‘Obama Lied, Jobs Died’

Where Are the Cries of ‘Obama Lied, Jobs Died’?
His and his administration’s whoppers are super-sized, yet the press still focuses on Bush.

from Pajamas Media.com
May 21, 2009
by Tom Blumer

In mid-February, I identified several clear fibs and pathetic straw-man arguments that Barack Obama and his teleprompters (not necessarily in that order) employed in four statements he made at his first presidential briefing and at an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana, earlier that day.

It is now painfully clear that Obama and his apparatchiks have entered an arena many thought Bill Clinton and his crew had all to themselves.

Admission to this very exclusive club requires the repeated ability to get through the Three Steps of Super-Sized Lying with most of your perceived credibility somehow still intact:

1.The president and his administration must have the nerve to state what they know is an obvious falsehood without betraying any hint that he or they realize it is false, and in a way that causes virtually all who hear it to instinctively believe it.

2.Sadly, more often than not, Step 1 is enough, because the second step requires actual follow-up by someone who heard it. That someone has to discover, document, and prove beyond doubt that the statement or contention made by the president or his administration is not true.

3.Sometimes Step 2 occurs, but the truth-teller’s proof gets little or no attention. But if it does, the third step requires the president and his administration to cling to their guns, so to speak, using a variety of tactics that effectively amount to saying, “Who are you going to believe, us or the irrefutable evidence?”

Critics can say what they will about George W. Bush’s accomplishments or lack thereof, but if they’re honest — an unfortunately dubious proposition — they’ll have to admit that he and his administration almost never engaged in the three-step process to which this administration is virtually addicted.

If you look at what the Left continues to insist are Bush’s five biggest “lies,” you’ll realize that he and his administration never even got to Step 1, let alone the rest of the Three Steps of Super-Sized Lying:

Most crucially, there is the assertion that there were weapons of mass destruction in pre-war Iraq. Critically, the Left’s claim has been and still is that “there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Please note that the critics’ claim was not “no stockpiles,” “no large caches,” or “only a few.” Their claim, frequently stated to great applause, was that there were none, with no exceptions, no qualifications, and no redefinitions. But the truth is that there were WMDs in Iraq … (This brief pause has been provided so lefties can pick their brainwashed jaws off the floor.) … Heck, I knew that in 2005. Later evidence proved that WMDs were really, officially there. What’s more, in November 2006, a New York Times article acknowledged the existence of a report showing that “[Saddam] Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.” As Ed Morrissey described it at the time, “Saddam [was] far ahead of Iran in the nuclear pursuit, … [making] it much more urgent to take some definitive action against Saddam before he could build and deploy it.” Oh, and I almost forgot about the 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can be refined into nuclear weapons or nuclear fuel.” History will have to tell us why the hapless Bush crew didn’t defend itself against the Left’s long-since-refuted lie.
The supposedly infamous “sixteen words” (”The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”) that made Joe Wilson a temporary media darling were and still are not only true, but doubly so.
Bush never said that the threat from Iraq was “imminent.”

The worst that can validly be said about the “Mission Accomplished” celebration in May 2003 is that it was overconfident; it doesn’t change the fact Saddam’s ouster had indeed been achieved.
Finally, the hope expressed by Dick Cheney in 2002 that “my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators” was just that — a hopeful prediction.

None of the above items from the Bush era qualifies as a “lie” as any normal person who recognizes that intent is the key would define the word.

By contrast, there is no legitimate doubt that Barack Obama and his administration are serving up super-sized whoppers with a complete absence of shame. Here are just a few of the more egregious:

In February, Obama, in a Peoria, Illinois, visit, said in a speech that Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens had told him the previous day that “if Congress passes our [stimulus] plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.” The truth is that Owens “told Obama he could rehire people if a ‘responsible stimulus bill is passed and the economy gets going again.’”

Who do you believe, Barack Obama or a CEO and the congressman who later spoke with Mr. Owens?

On May 11, Obama and the administration claimed that executives and representatives of major health care providers agreed that they could wring major cost savings out of the medical system in the next 10 years on the road to a supposedly affordable government-run system that would save the government up to $2 trillion. Within days, health care officials denied there were any detailed promises, saying that “they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts.” Who do you believe, Obama or the others at the conference?

