Let the Fun Begin

Washington Post - Trade Wars Brewing...

excerpt: ""No one appears to be more concerned than America's largest trading partner -- Canada.

Initial concern north of the border over the buy American provisions died down after a clause, supported by the administration, was inserted in the bill clearly stating that the measure would not supersede existing U.S. trade obligations. During his Feb. 19 trip to Ottawa, Obama additionally pledged to avoid protectionism.

As passed, the act keeps that pledge, White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. "The president is committed to creating jobs in America and committed to global engagement with our trading partners and does not see any contradiction between those two goals," she said.

But in recent weeks as federal authorities drafted broad guidelines for implementing the law and hundreds of states and towns have begun preparing for stimulus-related projects, Canadian companies have been surprised to discover that while some federal contracts are still open to Canadian materials and equipment because of trade treaties, most of those issued by state and local governments are not.""

""

As a result, John Hayward, president of Hayward Gordon, a Canadian manufacturer of pumps used in water works projects, says U.S. towns, including Peru, Ind., have told him that they can no longer buy his Canadian-made products.

"We're not China. We're not even Mexico. We have the same relative cost of labor as you do," he said. "If we have a better price, you should buy from us. That's what competition is supposed to be about."

To stay in business, Hayward is considering moving some manufacturing operations to the United States, potentially creating jobs here. That, Peru Mayor Jim Walker notes, is what the stimulus was supposed to be about.

"You're trying to get America turned around, trying to put Americans back to work," Walker said. "And if American taxpayers are paying for this, well then, Americans deserve the benefits.""

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On a totally different note, I want to say that today is May 20 and it is snowing. I woke up to a WIND CHILL factor of -2C. I can't help but wonder sometimes if we SHOULD be trying to warm the planet with our putrid emissions. Maybe that will put off the impending ice age for a little while. Good - no?

Left's Love Affair With Obama Fizzling?

I was listening to a bit of Sirius Left today, the Lynn Samuels show. It's no secret she is not impressed with Obama but she also pointed the way to more Left wingers who are not impressed either. Perhaps for different reasons than the Right - but since I heard her agreeing that some of Obama's ideas are Fascist (such as Nationalizing banks), some of the reasons are the same. She spoke of an article called Buying Brand Obama, by Chris Hedges, so I looked it up and it's pretty interesting.

READ it here. She said that the author is as hard left as you are going to get. But here are some excerpts from his article:

""Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East.""

""Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.""

""What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis.""

""Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country.""

""Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any moral core and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests.""
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And just for fun, here is another article that may be of interest:

Pelosi the Enabler -by Robert Scheer

GE - A Corporate Sponsor

Andrew Wilkow's first Op-Ed (with Nick Rizzuto - his producer). Wilkow has a 3 hour show daily on Sirius Patriot 144/XM 166. I have been tuned in since last summer, and have heard him discuss this before. Now it is in print in the Washington Times.

ARTICLE LINK

Excerpts:

""For all of the carping liberals did for eight years about corporate cronyism in George W. Bush's White House, they seem to turn a blind eye to the same behavior in President Obama's. With plans in place for a major overhaul in the health-care industry, General Electric is positioning itself to become a major beneficiary of these health care reforms. ""

""To this end, GE has appointed Mr. Obama's former nominee for secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle, to the board of advisers for Healthymagination, an initiative launched by General Electric in partnership along with Intel, which will invest $6 billion over the next six years on "health care innovation that will help deliver better care to more people at lower cost." ""

""In 2008, Mr. Daschle wrote the book "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis" in which he explains his radical solutions to the problems in American health care. In the book, Mr. Daschle calls for a British-style Federal Council on health care. ""

""Under the cloak of corporate responsibility, General Electric seeks to benefit to the tune of billions from the passage of Mr. Obama's health care reform. On its corporate Web site, Healthymagination admits it will use every tool at its disposal to achieve its goals, including NBC Universal, the parent company of MSNBC which offers nearly uncritical coverage of Mr. Obama and his policies. ""

""Healthymagination states its target dates for the completion of its various initiatives as 2015, well into a second Obama term. This means GE will have a deep financial interest in Mr. Obama's re-election; a fact that will no doubt be reflected in its media divisions. It will certainly be interesting to see if the left-wing watchdogs howl, or if they will conclude this is an acceptable level of collusion between the White House and a multinational conglomerate. ""

This Is Better...

