“We’re going to have to make some tough choices” about the deficit and national debt, President Obama said to a crowded gymnasium full of supporters at Indian Hills Community College, after a lengthy riff on how the unsustainable debt would need to be tackled.

This, unlike most of what the president said during the town hall meeting, was met with silence.

“I noticed I didn’t get a lot of clapping about the whole ‘We’re gonna have the hard choices’ thing,” the president ribbed the crowd.

The President is ribbing the crowd? Now that’s what I call “The Audacity of Hope.” Half million dollar pizza parties. The most expensive inauguration in history. After this gentleman spent all of last year more than tripling spending (yes, I know, I know, it was all Bush’s fault) now he wants to tell the American people it is time to make some hard choices?

More frustrating than the endless campaigning and political posturing is the notion that the American people are so bloody stupid, they will not leap to the same conclusions I just did. Further, he tells us this stuff as if he just thought of it. Haven’t the tea partiers, for one, been screaming about these very problems for over a year?

Could it be President Obama is not aware why his audience sat on their hands for his remark about “hard choices?” I cannot prove that the people of Ottumwa, Iowa agree with my assessment but perhaps this might be a reason why he did not receive the adulation he is used to and so craves:

It is offensive to be lectured to about fiscal restraint by a man who has been spending taxpayer money like a drunken sailor for the better part of a year and a half, bailing out and covering for reckless companies with reckless management styles that continue to scam the American people, hiding the true cost of the legislation his Congress has been ramming down our throats and promising transparency while delivering the opposite.

The people of Iowa, and the rest of American for that matter, have been practicing plenty of fiscal retraint as they deal with high unemployment, watching their savings dwindle to dangerously low levels amidst an uncertain future with an administration that appears tone deaf as to their problems.

Any President that keeps trying to sell the bill of goods that cap and trade is going to help solve our economic problems instead of finally planting his feet behind the desk to figure out how to put more people back ot work in this country really needs to talk less to the American people – and listen more.

“This will bear on how we think about our federal budget in the future,” [Obama] said. “Everybody dislikes Washington right now, and everybody wants to lower their taxes. Everybody hates waste in government. But at the same time, you know, government does some important things like helping to make sure you’ve got clean drinking water and that your roads aren’t full of potholes.”

Please Mr. President, stop telling me what I hate. I don’t hate taxes. I am more than happy to pay my fair share and do so regularly. I hate when my taxpayerdollars go to bailout out the actions of corrupt actors who are not held to the same rules as I am. I do not hate government. I hate bloated government, local, state and federal, that enjoys no end of perks and bloated salaries and perks. I appreciate the good things that government does, which is why I pay taxes. What I don’t appreciate is the things my tax money is supposed to pay for – like education – gets “borrowed” away and never returned.

Clearly, the President has no idea what I hate which gives me a clear indication of why his policies have nothing to do with the urgent needs of the American people.
Close attention need by paid to the following:

…Earlier in the day, back in Washington, DC, he’d presided over the first meeting of his Debt Commission, which will issue recommendations after the November 2010 elections on ways to reduce the $12.8 trillion national debt.

“I’ve said that it’s important that we not restrict the review or the recommendations that this commission comes up with in any way,” the president said at the meeting. “Everything has to be on the table. …This means that all of you, our friends in the media, will ask me and others once a week or once a day about what we’re willing to rule out or rule in when it comes to the recommendations of the commission. That’s an old Washington game and it’s one that has made it all but impossible in the past for people to sit down and have an honest discussion about putting our country on a more secure fiscal footing. So I want to deliver this message today: We’re not playing that game. I’m not going to say what’s in. I’m not going to say what’s out. I want this commission to be free to do its work.”

Could it be he is not going to give you any details about what is “in it” until after the midterms because if he told you now, all his herd mentality Dems insistently following Pelosi and Reid off a cliff would be voted down this November? Is that why we are not getting a report from the Debt Commision until after that?

In Ottumwa, the president previewed for the crowd that whatever the commission comes up with, “we’re going to have a very tough debate about how to bring down our deficits.”

He continued, “as this debate unfolds, I just want everybody to pay attention to what folks are saying. A lot of times politicians will tell you, ‘I’m going to cut your taxes, I’m going to lower the deficit, I’m going to expand Medicare.’”

Don’t settle for that, the president told the crowd. “Ask every politician when they say they’re going to balance the budget and deal with the deficit: ‘What exactly are you going to cut? What spending are you willing to eliminate? Are you going to eliminate funding for sewers? Are you going to reduce the cost of Medicare? Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

Who the hell out here has been getting a free lunch. The free lunch has gone to the folks at Goldman Sachs, Fannie and Freddie, and GM (who claim they paid back their bailouts — however they did it with other TARP money).

A free lunch? Why does President Obama insist upon being condescending? Beyond his pronouncements from on high about “bitter voters,” this reminds me of candidate Obama’s pronouncement about Democrats and abortion during the campaign. As reported by CBS News:

“The mistake pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization . . . has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved,” he said.

Really? Do we not? Telling us what we do and do not like or believe seems to be a pattern.

Reading the other fine print of his statement in Iowa, he wants us to ask other politicians what THEY are going to do – but we cannot ask the President what HE is going to do. “We’re not going to play that game?” All he is doing is playing games, while taxpayers can only look on in frustration and disbelief.

The president said “the way folks talk about it in Washington,” you might think the debt could be solved by reducing waste and abuse, eliminating foreign aid and earmarks. But those are relatively small parts of the budget, he said.

Which “folks” are these, exactly?

“We could eliminate all foreign aid and all earmarks and we’d still have a huge problem, because most of our budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and defense spending, about 70 percent of the budget. Everything else we do is only about 30 percent of the budget. So this is going to be a tough bunch of choices that we gotta make here.”

Okay – so here is the bitter pill to swallow – get ready folks. Here come the cuts! So that if you have been paying in to Medicare, as my mother has, for example, in her 50 years in the work force, you can expect less. Presidents like to point toward Social Security’s impending insolvency without mentioning part of the reason it is in trouble is because government keeps borrowing money from it that they do not put back.
Remember his economic advisor Austan Goosbee talked about privatizing Social Security? Do not be surprised if you hear rumbings next year, too – the same rumblings President Bush made several years ago. Now I ask you – would you want the private sector – otherwise known as Wall Street crooks – playing with your dough while you’re busy keeping the roof over your head and don’t have enough time to daily monitor their shenanigans?

“I just want everybody to be prepared” for this debate, which will take place over the next couple years. “Remember when I was running for office, I said I will not just tell you what you want to hear, I would tell you what you needed to hear. And you needed to hear that we’re going to have some hard choices about our deficit.”

Oh, that was my favorite comment of all. I have never heard a bigger pile of horse hooey! And that is saying something. He told everybody what they wanted to hear out on the campaign trail – unicorns and giant popsicles. But little else.

Is there anyone with the courage to stand up and insist that this President start telling the truth? The press has already proven themselves to be, almost uniformly, nothing more than notches on his bedpost, cowed from speaking up for fear of a lack of access, which would mean a loss of their $5 million dollar book deals.

Who is speaking for us?

Thank you. Rant over.

Usually the Obama administration downplays expectations for job growth, but apparently Vice President Joe Biden didn’t get the memo – or he did, but just blew it off.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time our loquacious VP has done such a thing and come up with his own thoughts on a heated subject:

“Some time in the next couple of months we’re going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month,” Biden said at a fundraiser today in Pittsburgh.

Next month, Biden predicted, the nation’s employers will add between 100,000 to 200,000 jobs to their payrolls.