On the day of government-run Chrysler’s bankruptcy filing, Obama and his car guys told a bipartisan group of political leaders that the bankruptcy “will not disrupt the lives of the people who work at Chrysler or the communities that depend on it.” Those who heard it reasonably took that statement to mean that no plants would permanently close. At least two congresspersons issued press releases to that effect. On May 1, government-run Chrysler announced that it would close plants in Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Obama lied; jobs died. Who do you believe, Team Obama or a bipartisan group of politicians?

That the “Bush lied” crowd and the establishment media (but I repeat myself) are so quiet while Obama’s patent falsehoods go virtually unchallenged tells you all you need to know about whose side they are on — and it’s not the side containing the truth.

Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com.
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Gulp: U.S. to lose AAA debt rating?

from Hot Air.com
May 22, 2009
by Allahpundit

I guess my question would be, if we haven’t lost it already, how fantastically huge would our annual deficits have to be before we do lose it? $3 trillion? $4 trillion?

Something for Obama to shoot for now that national health care’s on the way.

“It’s very important that this Congress and this president put in place policies that will bring those deficits down to a sustainable level over the medium term,” Geithner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television yesterday. He added that the target is reducing the gap to about 3 percent of gross domestic product, from a projected 12.9 percent this year.

The dollar extended declines today after Treasuries and American stocks slumped on concern the U.S. government’s debt rating may at some point be lowered. Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. “eventually” will lose its AAA grade…

It’s “critically important” to bring down the American deficit, Geithner said.

It’s “critically important,” and by The One’s own admission our debt is “unsustainable,” and yet his two attempts at reducing spending thus far produced an initial budget cut of .0029% followed by a further cut of roughly one-half of one percent, later cannibalized by an upward revision in spending. Believe it or not, S&P was sounding alarms about America’s debt rating eight months ago, after the financial crisis first hit and Bush dumped $85 billion in AIG’s lap. Trillions of dollars in bailouts and stimulus later, with enormous new entitlements on the way, the problem’s considerably worse — and yet The One’s defenders insist there’s technically zero risk of a lower rating because the U.S. could simply print more money to pay off its debt and avert any looming default. Which, as far as I understand, means we’re facing the following choice eventually: Either increase the monetary supply to meet our obligations and risk massive inflation, or refuse to meet our obligations and suffer a lower debt rating, thereby triggering even more massive deficits. What am I missing here?

Fortunately, The One has a super secret plan by which nationalizing health care will actually bring down spending, so let’s look forward to that.
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Fund Managers Burned by Obama will avoid lending to unionized companies

Fund Managers Burned by Obama Now Say They Are Wary
from Bloomberg.com
By Caroline Salas
May 20, 2009

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Hedge fund manager George Schultze says he may avoid lending to any more unionized companies after being burned by President Barack Obama in Chrysler LLC’s bankruptcy.

Obama put Chrysler under court protection on April 30 after lenders balked at a proposal giving them about 29 cents on the dollar for their $6.9 billion in debt. The investors said the president’s plan favored a union retiree medical fund whose claims ranked behind them for repayment. It was offered a 55 percent equity stake in the automaker.

Pacific Investment Management Co., Barclays Capital and Fridson Investment Advisors have joined Schultze Asset Management LLC in saying lenders may be unwilling to back unionized companies with underfunded pension and medical obligations, such as airlines and auto-industry suppliers, because Chrysler’s creditors failed to block Obama’s move. The reluctance may put additional pressure on borrowers seeking capital in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

“Lenders will have to figure out how to price this risk,” Schultze, 39, said in a telephone interview from his office in Purchase, New York. “The obvious one is: Don’t lend to a company with big legacy liabilities or demand a much higher rate of interest because you may be leapfrogged in a bankruptcy.”

Dissident Lenders

Schultze, whose firm had about $247.7 million under management in February, according to a regulatory filing, declined to disclose which company debt he may avoid.

He was among the last holdouts. The dissident lenders to the Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker -- including OppenheimerFunds Inc. and Perella Weinberg Capital Management LP, both in New York -- caved after Obama blamed hedge fund “speculators” for the bankruptcy of the 83-year-old car company and said he stood with its employees.

