Posts Tagged President Obama
Obama Does Not Begrudge Wall Street Terrorists’ Robbing the National Treasury to make a Profit?
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Economics, Financial Crisis, Financial Terrorists, How and Why We Get Screwed, Politics, Show Them the $$$, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, economy, financial industry on February 10th, 2010
President Obama – you cannot be serious?!?
These Titans of Socialist Capitalism take the money we bailed them out with – including “rigging” the system with the help of Paulson and Geithner so that AIG’s TARP money was re-directed to them – go on to make an enormous profit by trading with that money (which was not the purpose of the bailouts), and you call them savvy businessmen?
Now almost a year ago to the day, you gave the following remarks at the White House:
“This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded. But what gets people upset – and rightfully so – are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”
So are they failures? Or savvy businessmen? Or both?
This author recently pondered your failure to immediately regulate and reign-in Wall Street after your election when they were still on the ropes. Here is the bottom line: They screwed up, then they screwed us, and then you screwed up?
Do you see the problem here, Mr. President. The cognitive dissonance regarding your words and deeds towards Wall Street is deeply disturbing to those who supported you in 2008, especially when you had the perfect combination of opportunity, power, and the political capital to reign in these financial terrorists right after you took an oath to protect the American people. You did nothing, and now it is too late. Was it intentional? Or are you being obtuse?
When political rhetoric collides with inaction, people become dismayed. Maybe the young voters who are stepping to the sidelines are correct?
Disillusionment is too mild a word for such a betrayal if it was just the “same old wine in a brand new bottle“, President Obama.
“Meet the new Boss . . . Same as the Old Boss . . .We Won’t Get Fooled Again!”
Shame on us for ever having the audacity to hope? I hope not.
OK, President Obama, “Where’s The Beef”?
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Business and Money, Capitalism, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Wall Street, economy on February 6th, 2010
You are making all of this noise about refocusing TARP (bailout) funds towards small business.
President Obama, this blog noted that you said the same thing 100 days ago . . . read it right here.
So Where’s The Beef?
America: Ten Years From Now, Recall When You Believed Health Care Reform Was Too Expensive
Posted by Lance Haley in Budget Deficit, Uncategorized, economy on February 4th, 2010
Let’s see. Obama’s Health Care Reform was way too expensive. We just could not afford it. It was going to financially break the country.
Read this little statistic released this week, and then you just keep telling yourself that . . .
A Reasoned Conservative Offers Sage Advice to President Obama
Posted by Lance Haley in How and Why We Get Screwed, Politics on January 25th, 2010
I cannot help but be a bit giddy tonite about my previous post which I published earlier today. I just got back from watching a basketball game with my buddies, and read Jon Meacham’’s insightful and intelligent take in the most recent edition of Newsweek magazine on why President Obama has failed. What Meacham says echo’s my sentiment from this morning - Obama is leading the country with his head, and not his heart.
Of even greater interest is Meacham’s acknowledgement – for the record, he is an avowed Conservative – that there is this curious notion held by a significant minority of the American public from every political persuasion – left, right and centrists - that the President is some left-wing radical, hell-bent on bringing permanent ruination to the United States. What is most perplexing is how wholly disconnected this widely-held perception is from reality: Barack Obama is more conservative in his views and actions than many of his Republican predecessors. I confess that I have thought a great deal about why people really believe these things are true, when all evidence is to the contrary. The only rational explanation for this warped perspective is that the President has passively allowed others to define him.
The solution to the problem (and it is a problem)?
Once again, President Obama: get some damn fire in your belly, piss a few people off in the process (even on the Far Left), and move this country out of the doldrums!
President Obama, Now You’re Talking . . .
Posted by Lance Haley in Economics, Middle Class, Uncategorized, economy on January 25th, 2010
but it is still just talk.
IF you are going to successfully implement these proposals - which have been a long time coming, and would show that the U.S. government really does care about the Middle Class – a little word of advice.
USE THE DAMN BULLY PULPIT – Teddy Roosevelt style!
Now that is really talking.
Furthermore, the American people will start listening if you have the courage of your convictions to place unrelenting pressure on both your political allies and opponents into taking strong action, regardless of the consequences. You are too worried about being liked by everyone. Teddy Roosevelt was not particularly popular with many of his political friends, nor any of his enemies – especially the rich and powerful. Nonetheless, he was both respected and feared by all. Most importantly, he won the majority of the American public’s heart and soul.
So can you.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
President Teddy Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
All Proposed U.S. Budget Deficit Reduction Plans Are “Nothing Burgers”
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Budget Deficit, Campaigns, Congress, Conservatives, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Politics, Senate, Show Them the $$$, Uncategorized, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, economy, financial industry on January 24th, 2010
“Nothing Burger“: Two pieces of bread slapped together with nothing in between. Usually eaten when you have nothing in the house except bread or are too lazy to spend 2 minutes making a decent sandwich.
