“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.

According to CNN, when it comes to the passage of the new health care bill…

[Billy] Wharton, co-chair of the Socialist Party USA, sees no reason to celebrate. He’s seen people with bumper stickers and placards that call Obama a socialist, and he has a message for them: Obama isn’t a socialist. He’s not even a liberal.

“We didn’t see a great victory with the election of Barack Obama,” Wharton says, “and we certainly didn’t see our agenda move from the streets to the White House.”

Obama’s opponents have long described him as a socialist. But what do actual socialists think about Obama? Not much, says Wharton.

And here is where CNN shares a doozy and my second favorite line of the entire article. According to Mr. Wharton:

“He’s the president whose main goal is to protect the wealth of the richest 5 percent of Americans.”

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding !!!! Bingo! You win the prize. Corporate bailouts. Crony capitalism. “Too big to fail policies” that encourage Wall Street thugs who have been reckless to continue said behavior knowing they will get bailed out when they fail again. A health insurance plan to benefit Big Insurance and Big Phrma, bailing out mis-managed car companies….

Mr. Obama is a corporatist.

One of his biggest economic advisors is Austan Goolsbee (um, the guy who wants to privatize Social Security). I said it when President Bush was trying to do the same thing – do you want some of these Wall Street ganeffs (crooks) managing your hard earned dough and playing Ponzi schemes with your retirement?

The following should be of interest:

[Wharton] and others say the assertion that Obama is a socialist is absurd.

“It makes no rational sense. It clearly means that people don’t understand what socialism is.”

Definitions of socialism vary, but most socialists believe workers and consumers who are affected by economic institutions should own or control them.

Not all socialists, though, want to confiscate personal property. Democratic Socialists are more interested in protecting ordinary people from unregulated capitalism through regulation and progressive taxation.

Some of the socialist agenda is already part of American life, according to Wharton and others.

Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits — all reflect socialistic values, says Van Gosse, an associate professor of history at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who has researched socialist movements in the United States and Latin America.

The widely accepted notions of public education and Pell Grants for college students are socialistic in origin, Gosse says. They fit well with the socialistic premise that government should provide basic security from the cradle to the grave to all of its citizens, he says.

“We assert that education should not be left up to the private market — where those who can pay, get it and those who can’t, don’t get it,” Gosse says. “It’s a common good and in that sense it is a socialistic institution even if the U.S. remains a capitalist nation.”

Socialists are not happy with the recent 2,700 page health insurance reform bill…

They don’t applaud the passage of the recent health care bill either. They wanted a national “single-payer” health insurance plan with a government option. The bill that Obama championed didn’t have any of those features.

Wharton said the new health care bill only strengthens private health insurance companies. They get 32 million new customers and no incentive to change — something a socialist wouldn’t accept.

“Most of it was authored by the health care industry,” Wharton says. “I call it the corporate restructuring of health care.”

BINGO!! And in regard to The Obama administrations actions re the banks, just like Bush before him:

Other critics point to Obama’s Wall Street bailout — which actually had its roots in the Bush administration. Critics say it’s socialistic for government to assume control of private industry.

Frank Llewellyn, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, says the bailout had nothing to do with socialism.

Llewellyn says a socialist leader would have at least nationalized some of the troubled banks.

“He gave them [the banks] too much with no strings attached,” Llewellyn says. “Banks that were too big to fail are bigger, and they can still fail.”

How about Obama’s bailout of the Detroit auto industry? During the bailout, the federal government assumed partial ownership of General Motors.

“It’s not socialism,” Llewellyn says. “The mere fact that the government owns something or has a stake in it, doesn’t make it socialist. If that was true, you would say that we have a socialist army. The government owns the army.”

Here’s where it gets interesting:

Defining socialism is complex, Llewellyn says, but it starts with a simple goal: Socialists want to introduce democratic features into the economy to reduce inequality.

The economy has “to be run for the overall benefit of the entire population, not for the benefits of a very few people.”