Um. Could you please tell me where he is getting these numbers? We know the Census created a bunch of temporary jobs but they will evaporate in a few months. On behalf of all my friends, neighbors and local business owners who are struggling or whose businesses have already shut down, I’d love to hear some good news here – but only if it backed up by fact…

The administration’s own forecast projects that the labor market will add about 100,000 jobs a month for the rest of the year, then around 200,000 jobs a month next year, and 250,000 jobs a month in 2012.

Biden noted today that in the past he “got in trouble” for making predictions about job creation, but clearly that did not stop him from delivering his bold new projections.

“We caught a lot of bad breaks on the way down,” Biden said. “We’re going to catch a few good breaks because of good planning on the way up.”

Another phrase I’m not quite sure what to do with… “good planning”? So it was good planning to enact a pork, er, Stimulus Bill when they first got into office and then withhold a large percentage of the money until just before the midterms so they can artificially pump up the economy to get votes? Is that the sort of good planning we are talking about? Strikes me not only as cynical but downright cruel to so many who have lost their jobs and homes.

Please – if you have any news to report — I mean, real news, backed up by real fact, not just spit-balling or spin, that indicates some honest to goodness substantial job hiring is going to happen in the next few months, please share it…

I’m sure Mr. Biden would be happy to know someone agrees with him.

___

But if you want to make billions the easy way, I suggest you use GM’s easy payback magic:

First, get a government bailout.

From Forbes:

Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy. (If it hadn’t, the company, which couldn’t raise this kind of money from private lenders, would have been forced into liquidation, its assets sold for scrap.) …

Because a loan of such a huge amount would have been politically controversial, the Obama administration handed GM only $6.7 billion as a pure loan. (It asked for only a 7% interest rate–a very sweet deal considering that GM bonds at that time were trading below junk level.) The vast bulk of the bailout money was transferred to GM through the purchase of 60.8% equity stake in the company

Then, pay back just the TARP loan (taxpayer money) minus the interest portion of the bailout using the escrowed TARP equity money (the part of the taxpayer money that made taxpayers shareholders in GM).

From TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky, Special Treasury Department Inspector General to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program:

“It’s good news in that they’re reducing their debt,” Barofsky said of the accelerated GM payments, “but they’re doing it by taking other available TARP money.”

—

“It sounds like it’s kind of like taking money out of one pocket and putting in the other,” said Carper [Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE)], who got a nod of agreement from Barofsky.

“The way that payment is going to be made is by drawing down on an equity facility of other TARP money.”

Now ask the federal government for another bigger loan but with a lower interest rate.

More from Forbes:

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5%) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government’s tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new–and bigger–DOE loan much more feasible.

Finally, to make sure everyone knows how successful you’ve been at making money, you have to run an ad touting how you’ve paid back your loan in full and ahead of schedule. The GM’s ad can be seen here.

Now wasn’t that an amazing trick? A payback that wasn’t a payback at all, but more a loan trade-up. And all with the taxpayer’s money. But of course we didn’t get a bigger stake in GM from it. We didn’t even get a thank you.

And just in case you were wondering if we would see a payback of the rest of the $49.6 billion TARP investment anytime soon?

Forbes Again:

No. That goal has been pushed back, as it turns out.

In order to recover that investment, the government has to sell its equity. It plans to do that only when GM becomes a publicly traded company once again. GM was hoping to turn a profit by the end of 2010 and float an initial public offering this winter. However, GM Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell, when queried about that timeline a few days ago, demurred. The offering will be made, he said, “when the markets and the company are ready.”

The General Accountability Office, on the other hand, remains deeply pessimistic. It concluded in a December report (which a more recent April report has said nothing to contradict, despite media spin to the contrary) that: “The Treasury is unlikely to recover the entirety of its investment in Chrysler or GM, given that the companies’ values would have to grow substantially more than they have in the past.”

More from TARP watchdog Neil Barofsky.

“When do you think we’ll have really good news from GM?” Carper asked.

“I don’t have a crystal ball on that Senator,” Barofsky replied.

Don’t you just love these bailouts!

___

Democratic officeholders should be afraid.

Republican officeholders, too.

For many a year now, officeholders of both major parties have worked hard to earn the distrust of ordinary Americans. It appears that they finally have succeeded.

If only ordinary Americans hadn’t been so inattentive. If only ordinary Americans hadn’t been so trusting. If only ordinary Americans hadn’t been so damnably nice, the country would be in a better position to manage its finances today. [snip]

Better late than never, a lot of ordinary Americans are waking up to the sobering reality that there really is no one they can trust. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not government. Not corporations. And certainly not corporations in league with government.

The people who are angry today are more in tune with this nation’s founders than ordinary Americans have been in decades.

While there are those who make fun of a few tea partiers dressing up in costumes reminiscent of our founding fathers, those costumes are designed to make a point:

The United States has an intricate system of checks and balances, and a government structure based on a separation of powers, and a Bill of Rights that safeguards the rights of states and the rights of the people precisely because the greatest collection of political talent and philosophical insight ever assembled on this continent — and maybe anywhere on this planet — looked at the concept of government and said, “We need to make a really small cage for this thing, then be careful not to overfeed it.”

We seem to have lost the care-and- feeding instructions about a century ago. We let government out of its little cage and it has been consuming everything it can lay its paws on ever since. In the last 45 years, it has been on a real binge, and in the last year and a half, it has taken bigger bites than a lot of people thought possible.

Ordinary Americans who care about freedom are finally getting a clue and — horrors! — they’re hollering at members of Congress. That’s right: Nice, trusting, formerly inattentive Americans are getting in the faces of the political class and calling them names.

…If members of the political class are too tender to endure a little well-earned rudeness from the people whose hard-earned money they like to “spread around,” then they ought to get out of politics. Maybe their successors will find the voice of the people less irritating.

While O’Brien is correct in stating that this righteous anger needs to be expressed without violence, he also states that this administration and our media as taking to shutting down criticism with tactics of demonization (just like the administration before it):

Don’t doubt for a second that the left is hoping desperately for someone to step all the way out of line. They thought they had their man — and early news reports said they did — when Joseph Stack crashed his Piper Dakota into an IRS building in Texas.
As it turned out, Stack proved to be a Marx-quoting lefty — the wrong flavor of nut.

So the left has to settle for a little name-calling of its own: “ignorant,” “racist,” “homophobes,” “hooligans,” “extremists.” The list, as you know, goes on and on.

It’s bunk, but it’s the script.

Tea Party folks are just patriots worried, with good reason, about the future of the country they love. They’re vocal and they’re inspiringly unaffiliated.

They scare the hell out of both political parties, because they’ve embraced distrust.

The Democrats fear them because they see through the left’s empty promise of utopia in exchange for freedom. The Republicans fear them because they’re pushy and because they’re loyal to their principles rather than to a party.

They make everyone uncomfortable. That’s healthy.

While I’ve never been to a tea party protest, I got good and angry when the bailouts started at the end of 2008 and the pork laden non useful Stimulus package passed in 2009 and the bailouts of car companies that couldn’t run themselves properly happened, too. The 2700 page health care monstrosity, whose ugly details are now just coming to light, was the last straw.

I was taught to play by the rules only to discover my taxpayer dollars were used to bail out those using our investments as a giant ponzi scheme. And too many politicans who exempt themselves from the rules and policies we are expected to follow take pork for their districts as an inducement to continue to sell taxpayers down the river.

So crooks and liars are rewarded for their folly while the rest of us are told to pay the bill – and keep playing by the rules. That is but one reason for the groundswell of anger sweeping the country.

What are yours?

Some Americans who say they have been sympathetic to Democratic causes in the past — some even voted for Democratic candidates — are angry with President Obama and his party. They say they are now supporting the Tea Party — a movement that champions less government, lower taxes and the defeat of Democrats even though it’s not formally aligned with the Republican Party.

