Michelle Malkin: Spare us your fury, DC hypocrites.
Updates from March, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Bloomberg: “The public furor over the $165 million in bonuses AIG handed out to employees gives administration critics a new weapon to thwart Obama’s agenda, from his budget to plans for financial-market regulation.”
Plus this:
Obama…must now “play defense on economic populism,” said pollster John Zogby. That can be a “deadly” posture in American politics, Zogby said.
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Just as Wall Street donors to the Obama campaign benefited from bailout money, Obama and Dodd benefited from AIG donations more than any other member of Congress.
Will Obama and Dodd return the money? Don’t count on it.
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Mauren Dowd: “Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.”
Ouch!
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Stephen Moore: That 70′s Horror Show.
Wow. So Obama could be like a blend of Nixon, Ford, and Carter? God help us…
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Washington Times: Democrats plan an end run around Senate filibuster rules to pass healthcare reform without debate.
Support for Obama’s policies has dropped so much that they probably feel they have no other choice…
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Even if the administration is telling the truth and they for a fact didn’t know about the AIG bonuses till this month, that still doesn’t get them out of the doghouse. Why? Because it could be argued that Congress and Obama wanted to protect bonus obligations assumed before February 11, 2009:
Why is Obama so outraged and surprised?…[H]e signed the very bill that quite clearly made those bonuses legal — the $787 billion stimulus package…How can he, the president, or anyone else who voted for the stimulus, suddenly act surprised?
What? Didn’t they read the bill?
UPDATE: At OpenLeft, dissecting the administration’s economic credibility gap. The White House has been contradicting itself since the Inauguration on all sorts of stuff, not just on this AIG fiasco. So Id’ say the credibility gap goes beyond the economic. But far from me to argue with a leftie blogger.
One thing’s for sure: for a White House headed by an attorney and former law professor – and staffed to the hilts with attorneys – it’s pretty embarrassing to hear them equivocate so much on whether they can “unpay” the bonuses or not. But of course, the political theater wouldn’t be much of a show if they hadn’t initially pretended something could be done about them. The Federal government has a lot of flexibility when it comes to modifying contracts made with the United States. That is not the case here, but the bottom line is that federal law – as noted above – makes the bonuses legal. And that federal law is none other than the “Stimulus” bill.
ANOTHER ONE: Is it Dodd’s fault or the Executive Branch’s? Dodd inserted the loophole in the Stimulus, true. But the President signed it into law and his Treasury enforces that law. So why make this difficult? Let’s just tell it like it is and say it’s the Democrats fault. Or what? Should we blame this on Bush as well?
Not to get ahead of myself here, but since Dodd is in increasingly hot water over his “VIP” Countrywide loan deal, will Obama just throw him under the bus to deflect further criticism? We’ll find out soon enough…
ONE MORE: Politico: Why AIG outrage rings hollow.
STILL ANOTHER: “It’s getting harder and harder to explain why people losing homes and jobs are obliged to write more giant cheques to scoundrels – especially when Washington is so obviously not in charge.”
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This time from Joe Biden, as the writing on the wall becomes clearer regarding the omnibus bill:
We are willing to compromise on the margins on all these things,” he said. “There may be a better way to deal with energy. A better way to deal with health. A better way to deal with education. But we will not compromise on the need to invest in all three of those enterprises.
Evidently, the White House is willing to compromise on way too many things: case in point, Jim Geithner.
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Dr. Fiancee just told me she heard something on the radio about a proposal to tax the AIG bonuses at 100%.
Crazy? Constitutional? Sounds like a taking without compensation to me, to put it in Con Law terms.
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Oh, the irony! All that posturing and false outrage about AIG has become a systemic risk for the political class: Senator Chris “VIP” Dodd has been caught in the crossfire and even the Obama White House can’t escape the blowback. Maybe if they hadn’t been so busy siccing the MSM Inquisition on Rush, Santelli, and Cramer they would have realized that they ultimately would be held to account for missing out on the tiny detail of AIG’s contractual obligations, but they just didn’t see it coming. After all, in the current regime’s conception of what government is or should be, accountability is for “the little people”.