Instead of listening to Janeane Garofalo suggest that anyone at the Tea Parties who was not white must have Stockholm Syndrome, let's listen to this woman:



Thanks to the Mike Church show for playing this today.

You're All A Bunch of Teabagging Red Necks Hating a Black Man as President

Whoa... I just heard a sound bite on the Mike Church show of Janeane Garofalo on the Keith Oberman show last night (NBC)... and she directly said that people attending the Tea Parties in the US are nothing but racists, through and through, hating a black man as president, and are nothing but teabagging red necks. Wooooooo. Bet you didn't know that about yourselves eh? Oh yes, here is the vid clip. Her segment starts at 3:00 minutes in so slide the bar across once it is loaded. She also says that their synapses are misfiring, that they are dealing with a neurological problem. "These guys hate that a black guy is in the White House"...."these people, all white, for the most part unless there's some people with Stockholm Syndrome there...". "I didn't know there were so many racists left... the Republican/Conservative Movement has now Crystalized into the White Power Movement"....

Ugh I can't transcribe anymore or I will throw up. What is her answer for how many of these people ALSO hated Bush and complained & protested him as well? I know that Mike Church for example, the Sirius Patriot radio host who attended and spoke at the Wash DC rally, tore apart Bush for 6-8 years on many of his policies and issues. I guess Church just suddenly turned racist now? I'm surprised he has managed to live in Lousianna all this time.

Here is the website for those who Garofalo thinks must have Stockholm Syndrome:
National Black Republican Association.
Shouldn't someone let them know so they can get help?
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Why does this offend me? Because I very well might be one of those people she is slamming. Is there a lot of difference between a Canadian conservative and an American one? If not - well then nearly my entire province is a bunch of racists. Half the country perhaps (oh sorry, 36%?)... and THAT is offensive. I guess I better break the news to my best friend before she visits this summer. She will have to leave her black husband and their two kids at home in Charleston SC. Tis a shame, really.

Post-Tea-Party 'Reports'

First I want to quote an excerpt from the Vancouver Sun article I read yesterday:

""A reportedly corporate-financed grassroots" anti-tax movement, paid for, planned and promoted by right wing think tanks, corporate lobbyists and Fox News Channel, has failed to bring about the "popular uprising" against the Obama administration its creators had hoped for.""

And now I want to post a few photos from the various events around the US, just for the heck of it.

If this was a failure, I bet they don't want to see a Success.... EVER!

Did you Know...

There seems to be a few misconceptions about the Tax Day Tea Parties going on in the US today. It is not some Republican Revival, it's not even just conservatives getting together in small groups of protest. There are Libertarians, Independents, and yes, Liberals attending as well. This is to be a non-partisan gathering of people who are concerned about upcoming taxation country-wide to pay for the bailouts, stimulus, upcoming universal health care, and so on. Regular people from regular families who are extremely concerned about the country's future.

Why do I care when I'm in Canada? Maybe it's because we should take notice of things like this and instead of taking everything the government gives us, grumbling a bit under our breath, and then just going along with it as if we have no choice in the matter... maybe we should stand up and shout a bit more often. Maybe we should show our representatives that we care and are interested in our own lives for a change. Maybe we should take notice of what is going on in the US and then get some guts and do it ourselves.
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Another issue I have noticed on the news and various blogs is the comparison of today's Tea Parties to the Boston Tea Party. First off, who says that the tea parties have to be about the exact same thing? Is there a rule about this somewhere, that the 1700s have the monopoly on future TPs? And if the past issue was concerning 'taxation without representation', how is that so different from today? Is it really 'representation' if the govt tells you that they are taking your money and spending in on programs that you don't want? Is that REALLY representation? So you could look at this both ways - the Boston Tea Party has been used as an INSPIRATION for the 2009 Tax Day Tea Parties; and that it's not necessarily true representation if these representatives have not even read the bills they have signed, have ignored hundreds of thousands of letters and phone calls from their constituents requesting them to STOP, and are hiding fun little earmarks within bills to snag a few more taxbucks. So - maybe that is ALSO 'taxation without representation', don't you think?