Yet CNN does not report the numbers correctly – stating that Dems comprise only 4% of Tea Party membership. According to a new survey in The Hill, Dems and Independent voters in the Tea Party comprise 40% of its membership. The Winston Group reports that 13% are Democrats. It is quite likely that the Democratic membership is higher than CNN or this Administration would care – or dare — to admit. Further, the popular meme that Tea Partiers are comprised mainly of “racist, extremist, angry white males” is now debunked as well. As Politico now reports

Many of the tea party’s most influential grass-roots and national leaders are women, and a new poll released this week by Quinnipiac University suggests that women might make up a majority of the movement as well.

Actually, women do make up a large part of the movement – most polls indicate their number to be about 53%-55%. Further, Gallup indicates that in terms of their “age, educational background, employment status, and race — Tea Partiers are quite representative of the public at large.”

CNN shares what droves two democratic women to join the Tea Party ranks:

A lawyer and lifelong Democrat, [Ann] Ducket made her political leanings clear: She said she was a campus community organizer for Democratic Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, voted for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, and previously ran for elective office in Colorado as a Democrat.

“I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I probably did inhale in college,” Ducket said.

Ducket, who is now an independent and did not vote for Obama, said the president has “carried things to an extreme.”

“I think we’ve gone too far on the side of government doing too much,” Ducket said. “The Democratic Party is wanting to take care of everyone, instead of helping everybody stand on their own two feet.”

Roxanne Lewis expressed a similar point of view. A small business owner in Grand Junction, Lewis described herself as a lifelong Democrat and called the president a “phenomenal speaker.” She voted for him because she “believed in what he was saying: change.”

But, Lewis added, “I should’ve listened a lot closer when he talked about ‘spreading the wealth.’ ”

Asked how she feels about having voted for the president, Lewis said “I feel lied to, cheated and raped.”

I can assure Ms. Lewis, she is not alone. Given the fact that Mr. Obama calls himself a Democrat, I’m sure the betrayal feels even worse.

Lewis criticized the taxpayer-funded bailouts of financial institutions, which began under former President George W. Bush, and the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler.

“These are not the Democrats that I have been brought up with,” Lewis said. However, she said she will continue to be a Democrat.

“We hear from folks, probably at every rally, who say, ‘I was a Democrat,’ ” Levi Russell, communications director for the Tea Party express tour, said.

“Having more Democrats join the movement shows that it is more representative of the American people than the antics of the Obama, [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi, Reid leadership,” Russell said.

I applaud these two ladies for going on the record. Considering the horrid demonization this movement has endured at the hands of “trusted media outlets” and those at the highest levels of this Administration, they must be mighty frustrated to go public. I no longer trust anyone who has a knee-jerk reaction, labeling others before understanding who they are and what they stand for. Hillary voters know all to well what it is like to be mischaracterized and insulted for the candidate they supported.

While there are more reports emerging acknowledging the legitimate grievances of tea party protests, they are still labeled as extremists. It is now starting to look as though the race baiting incident on the day of the health care vote, wherein Reps. Lewis and Cleaver, accused tea partiers of spitting and calling them the “N” word is evaporating – both gentlemen are backing off their initial accusations.

Conservative media mogul Andrew Breitbart first offered a $10,000 reward for anyone with any corroborating evidence of these incidents – he has now raised the reward to $100,000. You can read his entire story here.

So far, of all the people with video cameras, camera phones and the like who were in the crowd – no one has come forward to claim the reward. Surely, if anyone actually did this, they should be called out and condemned for it. But if it didn’t happen, this should not be used as a tool to discredit those who attend tea party rallies.

We will keep you posted if any thing new develops.

As Hillary Clinton said when she was campaigning for the Presidency: “Hold me accountable.” It is critical that we hold all our representatives in government accountable for their actions, their legislation but also for their rhetoric.

Demonization must not be used as a weapon to silence legitimate criticism. The Bush Administration was guilty of the same in labeling critics of the Iraq war. Both sides employ this immoral tactic and as frightening as it is to go up against the party powerful, it is my hope that enough citizens of all stripe will stand up and decry falsehoods put out by the press or irresponsible government officials.

It is also heartening to see women on both sides of the aisle join together in this movement — if only to let both the Democrats and Republicans in charge that women are more than one-issue voters.

The Heat Is On. We May Get Burned. Political rage is a national problem, not a partisan one.

So where are we? In a dangerous place, actually.

Politics is a rough arena, and understandably so, for our politicians tell us more and more how to order our lives. Naturally there will be resistance, and strong opposition. We have a long history of hurly-burly debate, and we all know examples the past 200 years of terrible things said and done. Capitol tour guides enjoy showing the stain on the marble steps supposedly left by the blood of Sen. Charles Sumner, beaten half to death on the floor of the senate in 1856 by Rep. Preston Brooks, who wielded a thick gold-tipped cane. So we’ve had our moments.

But it’s a mistake not to see something new, something raw and bitter and dangerous, in the particular moment we’re in.

Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader, this week announced that 10 congressional Democrats have recently been menaced and threatened with violence, and that they found it necessary to meet with the FBI and Capitol Police. A congressman apparently said a casket had been left near his home; a congresswoman reportedly said she was worried for the safety of her children.

This is all completely believable.

Democratic officials are right to call attention to what they believe is a growing threat. It is a truly terrible thing. But it would be deeply unhelpful for the Democrats to use this story as a mere political opportunity, as a way to undermine opposition to ObamaCare by painting opponents as dangerous and unhinged. That would only inflame the country, and in any case is not true. The truth is this sickness works both ways.

Indeed. It is unacceptable that a member of Congress has to fear for the safety of her children. That just should not happen. But the casket was not left on the lawn of a Congressman:

The coffin, in fact, was used as a prop at a prayer vigil on Mar. 21 to symbolize the “loss of freedom and the loss of lives due to government medical rationing,” said the activists.

Back to Noonan:

There probably isn’t a Republican leader who has not the past few years been menaced, and in exactly the same ways as the Democrats. Thursday I asked a staffer for a congressman who is a significant and respected opponent of the health-care bill if he had ever been threatened. Yes indeed. “Over the years and as recently as yesterday,” both the congressman and his staff “have received countless threats—both threats of violence and of death. These come in the form of letters, faxes, emails, phone calls, and voice-mail messages. We’ve had the front window smashed in at one of our district offices. Rather than call TV crews or the Washington Post, we report threats to the proper authorities, and move on. We’d take issue with the recent narrative that conservatives are disproportionately hostile, prone to violence or whatever message the left is pushing these days. They have anecdotes, we have anecdotes.”

Even columnists and pundits have anecdotes. Just about everyone in public life on whatever level gets threats now.

Here’s the tenor and tone of the moment:

Under the news story on Mr. Hoyer’s statement on the Yahoo! news site on Thursday, there was a lengthy comment thread, with more than 800 people offering their thoughts. “An American Hitler might be in the making who would purge the leftists,” said one, who of course didn’t use his or her name. “Republicans are criminals and terrorists,” said another. “Republicans . . . are thugs, scoundrels and rascals.” And: “What did they expect when they . . . went against the American people and are FORCING this bill on us.” “It’s what happens before the revolution . . . people are frustrated over not being heard . . . let the battle begin.”

Here, edited for a family newspaper, are some of the recorded telephone messages left on the answering machine of Rep. Bart Stupak. These are messages left by individuals who appear to be pro-life activists—that is, people who have put themselves on the line to support generous and compassionate treatment of the unborn.

