, there's no hope of waking up." "

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 06:19 PM

"Brown's victory over Democrat Martha Coakley is expected to go down as one of the biggest upsets in modern political history. Yet the administrations top advisers appeared unfazed.

Gibbs said Obama came into office with an agenda for his entire term, not just for the first-year. Addressing voter anger over the current economic circumstances, he said, is the key to the months ahead.

"I think that's what we saw most of all coming out of Massachusetts is there's a tremendous amount of anger and frustration about where people are economically, and whether this town is fighting for their economic well being, or fighting for the special interests' well being," Gibbs said. "I think that's what ultimately is going to define more about the coming political battles and the upcoming [midterm] election."

Asked how the administration plans to proceed on its faltering healthcare-reform proposals, Axelrod gave no indication that the president plans to jettison the increasingly controversial legislation.

"I'm not going to discuss tactics here," Axelrod said. "He believes we have to deal with that crisis, but we also have to take into account what voters were saying yesterday, what people have been saying around this country. We'll take that into account and then we'll decide how to move forward. But it's not an option to simply walk away from a problem that that's only going to get worse."

After that response, Daily Rundown co-host MSNBC Chuck Todd seemed concerned the administration's top two advisers might not be heeding what most Democratic leaders are now acknowledging was a blatant wake-up call in Massachusetts.

On Tuesday, for example, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., told ABC News, "There's going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this." Bayh then added: "If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call, there's no hope of waking up."

After referencing those remarks, Todd asked Axelrod and Gibbs: "Do you guys hear this wake up call? Do you believe this was a wake up call, whether it's to retool your message, whether it's to get your message out there better, do you hear a wake up call in what happened yesterday."

While open to tweaking the administration's message and focusing more attention on the economy, Gibbs' response appeared to push back against Bayh's remarks.

"I don't think what Sen. Bayh would argue is that we somehow abandon our pursuit on things that are important to the middle class: How to make college more affordable, how to make retirement more secure, how to create an environment for good paying jobs in this country," Gibbs said.

Then he appeared to remind Bayh how popular the president is in his home state of Indiana.

"Look, we won Indiana for the first time since 1964 because we understood the frustration, the anger that was out there, particularly about economics, and economic isolation," Gibbs said.

"We were with Sen. Bayh at a lot of those events. I think we all agree we need to work even harder on that, and have the American people understand that the focus of the president's day from the very beginning to the very end is on their economic situation.

President Obama "wakes up in the morning and he goes to bed at night thinking about how to make people's lives better, how to create that environment for creating jobs, how to get this economy moving again for real working people," Gibbs said".

You hotheads need to take a lesson from Mister Obama and try to see the course ahead, not the spray hitting your ass.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 01:58 AM

Did Karl Rovere screw this up too?

BBC Jan 22 2009:

Obama orders Guantanamo closure

President Obama said American values would be maintained

US President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as well as all overseas CIA detention centres for terror suspects. Signing the orders, Mr Obama said the US would continue to fight terror, but maintain "our values and our ideals".

He also ordered a review of military trials for terror suspects and a ban on harsh interrogation methods. Continuing a flurry of announcements, he named his envoys to the Middle East, and to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At Mr Obama's request, military judges have suspended several of the trials of suspects at Guantanamo so that the legal process can be reviewed. Mr Obama signed the three executive orders on Thursday, further distancing his new administration from the policies of his predecessor, George W Bush.

He said the Guantanamo prison "will be closed no later than one year from now." The US would continue to fight terror, he said, but maintain American values while doing so. "The United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism," he said. "We are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals."

Mr Obama believed Americans will be safer with the prison closed, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in his first media briefing. Mr Obama has repeatedly promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, where some 250 inmates accused of having links to terrorism remain and 21 cases are pending.

The legal process for these prisoners has been widely criticised because the US military acts as jailer, judge and jury, the BBC's Jonathan Beale reports from Guantanamo. However, closing the prison will not be easy, he says.

Questions remain over where those charged will be tried and where those freed can be safely sent. Secret CIA "black site" prisons around the world are also to be closed, although the time frame for this is unclear.

The rendition - or transfer - of terror suspects to these prisons was widely criticized after they came to light in the wake of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Mr Obama has also limited the methods investigators can use to question terrorism suspects.