By that measure, Obama’s economic policies are not socialist, he says.

Many here at NoQuarter have long maintained that Presidents Obama and Bush are mirror images of each other. Mr. Llewellyn’s comments go some distance in making that point.

A tea party member had this to say in response:

“The role of government is to provide a safe environment to conduct business, not to take from one and give to the other,” says Quagliaroli, a financial planner who lives in Woodstock, Georgia.

Quagliaroli was not persuaded by the arguments of other socialist leaders who reject the idea that Obama is a socialist.

“He’s just not socialist enough for them.”

Quagliaroli says he doesn’t like socialism because it breeds mediocrity and encourages people to “live on the dole.” Capitalism “breeds excellence” because it encourages initiative, he says.

I have likewise heard other heretofore compassionate people becoming judgmental over the lifestyles of others, particularly if they are reckless, since we are now going to have to subsidize them. If “spreading the wealth acround” means I have lived by the rules my whole life and now have to bail out those who haven’t — no, I don’t like that either.

And now we come to my favorite line in the entire article – this ought to have heads exploding all over the country:

The argument over Obama’s ideology may rage on, but at least one socialist says another prominent politician ought to be inserted into the debate.

Llewellyn, the national director of the Democratic Socialists of America, says he was struck by one player in the 2008 presidential elections who displayed more socialistic leanings than Obama.

This candidate raised taxes on the big oil companies, and sent the revenue to the people.

If you want to learn something about spreading the wealth, Llewellyn says, don’t look to Obama.

“To be honest, the most socialist candidate in the 2008 election was Sarah Palin.”

Hmmm. Well, at least that gives the lie to lefties claiming Sarah Palin is some sort of reactionary.

I think the reason so many keep calling President Obama a socialist is that they don’t know how to term his political philosophy. Perhaps because the only one he seems to have is the one that is going to get him re-elected – namely putting money in the pockets of the groups who have the most dough to spend on his campaign.

His supporters didn’t want to admit it, but he got more money from Wall Street than any other candidate. Fannie and Freddie, Unions, Big Insurance, Big Phrma likewise helped put him over the top – burying all comers in an avalanche of money. His policies most seem to benefit them. Not us. Even the rumblings we are hearing about proposed regulatory reform in the banking industry leave me doubtful anything will be imposed that has real teeth. This health care plan was more or less written by insurance companies for their own benefit. How can we believe anything else that comes out of this administration is going to be for the benefit of those on the street?

Frankly, I’m not sure what name to give what is coming out of this White House but it sure seems to continue the idea that an elite few create policies that most benefit themselves, and we are told to sit down, shut up and take what’s left over.

What would you call it?

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.

President Obama should just join the cast of “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!” It’s not that farfetched; he’s been on everything else….(snip) …there’s a fine line between being transparent and being overexposed. Every time you turn on the TV, there’s Obama. He’s getting a puppy! He’s eating a cheeseburger with Joe Biden! …(snip) I get it: You love being on TV. I love my bong, but I take it out of my mouth every once in a while. The other day, I caught myself saying to a friend, “Don’t tell me if he’s fixed the economy yet, I’m Tivo-ing it.”
(snip)
You’re the president, not a rerun of “Law and Order.” Save some charisma for a rainy day. Taking strangers from a TV show on a tour of your house? We have that show; it’s called “Cribs.” And letting reporters ask you questions like “You like to be the one who picks out the shaving cream, don’t you?” Or as it’s called today, “journalism.” I was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt until I saw him take Brian Williams into his bedroom, and at the end of the bed there was a teleprompter and it said, “Who’s your daddy?”

…we see your name in the paper a lot, but we’re kind of wondering when you’re actually going to do something.

Are ya’ kiddin’ me, Bill? We’ve been saying this for two years! But it took YOU two years of idol worship to finally find a halfway coherent moment? Mr. Maher, snarky as ever, states:

Remember during the campaign when John McCain attacked Obama for acting like a celebrity and we all laughed at the grumpy old shellshocked fool? Well, it turns out he was right. Sorry, senator. I’m sending a nice gift basket of high-fiber muffins your way.