“I hope you bleed out your ___, get cancer and die.” “You will rue the day. . . . I hope you’re haunted the rest of your living day. . . . We think you’re a devil. . . . The country loathes you.” “You are one big piece of human ____. There are people across the country who wish you ill, and all of those thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you. Go to hell, you piece of ____.”

These are people whose professed mission it is to save children. Whatever else these particular individuals are, they are people whose nerves have been rubbed raw.

There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, to be sure. It does not further dialogue, it does not engender good will, and it sure doesn’t help to prove one’s point. But Noonan is right – people’s nerves are frayed, and too close to the surface:

Responsible leaders on all levels of American life ought to stop, breathe in, and see the level of anger and agitation that’s rippling through the country. Both sides should try to cool it, or something bad is going to happen. In fact I am struck now by how, when I worry aloud about this and say to a conservative or a liberal, a Republican or a Democrat, that I fear something bad is going to happen, no one disagrees. No one says, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing.” They say—again, left, right and center: “I’m afraid of that too.”

What I keep thinking of is a beehive. A modern, high tech, highly politicized democracy is a busy beehive, and sometimes the bees are angry, and sometimes someone comes by and sticks a big sharp stick in the hive. The biggest thing Washington should do right now is stop it, stop poking the stick.

The beehive was already angry about a million things a year ago, and most of those things, obviously, were not the fault of the administration. People are angry at their economic vulnerability. They are angry at the deterioration of our culture, angry at our nation’s deteriorating position in the world, at our debts and deficits, our spending and taxing, our threatened security in a world of weapons of mass destruction. Their anger is stoked by cynical politicians and radio ranters and people who come home at night, have a few drinks, and spew out their rage on the comment thread. It’s a world full of people always cocking the gun and ready to say, if things turn bad, “But I didn’t tell anyone to shoot!”

And yes, this mood, this anger, has only been made worse by this yearlong, enervating, exhausting, enraging fight over health care. The administration is full of people who are so bright, and led by one who is very bright, and yet they have a signal failure: They do not know what time it is. They cannot see how high the temperature is. They cannot for the life of them understand that they raise it.

Okay, I could so say something right now about how BRIGHT Obama and his Administration people are alleged to be, but for this once, I’ll bite my tongue:

What we need now in our leaders is the knowledge that there is so much that is tearing us apart as a nation and that the great project now is to keep us together, to hold us together as much as possible, because future trends will be to come apart, and for many reasons. To come apart because we’re no longer held close and firmly by the old glue of appreciation for a common heritage, history and culture; to come apart because we’re a country that increasingly feels there are people in the cart and people pulling the cart, and the latter are increasingly overwhelmed and fearful; coming apart because we’re now in at least our second generation of young, lost, unguided children with no fully functioning parent in their lives, kids being raised by a microwave and a TV set. All of these things weigh and grate.

They are all, of course, too big and complicated to be adequately dealt with in a year or even a decade. But one immediate thing can be done right now, and that is: lower the temperature. Any way you can, and everybody. Just lower it.

I cannot disagree with Ms. Noonan. I, for one, would love to see some civility in political (and other) discourse, a cessation of demonizing the other side to make ourselves feel superior. Even worse, to taunt and belittle the other side, as we have seen so much of these past few years.

But articles like this one, “In The Faces Of Tea Party Shouters, Images of Hate And History,” by Colbert I. King. I won’t include it all here, but this should give you an idea:

The angry faces at Tea Party rallies are eerily familiar. They resemble faces of protesters lining the street at the University of Alabama in 1956 as Autherine Lucy, the school’s first black student, bravely tried to walk to class.

Those same jeering faces could be seen gathered around the Arkansas National Guard troopers who blocked nine black children from entering Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.

“They moved closer and closer,” recalled Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine. “Somebody started yelling, ‘Lynch her! Lynch her!’ I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd — someone who maybe could help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”

Those were the faces I saw at a David Duke rally in Metairie, La., in 1991: sullen with resentment, wallowing in victimhood, then exploding with yells of excitement as the ex-Klansman and Republican gubernatorial candidate spewed vitriolic white-power rhetoric.

People like that old woman in Little Rock, the Alabama mob that hounded Autherine Lucy, the embracers of Duke’s demagoguery in Louisiana, never go away.

It gets worse from there:

Hence, an explanation for the familiarity of faces: today’s Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies.

They, like Wallace’s followers, smolder with anger. They fear they are being driven from their rightful place in America.

Holy cow. Talk about stoking the fires of hatred and division. I do not consider myself a Tea Party member or anything, but I find this article to be exceedingly offensive. Never mind that the majority of Tea Party members are women, but to equate them with such a painful time in our history, without founding, is obscene. I don’t think Mr. King is going to be one of the ones turning down the heat, if this article is any indication.

Neither will this man. The problem with him, though, is he isn’t just a columnist for a newspaper. He’s the President of the United States:

Well, when you have that kind of rhetoric coming from Obama, it is hard to expect any of his followers to tone it down, either.

Of course I am not saying it is only those on the left who need to ratchet it back, but I do find it interesting that Tea Party members are depicted as racist, homophobic lunatics because they feel government has gotten too large (and it has under Obama, as well as spending way too much money on TARP, programs, and even the increase of federal employees making six-figure incomes during this economic downturn). They have good reasons for their discontent. Calling them names and depicting them as horrible people for their use of Constitutional rights is extremely harmful.

And while the Tea Party members are being belittled by the other side, people raging against the war, or marching for Gay Rights, or against the World Bank, etc., are depicted as perfectly sane, as Jonah Goldberg pointed out recently. I guess it’s all a matter of spin, and right now, the message being put out is that ANYONE who opposes Obama for any reason whatsoever is a racist, homophobic, nutjob. While that may entertain Obama’s followers, it demonizes half of the country, and does a grave disservice by attempting to silence their speech.

That, as Peggy Noonan pointed out, doesn’t help. It doesn’t foster understanding, respect for differing opinions, or civility in discourse or action, as the egging of a Tea Party bus this weekend exemplifies. It needs to stop. The media needs to stop depicting people who think differently from them as a bunch of hillbilly yahoos, and OBAMA needs to stop depicting people who don’t support his policies, be they Republicans, Independents, or true Democrats, in such an “Us v. THEM” way, fanning the flames of intolerance and division. I agree with Noonan – this needs to stop, and it needs to stop before the anger spills over in ways we don’t want to see, by both sides and the middle. And it can happen none too soon…

What rock did Herb just crawl out from?

The Wall Street Journal addresses Herb’s ridiculous comment in writing, Treasury Official: ‘No Too Big to Fail Guarantee’ for Big Financial Firms:

There is no U.S. government guarantee to protect the largest financial firms, a Treasury Department official said Thursday, as a congressional watchdog criticized the $45 billion in government aid provided to Citigroup Inc.

Herbert Allison, who oversees the Treasury’s $700 billion financial rescue plan, disagreed with members of a congressional oversight panel that some financial firms benefit from the assumption that the government would step in to prevent their failure.

“There is no too big to fail guarantee on the part of the U.S. government,” Mr. Allison said.

How often did we hear similar drivel about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?

What happens to people when they get inside the Beltway? Do they instinctively become serial panderers, if not outright liars?

Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel, said it was clear that financial markets do assume the guarantee exists, pointing to a recent ratings agency report that specifically noted the government’s role in backing Citigroup.

“The market clearly perceives that there is a too big to fail guarantee,” Ms. Warren said. “That gives Citi an advantage in raising capital. … That is very valuable to Citi.”

Panel members locked horns with Mr. Allison over his reluctance to answer some questions, primarily regarding the health of Citigroup when the government injected capital into the bank in late 2008. Panel member Damon Silvers, pressing Mr. Allison on whether the bank was at risk of failure at the height of the financial crisis, said it was “extraordinary that it is not possible to have a straightforward conversation.”