But – no surprise again – the administration actually knew more than their fake outrage lets on. The public’s own outrage should only heat up as more is revealed about where the bailout money, our tax money, has gone (via Instapundit) and the 5-month cover-up behind it all.
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Not with a Sopranos spinoff, though. This time, it’s a mini-series.
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One adviser says everything’s ok, the other one says things will get worse.
Which is it? Makes you wonder “Do they know what they are doing?” Maybe that’s why more and more people are turning out for Tea Parties. Check out the crowd at this one. Clearly, people are only becoming more skeptical of the administration. And they know it. In fact, they are already lowering expectations for Obama’s big Nero-like fundraiser next week. It’s not donor fatigue. It’s Obama fatigue!
UPDATE: More voices join the choir: “We’re stuck not only with a socialist but seemingly an incompetent one.” Ouch!
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Scientists claim earth is undergoing natural climate shift.
Just as I thought….
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WSJ: Market gains evaporate.
Hey, I’m not the one attributing last week’s gains to the Obama Factor. That was Joe Biden, remember?
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Former Rocky Mountain News staffers want people to pay about $5/month for news website access.
Not sure that’s gonna work. First of all, if people didn’t want to read what they were putting out before, why would they want to read it now?
Via JWF.
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Rasmussen has learned that Obama’s popularity keeps dropping at home. Meanwhile, in Germany, his likeness seems to help – if sometimes clumsily – sell consumer products.
Of course they like him over there. They don’t have to live with his policies!
Note Rasmussen’s observations as to the size of the investor class, something the White House seems to have forgotten.
UPDATE: Predictably, a charm offensive has begun: the President is going on Leno some time this week. Good luck with that. I guess a few late night banter can’t hurt now that the economic crisis has been cancelled.
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Why are some people so intent on putting Jon Stewart on a pedestal while indicting Jim Cramer? Watch the video below and you’ll see what I mean:
What is the sacred duty Jim Cramer shirked? So he gives bad advice while making his show entertaining. Is he the only fount of investing advice available? Why shouldn’t he make his show entertaining? Part of his job is to keep people watching night after night. The minute he stops doing that, he’ll get fired.
But I think I know what Jim Cramer’s crime is: he’s an Obama supporter with an audience who dared to bad-mouth Obama’s designs on our national economy. For that, he must be punished, chastised, humbled.
Tucker Carlson should know better than putting himself in a situation where he’s outnumbered. What a glutton for punishment!
UPDATE: Ben Shapiro on partisan hack “comedians”.
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A stunning photo essay documenting Detroit’s decline.
No wonder Robocop
was set in Detroit. The city has been crumbling into the very picture of post-apocalyptic decay for more than 30 years now.
H/T: The Corner.
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Obama adviser: economy’s ok even though it’s pretty bad.
Lame…
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Ron Silver died yesterday. May he rest in peace.
Roger Simon remembers him here.
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Witch Mountain is #1. And both Taken and Tyler Perry’s new Madea installment remain in the Top 5. Nice run!
Looks like Watchmen, as I had previously considered, is doing terrible internationally, and has been something of a disappointment box office-wise domestically.
Steve Mason has the figures and analysis.
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Politico outlines Obama’s new message strategy: a carpet bombing to his campaign mailing list of marching orders in support of the increasingly unpopular omnibus bill.
But isn’t Team O missing the forest for the trees here? Their new message strategy should be: “We know what we are doing! Join us!” Isn’t it obvious? Instead, we get what is perhaps the most inappropriate exercise of Oval Office leadership of Obama’s young presidency since his own version of the Enemies List. Speaking of: Is Rush in danger? I hope not, but I believe Rush has been getting death threats for many years now. I think it comes with the territory, as the Alan Berg case might remind us. Hopefully he has taken appropriate measures to protect himself.
Wrong focus again: did the administration set a trap for itself via Biden’s foolish claim of “owning” last week’s stock market rallies? By effectively attributing last week’s market gains to the “Obama Factor”, they have no choice but to be held responsible for any further stock market drops, which are inevitably forthcoming.
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Wow. Does Michael Goodwin read The Rhetorican?
I doubt it, but we sure seem to be on the same page about at least one thing regarding the incompetence of the Obama White House.