- definition in the The Urban Dictionary
This is utter laughable.
Senator Gregg Judd (R-New Hampshire), the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, claims the Democrats are not serious about cutting the deficit. He first offered a plan co-sponsored by Democratic Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D – North Dakota), that would require Congress to establish a bi-partisan commission to study deficit reduction recommendations, and if a fixed number of its members could agree on specific budget cuts, Congress would then be compelled to vote on those measures before the 2010 mid-term elections this Fall.
President Obama and the Democrats endorsed a similar deficit-reduction plan, but without the requirement of a mandatory vote in the Senate on the issue. Senator Gregg then criticized the Democrats, calling their plan a “nothing burger“, insinuating that they were not serious about deficit reduction. And the Republicans are?
Senator Gregg, you need a little lesson in transparency.
First, there is serious doubt about whether you can even get the support of your own party on this issue – both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (D – Ohio) stated they will not back the plan because the Republicans are philosophically opposed to tax increases. In other words, Republicans tacit acknowledge that deficit cutting would likely involve raising taxes, and they would rather let the country go bankrupt before they would make it pay its own way – now that is fiscal responsibility at its finest.
Second, that nasty little chart just below indicates that the real explosion in the government debt started in 1981 – after Ronald Reagan took office and the Neo-Conservative movement began. The largest deficit increases (as a percentage of the previous deficit) occurred from 2003 to 2006, not ironically when President Bush and the Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress. Moreover, that does not even account for the estimated $600 Billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we borrowed from China through 2007, – projected to increase to $1.6 Trillion before Obama took office - and which was “kept off the books” by the Bush Administration, Enron style.
Ouch!
Third, no Washington politician is ever going to be serious about fiscal responsibility, regardless of which party they belong to – it just does not make political sense if you are an incumbent running for re-election. Besides, Senator Gregg, proposing mandatory deficit reduction is easy when you are being disingenuous about the political realities of the issue.
One final word on that lesson about transparency, Senator Gregg: While serving as the Senate Republican’s lead negotiator and author of the TARP program (Wall Street bailouts) in the Fall of 2008, you recommended that Bank of America receive $45 Billion from the TARP funds – at a time when you owned millions of dollars in Bank of America stock. After your Bank of America stock recovered rather nicely this past year, you are now proposing that the TARP fund be terminated so as to not create a “piggy bank” for politicians.
And you have the audacity to criticize the Democrats, Senator Gregg?
President Obama: Yes! It’s The Economy, Stupid.
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Campaigns, Capitalism, Congress, Conservatives, Credit Card Industry, Dick Cheney, Economics, Financial Crisis, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Media & Communication, Politics, Sarah Palin, Senate, Show Them the $$$, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, financial industry on January 22nd, 2010
President Obama has been beyond a huge disappointment.
The reasons for his significant failure in the first year of his Presidency are varied, and yesterday I read a very insightful essay on MSN Money by Paul B. Farrell of the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch that hones in on a number of opportunities Obama could have seized upon as a result of the financial collapse that would have allowed him to increase the already significant political capital that he possessed on the day of his inauguration.
In the simplest parlance - he blew it!
This writer will have more to say on the specifics of those issues, but that is for another entry posted here on this blog. More importantly for purposes of today’s entry, I offer a humble mea culpa for my idealistic beliefs that this man was really different from all the others. I pride myself on being intellectually honest enough to admit that I was wrong about Obama’s willingness to effectuate any substantial change in this country with acumen and finesse. How stupid of me to believe that he would really first focus on the one issue that was at the forefront of every voter’s mind since November, 2007 - one year before the 2008 election – and has continuously been the leading issue for the past two years.
In the words of James Carville’s famous political mantra for the 1992 Clinton campaign, “It’s The Economy Stupid!”
Suddenly this week, the President finally has this incredible revelation that he needs to place the issue of the economy, as well as attend to financial system reform, at the top if his agenda? President Obama – how could you and all of these ostensibly intelligent people you surrounded yourself with have possibly missed that most salient and readily available information? Why did you not immediately address the failure of our economic system in it’s present form to serve the interests of its citizens, and redress the ongoing transgressions by the men who were responsible for single-handedly wrecking the underpinnings of American Capitalism? Why did you not implement substantial changes in how our economy is managed by imposing strict accountability, transparency and limitations on how the banking industry operated? Why did you trust that these financial terrorists would not not rob the national treasury for their own personal gain, instead turning a blind eye to their obvious avarice and indifference to the economic welfare of the country? Why did you not instruct Tim Geithner and the Treasury Department to direct the lending institutions to focus all of that available financial capital at shoring-up businesses and home values in order to preserve the essential assets so critical to the future of the American people, instead of bailing out these corrupt and incompetent financial giants? Why did you not utilize the available “bully pulpit” to chastise both your party and the Republicans for their unwillingness to use their legislative powers to immediately reign in these predatory financial giants, because of the “river of dirty money” (campaign contributions) running through Washington, D.C.?