Tax Day USA

Anyone care for a spot of tea?

US Tax Day Tea Parties

Just in case any Americans here are interested, here is a link to check out for any local Tea Parties coming to your region on April 15:

Tax Day Tea Party Website

and I will repost this little Musical Interlude thanks to the Mike Church Show band:


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A little tidbit I stumbled across this morning and had not heard yet... I can't see it happening but you never know. I wonder what the big lib celebs will think of this?
Ban Big Screen TVs in California?

Very Interesting Piece on Common Dreams.org via Salon.com

Is Obama Wrong? by Joan Walsh

A left's view on the current economic showdowns. Interesting read!

Excerpts:

""All of that might seem like ancient history -- Obama's moving to clean up the mess, right? Except Johnson, like Krugman, believes that the continued power of the financial oligarchy makes real reform impossible. A former chief economist for the IMF, Johnson sees scary similarities between the behavior of U.S. political and business leaders, and the titans of the corrupt and ultimately bankrupt economies the IMF had to work over during his time there:""

""A few Democratic heroes spoke against the bill -- North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan and, not surprisingly, the late Paul Wellstone. ''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' Dorgan said presciently.""

"" I can't help thinking that Tim Geithner is too close to the industry that took over -- and took down -- the economy to tame it. A large part of the Democrats' resurgence in the last four years, ironically, has been its success raising money from Wall Street, which undermines its populist street cred at a time like this.""

Economics [hurts my brain]

So, when I am in doubt, I turn to the professionals....

Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade....Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

On October 13, 2008, it was announced that Mr. Krugman would receive the Nobel Prize in Economics. [Source: NY Times]

And here is what Krugman has had to say this past week about the current 'plans' in the US:

""If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.""

""This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.""

""...by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.""

""But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, apparently wants an easier way out.""

""But the Geithner scheme would offer a one-way bet: if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt. So this isn’t really about letting markets work. It’s just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets.""

""By my count, this is the third time Obama administration officials have floated a scheme that is essentially a rehash of the Paulson plan, each time adding a new set of bells and whistles and claiming that they’re doing something completely different. This is starting to look obsessive.""

""But the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work""

""...no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact.""

""Even more important, however, is the way Mr. Obama is squandering his credibility. If this plan fails — as it almost surely will — it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to persuade Congress to come up with more funds to do what he should have done in the first place.""

---------------------------

And this is all from the article I posted a couple of days ago:

""Or to put it another way, Treasury has decided that what we have is nothing but a confidence problem, which it proposes to cure by creating massive moral hazard.

This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work.""

WSJ Articles

Obama gives GOP an opening
excerpts: "President Barack Obama and his West Wing lieutenants are playing on the world's largest stage, yet act as if no one is watching them when they contradict their campaign promises. That behavior is unwittingly giving the Republicans an opening."

"With the Dow at 7,486 and unemployment at 8.1%, Mr. Obama says the economy is fundamentally sound. Does he suppose the nation won't recall him attacking John McCain last September for saying the same thing -- when the Dow was at 11,000 and unemployment at 6.2%?"

Obama's AIG Panic
excerpt: "Reviving a financial system is a long process that requires a combination of capital support, workout ability and discipline for mistakes. The public has to believe the end result will be a better, sturdier system in return for taxpayer support, while at the same time being assured that gamblers aren't saved from their own mistakes.

If this balance is beyond the ability of Mr. Obama's current economic team, he needs a better team. The worst mistake he can make is to deflect attention away from government's mistakes by joining the attack on the very bankers he needs to lead an economic recovery. That's how a deep recession becomes a Depression."

* thanks to the Mike Church show for these links

What does a Trillion Bucks LOOK like?