At its peak, the group consisted of 30 funds holding more than $1 billion, according to Tom Lauria of White & Case LLP, the investors’ attorney, who is based in Miami and New York.

“Anything that involves a large number of jobs or affects a large number of people, you can expect to see a Chrysler redux,” Jerry del Missier, president of Barclays Capital, said in an interview from his New York office. “One of the consequences here is the so-called speculators, people who provide financing, will think twice about getting involved.”

Barclays Plc, based in London, is the third-biggest U.K. bank.

‘Rights Were Trashed’

Jack Welch, former chief executive officer of General Electric Co., criticized how the government handled Chrysler’s bankruptcy, saying unions were favored at the expense of creditors.

“I didn’t like the terms,” Welch, 73, said in an interview yesterday at the Boston Convention Center. “The creditors’ rights were trashed and the unions got 55 percent of the company.”
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Obamanomics: Fed's economic forecast worsens

Central bank now expects unemployment to rise to a range of 9.2% to 9.6% this year. Fed also predicts a sharper decline in GDP than it had forecast in January

By Chris Isidore
CNNMoney.com
May 20, 2009

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The Federal Reserve's latest forecasts for the U.S. economy are gloomier than the ones released three months earlier, with an expectation for higher unemployment and a steeper drop in economic activity.

The Fed's forecasts, released as part of the minutes from its April meeting, show that its staff now expects the unemployment rate to rise to between 9.2% and 9.6% this year. The central bank had forecast in January that the jobless rate would be in a range of 8.5% to 8.8%, but the unemployment rate topped that in April, hitting 8.9%.

The Fed also now expects the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic activity, to post a drop of between 1.3% and 2% this year. It had previously expected only a 0.5% to 1.3% decline.

At the April meeting, the Fed decided to once again leave its key federal funds rate near 0%, a level it has been at since last December. The central bank also announced that it did not plan on increasing purchasing more long-term Treasury notes anytime soon.

The Fed disclosed plans to begin buying $300 billion's worth of such Treasurys in March in order to try and keep long-term rates down and boost economic activity.

But according to the minutes, some members of the central bank's policy committee indicated they were open to increasing its purchases of Treasury notes and mortgage securities as a way of spurring more lending.

Treasury prices rallied after the minutes were released, pushing their yield, which moves in the opposite direction, down to 3.18%.

Stocks, which have moved sharply higher during the past two months on hopes that the recession may soon be ending, fell Wednesday afternoon.

According to the minutes, Fed members did indicate they expected GDP to increase slightly in the second half of this year. However, it would not be enough to overcome the anticipated declines in the first half. GDP shrunk more than 6% in the first quarter.

Policymakers acknowledged that there were some better economic readings in the period leading up to the April meeting, but added that they were not convinced the economy was out of the woods yet.

In the minutes, Fed members indicated that there are a number of factors that "would be likely to restrain the pace of economic recovery over the medium term" and added that the credit crunch would "recede only gradually" and that "households would likely remain cautious" in their spending.

Fed members expressed concerns about rising problems in the commercial real estate market as well, indicating that this could cause further problems for financial institutions still struggling with the effects of the collapse of home prices and rising mortgage defaults.

The Fed also reduced its GDP targets for 2010 and 2011, but the central banks still expects the economy to grow in both years.
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Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’ - Then why did you just triple it?

By Roger Runningen and Hans Nichols
from Bloomberg.com

President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”

Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.

Two weeks ago, the president proposed $17 billion in budget cuts, with plans to eliminate or reduce 121 federal programs. Republicans ridiculed the amount, saying that it represented one-half of 1 percent of the entire budget. They noted that Obama is seeking an $81 billion increase in other spending.