Threats, coercion, physical abuse and waterboarding are now all banned. Continuing a day focused on national security and diplomacy, Mr Obama said veteran politician and deal-maker George Mitchell would head to the Middle East as soon as possible, in an effort to pursue a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

George Mitchell: 'There is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended' Mr Mitchell is a former senator who under former president Bill Clinton chaired the talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

Long-serving diplomat Richard Holbrooke was appointed US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan and charged with leading "our effort to forge and implement a sustainable approach to this critical region", Mr Obama said. The announcements were made at by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, flanked by Mr Obama and his Vice-President Joe Biden.

Mrs Clinton had earlier arrived at the state department for her first day on the job, where she was welcomed by applause and cheers from staff members. She said it was a new era for America.

"President Obama set the tone with his inaugural address, and the work of the Obama-Biden administration is committed to advancing America's national security, furthering America's interests, and respecting and exemplifying America's values around the world." Earlier on Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee approved the nomination of Timothy Geithner [a charter member of the diabolical Paulson Gang] as Treasury Secretary, despite questions over his late payment of taxes earlier this decade.

The full Senate next votes on Mr Obama's choice to be the point man in steering America through its sharpest economic downturn in decades.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Jan 10 - 01:43 AM

BBC:

President Barack Obama's approval poll ratings fall

It has been an extraordinary first year for President Barack Obama, during which unemployment has hit 26-year highs, two of the biggest US carmakers have declared bankruptcy, and the president has pushed his healthcare bill and won a Nobel Peace Prize.

His approval ratings have fallen from highs of about 68% in his first weeks in the job to about 50%.

Look at the graph below to see how his popularity has changed in his first year in charge.

The approval ratings were calculated by Gallup, Pew and ABC/Washington Post and collated by www.pollster.com   where you can find full data from these and other polls.

GALLUP: Asks 1,500 adults whether they approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.

PEW RESEARCH CENTER: Asks between 1,000 and 2,000 adults: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?"

ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST: Asks about 1,000 adults: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 11:40 PM

Sawz:

You are badly mistaken, sir. I am not blaming anything on Jarl Rove except what he has actually done.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 10:27 PM

The folks running Obama overstepped their authority. The people of Massachusette have spoken.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 09:52 PM

Earth to Amos: This thread you started was about Obama but now all you can do is bash Karl Rove and others that preceded Obama. You try to blame his poor performance on someone else.

He is in command now. It is time for him to quit whining and take on the responsibility of the job he applied for and said he could do.

A lot of people, including me, said oh well lets give him a chance. He got the chance and he blew it.

All this hope and change bullshit turned into no change and no hope.

But continue on with your goose stepping. It is entertaining.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:55 PM

I wood have a way flippin' higher opinyon of Obama if he had not flippin' blown up them 2 big buildings back there in New Yorke, eh? In 2000? I think that is goin' WAY too far! There is no flippin' way I woyld vote for a man that done that sort of thing even if he was not the one flyin' the flippin' airplanes. He otta be charged. Why has no one done nothin' about it? Is he above the flippin' law or WHAT??? Gimme a flippin' break, eh?

If Don Cherry was made president of the USA and Canada then that sorta thing would not happen again. Too bad he has to stay in hockey broadcastin' cos he could turn this hole flippin' thing around. Don Cherry kicks ass!

- Shane

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 06:49 PM

WaPo:

What Karl Rove got wrong on the U.S. deficit



Friday, January 15, 2010

For its Topic A feature last Sunday, The Post invited a panel of political operatives to offer their advice to the Democratic Party on strategy for 2010 [Sunday Opinion, Jan. 10]. Improbably, one of the operatives asked was Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's longtime chief strategist.

Rove has some impressive campaign victories to his credit. But given the shape in which the last administration left this country, I'm not sure I would solicit his advice. And given the backhanded advice he offered, I'm not sure he was all that eager to help.

Of all the claims Rove made, one in particular caught my eye for its sheer audacity and shamelessness -- that congressional Democrats "will run up more debt by October than Bush did in eight years."

So, let's review a little history:

The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. When the Bush administration left office, it handed President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit -- and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion for the next decade. During eight years in office, the Bush administration passed two major tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest Americans, enacted a costly Medicare prescription-drug benefit and waged two wars, without paying for any of it.