Instead, you choose to ignore the over-arching importance of these matters, and wasted all of your hard-earned political capital by rubber-stamping the bailouts, and then embarking on an agenda of reforming an equally complex and failed health care system – a pathway that was historically fraught with political pitfalls and epic battles against powerful wealthy corporate interests. Anyone studying the history of American health care reform would know that simple fact.
Now, before any of you Conservatives start hooting and hollering in celebration of my criticism of the President, or my ”concession” regarding his obvious failures, let me inform you that your intellectual dishonesty for the past decade has been nothing short of shameful. Lest you think you are blameless, your willful ignorance of, as well as refusal to admit, the abysmal failure of your leaders, party, spokespersons, and Conservative media to improve the status of this country and its people - particularly Bush, Cheney, Palin, McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc. - is completely reprehensible, and gives you no standing to believe that you have something to crow about.
You don’t.
In fact, part and parcel of Obama’s inability to effectuate change has been due to the ”political noise” you either countenenced or participated in during the election campaign in the Fall of 2008 as a substitute for reasoned and measured dialogue about what was wrong with this country. Labeling him a Muslim – when nothing is further from the truth, and cheering on those who claimed that he was “palling around with terrorists“, willfully distracted the American public from what was really at stake for the future of our country. Many of you continued to increase the sound of that chorus to a deafening roar after he was elected with the most utter nonsense – first claiming he was not a citizen in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as well as charging that he is a Socialist, hellbent on destroying the foundations of this nation, when in fact his predecessors that you supported, as well as their corrupt political business cronies, had already virtually accomplished that objective.
In so much as you have fostered and perpetuated these opinions by either expressed belief or passive silence as to the truth, you are partially responsible for the demise of this republic. Your behavior is utterly Un-American. It is an absolute certainty that history will be far less kind to you than it will be to President Obama.
Shame on you.
And if you happen to choke to death on your teabags, oh well . . .
Fighting both the Islamic Terrorists, as well as the Financial Terrorists with Terror
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Capitalism, Credit Card Industry, Economics, Financial Crisis, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, National Security, Politics, United States, Wall Street, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, al Qaida, financial industry, foreign policy on January 15th, 2010
Al Qaida and Wall Street understand how to use terror!
First, you place American citizens in deep fear of some unimaginable catastrophe by destroying two very tall skyscrapers full of people, or by sending the global economy into an almost irreversible tailspin. Second, you continually remind them through repetitive conditioning (suicide bombers on planes or wide-spread bankruptcies and unemployment) that it could happen again tomorrow. Finally, you then reap the results of their irrational behavior from the resulting Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): 1) two debt-laden wars, with the associated horrific physical deaths and wounding of tens of thousands of innocent young soldiers; 2) financial system-breaking bailouts, with huge profits for a select group of well-connected banks, as well as obscene bonuses for the well-heeled financial terrorist executives who reside at the top of those businesses.
The answer to the problem?
Well on the first front, President Obama and his advisers seem to understand that General McChrystal’s “urge to surge” in Afghanistan was only an appeasement to military strategists, and simply moves more targets (soldiers) into closer proximity for the Islamic terrorists to attack. More importantly, Obama and company also understand that terrorizing the Islamic Terrorists is a far more effective and efficient use of resources.
This strategy was first articulated in Obama’s campaign for President, wherein he declared that he would not hesitate to send large numbers of drones into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area to bring the fight to our enemies in their own backyard. Guess what? It is working.
As one resident of the region was recently quoted, “[w]e have become used to the drone attacks, but now people are scared as they are coming every night.” Israr Khan Dawar, a 17-year-old student in Mir Ali, a town in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan which is controlled by Islamic militants, said “more noise means they are flying lower, and that means an attack is more likely.” Sadly, these civilians are collateral damage in an unfortunate war that they have been drawn into as a result of the reckless behavior of those around them.
As for the second front (the Financial Terrorists), we need a scorched-earth strategy like Colonel Kurtz employed in the movie Apocalypse Now, and not some lame federal “banking fee“. Obama should temporarily nationalize the ten largest U.S. banks, starting with Goldman Sachs, throw their management out, replacing them with people who will act without reckless abandon in search of profits and then make money the old-fashioned way – loaning it out at reasonable rates of interest.
Now THAT would sufficiently terrorize Wall Street.
Unfortunately, it is likely far too late. The time to have moved on this would have been one year ago, when they were at the mercy of the Feds. They won that war, and now we ARE screwed.