‘Beginning to Turn’

“We’ve got a long way to go before we put this recession behind us,” Obama said. “But we do know that the gears of our economy, our economic engine, are slowly beginning to turn.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Roger Runningen in Albuquerque at rrunningen@bloomberg.net; Hans Nichols in Washington at =1871 or hnichols2@bloomberg.net
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Gone With The Wind - A Classic Starring Barack Obama

image by Rees

What movie goers have said:

"An Epic Movie about romance and dirty money"

"You'll laugh, you'll cry. Well, mostly cry"

"I threw-up in my mouth"

"More villains than I could have ever imagined"

"Disturbing, just disturbing"

"I just wish it were fiction"

"Do not take your children. The vision of their future will give them nightmares"

Rated U - for Unconstitutional

Obama, oops, Hugo Chavez seizes food plant owned by transnational Cargill

Gee, isn't this the same thing Obama has been doing? Is Obama copying Hugo, or is Hugo copying Obama?
Rees

Caracas - The Venezuelan government on Friday took over a food-processing plant owned by the transnational corporation Cargill, arguing that it had violated state rules for the production of goods with regulated prices. Deputy Food Minister Rafael Coronado headed the move on the pasta- processing plant in the coastal state of Vargas, near Caracas, and said the seizure was temporary.

Coronado said the measure was adopted in response to the violation of a presidential decree establishing quotas for manufacturing, distribution and commercialization of 11 basic food items, including pasta and rice.

Under the rules, 70 per cent of each plant's pasta must meet the government standards for manufacture, distribution and commercialization, with only 30 per cent allowed to be made outside that framework.

Coronado said authorities had inspected Cargill's facilities in Caracas Thursday, to establish whether they were abiding by the law in terms of production, price, characteristics and product presentation.

They found that 80 per cent of the pasta in stock fell outside the regulations, with only 20 per cent of the regulated variety, Coronado said.

The plant was set to be occupied for 90 days. The authorities would seek to make sure from Monday that the plant production is in line with legal requirements.

Coronado said that the state and private companies alike have a duty to provide the population with quality products at fair prices. According to Coronado, measures adopted by the government seek to guarantee food security and to prevent food scarcity.

In March, the Venezuelan government nationalized a rice-processing plant that belonged to Cargill in the western state of Portuguesa, also arguing that the transnational was not producing regulated goods.
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Obama Wants Nationalized Banking and More - much, much more...

Why doesn't Obama just come right out and say he wants to control all businesses? That's what he's attempting to do. Somehow this power grab has got to stop.
Rees

From Yahoo! News:
By Anne Flaherty
Associated Press Writer
May 9, 2009

WASHINGTON – The White House told industry officials on Friday that it is leaning toward recommending that the Federal Reserve become the supercop for "too big to fail" companies capable of causing another financial meltdown.

According to officials who attended a private one-hour meeting between President Barack Obama's economic advisers and representatives from about a dozen banks, hedge funds and other financial groups, the administration made it clear it was not inclined to divide the job among various regulators as has been suggested by industry and some federal regulators.

"The idea of having a council of regulators was pretty much vetoed," said one participant.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who briefly attended the meeting but did not identify the Fed specifically as his top choice, told the group that one organization needs to be held responsible for monitoring systemwide risk. He said such a regulator should be given better visibility into all institutions that pose a risk to the financial system, regardless of what business they are in.

"Committees don't make decisions," Geithner told the group, according to another participant.

Officials from the Treasury Department and National Economic Council, which hosted the meeting, told participants that the Fed was considered the most likely candidate for the job, according to several officials who attended or were briefed on the discussions.

The administration officials said a legislative proposal would likely be sent to Capitol Hill in June with the expectation that the House Financial Services Committee, led by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., would consider the measure before the July 4th recess.

The officials requested anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced and they were not authorized to discuss it.

A Treasury Department statement provided to The Associated Press on Friday confirmed Geithner's position that he wants a "single independent regulator with responsibility for systemically important firms and critical payment and settlement systems."

A spokesman said Geithner also is open to creating a council to "coordinate among the various regulators, including the systemic risk regulator."

Industry officials say such a council would likely serve as advisers and would not be given the authority that a "systemic risk regulator" would.

The Fed itself hasn't taken a position on whether it should have the job, although Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the Fed would have to be involved in any effort to identify and resolve systemwide risk.

Geithner said Friday the administration plans an "aggressive" package of reforms for the financial system including proposals to fundamentally overhaul how financial institutions pay their senior executives. Critics have charged that the bonus system used at many major institutions encouraged excessive risk taking.