Well, no, Bill. WE didn’t laugh at Senator McCain because WE didn’t find him grumpy, old or shell-shocked. YOU did. WE knew he was spot on the money. And Hillary Clinton was also spot on the money when she said:

“Senator McCain and I bring a lifetime of service, Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

But you were so busy trashing her on your show every week, it never once occurred to you to appreciate the work she had actually done in her career standing up for those who needed help. And the list is long. As much bashing as Secretary Clinton took during the grueling eighteen month campaign, and as happy as you were to chime in, did you not for once admire her toughness in being able to handle it all with such grace, class and fortitude. She’s a fighter. Don’t you think that quality would have been nice to have, particularly in light of your next comments about President Obama:

“…[W]hen I read about how you sat on the sidelines while bailed-out banks used the money we gave them to hire lobbyists who got Congress to stop homeowners from getting renegotiated loans, or how Congress is already giving up on healthcare reform, or how scientists say it’s essential to reduce CO2 by 40% in 10 years, but your own bill calls for 4%, I say, enough with the character development, let’s get on with the plot.

And let’s stop worrying so much about doing anything that might tarnish the brand. See, this is why I don’t want my president to be a TV star: Because TV stars are too worried about being popular — and too concerned with getting renewed.
(snip)
Obama needs to start putting it on the line in fights against the banks, the energy companies and the healthcare industry. I never thought I’d say this, but he needs to be more like George W. Bush. Bush was all about, “You’re with us or against us.”
Obama’s more like, “You’re either with us, or you obviously need to see another picture of this adorable puppy!”

Bush had horrible ideas, …[t]he point is, he didn’t care if it made him unpopular with every human on the planet not named Cletus or Fred Barnes. Which it did.
And we need to marry the good ideas Obama really believes in with that Bush attitude and Bush certitude.”

I’m afraid you’re missing the point, Mr. Maher, as are most of his die hard supporters. President Obama doesn’t have moral certitude about anything but popularity polls and his TelePrompTer. How would you like the man to attack a problem with certitude? He has never exhibited any throughout his entire career. Believe me, this is not about insulting the President. Frankly I am beyond it, or worrying about it. This is about logic and common sense. So, for the one thousandth time: You can’t know what you don’t know.

Throughout President Obama’s career as a State Senator, with 130 “present” votes and six “wrong” votes, his missing over 40% of his votes in the U.S. Senate, dodging politically risky votes, or voting several times to fund Bush’s war, he has shown a proclivity NOT to lose. His career is no accident. Every move is deliberately and painstakingly plotted out to piss off as few people as possible before actually winning the office of the Presidency.

We never saw him willing to go to the mat for anything. He promised to use public financing and reneged. Moreover, there was no principle or legislation for which he was willing to “go down fighting.” He promised a filibuster on FISA and reneged. Believe me, had he staged that filibuster, it would have been the Senate session heard ‘round the world. Imagine him, sans teleprompter, fighting the good fight till he ran out of spit. You know what, Hillary would have taken over for him and helped out while he caught his wind – because she voted correctly on that bill. That’s the difference between a leader with guts and a “reader.”

If the man’s forte has always been giving speeches, without any governing and precious little legislative experience, if he had not heretofore exhibited leadership on any cause, except talking about it, what potion did you imagine he could ingest on Inauguration Day that would magically endow him with powers he had never previously exhibited? I always appreciated SoS Clinton and Senator McCain because we have the empirical evidence to indicate they had the courage to stand alone and fight. I knew they were both capable of it. Sir, from what mysterious inner reserve did you think Barack Obama would draw this strong character you are so vehemently exhorting him to show now?

You conclude with:

I’m glad that Obama is president, but the “Audacity of Hope” part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity.