To put the breathtaking scope of this irresponsibility in perspective, the Bush administration's swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined. And its spending spree is the unwelcome gift that keeps on giving: Going forward, these unpaid-for policies will continue to add trillions to our deficit.



This fiscal irresponsibility -- and a laissez-faire attitude toward the excesses of the financial industry -- helped create the conditions for the deepest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Economists across the political spectrum agreed that to deal with this crisis and avoid a second Great Depression, the government had to make significant investments to keep our economy going and shore up our financial system.

That is why President Obama and Congress crafted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Despite Rove's assertion, it is widely accepted that the difficult but necessary steps Obama took have helped save our economy from an even deeper disaster. And while Rove conveniently ignores that it was President Bush -- not Obama -- who signed into law the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout for banks, the Obama administration's rigorous stewardship added transparency and accountability that have cut the expected cost of that program by two-thirds.

At the same time, we also recognize that we need to address the long legacy of overspending in Washington. That is why, shortly after taking office, Obama instructed his agency heads to go through the budget page by page, line by line, to eliminate what we don't need to help pay for what we do.

As a start, the president proposed billions of dollars in cuts, and he'll continue to fight for them and others in the upcoming budget. An analysis by the Washington Times concluded that in this first year, Obama had been more successful in getting his proposed cuts through Congress than his predecessor was in any of his eight years in office. ...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 03:31 PM

Job Approval         Approve         Disapprove         Spread
Obama                49.5%                44.6%                +4.9%

Real Clear Politics.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 02:41 PM

I think some of his declining favor has been attributable to mismanagement on on e front or another, but a significant part of it has come from the endless spew of distortions from Replugican uglies with hatred on their minds.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: DougR
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 02:07 PM

Based on the results of recent major polls, the popular view of the Obama Administration is ...it's not very popular.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jan 10 - 10:47 AM

In Obama's first year, successes outweigh missteps
        


By Fred Hiatt WaPo
Tuesday, January 19, 2010

On Wednesday one year will have passed since President Obama's inauguration. Much of the tidal wave of assessments has been negative: Falling poll numbers. Unfulfilled promises. Disappointed supporters, disillusioned independents, angry opponents. He's been too cool or too egotistical, too left-wing or not left-wing enough. And if voters repudiate his policies in a special Massachusetts Senate election on Tuesday, as is quite possible, the tidal wave will become a tsunami.

So before that happens, I'd like to interrupt the anniversary-bash-Obama-fest with a simple proposition: Obama has done a good job so far.

I've had my share of complaints. I harbor my share of misgivings. But on the issues that mattered most in his first year, Obama got things right.

Begin with something that didn't happen: financial collapse and great depression.

It's easy to forget, but Obama came into office facing a frightening situation. He assembled in short order an extremely competent economic team and took -- or, in many cases, continued -- the drastic measures needed to stave off disaster. And those measures succeeded.

White House political aides knew that, no matter what they did, the economy would still be reeling one year later and that Obama would be unfairly blamed. They knew that little credit would be awarded for jobs that weren't lost or bankruptcies that were averted, and little credit has been. But credit is due.

The other primary responsibility facing a president is to keep the country safe, and there, too, Obama has gotten things mostly right. He again assembled, through judicious retention and new hires, a solid team, and for the most part it has shaped reasonable policies to defend against terrorism.

You could wish that his support for Iraq weren't accompanied by such teeth-gritting reluctance. You might have hoped that his commitment to Afghanistan would come with less public ambivalence. But in both cases, he has put national interest ahead of political consideration and committed the United States to success. He has assigned skilled generals to the missions, given them adequate resources and set reasonable goals.


At the same time, he has restored a balance between security and liberty in his handling of terrorists and alleged terrorists. He was right to end abusive treatment of detainees; he was right also to reject an ACLU mind-set in their handling.

Inevitably, in such a minefield of complex moral questions and simpleminded political demagoguery, he's made choices I disagree with. But he has sent a clear message to other nations that the United States is committed to its values and its self-defense, and he's gone a long way toward backing up both with his actions.

In my book, reasonable success in these two broad areas would be enough to earn more than a passing grade for a first, turbulent year. But -- and even setting aside the now uncertain prospects of health-care reform -- there's been more.