"We had a financial system that did a terrible job of protecting consumers, of building a strong, stable financial system less prone to crisis and we are going to have to fix that," Geithner said in an interview on PBS' "Newshour." "You will see this president, this administration bringing sweeping reforms to our financial system."

In a speech Thursday, Bernanke said that huge, globally interconnected financial firms whose failure could endanger the U.S. economy should be subject to "a robust framework for consolidated supervision."

Naming the Fed as a kind of super regulator is likely to run into at least some resistance by other federal regulators and in Congress.

Mary Schapiro, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Friday that she was inclined to support the idea floated this week by the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for a new "systemic risk council" to monitor large institutions against financial threats. The council would include the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, FDIC and SEC, according to the proposal by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair.

Speaking to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry's biggest trade group, Schapiro said she is concerned about an "excessive concentration of power" over financial risk in a single agency.

Lawmakers are divided on whether the Fed alone should assume the role of systemic regulator. Some say the Fed failed to prevent the current economic crisis and shouldn't be trusted with such a big responsibility. Others say the Fed should stay focused on its primary duty of setting monetary policy.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said this week he is "more attracted to the council idea" than having a single regulator play that role.

Unlike other regulatory agencies, the Fed does not rely on appropriations from Congress for its operating funds. It finances itself through its investments.

Fed Gov. Daniel Tarullo told Congress in March that the extent to which the new responsibility for systemic risk should fall to the central bank "depends a great deal on precisely how the Congress defines the role and responsibilities of the authority."

"Any systemic risk authority would need a sophisticated, comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to systemic risk," he testified. "Such an authority likely would require knowledge and experience across a wide range of financial institutions and markets."
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Hey Obama! - The U.S. Should Revoke Your Passport

from The Provocateur
Monday, April 6, 2009
by mike volpe

The President Fails Rule 1 of Geopolitics

It's gone from annoying to disturbing how often the president is making a habit of finding a foreign audience to criticize prior American foreign policy. Make no mistake, while a large majority of that prior policy is George W. Bush's, the current president's criticism isn't limited only to his predecessor. In 1952, Arthur Vandenburg presented a very simple geopolitical principle.

politics stops at the water's edge

In other words, whatever disagreements we may have, we present a united front outside our nation. Vandenburg believed that this is vital because in his words,

to unite our official voice at the water's edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us

President Obama seems to never miss an opportunity to talk to foreigners and find a point of prior foreign policy to criticize. The latest comes in a speech to the Parliament of Turkey.

An enduring commitment to the rule of law is the only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people. Robust minority rights let societies benefit from the full measure of contributions from all citizens.

I say this as the President of a country that not too long ago made it hard for someone who looks like me to vote.

As Powerline itself points, it wasn't even the federal government that stopped African Americans from voting but rather individual states. This may be a nit picking technicality however what's more important is that this follows in a disturbing pattern of the president using just about any opportunity to take shots at the country he is leading.

He has already gone overseas and accused America of torture, violating civil rights, violating the rule of law, acting arrogantly, not listening, and acting as imperialists. This disturbing onslaught on the country he purports to lead has real geopolitical consequences. From now on, any action which ally or foe alike doesn't like by his administration can be characterized by our adversaries as "imperialist", "arrogant", "torturous", etc.

By doing an endless string of mea culpa for all sorts of prior perceived bad policy, the president also by extension weakens the credibility of the nation as a whole. That's because he presents an image of the nation as a terribly flawed and failed nation. He presents a nation that has an image of doing wrong rather than right. What is really most troubling about all of this is how little time the president spends pointing out all the times that the United States has been a force for good rather. Instead, the president seems to always find any and all prior acts of bad and tells the world about the country's bad, but he rarely points out when the country has been a force for good.

If you were to only listen to the president, you might not realize that our blood and treasure freed both Western Europe and Eastern Europe. If you listen to the president, you wouldn't know that both Afghanistan and Iraq now have a chance at freedom because of the blood and treasure of the United States. It was also the United States that lead in the effort to isolate the Apartheid government of South Africa that ultimately lead to its disintegration. These are just a few examples of a history of good of our nation, and these examples rarely find their way into things the president says about the nation when he is overseas.
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Hey Obama! - Apologize to the American People!

What kind of man has such an obsessive need to put down his own country?