Even in your diatribe, you pepper your article with how much you like him and how glad you are that he is in office, as if to apologize for the fact that you dare to criticize “The One.” Frankly, Mr. Maher, this is the first time in two years when you should NOT be apologizing because your criticisms are the first sensible words I’ve heard from you in regards to President Obama.

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?”

[...]

Every business and organization is ultimately a reflection of its people. To that end, the depth and quality of the people are the single greatest factors in the long term success of the organization.

Any individual or organization would relish developing a system that generates untold success and then automates the process. Neither business nor life works that way. Change is constant. How organizations proactively stay ahead of change and respond to change is paramount in succeeding in business and life.

The best sports organizations have developed a deep bench of talent both on and off the field. When players or executives leave – as they always do – the general manager moves another body in and the team does not miss a beat. The same scenario occurs in the best companies. This transition process is part of the culture of the organization.

Regrettably, we do not have enough change in the halls of Congress. The power of incumbency has created an odor due to the stagnation in key personnel turnover. The same stagnation is prevalent at many weak organizations. As a result, a strong “bench” with the ability to adapt is lacking.

What happens when an organization such as the federal government intersects with failed or failing enterprises also without a deep bench? The failed approach is multiplied. Welcome to the world of finance 2009.

With all due respect, the best people want to work for the best organizations. Failed enterprises (Citi, AIG, Freddie, Fannie, GM, Chrysler) have not developed a culture which attracts the depth and breadth of talent necessary to adapt to change. Additionally, failed policies are not scrapped but are managed. Failure begets failure.

Attracting qualified executives into these organizations to manage businesses that are for sale or on life support is extremely difficult. Secretary Geithner asserts in an FT article, U.S. Prepared to Oust Bank Chiefs:

Tim Geithner warned on Sunday that the US government would consider ousting board members at American banks as a condition for giving the institutions “exceptional” assistance in the future.

The Treasury secretary said the Obama administration would be prepared to force out senior management to protect US taxpayers, and ensure accountability, as a condition for providing money to help banks restructure. “If, in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we’ll make sure that assistance comes with conditions,” Mr Geithner told CBS television.

While I have no interest in supporting executives or boards that have literally driven their companies and our economy into the ditch, I also have little interest in supporting government officials and regulatory bodies that were in the passenger seat at the time.

While Turbo-Tim and Barack are polishing up the “Under New Management” signs, I wonder if we might be better off calling in the Board of Health and shutting them down. How about “Condemned: Filled with Toxic Assets.“ On the other side of the building we should tack up, “STAY AWAY: MORAL HAZARD!!”

Another name for this process . . . Capitalism.

LD

Why do these games remind me of our current banking system? The similarities are scary. Let’s access the most recent piece from John Mauldin’s site to “view the games.”

Mauldin’s guest, John Hussman, comments on these various “games” (TALF, PPIP, TARP, FDIC, FASB), in which taxpayers bear the brunt of the risk in the government’s engagement with financial institutions. Hussman writes of the PPIP:

this is a recipe for the insolvency of the FDIC and an attempt to bail out bank bondholders using funds that have not even been allocated by Congress. The whole plan is a bureaucratic abuse of the FDIC’s balance sheet, which exists to protect ordinary depositors, not bank bondholders.

In regard to the FASB’s relaxation of the mark-to-market accounting rule for financial institutions:

the irresponsibly rosy assumptions built into these models have been a large contributor to this near-insolvency, because they virtually ignored foreclosure risks.

Whether via the TALF, PPIP, or FDIC sales, the transferral of toxic assets to private investors will ultimately only have one outcome and that will be :

the public will suffer the losses that would otherwise have been properly taken by the banks’ own bondholders. You can tinker with the accounting rules all you want, and it won’t make the banks solvent. It may improve “reported” earnings for a spell, but as investors who care about the stream of future cash flows that will actually be delivered to us over time, it is clear that modifying the accounting rules doesn’t create value. It simply increases the likelihood that financial institutions will quietly go insolvent. I recognize that the accounting changes may reduce the immediate need for regulatory action, since banks will be able to pad their Tier 1 capital with false hope. But we have done nothing to abate foreclosures, and we are just about to begin a huge reset cycle for Alt-A’s and option-ARMs. As the underlying mortgages go into foreclosure, it will ultimately become impossible to argue that the toxic assets would be worth much even in an “orderly transaction.”