Obama has acted, within budget constraints, on his promises to make college more affordable, and he has taken small but promising steps to bring new thinking and more accountability to the schooling of poor children. He named and won confirmation for a well-qualified Supreme Court justice. He returned climate change to the center of national debate and executive policymaking. And from Cairo to Oslo, and now to Haiti, he has sought to chart a path for America between arrogance and isolationism, neither denying nor boasting about the burdens of global leadership.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 02:04 PM

Heh! Heh! (evil laughter)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 12:54 PM

"
I take great satisfaction in knowing that I am adding some precious (and relatively scarce) CO2 to the atmosphere every time I exhale, thus helping to keep the plant kingdom a little happier and healthier. I'm sure you do too. ;-) "


Al Gore will get you for that sacrilidge!!! HOW DARE you contribute to the global warming! STOP THAT immediately!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 12:11 PM

Counting Conundrum

January 12, 2010

We’ve been questioning the Obama administration’s claim that the stimulus bill would "save or create more than 3.5 million jobs" since the president began saying it. In February, we pointed out that although several economists made such a projection, they all said there was a lot of uncertainty surrounding these estimates. Late last year, the administration’s effort to count actual stimulus-created (or saved) jobs was plagued by the reporting of jobs in nonexistent congressional districts. And now, it appears, we’ll never really get an accurate count of actual jobs.

As ProPublica’s Michael Grabell reports, the administration will now count any job paid for with stimulus money, regardless of whether the job would have existed in the absence of stimulus money or not. A Dec. 18 memo from Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said:

    OMB Memo: Recipients will no longer be required to make a subjective judgment on whether jobs were created or retained as a result of the Recovery Act. Instead, recipients will more easily and objectively report on jobs funded with Recovery Act dollars.

Granted, asking recipients to decide whether or not a job would have existed in some kind of parallel universe without the stimulus money is sometimes pretty subjective. All the more reason for Obama to couch his "will create" claims with a "could."

Grabell quotes Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz as saying the whole counting exercise is just "silly." To truly determine what jobs exist now but wouldn’t have existed without the stimulus, Katz says, there would have to be a control group â€" such as a state that doesn’t get stimulus funds, to be compared with one that does. Katz says a more accurate estimate would come from economic models â€" like the ones the White House touted early last year, the ones that are still filled with uncertainty.

In late November, the Congressional Budget Office said that the stimulus had added an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs in the third quarter of 2009 than would have been the case otherwise. That large range, CBO said, "reflect[ed] the uncertainty involved in such estimates."

sub·jec·tive adj.
1.
a. Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world: a subjective decision.
b. Particular to a given person; personal: subjective experience.
2. Moodily introspective.
3. Existing only in the mind; illusory.
4. Psychology Existing only within the experiencer's mind.
5. Medicine Of, relating to, or designating a symptom or condition perceived by the patient and not by the examiner.
6. Expressing or bringing into prominence the individuality of the artist or author.
7. Grammar Relating to or being the nominative case.
8. Relating to the real nature of something; essential.

ob·jec·tive adj.
1. Of or having to do with a material object.
2. Having actual existence or reality.
3.
a. Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: an objective critic. See Synonyms at fair1.
b. Based on observable phenomena; presented factually: an objective appraisal.
4. Something that actually exists.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 18 Jan 10 - 10:47 AM

The Idealism:

"I notice she did not address what he actually said--that lobbyists would no longer set the agenda in his Administration. I notice she did not mention the fact the the Obama's rule-set for anyone who was a lobbyist prohibits them from having any direct connection with any field in which they lobbied. Seems to me that's a mess of data to leave out if you are trying to be "without Bias". "Maybe struggling to keep..." is a pretty broad and un-detailed and speculative assertion for someone dedicated to cutting through BS, wouldn't you think?"

The reality:

Promises Broken

During the run-up to the election, Obama spoke frequently about the need to purge the government of lobbyist influence. He called for new rules to make it more difficult for people to pass back and forth between public office and special interest organizations.

"This gets to a key theme during his campaign, which was that lobbyists were not going to run the Obama administration," Adair says. "But ... in Washington, the lobbyists are the people who know how the place works, and so he appointed lobbyists to some key positions and basically created loopholes in the policy for them."