Obama, You should not be allowed to visit Normandy. Your presence will desecrate the ground in which our fallen American Heroes are buried. You are President and Commander In Chief in title only. You dishonor the office. You DO NOT love this Country. And, regardless of what Michelle says, neither one of you are proud of this country.
Rees

from American Thinker
April 06, 2009
By James Lewis

Those arrogant Americans

We have a rock star president who for the first time in American history fired the President of a private corporation, General Motors, then immediately flew to Europe with an entourage of 500 courtiers and a worshipful media, bowed waist-deep to the King of Saudi Arabia, and proceeded to accuse his own country of arrogance.

In Paris, of all places.

Does anybody else think this guy is shockingly ignorant? I wonder if he has ever really talked to a concentration camp survivor, or a Cuban refugee, or a boat person from Vietnam? Or a Soviet dissident. Or a survivor or Mao's purges.

Not to mention families with fallen American soldiers in the graveyards. Yes, he's going to Normandie, but will he apologize for our arrogance there, too? Does he really understand anything beyond the PC history of the world? Or will he just lie in his photo op at the American Cemetery at Normandie?

Ahhh, those arrogant Americans. First they rebel against King George III and all the crowned heads of Europe. Then they welcome tens of millions of poor and persecuted people from the Old World. Then they fail to bow down to Europe's greatest figures -- from Napoleon and Otto von Bismarck to the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin. Then they fight a civil war, losing half a million people to liberate black people in America. Then they diss the man the BBC considers to be the greatest philosopher ever, one Karl Marx, whose followers killed 100 million innocents in the 20th century. And then, to top it all off, they liberate both the Western half of Europe (in 1946) and the Eastern half (in 1989).

What arrogance these Americans have. Either that, or a very, very -- no, stunningly -- ignorant man was just elected president -- largely because millions of benevolent voters believed that we owe black people a presidency. They may come to see that as their biggest mistake ever. In the next couple of years they will see a tripling of government debt, high inflation, a permanent loss in their personal wealth, and a major devaluation of the dollar.

Which, to judge by his recent television performance, should just make him giggle quite inappropriately, in front of God and everybody. What kind of man has such an obsessive need to put down his own country? Especially given our real history? Has he ever read an honest history book?
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Obama - Are you head of state or enemy of the state?

You should be ashamed of yourself. I'm embarrassed that you are the President of the United States. You would be a much better fit as President of Iran or Venezuela. You could then dictate to your heart's content. You're behavior while in Europe has been disgusting, disturbing and disrespectful to those Americans who lost their lives in order to free Europe.
Rees


Echo Of Europe

from INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Leadership: Sixty-one years to the day after Truman signed the Marshall Plan rebuilding war-torn Europe, President Obama apologizes to French youth for U.S. arrogance. Our defense of freedom is no shame.

News reports quoted French men and women hailing the first African-American president of the United States as a hopeful sign for global racial reconciliation.

But is there another reason they're so smitten? Might they be imagining the decline of America and the rise of a Eurocentric multilateralism?

Barack Obama's words to the thousands of squealing young French and German fans at the Rhenus Sports Arena in Strasbourg certainly seem in harmony with such hopes.

"In America," the president claimed, "there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

President Obama promised that "America is changing" and that there would now be "unprecedented coordination" in our policies.

He lamented that "we got sidetracked by Iraq"; he extolled the "social safety net that exists in almost all of Europe that doesn't exist in the United States."

And he described the G-20 summit he just attended in London last week as "a success of nations coming together, working out their differences, and moving boldly forward."

But is multilateralism really the great hope for the future that the president and his French and German devotees are convinced it is?

"We just emerged from an era marked by irresponsibility," the president claimed in reference to the global financial crisis.

But when he flaunts his "excellent meeting with President Medvedev of Russia" to begin the reduction of U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles with the claim that working with Moscow will "give us greater moral authority to say to Iran, 'don't develop a nuclear weapon,' to say to North Korea, 'don't proliferate nuclear weapons,' " isn't he actually embarking on a new era of naive foreign policy irresponsibility?

The Russia and Communist China the president wants to "partner" with are directly responsible for giving Iran and North Korea the nuclear expertise and equipment that have empowered those two oppressive terror states to pursue the ability to incinerate a city.