In a slightly different version of the game – and in attempt to attract more players, if not necessarily truly new money – the government is considering allowing the sellers of toxic assets to also be buyers. How does that version of the game work? The sellers (Citi, BofA, JP Morgan, et al):

can put up a few percent of their own money, and swap each other’s toxic assets financed by a bewildered public suddenly bearing more than 90% of the downside risk. The “investors” in this happy “public-private partnership” keep half the upside while ordinary Americans take the downside off of their hands. Some partnership.

The NYC sidewalk games of chance are best played outside so we need to make sure the weather is good. In a similar fashion, for the government’s games to work it helps if the weather, that being the economy, is improving. Well, the difference between partly cloudy and partly sunny is all in how you look at it. In a similar fashion, regarding consumer spending:

analysts have noted that year-over-year consumer spending has only declined very slightly, hailing this as evidence that economic concerns are overblown. The difficulty is that consumer spending has never declined on a year-over-year basis, except in this downturn, so that slight decline is actually the worst showing for consumer spending in the available data.

Games of chance can be fun; however, if an individual is spending money he does not have, the risks grow exponentially. To wit, Hussman summarizes:

I have no idea how long investors will remain enthusiastic about trillion dollar band-aids and eroding the integrity of our accounting rules. I do know that at the end of the day, what matters is the long-term stream of deliverable cash flows that investors can actually expect to reach their hands. It’s exactly that consideration that makes it clear that we will sink deeper into this crisis until we observe debt restructuring on a large scale. If we don’t restructure the debt, the debt will fail, because for many borrowers, the cash flows aren’t there, and it is not possible to service the debt on existing terms.

When my “old man” encouraged me to “hustle” and “take some chances,” I am not so sure this is what he had in mind.

LD

Pirate Bankers Rising.

Francesco Guerrera, FT, reported to my financial roundtable on the show, Sunday 5, that the bankers are preparing to game the junk assets on their books.  Here is the part of the scheme that I like best so far:  The banks have discovered that the Tim Geithner plan called PPIP provides that the federal government will contribute 85% of the purchase price of the toxic waste on the books of the now insolvent banks regardless of who bids on the junk.   Let the games begin.

Let us stipulate that the bidders are going to pay top dollar for the junk asset.  If the bank that holds it claims it is worth 80 cents on the dollar (and even if you know it is worth well under 33 cents on the dollar), you still bid 80 cents.  This means that if Citi bids on $10.00 of Chase’s junk — and is willing to pay full value — Citi puts up $1.50 and the feds put up $8.50.  Simple.  Now why would Citi want to pay even $1.50 for junk that is possibly worthless and will certainly be impossible to price candidly?  Two reasons:

 1.  Because Chase is meanwhile buying Goldman’s and Goldman’s is buying Citi’s, in a daisy chain of junk buying and selling, all underwritten by the feds at 85% of the costs; and

2.  Because it gets the junk off each bank’s books and so makes their stocks rally, since the reason they are undesireable to investors is that they cannot now price their junk for sale nor find any buyers at any price.

Once the junk is gone, the lone problem the banks have is the $1.5o they each put at risk.   (Not now exploring the high probability that the banks have formed third party entities with hedge funds to buy a ton of calls on the bank in order to profit when the junkless stock rallies.)  From Businessweek.com:

BESIDES: I can’t believe how the rightwing has walked right into Obama’s set-up, his favorite play with the magician’s “sleight of hand” to distract people, to keep the rightwing obsessing about brown people in Mexico causing WAR (!) in the U.S., while three months ago it was barely on the radar. Yes, Hillary is taking the problem seriously, but she is also taking hundreds of situations around the world equally as seriously. She’s really been to 11 countries already, and is going to her 12th next week. The woman WORKS at her job. She looks like she never sleeps and like she’s lost 10-15 lbs. Check out the State Dept.’s blog. She gets more done in one day than Obama in a week. (And don’t miss Amy’s and Ani’s stories today on Hillary.)