The fact that America can not get straightforward and honest answers from our government officials plays right into my commentary the other day, Harry Markopolos: “Don’t Trust Your Government”.

Bend over, Herb.

LD

I broach these questions and make that assertion based on Tuesday’s engagement (video clip below the fold) between Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Peter Orszag, White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

As a backdrop to Gregg exposing Orszag’s arrogant and presumptuous demeanor, please recall that the law enacted to implement the TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program) required that any funds recovered through this program be effectively returned to taxpayers to pay down our national debt. That’s the law.

Do the laws of our nation stand for anything or can they be presumptuously overrun at the administration’s whim and fancy?

I commend Judd Gregg for standing his ground and exposing Peter Orszag in this engagement. America deserves to witness this undressing because the very core of Gregg’s argument is the lack of respect so many in our country have for principle. You may feel differently and believe Orszag’s goals are worthy. I would ask you if the ends justify the means. Do you really want to go there?

What do you think of Judd Gregg? Peter Orszag? Are we a nation of laws or not?

LD

Let’s not forget who was in charge of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, shall we?? Barney? Chris? Ahem. Funny how that often goes unmentioned, isn’t it?

You wanna know what else is funny about this whole negative attitude toward lobbyists? Especially after Obama ripped on them again? That he INVITED THEM TO THE WHITE HOUSE FOR A PRIVATE BRIEFING THE DAY AFTER THE STATE OF THE UNION. I am not kidding, people – how many different ways can I say, “What a freakin’ hypocrite?????” Or, “How do people buy the crap that comes out of his mouth???” Holy smokes!!! Those of us who are sentient beings knew this was happening, that he was saying one thing, while doing another. But, c’mon, how blatant can he be that he thinks we are the biggest bunch of morons on the face of the planet??? And how can so many Americans BE such morons to buy this crap from him? Good grief, people, THINK!!!

So, here it is, in black and white:

[Snip] The Treasury Department on Thursday morning invited selected individuals to “a series of conference calls with senior Obama administration officials to discuss key aspects of the State of the Union address.”

The invitation, which went to a variety of stakeholders, was sent by Fred Baldassaro, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Office of Business Affairs and Public Liaison.

The invitation stated, “The White House is encouraging you to participate in these calls and will have a question and answer session at the end of each call. As a reminder, these calls are not intended for press purposes.” (Emphasis mine.)

Yeah, I’ll just bet they aren’t:

The calls are scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, with the first topic being job creation and economic growth.

Another call, at 1 p.m., is on government reform and transparency. Republicans have criticized the Obama White House for not being more transparent in its discussions with Congress on healthcare reform. Obama recently acknowledged that the legislative process has not been as open as he promised on the campaign trail.

Other issues that will be addressed on Thursday include education, climate change and healthcare reform.

Oh, yay!! Doesn’t that make you feel better? Of course, they have been there all along, steering this Healthcare bill, from Obama’s original meeting with Big Pharma to the insurance industry lobbyists. Gee, can’ imagine why so many of us oppose this current bill: because we know what actually wrote it.

But Obama better be careful before he hurts their feelings:

A handful of lobbyists told The Hill on Thursday morning that they received the invitations and were planning to call in.

Some lobbyists say they are extremely frustrated with the White House for criticizing them and then seeking their feedback. Others note that Democrats on Capitol Hill constantly urge them to make political donations.

One lobbyist said, “Bash lobbyists, then reach out to us. Bash lobbyists [while] I have received four Democratic invitations for fundraisers.”

In his State of the Union on Wednesday, Obama once again targeted K Street: “We face a deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years. To close that credibility gap, we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue — to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve.”

So, um, this is how Obama expects to fix it? Invite the lobbyists to participate in these major issues facing the country? Well, sure, that makes sense. In the Upside-Down World of Washington, DC, that is.

And all in the light of day, right? Oh, sure, PollyAnna:

The Treasury Department referred The Hill’s request for comment to the White House, which at press time had not responded to questions on this issue.

On Thursday afternoon, White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated in an e-mail, “As part of our effort to reach out and engage with the public and policymakers, it is standard for our outreach team to organize a conference call, so that we can include people who are not in Washington, after a major speech or announcement through the president’s priorities. These calls are targeted at a diverse group of community and government leaders including mayors, governors, faith groups, women’s organizations, representatives from the African American and Latino communities to share as much information about the administration’s agenda as possible. The calls, which include question-and-answer sessions, typically include hundreds of people from across the country…”

Lobbyists say the Obama White House has held many off-the-record teleconferences over the past year.

For example, lobbyists and others were invited to a teleconference with “senior Obama administration officials” on Monday to discuss the administration’s plan to improve the lives of middle-class families.

The invitation, which is addressed to “Friends,” emphasizes in bold and italics that “this call is for background information only and not intended for press purposes.” It advises callers to tell the operator “you’re joining the ‘White House Briefing Call.’ ”

Another lobbyist said these types of teleconferences occur “all the time.” (Emphasis mine)

And that is why many on K Street are exasperated with Obama’s use of lobbyists as a punching bag. Some have said they understood why he used strong rhetoric on the campaign trail but are irritated the White House solicits their opinions while Obama’s friends in Congress badger them for political donations.

Don’t you feel sorry for those poor lobbyists who are shaping our policies?

Or do you feel anger that we have a government that is so duplicitous, so underhanded, so hypocritical, and so conniving?? Obama gets up there spewing this bullshit at the SOTU, and the VERY NEXT DAY, meets with K Street Lobbyists. And he does so with no shame, not even a hint that the impropriety gets through to him.

Wow. Show of hands – WHO bought this crap from him and the Democrats?? Anyone? Bueller?? And we wonder why this country is in such a mess…

Now you know I am a huge Yankees fan. I was telling my dear friend Bronwyn’s Harbor about the series, and got her started watching the games. I mentioned that I had a shrine to the Yankees in my living room. She suggested I share it with you, so here it is:

Let me just say, besides the t-shirt, and the baseball, I didn’t buy ANY of those things. My Mets loving cousin was kind enough to send most of them to me. She has an eye for all things Yankees for me. She knows of my deep and abiding love for both the Yankees and their captain, Derek Jeter. The small framed piece is actually a painted feather from Belize that my niece gave me.

I might add, the baseball you can see there was not purchased, either, at least not with money from me. My partner took me to Cleveland for 3 games with the Indians for my 50th birthday (it just happened that they were in Cleveland for the day of my birthday). We were in the section to get autographs during batting practice. That baseball was hit by A-Rod, a screaming foul ball that hit my partner. While it was bad that it hit her, had she not been where she was, it would have hit the very pregnant woman next to her in the abdomen, which would NOT Have been good. Anyway, after batting practice, Johnny Damon came over and signed it for me while my partner was getting medical treatment (no permanent damage, but the bruise lasted for WEEKS. Seriously. It was A-Rod, after all!).

Speaking of Derek Jeter, he has been playing sick the past few days. Not that that has stopped him from hitting a home run, and getting on base in every game, not to mention great defensive plays. He embodies the very best of a Yankees Captain, IMHO.

And in a totally “Entertainment Weekly” kind of way, don’t you think Derek Jeter and the singer, Leona Lewis, would make a beautiful couple? Check them out:

(PRNewsFoto/J Records)

Right?? I know! But, Derek is with the actress, Minka Kelly, and Leona lives with her high school boyfriend. Oh, well, as long as they’re happy…(Don’t worry – this is but a slight foray into Hollywood-style gossip. I’ll be back to political pontificating ASAP.)