And does the president really believe that Kim Jong-il or the Ayatollah Khomenei respond, as he put it, to "moral authority" the way civilized leaders do?

It's Europe that has things to learn from America, not vice versa.

Europe can learn that with an injection of U.S.-style market competition, French patients need not wait month-upon-month for heart bypass surgery. They can learn that Iran is a clear and present danger requiring force from a united free world, not talk.

While they're at it, they might also learn to express some gratitude for the $13 billion American taxpayers shelled out during the post-war years (over $100 billion in current dollars) to rebuild their countries — after the U.S. came to their rescue during the war itself, spilling the blood of hundreds of thousands to defeat Hitler.

The United States of America is the world's lone superpower — unless and until we choose to relinquish that responsibility.

The last thing our sometime friends and allies across the pond need is a U.S. president bemoaning America's role in the world and serving as an echo chamber to those in Europe who would like to see us weakened or irrelevant.
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Obama Is the ‘Arrogant, Dismissive, and Derisive’ One

If President Obama keeps it up, he may find the pitchforks with which he threatened the CEOs pointing at him.

April 5, 2009
by Kim Priestap
from Pajamas Media

While in Strasbourg, President Barack Obama told an audience in a townhall meeting that America needs to change its attitude toward Europe. He said America was wrong for not celebrating Europe’s “dynamic union” and not seeking “to partner” with them to better address the “common challenges” that face our nations. He even went so far as to say past American policy was misguided because it had “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive,” an obvious rebuke of former President Bush. The president made these highly critical comments of his own country on foreign soil in an effort to “rebuild” the transatlantic relationship between the United States and Europe by offering an olive branch.

The president’s comments were greeted with cheers. They were described as electrifying and inspiring. And they are the most classic case of projection exhibited by an American president to date.

Just a few days ago in a meeting with American CEOs of American banks, President Obama’s tone and attitude were rife with the arrogance, dismissiveness, and derision he had just criticized in Europe. A participant in the meeting told Politico that when the CEOs tried to explain that the nature, complexities, and competition of the finance and banking industries required that they continue retention bonuses for their employees, the president became impatient. He interrupted them and said, “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

The imagery behind Obama’s threat couldn’t be more obvious: comply with my demands or I will make sure you are harassed, intimidated, and run out of town on a rail. He made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Don Corleone couldn’t have said it better.

We can not forget, however, that it was Barack Obama himself along with his fellow Democrats who agitated this mob-like frenzy about the banks, the CEOs, and the bonuses. It was Obama who said the bonuses were an “outrage” and a “violation of our fundamental values.” Democrat Barney Frank hauled AIG’s CEO in front of the House Financial Services Committee and interrogated him, demanding to know why he approved the hundreds of millions of dollars of bonuses. Conveniently, Congressman Frank failed to mention that the approval was inside the very stimulus bill Obama championed and the Democrats overwhelmingly voted for.

This wasn’t the first time Obama bared his political teeth. Back in January he responded to the House Republicans’ concerns about not having enough tax cuts in the stimulus package with an arrogant and dismissive “I won.” Karl Rove reported in a recent Wall Street Journal column that Obama told fellow Democrat Rep. Peter De Fazio that he needed to watch his political backside after he voted against the president’s stimulus package: “Don’t think I’m not keeping score, brother,” he warned him.

Obama’s most recent pitchfork threat, however, was not just for his private audience of CEOs. He had a much wider audience in mind: the Democrats in Congress and the American people.

While the president continues to inflame the outrage surrounding the executives’ bonuses by threatening bank CEOs with angry mobs wielding pitchforks, he’s quietly working behind the scenes to help these same CEOs avoid the limits Democrats in Congress are trying to place on the salaries of the executives that receive bailout funds. In fact, the president himself has called for these limits. That means we can add another descriptor to Obama’s list: duplicitous. The Washington Post gives us the details:

The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

It seems the president is trying to play both sides of this issue. On the one hand, he wants to continue to stoke the populist outrage set ablaze by the lavish bonuses; on the other hand, he is trying to help the CEOs keep those same lavish bonuses.