Meanwhile, Obama is picking the pockets of every American, including the rightwingers’ pockets, through his VBF Timmy Geithner’s plan: See our toxic assets plan articles here at NoQuarterUSA. All while O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Fox 24/7, Anderson Cooper, CNN are consumed with brown people’s violence — reporting stories that describe torture, kidnapping, and murders (and they know that viewers love stories with lots of gore, mayhem and violence). Meanwhile, Timmy Geithner bypasses the Constitution, Congress, and the American people with a $1 trillion plan to feed each of his rich buddies hundreds of millions for a one-way bet on toxic assets, with taxpayers left holding the bag every time. I have a question: How can one man, on the job less than two months, get to decide to spend $1 trillion without Americans’ approval via their elected representatives in Congress? (Call your reps. immediately!)

I almost forgot. Here’s the debate about Hillary:

[U]nder the Geithner-Summers plan the loan is precisely designed to be a one-way bet, for the purpose of overpricing the toxic asset in order to bail out the bank’s shareholders at hidden cost to the taxpayers.

People must scream to the high heavens about the the toxic assets plan, not the AIG bonuses. The plan costs incalculably more, and unfairly rewards plutocrats while stealing hard-earned taxes paid by lower- and middle-classes and small businesses (the “underclass”) neglected by 0bama and Geithner.

Readers, this is where YOUR rubber meets the road. Now is the time when we prove if we can get it or, sigh, that we can only comprehend simpleton issues like the AIG bonuses. Populist anger only shakes things up IF it’s focused on what truly matters. You can be sure Obama/Geithner/Summers loved the distracting AIG bonus outrage whilst they launched this far more costly, undemocratic plan to reward their filthy rich pals while further pauperizing the rest of us.

Although the toxic assets plan can require some explanation, you can tell people that:

1) Taxpayers bear the burden and investors carry no risk except their own investment — that even though they get government money six-plus times their own investment, they bear NO responsibility if their venture fails;

2) The toxic assets plan rewards only plutocrats, not the U.S. government or its taxpayers (barring a miracle if toxic assets sell high); and

3) The same long unregulated, irrationally wild gamblers who created our crisis will benefit the most financially.

NOW, here’s another world-famous economics expert, JEFFREY SACHS, who is as correct as Paul Krugman. From today’s Financial Times, in “Obama’s bank plan could rob the taxpayer“:

The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value. It is dressed up as a market transaction but that is a fig-leaf, since the government will put in 90 per cent or more of the funds and the “price discovery” process is not genuine. It is no surprise that stock market capitalisation of the banks has risen about 50 per cent from the lows of two weeks ago. Taxpayers are the losers, even as they stand on the sidelines cheering the rise of the stock market. It is their money fuelling the rally, yet the banks are the beneficiaries.

The plan’s essence is to use government off-budget money to overpay for banks’ toxic assets, perhaps by a factor of two or more. This is done by creating a one-way bet for private-sector bidders for the toxic assets, then cynically calling it “private sector price discovery”. Consider a simple example: a toxic asset with face value of $1m pays off fully with probability of 20 per cent and pays off $200,000 with probability of 80 per cent. A risk-neutral investor would pay $360,000 for this asset.

Along comes the government and says it will finance 90 per cent of the investor’s purchase and, moreover, do so as a non-recourse loan. Non-recourse means the government’s loan is backed only by the collateral value of the toxic asset itself. If the pay-out is low, the loan is defaulted and the government ends up with the low pay-out rather than full repayment of the loan.