Anyhoo – I’m not going to take any chances about the Yankees winning tonight. I’ll don my Yankees away gray t-shirt, put on my Derek Jeter official jersey, grab my Yankees cap, and watch the game with a Diet IBC Root Brewski or Diet Dr. Pepper in hand. Maybe if I play the video below a bunch, my prayers will be answered (major H/T to Nunly at Bad Habit). I warn you, the song may get stuck in your head, but it is SO worth it:

I just hope I won’t be laughing so hard I don’t miss a great play by the Captain, or another home run by A-Rod. And say what you will, but despite some apparent clashing between his new girlfriend, Kate Hudson, and the other Yankees’ wives/girlfriends, he is having the very best post season he has ever had since he started seeing her (h/t to Bronwyn for the link). Maybe he’s just a big Kurt Russell and/or Goldie Hawn fan, and likes having them around, too, since they often accompany Kate. Who knows? As long as he keeps hitting like this, I am happy, happy, happy.

So, you know what I’ll be doing tonight – wishing, hoping, and yes, praying. Hopefully, I’ll be CELEBRATING, too. Then, you know I’ll be at the MLB shop getting my new American League Champions t-shirt to add to the shrine for the upcoming World Series!

Consider this an Open Thread. What’s on YOUR mind today? Maybe that it’s been fifty-four days since Gen. McChrystal;’s recommendations landed on Obama’s desk about Afghanistan? Maybe the economy? Health Care Reform? Whatever it is, have at it!

UPDATE: And No. Swisher, for the second time with runners in scoring position (top of the 9th, bases LOADED), popped up. The series is going back to New York.

Since Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the (TARP) Troubled Asset Relief Program and Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the (TARP) Troubled Asset Relief Program were guest witnesses, it seemed a good time to get some answers to the $700 billion dollar questions of how well is TARP working and how stable has our economy become.

And, well, you might want to hold off on the champagne.

From SIG Neil Barofsky:

“I think we may be in a far more dangerous place today than we were a year ago,” he said.

As Ms. Warren points out in her testimony:

EESA [Emergency Economic Stabilization Act] listed five specific objectives for TARP: to restore financial stability, protect home values and family savings, promote jobs and economic growth, maximize returns to taxpayers, and provide public accountability.

——

Since EESA was enacted one year ago, the apprehension that pervaded this country has turned into something else: frustration and anger. Taxpayers have committed over $531 billion through TARP, and although there is no doubt that the financial system has begun to stabilize, families are still feeling the pain of rising unemployment, rampant foreclosures, higher bank fees, and limited access to credit.

Today’s fragile stability has come at an enormous cost to the American people. Taxpayers have a right to expect full clarity, full transparency, and full accountability in Treasury’s use of their money. They also have a right to know what has fundamentally changed to prevent this crisis from ever happening again….

From Mr. Barofsky testimony:
On Maximizing Returns to Taxpayers

The progress on meeting the goal of “maximiz[ing] overall returns to the taxpayer” is unclear. While several TARP recipients have repaid funds for what has widely been reported as a 17% profit, it is extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment. For example, certain TARP programs, such as the mortgage modification program which is scheduled to use $50 billion of TARP funds, will yield no direct return, and for others, including the extraordinary assistance programs to AIG and the auto companies, full recovery is far from certain.

Similarly, Treasury’s original stated goal of increasing lending has not yet occurred, although, as SIGTARP’s recently issued audit on TARP recipients’ use of funds indicates, it is likely that lending from TARP recipients would have decreased far more in the absence of TARP funding.

On Protecting Home Values and Family Savings;
On Promoting Jobs and Economic Growth

…the goals of “preserving homeownership,” “promot[ing] jobs and economic growth” have not yet been met, and the ultimate success of meeting these policy goals will depend on programs that are just now reaching the implementation stage, such as the TARP’s mortgage modification program and the public-private investment funds. In the meantime, the risk of foreclosure continues to affect too many Americans; unemployment continues its rise to levels that Treasury has characterized as “unacceptable”; the so-called “toxic” assets that helped cause this crisis for the most part remain right where they were last fall – on the banks’ balance sheets; and it is becoming more and more clear that the commercial real estate market might be the next proverbial shoe to drop, threatening to increase the pressure on banks and small business alike yet again.

On Providing Public Accountability

“Treasury’s default position should always be to require more disclosure rather than less and to provide the investors in TARP — the American taxpayers — as much information about what is being done with their money as possible. …TARP largely remains a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested.”

More from Ms. Warren:
On Restoring Financial Stability

“The toxic assets remain on the books of the banks. The commercial real estate mortgages are a coming crisis. Small banks are continuing to fail. We were talking a year ago about too big to fail. We are now facing an industry that’s more concentrated than it was a year ago and too big to fail is up on us now in a much larger sense.”

“Until we get down to dirt, to something that’s solid, that we can put our feet on, our financial institutions are standing in a secure place, we can’t rebuild and know that we are safely past this crisis”

“The question about how we’re going to get these toxic assets out of here at a time when the real estate mortgage market is still in trouble and the commercial real estate mortgage market may be getting into more and more trouble – I’m not hearing the plan.”

Then again, the way our government has been working of late, maybe it is a good thing if they don’t have a plan for this.

Clearly Mr. Van Dyk was a huge fan of this President, thought his campaign “superb” and appreciated his promises of “reaching across party and ideological lines to get the public’s business done.” Van Dyk opines:

“You displayed an intellect and sense of cool that made us think you would weigh decisions carefully and view advisers’ proposals with skepticism.”

You know what I get from that phrase? Since the President acted “cool,” some mighty educated people actually believed this to be more than just a pose on his part. Not unlike Madonna’s use of “Voguing” back in the day. Now perhaps they begin to see that a pose has neither to do with governing nor an ability to adapt to the changing realities on the ground.

At that point, Mr. Van Dyk goes off the rails and we see that his blanket approval has come to an end:

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

He then complains of Obama stocking his White House with “Clinton administration retreads who had learned their trade in the never-ending-campaign culture of the Clinton years.” Again, blame Clinton. But who did Mr. Van Dyk think this man was going to hire? He faults Obama for his “reliance on these Clinton holdovers.”

Your chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, defined your early strategy by stating that the financial and economic crises presented an “opportunity” to jam through unrelated legislation. To many of us, the remark was cynical and wrong-headed.

The crises did not represent an opportunity. They presented an obligation to do one thing: Return our financial system and our economy to good health.

Does Van Dyk assume any Democratic president would have been this reckless? Hillary Clinton had different health care proposals, different proposals for helping homeowners in this crisis and a much better understanding of the economy. None of her ideas are being utilized, I’m afraid. She just may have exhibited the good sense Mr. Van Dyk longs for and put the financial floor back under us before attempting a more drastic change. But we’ll never know…

Van Dyk discusses Mr. Obama being unfairly compared to FDR & LBJ. Discussing President Johnson’s “Great Society legislation”…

…at every stage, congressional leaders of both political parties and financial, business, labor and other private-sector leaders were consulted. Johnson wanted to assure that his legislation was substantively sound and could get consensus support in the Congress and the country.

Your strategy, by contrast, has been to advocate forcefully for health-care and energy reform but to leave the details to Democratic congressional committee chairs. You did the same thing with your initial $787 billion stimulus package. Now, you’re stuck with a plan that provides little stimulus until 2010. A president should never cede control of his main agenda to others.