I have asked people to just simply stop and think about what a trillion dollars really is, since so many just seem to toss the number around as though it's not that much more than a billion. It frustrates me because just a handful or so years ago, a 'trillion' was rarely used when talking about money. It was an 'out-there' amount of cash. Now, heck, trillion this, trillion that, who cares.... I Care! And so should you. So here is a fun little thing to show you what a trillion dollars actually looks like (since it would take you more than 31,000 YEARS to actually count to one trillion, it's better to show you in a few simple steps or you would be dead long before hitting that special trillion number in your head)

CLICK ME!

ps in case you don't believe me that it would take 31000+ YEARS to count to one trillion, it's pretty easy to figure out. If you count one number per second, that's 1 trillion seconds (obviously).

1 trillion seconds / 60 (seconds in a minute) = 16666666666 minutes
16666666666 minutes / 60 (minutes in an hour) = 277777777 hours
277777777 hours / 24 (hours in a day) = 11574074 days
11574074 days / 365 (days in a year) = 31,709 YEARS

tada :)

or if you prefer, you could speed things up a bit and count 2 numbers per second, then it would only take you 15,854 years. Phew that sounds much better!

I knew there would be More

We hear so much from celebs supporting what is going on with govt these days, I am always glad to find ones that are Not impressed. Chuck Norris, for one.
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and in OTHER NEWS, the Wall Street Journal investigates the President's claims that electronic record keeping in the medical field would save $80 billion per year......

thanks again to the Mike Church Show for providing these juicy tidbits of information :)

Deepening Scrutiny

Thanks to Al Fin and The Mike Church show (links in right column) for linking to the following article/opinion piece from the National Journal Magazine by O supporter Stuart Taylor, who has apparently finally been waking up to the concerns that millions of other people have had since before Obama was even chosen as the Dem candidate. Better late than never?

No. I think it's way too late. You Were Warned. You just chose not to listen and followed blindly behind the bandwagon instead.

Obama's Radicalism is Killing the Dow- WSJ

WSJ article

Other Headlines of Interest Today:

Chavez calls for Obama to follow path to Socialism

Russia Won't Haggle with US

Clinton's Gift Gaff to Russia

Clinton's EU Oopsies

WH Press Secretary fields MSNBC/CNBC commentators

Tax Havens, Tax on International Earnings Targeted

Some Brits not happy, feeling Slighted

Other Opinions

I was talking with a family member this weekend about the US stimulus package/bills, etc. His mentioned that Obama had to do something and has admitted that it might not work, but at least he was trying.

My response is this: If the economy is going down the toilet and worrisome times are coming, but you aren't quite sure what action is going to have the right effect (if any), WHY oh WHY would you go in with all engines at full speed, dropping an unbelievable amount of non-existent tax payer's money? If your choices are Do Nothing, Put In A Little Bit of Stimulus, or put in The Whole Hog - and all three choices have the same "We Don't Know If This Will Work or Not" tagged on the end, WHY would you choose an extreme, when the extreme could cripple the country beyond belief if it doesn't work???

I still don't think people are getting the concept of TRILLIONS. 20 years ago when I was in high school, that number wasn't even used! It was considered a nonsensical number, useless... now it's thrown around left and right. I heard an example on the radio that some young math students figured out --- if they spent $10,000 a SECOND, it would take 40 YEARS to spend ONE trillion dollars. 10 thousand a second... wow... Now we are talking several trillion in various stimulus and spending bills, when there is already a multi-trillion debt. If you still think that is a responsible thing to do, I can't explain it more than I already have.

I also have another suggestion --- if you have never actually taken the time to sit and listen to what 'right wingers' have to say, I suggest you go to www.sirius.com and sign up for their FREE 3-day trial. You can listen to Sirius Patriot for 3 days on your computer for FREE. There are 4 programs I listen to - Mike Church, Andrew Wilkow, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin (every week day, all day long, 3 hours each)... Try them out before just passing them off as nutjobs. I took time to listen to Sirius Left radio, so you should try listening to the things rights have to say, otherwise I do not believe you are informing yourself properly - which means looking at ALL of the information and forming your opinion AFTER that. Click "Listen Online" and then look for the free 3day trial link. Simple as that.

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My family member and I also discussed varying opinions because we often listen to and read different news sources. He acts like I am wrong because I am listening to 'the wrong people'. I'm not saying I listen to the correct ones at all, I just happen to believe what I hear from them and weigh it up with others that I read.. but I found an article yesterday on the same news source I was told I should follow that SUPPORTS things that 'people on the right' have been saying all along. So I wonder what happens when those kinds of articles pop up. Do the left-leaning readers just pass it off as a conservative trying to infiltrate? Do they even read it thoroughly? Who the heck knows. But it is frustrating nonetheless.