Now the investor is prepared to bid $714,000 (with rounding) for the same asset. The investor uses $71,000 of his/her own money and $643,000 of the government loan. If the asset pays off in full, the investor repays the loan, with a profit of $357,000. This happens 20 per cent of the time, so brings an expected profit of $71,000. The other 80 per cent of the time the investor defaults on the loan, and the government ends up with $200,000. The investor just breaks even by bidding $714,000, as we would expect in a competitive auction.

Of course, the investor has systematically overpaid by $354,000 (the bid price of $714,000 minus the market value of $360,000), reflecting the investor’s right to default on the loan in the event of a poor pay-out of the toxic asset. The overpayment equals the expected loss of the government loan. After all, 80 per cent of the time (in this example) the government loses $443,000 (the $643,000 loan minus the $200,000 repayment). The expected loss is 80 per cent of $443,000, equal to $354,000.

The idea of “private sector price discovery” is therefore flim-flam. There would be price discovery if the government’s loan had to be repaid whether or not the asset paid off in full. In that case, the investor would bid $360,000. But under the Geithner-Summers plan the loan is precisely designed to be a one-way bet, for the purpose of overpricing the toxic asset in order to bail out the bank’s shareholders at hidden cost to the taxpayers. …

You must read all of the Financial Times‘s “Obama’s bank plan could rob the taxpayer” by Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

READ and MEMORIZE this closing paragraph of Sach’s op-ed:

Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, director of the White House national economic council, suspect that they cannot go back to Congress to fund their plan and so are raiding the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the remaining Tarp funds, hoping that there will be little public understanding and little or no congressional scrutiny. This is an inappropriate institutional use of the Fed, the FDIC and the Tarp. Mr Geithner and Mr Summers should at the very least explain the true risks of large losses by the government under their plan. Then, a properly informed Congress and public could decide whether to adopt this plan or some better alternative.

We have THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT for a reason. Duh. One of the reasons is to keep the Executive Branch from calling the shots or from STEALING from taxpayers to REWARD their own friends.

I quibble with Mr. Sachs in that I do not wish to hear Mssrs. Geithner’s and Summers’ explanations that will obfuscate the essential problems with the plan (exposed by Mssrs. Krugman and Sachs) and just end up confusing Americans.

This is why our Forefathers protected the Fourth Estate, through which we occasionally get good, factually- and reality-based information we can use to evaluate our government and its leaders. We all lament the state of the media, but it is still, for now, publishing the likes of Krugman and Sachs who dare to tell us the truth.

Mr. Sachs, you and Paul Krugman have done an outstanding job of explaining this massive and undemocratic theft of the underclasses’ money. NOW it is up to US to all call our Representatives and Senators and demand 1) Hearings, and 2) Legislation to disallow Mssrs. Geithner and Summers from “picking our pockets” and bankrupting the United States of America.

::::::::::::::::::::::

WHO’S WHO:

1) Timothy F. Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury;
2) Lawrence Summers is the director of the White House national economic council; and
3) Barack Obama is the president of the United States who is working on his bowling game except when he practices with his teleprompter.

“Me love you long, long time,” whisper the prostitutes Geithner, Summers, and Obama — telling us what we want to hear — as they slyly slip a drug in our drinks as they pleasure us with seductive talk and acts, but then empty our wallets while we’re passed out.

UPDATE: Run over to CNN and listen to Senate investment hearing. (C-Span3 is only carrying BO’s live townhall b.s.) BTW: Geithner is testifying before Franks’ House committee, but I can’t find live video. Can you? The WaPo is live-blogging Geithner’s testimony. Here’s Geithner’s prepared testimony.