President Obama is in over his head, so of course he “outsourced.” Why is this gentleman surprised? Mr. Van Dyk willfully ignores the fact that the biggest culprit here is not a “Clinton retread,” but the Queen Bee herself, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She crafted the stimulus package behind closed doors and the President willingly allowed her this control. Perhaps that was his devil’s bargain for her help in kicking the ladder out from under Hillary. Republicans were not the only ones to be shut out of the crafting of the Stimulus package. Many Democrats were as well. Van Dyk continues:

This tactic has already had negative consequences. Frightened by the prospective costs of your health-care and energy plans — not to mention the bailouts of the financial and auto industries — independent voters who supported you in 2008 are falling away. FDR and LBJ, only two years after their 1932 and 1964 victories, saw their parties lose congressional seats even though their personal popularity remained stable. The party out of power traditionally gains seats in off-year elections, and 2010 is unlikely to be an exception.

He then offers up a prescription for a fix:

- Cut back both your proposals and expectations. You made promises about jobs that would be “created and saved” by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.

It’s time to re-examine these initiatives. Could your health plan be scaled back to catastrophic coverage for all — badly needed by most families, but quite affordable if deductibles are set at the right levels? Should the Rube Goldbergian cap-and-trade proposals be replaced with a simple carbon tax, with proceeds to be allocated to alternative-fuels development?

The evolving health and cap-and-trade bills are loaded with costly provisions designed to gain support from congressional leaders and special-interest constituencies. In short, they have become an expensive mess. This legislation will not clear Congress by the August recess, as you have requested, and could be stalled for the remainder of 2009. Settle for incremental change: Do not press Democratic legislators to vote for something they fear will destroy them in 2010.

- Talk less and pick your spots.

Applause and adulation are gratifying. But the more you talk, the less weight your words will hold. Let voters see you at your desk, conferring with serious people about serious matters. When you do choose to talk, people will understand that it’s important and they should listen.

“Let voters see you at your desk!” Doing some “work.” Great ideas!

- Conform your 2009 politics to your 2008 statements. During your campaign, you called for bipartisanship and bridge-building. You promised to reduce the influence of single-issue and single-interest groups in the policy process. Yet, in your public statements, you keep using President Bush as a scapegoat.

You have ceded content of your principal proposals to Democratic congressional leaders who in large part have yielded to special-interest constituencies and excluded Republican leaders from policy formulation. This certainly was the case with the stimulus plan. It has been the case with health and energy legislation, with the notable exception of Sen. Max Baucus’s attempt in the Senate Finance Committee to develop genuinely bipartisan legislation.

He concludes by telling Obama

“You have an enormous reservoir of goodwill among Americans of all persuasions. They want you to succeed. Level with them and trim your proposals to what is practical in the current environment.”

But ironically, it is Mr. Van Dyk’s closing statement with which I most take issue:

You had things right in 2008. Take a timeout. Get back to yourself. Make a fresh start.

He did not have things “right” in 2008 because there is no “self” to ‘get back to’. His campaign was always “words, just words.”

While I graduated college with high honors, I am no genius, yet I figured this out from my living room couch back in January of 2008. I watched this man at a debate and his “performance” told me everything I needed to know. I then looked at his voting record and the corporate interests with whom he surrounds himself, his addiction to pretty sound bytes and an over reliance on canned speeches rather than a resume that indicated he had worked even on a smaller level to achieve his stated goals. His current proposals are loaded with top heavy payback for special interests that arguably got him elected in the first place. Wall Street has gotten bailed out. Not Main Street. He lives in support of an oligarchy, like his immediate predecessor. If these are true Democratic principles, its the first I’ve heard of it.

The obscene amount of money spent on his inauguration, expensive “dates” and pizza parties and his hiring not less than 30 “czars” all of whom require staff and total salaries in the millions are more accurate indicators of the man than any of his campaign rhetoric.

Like Obama’s other supporters, perhaps Mr. Van Dyk has yet to understand that speeches will never equal governing ability. He too, blamed the Clintons for being “polarizing” as Bush was, but how true is his claim? Clinton passed true bi-partisan legislation. He had to, as he was working with a Republican Congress for 6 of his 8 years and did very well in that regard. But in his case, he also had deep knowledge of the economy and a willingness to reach across the aisle and conform to the existing reality. He certainly left the country in better shape than he found it.

President Obama, by contrast is the “salesman in chief.” That is what the DNC wanted. How is he supposed to pull us back to “reality” with his proposals when he clearly did not have these reasoned intentions in the first place, or a true understanding of how to get us there?

Apparently, Mr. Van Dyk has yet to travel the last mile in his awakening.

Is it even possible to track the massive government outlays across the entire economic landscape? Is it further possible to measure the actual cost of the outlays as a percentage of the overall subsidies? Can we navigate this terrain without getting bogged down in the midst of a thicket of government data and statistics? You have come to the right place.

Subsidyscope has just released a report, entitled Estimated TARP Subsidy Rate Rises, which links to a report from the Congressional Budget Office highlighting all aspects of the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).

Just as “you can’t tell the players without a program” when attending a sporting event, “you can’t track Uncle Sam without Subsidyscope and Sense on Cents.”

What do we learn? Uncle Sam is still holding some TARP firepower. The TARP was launched as a $699 billion capital commitment. If you recall, the TARP legislation was passed as a vehicle to purchase toxic assets from banks. It has moved a long way away from that.

The TARP now covers 4 initiatives:

1. capital purchase and repayments from financial institutions

2. additional support for large financial institutions

3. financial assistance to automakers and related businesses

4. other actions, such as mortgage modification, TALF subsidies, and purchasing securities backed by Small Business Administration loans.

To be perfectly frank, I think it is very plausible that the actual capital commitments and activities ongoing under the TARP may not have met the pure letter of the initial legislation. That said, in an environment in which so many initiatives are capital constrained, there is no real legislative pushback. When was the last time we worried about the spirit or letter of our laws when we had bigger issues concerning money?? Money is more important than legal precedents, correct? We’ll get into that on another post.

On the numbers front:

Of the $699 billion in total capital, $142 billion has yet to be committed. Of the funds already allocated, Uncle Sam has incurred a total cost of $159 billion. What does that mean?

Recall the number of times that government officials told taxpayers that we would make money on investments in AIG and the like. Well, so far we’ve lost $159 billion dollars across all our TARP investments. The loss is calculated as the difference in funds committed and allocated to securities and the market value of those securities. That loss represents 36% of the funds committed and actually allocated.

Not that anybody in the media or the financial industry would want you to know that.

Program, here….get your program….step right up…program, here!!

Enjoy the ballgame, folks!!

LD

Today, Morning Joe had Jim Cramer on to put out Spitzer’s fire. Who’s right?

versus Jim Cramer:

So, WHO IS CORRECT? My money is on Spitzer.

Spitzer, by the way, is a regular columnist these days for Slate.com.

His latest column is “Fed Dread: The New York Fed is the most powerful financial institution you’ve never heard of. And look who’s running it.”

And you ALL know who used to run the New York Fed, right? Yes, one Timothy Geithner. Here’s why the New York Fed is so important, and why it is ethically compromised. From Spitzer’s latest column, “Fed Dread“:

A quasi-independent, public-private body, the New York Fed is the first among equals of the 12 regional Fed branches. Unlike the Washington Federal Reserve Board of Governors, or the other regional fed branches, the N.Y. Fed is active in the markets virtually every day, changing the critical interest rates that determine the liquidity of the markets and the profitability of banks. And, like the other regional branches, it has boundless power to examine, at will, the books of virtually any banking institution and require that wide-ranging actions be taken—from raising capital to stopping lending—to ensure the stability and soundness of the bank. Over the past year, the New York Fed has been responsible for committing trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to resuscitate the coffers of the banks it oversees.