This epitomizes arrogance, dismissiveness, derision, and duplicity toward the American taxpayers and his own party. The president was elected with the grand expectation that he would transform the way Washington does business, but his new scheme of circumventing Congress is nothing more than the old policies of the Chicago political machine. If President Obama keeps it up, he may find the pitchforks with which he threatened the CEOs pointing at him.
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Fannie, Freddie Set to Pay $210 Million in Retention Bonuses

Hey Barney Frank:

Are you going to get all self-righteous and demand that the names of all the recipients be released just like you did for AIG? Oh wait! That's right. You'll probably won't since Fannie and Freddie have been your babies that you've gone out of your way to protect. What was I thinking?
Rees

from The Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2009

In a compensation program that has drawn angry protests from politicians, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expect to pay about $210 million in retention bonuses to 7,600 employees over 18 months, according to a letter from the mortgage companies' regulator to Sen. Charles Grassley.

The maximum retention bonus for any individual executive under the plan will total $1.5 million during the 18 months ending in early 2010, according to the letter, which provides previously undisclosed details about the bonuses. The regulator, James Lockhart, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said in a letter to the Iowa Republican senator that ...

Salary control: You knew it was coming

article from Michelle Malkin.com

By Michelle Malkin

March 31, 2009

This is not a surprise. Grabby Hands Barney Frank has been signaling his salary control plans for weeks. In early February, you’ll recall, he told Business Week that compensation restrictions might be restricted to all US companies, not just TARP recipients.

Now, via Byron York:

In a little-noticed move, the House Financial Services Committee, led by chairman Barney Frank, has approved a measure that would, in some key ways, go beyond the most draconian features of the original AIG bill. The new legislation, the “Pay for Performance Act of 2009,” would impose government controls on the pay of all employees — not just top executives — of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

The purpose of the legislation is to “prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards,” according to the bill’s language. That includes regular pay, bonuses — everything — paid to employees of companies in whom the government has a capital stake, including those that have received funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The measure is not limited just to those firms that received the largest sums of money, or just to the top 25 or 50 executives of those companies. It applies to all employees of all companies involved, for as long as the government is invested. And it would not only apply going forward, but also retroactively to existing contracts and pay arrangements of institutions that have already received funds.In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is “unreasonable” or “excessive.”

And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate “the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.”

The bill passed the Financial Services Committee last week, 38 to 22, on a nearly party-line vote. (All Democrats voted for it, and all Republicans, with the exception of Reps. Ed Royce of California and Walter Jones of North Carolina, voted against it.)

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Little Dictators

from INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Congress: The spectacle of the very same people responsible for one of the nation's great financial calamities angling to be given even more control to fix the problem would be funny if it weren't so tragic.

Rep. Barney Frank, the Democrat who sits atop Congress' efforts to deal with the financial crisis, has enough chutzpah for 100 politicians — which is saying a lot.

In comments before testimony from both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chief Ben Bernanke Tuesday, Frank said he wants to regulate pay on Wall Street — even for companies that aren't getting bailouts.

And he called retention bonuses — a time-honored practice on Wall Street and elsewhere in America in which key employees are compensated for their enormous value — "extortion" and "bribes."

Frank, one of the chief architects of the housing mess that's brought us so low, isn't satisfied merely with pretending he and his Democratic pals aren't to blame for all this. No, exploiting voter anger over the now-infamous AIG bonuses, he also wants to dictate to American capitalism what it can earn and what it can't.

This is the kind of thing that normally happens in Third World countries ruled by tinhorn dictators, or in fascist states, where the democratic rule of law has collapsed. Not the U.S.

Yet, that's where we find ourselves today, isn't it? Democrats in Congress, who steadfastly rejected virtually all efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they went on the wildest, most irresponsible lending binge in the history of finance, now pose themselves as the saviors of fallen capitalism.

The hypocrisy is nothing short of stunning.

Take Frank. As we've written before, he spearheaded congressional Democrats' efforts in 1992, 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2005 to block reform of Fannie and Freddie.

Those two "government-sponsored enterprises" were the nexus of this crisis, holding $5.4 trillion of the $12 trillion in U.S. mortgages, while originating or funding 90% of the subprime market.

Their failures presaged the subsequent financial meltdown from which we're still trying to regain our economic footing.
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