"This Is Going To Be Some Trick!!"

That title is actually a line in a Wall Street Journal article (thanks for sending it to me, Cloud). Since it is about paying for the famed Stimulus Package, I think you can guess what the gist of the article is.

If you are one of those people who are still on board with the package, still say you trust the new president, you have hope for change, etc -BUT you haven't actually taken the time to read and learn about the president's claims, I strongly suggest you TAKE THE TIME to read this article.

Here are some highlights copied from the article just for the heck of it:

""Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.""

""These combined increases [Note: higher taxes on top earners, increasing capital gains and dividend rates] won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.""

""A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 [Note: 2006 was chosen because it was a good year for incomes] would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion""

""Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion...Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000."" [Note: here is a NYTimes article speaking of the same thing. My own observation is the shock at seeing the DOW below the TSX! Is the DOW going to be at 6000? That is my bf's projection.]

""The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion.""

""On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy.""
[Note: If people are happy about saving a few extra dollars in the middle-low income brackets, how are they going to feel when they get their utility bills with a higher increase than they got 'back' from the 'tax cuts'?].

""...the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.""

Enticement and Manipulation of Facts

On a little trip around the web, I have found so many people speaking of the Glorious Speech by the president last night. Everyone talking about a positive outlook, hope for America, amazed by the charisma of the new Prez, and so on. But that's not quite what I got out of it, as I had to turn it off after Pelosi's continual gymnastics. It was very distracting. I noted many general comments (such as assuring the people that America will come through this [recession]) - general because there was nothing to say that THESE plans are going to do it. If you say something general like that, it could mean 'sure, one day America is bound to come out of this, but I don't know if it will be 5 years or 20 or 50 years'. But people I have talked to took it to mean HE will bring them through this asap. That is not what the president said. I also heard some interesting twisting of words, such as the 'every 30 seconds, someone goes bankrupt because of health care costs' remark that stirred the audience to their feet. I tried to find info on that direct statement of 'facts' this morning and what I discovered was a anything from a clever manipulation of words to the realization that the figure would mean over 1 million bankruptcies because of health care costs each year, when the TOTAL number of filings was 1 million (or less). Perhaps many of those people cited medical costs as ONE of the reasons for filing, but his speech directly said ""And for that same reason, we must also address the crushing cost of health care. This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds. ""

Does it 'cause' or 'contribute'? Those are two very different words. That is why I suggest that this is a clever manipulation of words designed to entice people into supporting a nationalized/universal health care program. If you make people who are not struggling, or not struggling 'too badly' feel guilty that others are going bankrupt 'because of' medical costs, they will be more willing to have their tax dollars diverted. But this is where the deception comes in. Even sites that are supportive of the 'every 30 seconds' rhetoric leave little clues about the misrepresentation of facts. 'Facts' such as ""Health care costs contribute to an estimated 25 percent of housing problems."" for example (taken from the provided link). Does that factor in people who bought a house that was outside of their means? Is it really a health care issue if the family bought a home that they could not actually afford, and therefore if they purchased within their means, they may actually have been able to afford the medical treatments? Or ""Health costs are a factor in half of personal bankruptcies. Since 2000, an estimated 5 million families have filed for bankruptcy in the aftermath of serious medical problems."" - I have also seen stats that say anything from 5% to 17% cited medical costs as a factor, but let's go with 'half'. That also does not take into account what their lifestyle was before the medical costs became an issue. What if they had a boat, new car, new house, new furniture, making payments on all of the above and then whammo, they were hit with a huge medical bill? What if they were already stretched to the hilt with paying for luxuries? Does that change your mind about their ensuing medical costs? It also does not take into account that often times, SEVERAL reasons for the bankruptcy are listed - gambling debt, job loss, lack of insurance (which is NOT always because a family can't afford it, there are also people who simply don't get it because they don't think they will need it, and then eat their words later). That is why the president's words were misleading and don't tell me he didn't know that!!!