Given the power of the N.Y. Fed, it is time to ask some very hard questions about its recent performance. The first question to ask is: Who is the New York Fed? Who exactly has been running the show? Yes, we all know that Tim Geithner was the president and CEO of the N.Y. Fed from 2003 until his ascension as treasury secretary. But who chose him for that position, and to whom did he report? The N.Y. Fed president reports to, and is chosen by, the Fed board of directors.

So who selected Geithner back in 2003? Well, the Fed board created a select committee to pick the CEO. This committee included none other than Hank Greenberg, then the chairman of AIG; John Whitehead, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs; Walter Shipley, a former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, now JPMorgan Chase; and Pete Peterson, a former chairman of Lehman Bros. It was not a group of typical depositors worried about the security of their savings accounts but rather one whose interest was in preserving a capital structure and way of doing business that cried out for—but did not receive—harsh examination from the N.Y. Fed.
The composition of the New York Fed’s board, which supervises the organization and current Chairman Friedman, is equally troubling. The board consists of nine individuals, three chosen by the N.Y. Fed member banks as their own representatives, three chosen by the member banks to represent the public, and three chosen by the national Fed Board of Governors to represent the public. In theory this sounds great: Six board members are “public” representatives. …

Here’s more from “Class, Required Overnight Reading on “Toxic Assets”and A.I.G. by Spitzer“:

“There should have been a very different regulatory framework. Not in the sense that we needed more words in the books. We needed more aggressive voices at the SEC, the FTC, the OCC – this welter of federal agencies — people who came to Wall Street and said, ‘Wait a minute. That leverage is crazy’. … [E]verybody derided leverage in public, but in private, participated to the hilt. … This was sort of a disease that got into the bloodstream and the DNA of Wall Street leadership. … The more traditional, old-fashioned investment bankers — you think of Felix Rohatyn, who said, ‘Wait a minute, guys. This doesn’t work’.

“AIG is at the center of the web. The financial tentacles of this company stretched to every major investment bank. The web between AIG and Goldman Sachs is something that should be pursued. …

“[A.I.G.'s] fundamental accounting structure was wrong. … [W]e brought a case alleging that they had manufactured false, fictitious reinsurance contracts. … [T]he underlying effort was to create an illusion of financial strength that was not there. … [F]our people have been convicted. …

“[A.I.G.'s problems] stemmed from an effort from the very top to gin up returns whenever, wherever possible, and to push the boundaries [to] garner returns almost regardless of risk. …

“When AIG initially received $80 billion — a decision that was the consequence of a very brief meeting of the president of the New York Fed [GEITHNER], the secretary of the Treasury [PAULSON], perhaps Chairman Bernanke and [some say the] chairman of Goldman Sachs — $80 billion, virtually all of it flowed out to counterparties, $12.9 billion to Goldman Sachs.

“Why did that happen? What questions were asked? Why did we need to pay 100 cents on the dollar on those transactions, if we had to pay anything? What would have happened to the financial system, had it not been paid?”

[...]

HOT UPDATE: John Boehner is taking it right to Nancy, proving that “what goes around comes around,” and that Obama just did NOT think through the torture memo “blowback.”

Politico‘s Glenn Thrush reports that Rep. Boehner is “asking the Obama administration to release CIA notes taken during a 2002 briefing session with Pelosi and other Congressional leaders.”

Even “Dear Abby” could have given PBO the advice he needed: “THINK!. And make a careful list of the pros and cons, including the possibility you’ll throw your own party leaders under the bus (!). Your MoveOn and Kossack rabblerousers are NOT deep thinkers! Seek the counsel of savvy, experienced men and women.”

Obama’s increasingly heavy reliance on D.C. novice David Axelrod is folly. All Axe envisioned was Republican blood in the water. But Axelrod has NO background — none, zippo! — in Capitol Hill politics warfare. Rahm? Does he think with his gonads or his brain? Methinks that, like Obama, he’s more politician than legislator, and he probably didn’t recall that both Democrats and Republicans attended those intel meetings in 2002. But now it’s too late, the water is bloodied by Democrats and Republicans alike, and here we go:

Boehner is backing efforts by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, to release agency’s records of meetings with Congressional members from both parties.

The GOP is hoping to spotlight the fact that Pelosi and other Democrats raised few objections when told about details of the Bush administration “enhanced interrogations” of terror suspects.

“Congress and the American people deserve a full and complete set of facts about what information was yielded by CIA’s interrogation program, and they deserve to know which of their representatives in Congress were briefed about these techniques and the extent of those briefings,” says Boehner, backing Hoekstra’s letter to DNI Dennis Blair.

He adds: “To date, the administration has fallen short in providing this information.

Mr. Hoekstra’s request to Director Blair is straightforward, and the information he is seeking is essential. The American people have been provided an incomplete picture of exactly what intelligence was made available by the interrogation program. It is now the Administration’s responsibility to ensure they are given the full picture — including which members of Congress were briefed on the methods and how extensive those briefings were.”

EARLIER POST:

When one attempts to obsure, deflect, and outright prevaricate as much as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one can expect critics galore. And that’s just what’s happened. Politico‘s Glenn Thrush has been hammering Nancy hard. This article was published less than an hour ago:

“Pelosi playing defense on torture“:

Nancy Pelosi didn’t cry foul when the Bush administration briefed her on “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects in 2002, but her team was locked and loaded to counter hypocrisy charges when the “torture” memos were released last week.

Many Republicans obliged, led by former CIA chief Porter Goss, who is accusing Democrats like Pelosi of “amnesia” for demanding investigations in 2009 after failing to raise objections seven years ago when she first learned of the legal basis for the program.

Had President Obama and team THOUGHT through the blowback from their we’ll-have-it-both-ways approach to the torture memos, they’d have immediately realized the can of worms they were opening for members of their own party. Furthermore, Obama’s failure to look at the entire chessboard is endangering his other programs:

Pelosi finds herself on the defensive at a time when she needs to be on the offensive, pushing through a record-breaking budget, health care reform, a controversial cap-and-trade proposal and a supplemental funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Someone on Pelosi’s staff spoke anonymously to Thrush:

“As soon as the president made the decision to release [the memos], I was telling people that the Republicans were going to come after us, saying she knew about it and did nothing,” said an adviser to Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaking on condition of anonymity. “And I’m sure we’re going to get hammered again when they release all those new torture photos,” the person said.

Republicans are grateful for the gift:

But Pelosi’s allies were less prepared to confront the fallout from her convoluted answers during three sessions with reporters last week — answers that raised new questions and handed Republicans a fresh line of attack on a speaker at the height of her power.

“I’m puzzled, I don’t understand what she’s trying to say,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and currently the committee’s ranking minority member.

“I don’t have any sympathy for her — she’s the speaker of the House; there should be some accountability. She shouldn’t be given a pass,” added Hoekstra.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised to keep up the heat, telling reporters last week, “She and other leaders were fully briefed on all of these interrogation techniques. There’s nothing here that should surprise her.”

This next quote left me both flabbergasted and infuriated — because the Dems’ main concern seems to be how they appear in the media, not whether what Pelosi did and said are right or wrong:

“The Republicans may have won a news cycle, but we’re doing what we want to do,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly, pointing to Pelosi’s legislative successes during President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office.

Check Memeorandum.com for blog posts related to Thrush’s article.

For more on Nancy Pelosi’s modus operandi, see “On Pelosi’s Duplicity and Apparent Sandbagging of Elizabeth Warren.”

This attack piece proves how Pelosi and other Democratic leaders let Bush have his way with TARP and ceded ENORMOUS control to the Treasury Department. Now that Elizabeth Warren is analyzing and describing the real problems with TARP, Pelosi is maneuvering to cut her off at the knees. It’s quite a read.