UPDATE: Don Surber agrees (via Insty).
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Powerline: Is Congress getting cute with federalism? A provision in the stimulus bill gives state legislatures the power to override gubernatorial decisions. So much for state sovereignty.
UPDATED: Jonathan Adler has more on this topic here. (via Dan Riehl)
ANOTHER ONE: Way ahead of you: Michelle Malkin raised the red flag on the unconstitutional language almost a month ago, here and here. Looks like South Carolina’s U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn introduced the langugage, which makes it even more egregious if it was in fact targeted at South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who – like Bobby Jindal and Texas’s Rick Perry – has expressed an intent to reject “Stimulus” funds.
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The General is going to Iowa next year.
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Anne Thompson reports. I Love You, Man seems to have attracted a lot of attention there. It’s another Apatowesque comedy, directed by John Hamburg (who directed several episodes of Apatow’s Undeclared).
I never saw either one of Apatow’s TV cult hits. I think I was too busy following Buffy the Vampire Slayer back then. And there was also the year I swore off cable.
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Now I’ve heard everything: Alec Baldwin arguing for lower taxes on production companies in order to stimulate the film business in New York? (via Insty)
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Well, our enemies have always been good at smelling the scent of weakness. Given that our unsteady Executive is not inspiring confidence, this Russian move should come as no surprise.
Via Drudge.
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How in the world did we go from the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression to a crisis that is “not as bad as we think”? Victor Davis Hanson attempts to make sense of it all here (via Instapundit, where Prof. Reynolds has his own theories). I think what’s going on is much simpler.
Everybody makes mistakes, but this White House bunch is making avoidable ones. Many of them are simple ones and range from the dumb to the petty, but seen in the context of Executive Power they attain a much bigger resonance. Broken promises and Obama’s own bad executive habits add to the effect, and the result is that the President looks smaller, a perception that seems to be catching on. One can’t help but to think “so many misfires in such a short period of time! So many stumbles! They don’t know what they’re doing.”
And the hits keep on coming (More …)
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“[T]his is not a war film. It is a life film…This is deep patriotism.”
Via BigHollywood.
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Of course it will keep them. Why wouldn’t it? It can’t get rid of them when it’s so busy looking for ways to limit executive pay.
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According to John Nolte.
I’ve only seen two of them.
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It’s in the planning stage…
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SXSW opens today.
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The administration wants to have their cake and eat it too. It increasingly sounds like a two-headed monster that’s arguing with itself. Check out Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers preaching to the choir:
“[E]ntrepreneurship and the search for opportunity is what we need today. We need to instill the trust that allows opportunity to overcome fear and enables families and businesses to again imagine a brighter future.”
Exactly. We know that. Why are you telling us this? It would be encouraging if we saw you instill this trust. But you are not and you won’t. You are too busy “re-building” America.
No wonder people have no confidence in this White House. Day after day, they just sound like they are winging it. This new pearl of wisdom goes beyond the usual buck passing. The buck isn’t even there!
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(Via Instapundit) Jennifer Rubin sees another angle which neither I nor the other commentators I’ve linked seem to have considered: “the last person who so clumsily discussed trading things of value for public acts was Blago.” A dumb idea all around. No one can come out of this one looking good if such a deal is made.
How did I miss the Blago-like dimensions of the whole thing? Am I getting used to – gulp – government by quid pro quo? Bummer…
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Jon Stewart hammered Jim Cramer and his network, CNBC, in their anticipated face-off on “The Daily Show,” repeatedly chastising the “Mad Money” host for putting entertainment above journalism.
Stewart disapproves of the practice of putting entertainment above journalism? Who knew?!
UPDATE (via Instapundit): Why Stewart Really Attacked Cramer. It’d be interesting to see how much money Stewart has put into stocks. I find it hard to believe he has all his money under the mattress or in a checking account somewhere. Who knows? Maybe he’s put it in real estate.
ANOTHER ONE: Gibbs says he enjoyed seeing Cramer chastised. Fun show, no doubt. But in all the hubub an important point is getting lost: that Cramer was right to say Obama is bringing about the destruction of a great amount of wealth.