I have had people tell me this morning that many do not have insurance because they can't afford it. Granted, some of the costs are ridiculous in my opinion! Atrocious amounts to pay each month (like a married friend with no children who pays over $300/month), but people also need to take into account WHY the premiums might be rising. Is it because of greedy insurance companies alone, or is it also because there ARE a large number of people who get their treatments for free or never pay their bill to the hospital/medical professional, and then the rising costs are spread throughout the system to those who ARE paying? It always makes me think of the signs in stores that say Shoplifting Hurts Everyone - Prices Will Rise to Compensate for Loss. When I was a teen, I didn't understand that, but as I have gotten old and crusty, I see that a business cannot run on losses all the time and therefore the prices rise in response to the loss. So you have to really think about the wording of reports you read and speeches you hear. Look up the information for YOURSELF. If you still agree after doing your own investigating, that is of course your Right. But if you blindly follow another's words, that is dangerous business.

Think about the complaints about GW Bush over the past several years. People called him arrogant, said he was a liar, said he twisted words to trick people into believing his plans would work, spent the country into oblivion, the Iraq War, etc - and he left office with a 20% or so 'approval rate'. But those same people are now excusing Obama for his own 'lies' (no earmarks), twisted words (every 30 seconds), excessive spending (Stimulus), sending troops to Afghanistan instead and have his approval rating ranging between 69 and 59% (noting it has dropped 10% since taking office). It is very frustrating.

I think it's also interesting to look at the Market Reaction. If this was supposed to be an inspiring and hopeful speech, why aren't the markets showing it yet? I think youshould also take some time at the WSJ site and punch in random dates on the DOW chart page because if you look at the stock market while Clinton was in power, it is considerably lower than when GW Bush was in, then it gradually climbs under Bush, and the starts to drop in the last year or so and has now been dropping lower and lower since Obama was inaugerated. Is that Bush's fault? The market LOOKS FORWARD, from my understanding, looking at what is happening right now and what it's effect is going to be in the future. Does it look Back at Bush who is now gone along with the Republican control? I thought it was supposed to look Forward and see the light, see the hope, see the fantastic change that America needs. People invest their money in hopes of making more, getting a good return. If investors see a bright future, why are stocks hitting as low as they were in 1997 and worse? Why was the dow at over 13,000 in May 2008 and now it is barely 7000? It looks FORWARD and it does NOT like what it sees.

Tsk Tsk Tsk

I heard about a little tax idea problem in Houston Texas while listening to Sirius satellite this morning, and eventually found THIS ARTICLE in the chronicle. It looks like since the city council's plan reached the media, and they were flooded with phone calls and letters from citizens expressing their concern, the Mayor went ahead and pulled the plan from tomorrow's meeting.

But I pose this to you - what would have happened if the media had not gotten wind of this, and news didn't spread like wildfire across the net and airwaves? Would the council have discussed this idea tomorrow? Would Houston residents have found out too late that their tax dollars were going to help pay off others' credit bills? Or would council have said tomorrow what they said today, AFTER receiving multi-thousands of complaints?

I guess we will never know, but it's just worth a pondering thought or two, isn't it? If it is so ridiculous and embarrassing like council members and the Mayor stated later on today, why did it even receive clearance to be on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting? ""White's decision to pull the idea from Wednesday's City Council agenda came after the proposal hit the national news media, the Houston Chronicle reported in its online edition Tuesday.""

Do you think this will be the first and last of these kinds of stories while people try using tax payer's money to help pay off credit debt?

Sorry, what was that stimulus bill about again?
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Sidebar - did it not look like Nancy Pelosi was about to implode at one point during the president's speech tonight where he claimed yet again that there are no ear marks in the stimulus package and you could clearly hear some remarks of disapproval (aka disbelief) in the background? It was the only time I saw Nancy without a crazy grin on her face. It took her a couple of minutes to recover and rebuild her plastercine face back into some semblance of a smile (aka grimace). But the old gal managed to rein in her anger eventually and was back to leaping to her feet (much to the chagrin of poor VP Biden) at every pause in the president's speech. Poor Joe, I think he is going to need an extra smear of RubA535 after his aerobics class!