P.S. For all you “Capitalists” out there who would label such a drastic measure as “Socialism” – that’s what we have been doing for the past year - you better find a more cogent response. Besides, as Nouriel Roubini (”Dr. Doom”)suggested in the Wall Street Journal inteview, we would only ”nationalize” this sector of our financial system temporarily. It would seem prudent at that point to break up these banks into smaller entities, impose moderate regulations on them (especially with usury rates of 18% on credit cards), and spin off the trading and investment side of the firms - regulating them in move inventive ways. We would have then re-privatized them all within twelve months.
President Obama, that would have sufficiently vanquished the Financial Terrorists, and further given pause to Wall Street’s minions, forcing them to rethink how they are going to conduct business going forward.
Harry Reid is an Insensitive non-Racist – Trent Lott is a Devout Racist
Posted by Lance Haley in Campaigns, Conservatives, Cultural Issues, Fox News, Government, Media & Communication, Politics, Race, Senate on January 12th, 2010
There is something either very duplicitous or patently stupid in some of the Conservatives’ responses to the brouhaha over Senator Harry Reid’s comments several years ago about then Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s skin color and articulate speech-patterns.
Of course, Fox News commentators led the charge with their claims of a “double-standard”by Democrats in rushing to Harry Reid’s support, trying to contrast it with a dissimilar circumstance in 2002 when Senator Reid and other Democrats called for the resignation of Senator Trent Lott for his comments supporting Senator Strom Thurmond’s 1948 run for the Presidency on a Segregationist platform. However, other Conservative commentators understood the obvious nuances in each man’s remarks, as well as the context in which each of them were speaking.
Harry Reid was simply stating something that even the most politically correct among us was thinking – Senator Obama epitomized the ideal of a “perfect black Presidential candidate”: light-skinned, and extremely articulate (as well as handsome and intelligent).
Trent Lott was simply stating something that all racists believe: this country was better off when it was segregated.
If the people over at Fox News cannot even discern something as obvious this, their intelligence has to be seriously questioned.
So which is it, Murdoch’s minions? Duplicitious or Stupid?!?
Obama’s Answer to Battling Terrorism – Terrorist Profiling?
Posted by Lance Haley in Conservatives, Cultural Issues, Dick Cheney, National Security, Race, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on January 7th, 2010
Today President Obama is addressing the security lapses that occurred regarding the attempted terrorist bombing on Christmas Day in order to ensure the American public that his Administration is taking the proper steps to review and remedy the procedures that led to inaction on the information that was provided to security agencies, as well as silence his critics. Johnathan Alter of Newsweek even went so far as to suggest that the President needs to negotiate with Dick Cheney in order to get him to stop criticizing the Administration on it’s War on Terror.
That is utter nonsense. Dick Cheney is a hypocrite, as Alter himself acknowledges, and thereby irrelevant in his lame attempts to critique this Administration.
More to the point is Howard Fineman’s intelligent and inciteful essay in Newsweek noting that President Obama has several options to battle terrorism, suggesting one that I have long been philosophically opposed to on the principle of protecting the constitutional rights of individuals: profiling terrorists. Why, you might ask would I oppose this tactic? Before you prejudge my reasoning – “oh, this is just more Liberal gobbly-gook” - try reading clear to the end of this post. You just might be surprised by my conclusions.
The reason for my opposition to any type of profiling is the overwhelming evidence that there is a significant and unwarranted risk that it will ultimately result in few arrests and too many innocent people being wrongfully detained or otherwise unfairly targeted by security and law enforcement, and which has been scientifically proven to be both ineffective, as well as a waste of precious time and resources. That does not even speak to the “human cost” of targeting innocent people.
Moreover, law enforcement officials are widely known to rely on a multitude of nonsensical reasons under the guise of “reasonable suspicion” – which is not ironically the legal standard for a lawful search and seizure – as a legal basis for stopping someone because the officer thinks they may be involved in a crime. Many people would say, “well, so what . . . we have to sacrifice the emotional security of a few for the personal security of the many.”
This argument has been forwarded for over a century subsequent to a long line of U.S. Supreme Court decisions upholding individuals 4th Amendment right to be free from unlawful search and seizure. Very few Americans have any real indepth knowledge as to the historical basis for this fundamental right recognized by our founding fathers, as well as a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of case law protecting us from unwarranted and excessive intrusions upon our privacy by agents of the government.
But I digress from the central point of the issue of terrorist profiling.
Although I will always remain highly skeptical of law enforcement offficer’s motivations and justifications as a result of my professional experience (I have caught too many of them lying in court, while under oath), there just might be a reasoned and measured manner for accomplishing our national security objectives with a modicum of protection for the innocent. On the other hand, no one should pretend that profiling will easily identify and stop those who intend to kill innocent people and terrorize us. There are no simplistic solutions to this difficult and contentious issue.
The deeds of evil men are rarely so apparent until after they are completed.