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Conspiracy by liberals to ruin Dick Cheney
For god's sake, he's Obama's Islamic, Lying Cousin. I know that the media is shameless about digging into the President-Elect's family, but if the last 8 years have taught me anything, it's that the media shouldn't question anything the President does for the first 5-6 years of his administration.
Anything else would be treasonous.
Not to mention, they're charging Bush's mentally handicapped friend from Texas, Alberto Gonzales. That's just not fair! Fortunately, the man's probably already forgotten all about it, and will forget to show up at his trial, and forget to heed the subpoenas when they arrive.
It's not his fault, he was born without the ability to recall his own criminal wrongdoings!
Personally, I'm tired of all these liberal activist judges from the blue state of Texas picking on their native son President, George W. Bush.
Don't they know that when God wrote the Consitution, Article III says "Thou shalt not question Republican President's absolute authority, but thou shalt not respect Democrat
icPresident's authority at all?" I mean seriously, guys, didn't they teach you that when you were getting your law degree from Pat Robertson's Liberty University, or at your neighborhood GOPAC cell?Seriously, it's like you all have forgotten the Golden Rule of Conservatism: take whatever you want, however you can!
Examining Obama's Tax Plan - Austan Goolsbee / Steven Forbes
Obama's tax middle class tax cuts are structured as fixed-dollar tax credits. That doesn't make them one-shot. One-shot means a Bush-style "rebate" where you cut people a
bribecheck for a fixed amount...once. New tax credits that people get every year doesn't sound one-shot to me.Forbes (and other Republican supporters) insist that tax cuts for middle and lower classes won't have a stimulative effect on the economy. I don't understand, didn't even Fred Thompson make a joke about only taking water out of one half of the bucket, as if it didn't matter who got tax cuts, as long as they got cut?
So how's this, what if the Obama plan is an overall reduction of tax revenue, but it raises taxes on those making over $250,000, and cuts it for everyone else? Won't all that magic free-market mojo make our economy grow, no matter who gets the money?
I guess that's where the noise about redistribution of wealth comes in. Better when it's like Forbes' famed Flat Tax -- raise taxes on the poor and middle class, but cut it for the rich. More fair that way for sure. No redistribution in that idea, nosiree.
Examining Obama's Tax Plan - Austan Goolsbee / Steven Forbes
The State Government VS the Free Markets
Klein is also right; the derivatives market is a prime example of what happens when capitalists are truly left to their own devices -- a mess of hideously complex, opaque interactions that pile up until no free market actor can accurately gauge risk, reward, or value, much less make reasonable predictions about the future state of their investment.
Stiglitz is also right about corporate welfare being the real paradigm of the Bush administration, though their rhetoric had swept in some market fundamentalists too. Compromise between those two camps leads to things like the 3-page Paulson plan or the "equity injection" with no nationalization that are worse than what they'd do if they'd just been pure market fundamentalists or purely corrupt corporate socialists.
I think the real failure is that the corporate socialists didn't realize they were socialists. It's like someone told them wealth would "trickle down", as if that was some sort of law of economic gravity.
It seems that no ideology frees people from having to react to situations intelligently. They need to learn that rather than creating hard, fast rules for dealing with economics as a whole (e.g. less government is always better), they need to apply some common sense to what role government plays, and how people will really behave when left to their own devices.
I'm somewhat inclined to push for sports rule-makers take over the government. They don't seem to get into this asinine debate about "more rules" or "less rules", they just go with what works, and get rid of what doesn't, and listen when people bitch at them for getting it wrong.
I think that's how democracy is supposed to work, and for the life of me I don't know how things got so far off course.
Michelle Bachmann "That's not what I said It's urban legend"
Huckabee: Gay Rights Movement Hasn't Met Violence Threshold
I think if Republicans are smart, they'll run him against Obama.
Here's to hoping they run Palin against Obama instead.
Will Smith's Obama Happiness, Sobs
Obama Declares Fight on Global Warming Today
That said, $15bn a year isn't chump change, especially when you consider that Bush would not only refuse to spend one thin dime to help the environment, he'd rather use $30bn a year to purchase and burn tires just to piss off environmentalists.
Atheist Billboards in Colorado
It's the modern day atrophied version of what passes for it: just let two people on opposite sides of a dispute speak, and keep the overall length of the entire piece below 90 seconds, even though the story touches on a debate about the existence of god, free speech rights, and freedom of religion.