Mar. 25 – U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner caused a ruckus in foreign exchange markets after conflicting comments on the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

His comments follow a growing European backlash against parts the Obama administration’s economic revival strategy. Speakers: Mirek Topolanek, prime minister, Czech Republic; Meg Browne, senior currency analyst, Brown Brother Harriman Conway Gittens reports from New York

So much for Obama’s vaunted promise, his fevered supporters told us, to bring peace and cooperation amongst nations of the world. How could he? THEY know he doesn’t know what he’s doing:

Look. I know this is a lot of material. But if we’re going to get this stuff, if we’re going to be able to call our members of Congress and sound informed, we have to learn all this to be convincing. Someday soon, we’ll be talking to more and more shaken Obama supporters who’re waking up, maybe, and we’ll need to explain this all to them.

BELOW, you and I time-travel back to March 2008, to the sweltering primaries, to Hillary and Barack battling the “brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting art” of presidential primaries warfare. There, we see economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, in March 2008, sizing up and dressing down Barack Obama: “Why has Mr. Obama stumbled when it comes to economic issues?” (And has anything changed, or has he learned anything, in one short year?)

First, here’s the Nobel Laureate as a blunt instrument hammering the plan on PBS’s Charlie Rose Monday (March 23rd) for “an update on the economy with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Paul Krugman and Joe Nocera.” Krugman’s condemnation of Geithner’s recycled-from-Paulson “zombie” plan is stunning:

Paul. You’re the man. You nailed it yesterday. And, Paul, one year and 16 days ago (March 8, 2008), you had it all figured out:

Why has Mr. Obama stumbled when it comes to economic issues? Well, on health care — which is closely tied to overall concerns about financial security — there is a clear, substantive difference between the candidates, with the Clinton plan being significantly stronger.

More broadly, I suspect that the Obama mystique — his carefully created image as a transformational, even transcendent figure — has created a backlash among those unconvinced that he’s interested in the nuts-and-bolts work of fixing things.

Ohio voters were more likely to say that Mr. Obama inspires them — but more likely to say that Mrs. Clinton has a clear plan for the country’s problems.

And Mr. Obama’s attempt to win over workers by portraying himself as a fierce critic of Nafta looked, and was, deeply insincere — an appearance particularly costly for a candidate who tries to seem above politics as usual.

Isn’t that remarkable. Paul predicted — perfectly — the central problems of an Obama presidency:

1. A lack of interest in the “nuts-and-bolts work of fixing things”; and
2. A lack of sincerity — in fact, he comes across as “deeply insincere.”

That sums it up for me. The major question is why the hard left, which had adored Paul Krugman for years, turned on him immediately when he dared to criticize Obama as unreal and disinterested in WORKING at governance.

Hell, during the Tuesday night press conference, he didn’t even want to be bothered with working at explaining what he’s not doing.

Here’s a second segment from Charlie Rose’s show Monday night. “The economy continued with Daniel Alpert is a managing director of Westwood Captial and Thomas F Steyer is Co-Managing Partner of Farallon Capital Management.”

FOR INVETERATE READERS ONLY: Boy, if you want to see some historic predictions made, glance through our archives from Spring 2008 on the primary battles involving Hillary, Barack and John (Edwards), and Paul Krugman’s and our commentaries on all three.

Paul Krugman had Obama pegged, and so did we at No Quarter.

And, you know, we’re not pleased that we’re correct. For the sake of this country, we wish we had been wrong.

But you can’t take a guy who’s never worked hard at anything — except campaigning so he can win something — and turn him into an intense, involved chief executive of the most powerful nation on earth and in history.

The guy either has the work ethic, or he doesn’t.

This guy doesn’t.

Worse than his laziness are his disinterest and his disconnectedness. Which showed during the March 24th press conference, as he got restless and his answers became more and more mechanical, and it was clear he wanted to be anywhere but there because the reporters’ questions bored him. It’s hard, make that impossible, to work hard at anything if you don’t care.

The guy either has the passion, or he doesn’t.

Most certainly, they cannot be feigned. Every sentient American has the sniff and scratch ability to detect a FRAUD.

P.S. Unless they wear rose-colored glasses, but those people don’t count because they’re hopelessly clueless, and rational dialogue is impossible until they rehabilitate themselves and rediscover their critical thinking capabilities.