There's probably a bit more to the atheist group than the billboard, one would assume. Why are they doing it? What's the goal of their organization? Why did they think this was worth paying money to do?
Why do the religious representatives find it offensive that people who don't believe might organize the way believers do? Are they making an organized effort to prevent the advertisement from being posted? Doesn't that conflict with the ideals of free speech and freedom of religion?
A drive-by piece like this doesn't do the topic any sort of justice, and doesn't even try to educate -- it just says "hey look, people are pissed at each other over differences in beliefs"...like that's news.
If the automakers collapse
Please note that Jack & Suzy Welch (who just might know a bit about this stuff) recommend letting them go into bankruptcy as the best path forward.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_48/b4110000545461.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story
Oddly enough, they're suggesting the same thing I was: a government-financed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Not so sure I like the idea of GM and Chrysler merging, but they may as well start figuring out what to do with Chrysler, since I bet they're in some pretty bad shape too (worse cars than GM, and very low international sales).
Mullen Suggests U.S. Could Ignore Withdrawal Requirements
Ya know, to make sure they destroy all the evidence.
If the automakers collapse
^Don't forget that the auto unions were large contributors to the Democrats and Obama. I don't think letting them go into chapter 11 would be an option.
Haven't forgotten.
The way I understand it, under Chapter 11 they would keep operating. There'd be a big negotiation about how to reorganize the company, but they'd be forced to get new leadership. There probably would be layoffs at lower levels too, but it wouldn't be like GM suddenly closing its doors, which we're on track to see happen in a few months if things don't change.
Normal Chapter 11 bankruptcy probably wouldn't work, due to the credit crunch -- nobody's willing to loan GM (or anyone else) billions for them to keep operating while settling debts with creditors. Without that, they'd do Chapter 7 bankruptcy, where they cease to exist as a corporate entity and sell off their assets to recoup what they can to pay off creditors.
I don't think having GM go kaput like that would be a good idea right now.
But I'm just parroting my understanding of what I've read from people with PhD's in this topic.
Here's a good article from The New Republic that gives the topic a good shake: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a4893b49-36df-4784-9859-2dfa3a3211bf
Barack and Michelle Obama on 60 Minutes
If you don't see any difference beyond a skin color change, you really need to stop eating paint chips.
If the automakers collapse
The bailout for the Financial industry was called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It was intended to buy, well, Troubled Assets from financial institutions, and now Paulson and the Bushies are saying, $350 billion already spent, "oops, let's try buying stock instead"...which liberals like Paul Krugman had been saying from the beginning.
What pissed me off about that whole mess was that Democrats didn't even try to push Krugman's plan, they just acquiesced to the Bushian demands for $700bn, no strings attached.
What Paulson seems to have done is handed the cash over to his friends on Wall Street, and placed no conditions on the use of the money, or the management structure of the recipients.
It's the same old Bush strategy -- execute Big Govermnent intervention as poorly as possible to try to sour people on the very concept, in the hopes that it drives people into the waiting arms of the "conservative" Republican party, and their radical socialist agendas to redistribute wealth from the middle class to the top .5%. Joe the PlumberTM is a poster-boy for what "success" looks like for these asshats.
So here's my deal. GM sucks, the Escalade wasn't really offensive to me, what was offensive was that GM's first foray into Hybrids was to add 2-3mpg to their SUV's, not to try up the mpg of their small cars into a Prius-like 45mpg. They had a working electric car, and they killed it, and now they want to make a hybrid for $40,000 called the Volt and say "see, we're modern".
That said, they employ 3 million people directly, and countless millions more via their suppliers. I don't want those people unemployed. I want GM to survive, even if it takes taxpayer support -- but I want Wagoner and Lutz's heads on lances. Failing that, I want them fired without benefit, and stocks & options confiscated. Same goes for anyone whose fingerprints are on the killing of the electric cars.
So here's what I want Democrats to do: force GM into Chapter 11-style restructuring, but use taxpayer money to make sure they keep operating throughout and don't let them slip into outright liquidation. No golden parachutes, no shareholder dividends, no bonuses and no retention at the executive level.
Then, we take the other $350 billion and do across-the-board single-payer universal healthcare, so GM, Ford and Chrysler don't have to worry about healthcare benefits for their employees anymore.
If the Republicans go into a froth, and fillibuster it, let 'em. We'll just pass it in January to the loving applause of the entire Great Lakes region, and Indiana and Ohio will both stay blue states for the forseeable future.
William Ayers: Setting The Record Straight