The Political Blog For Cynical Millennials

Oh Snap, Now I'm Pissed Mr. President

2009-02-11T09:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, so you're the president of the United States and you want to do a nationally televised press conference. HAVE YOUR PRESS SECRETARY CALL TIME WARNER CABLE SO THE DVR'S DON'T GET SCREWED UP!

In case the ending of Monday's "Two and a Half Men" because you're DVR started recording the tail end of President Barack Obama's speech, here's what you missed.

Maybe U.S. Screwed On Foreign Relations No Matter What

2009-02-10T09:42:00.000-08:00

It may be time to realize people just don't like this country. President Barack Obama may be a symbol of a change in America in terms of tolerance.

But he's not looking too good in terms of change in the world's perception.

Okay, foreign policy is not about winning a popularity contest. If we needed a prom queen president then you know how would have gotten the gig.

But the man who I thought was best to curb the U.S. image and maybe back away from the Wild West attitude of the Bush administration seems to be getting nowhere thus far.

Check out part of this Wall Street Journal article below or read the whole thing.

The following is an excerpt from a WSJ.com article. The entire article isn't very long, but I just wanted to put this meat and potatoes breakdown straight in the blog. This is an opinion piece with reported information, so take that into consideration as well. --cr

Obama's Charm Isn't Working Wonders Abroad
Policy does matter after all.
By BRET STEPHENS

Iran. Since President Obama's inauguration, Iran has launched a satellite into space and declared (with an assist from Russia, which is providing the nuclear fuel) that it would complete its long-delayed reactor at Bushehr later this year. At the Munich Security Conference last week, Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani promised a "golden opportunity for the United States" in its relations with the Islamic Republic. He proceeded to make good on that opportunity by skipping Joe Biden's speech the next day.

Also, as if to underscore that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial is merely emblematic of his regime's outlook, Mr. Larijani offered that there could be "different perspectives on the Holocaust." Mr. Larijani is widely described as a "moderate."

- Afghanistan. This is the war Mr. Obama has said "we have to win" -- as opposed to Iraq. Our NATO allies are supposed to feel the same way.

So what was NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer doing at the Munich conclave? Why, reproaching our allies. "When the United States asks for a serious partner, it does not just want advice, it wants and deserves someone to share the heavy lifting," he said.

But the plea fell on deaf ears. Germany will not, and probably cannot, commit more than 4,500 soldiers to Afghanistan, and then only to areas where they are unlikely to see combat. The French have no plans to increase their troop commitment beyond the 3,300 now there. Mr. Obama, by contrast, may double the U.S. commitment to 60,000 troops.

- North Korea. A constant liberal lament about the Bush administration was that its supposed hard line on Pyongyang had yielded nothing except five or six North Korean bombs.

So what is Kim Jong Il to do now that the Obama administration is promising a friendlier approach? In late January, Pyongyang announced it was unilaterally withdrawing from its 1991 nonaggression pact with the South.

Satellite imagery later showed the North moving a Taepodong 2 missile -- potentially capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast -- to a launch pad. "The missile is pointing at Obama," Baek Seung-joo, a director at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, told the L.A. Times. "North Korea thinks that with such gestures they can control U.S. foreign policy."

- Pakistan. Perhaps the most unambiguous of the Bush administration's successes was rolling up the nuclear proliferation network of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan, who was kept under house arrest for five years.

But if some latent fear of the 43rd American president prevented the Pakistani government from releasing their dubious national hero, that fear clearly vanished with the arrival of the 44th. Mr. Khan was released last week, ostensibly by order of a Pakistani court, plainly with the consent of the government. So far, the Obama administration has done little more than issue a muted statement of concern.

- Russia. At the Munich conference, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov praised the "very positive" tone set by Mr. Biden. And Mr. Ivanov's tone? Less positive. Russia will continue to build military bases in Georgia's breakaway republics. It will press ahead with the fueling of the Bushehr reactor.

Russia also won't hesitate to complicate the U.S. position in Afghanistan -- and then lie about what it has done in a manner worthy of the late Andrei Gromyko. "There is no correlation between the decision of the Kyrgyz republic and the loans that the Russian federation granted," Mr. Ivanov said, referring to Kyrgyzstan's oddly timed decision to close an airbase used by the U.S. to supply Afghanistan after securing a $2 billion Russian "loan."

- The Arab street. "I have Muslim members of my family," Mr. Obama recently told Al-Arabiya. Yet so far his efforts at outreach have been met with derision from Arab hard-liners and "liberals" alike.

"We welcomed him with almost total enthusiasm until he underwent his first real test: Gaza," wrote Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany in a New York Times op-ed. "We also wanted Mr. Obama . . . to recognize . . . the right of people in occupied territory to resist military occupation." In other words, the price of Arab support for Mr. Obama is that he embrace Hamas and its terrorist tactics.

Sure, I'll Support Your Camp, As Long As It Isn't Jesus Camp

2009-02-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

I got an e-mail today from the Fresh Air Fund. Apparently they need my help.

Figures, because I am freakin' awesome. They need to recruit some college students to work at their summer camp. The program provides free vacations for children of low income families.

My lone question with the group, through some brief research (I read two articles, looked at their Web site and ran a Lexus Nexus legal search to make sure it isn't a prison camp or anything), is that it is strictly for New York City children. There are poor, low income children all over the country that could use a summer camp.

It seems like the goal of the group is to promote diversity, which is something our generation pushes. But I guess the group, which was established in 1877, does what it can. It seems like a very noble way to make some money in the summer, especially because seasonal jobs will be on the decline come June.

If you think you'll have a problem working with kids, don't worry. The camp doesn't look anywhere near as scary as the camp depicted in the documentary "Jesus Camp."

So, check out Fresh Air Fund Counselors page and some graphics their site. If I wasn't entering that whole career thing in June, I would seriously consider this option.

Let Me Get Some Of That Raise

2009-01-31T07:51:00.000-08:00

Everywhere I turn, someone's bitching about a pay raise someone else received.

First it was Ohio University President Roderick McDavis, who was given an $85,000 raise this past summer despite how the faculty and students feel about him.

Now, President Barack Obama is getting into it. In Friday's New York Times, Obama called the bonuses Wall Street executives took during the financial crisis shameful.

There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses,” Mr. Obama said during an appearance in the Oval Office with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. “Now’s not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them.

It gets more complicated though. Well, maybe not complicated if you can whisk through the shit. On his first day in office, Obama made this great stand and froze all White House employee salaries. How great of him.

Meanwhile, my parent's haven't taken a paycheck in weeks, trying to keep their business afloat. They've had to layoff multiple people and cut everyone's hours across the board just to keep the company's head above water. Glad to see Barack could freeze wages while everyone else is cutting them.

Maybe instead of worrying about everyone else, we should all be like Congress and have the best intentions. It's not like they have padded their pockets lately.

Come on everybody! Let me get some of that raise!

See, Obama Is A Muslim Terrorist

2009-01-28T08:39:00.000-08:00

Sorry if the power of a headline got you here on false pretenses. All I really want to do is bring to everyone's attention that President Barack Obama went on Muslim television for an interview.

Going along with my last post on United States foreign policy, I think Obama's message goes with bettering the country's stance on foreign interference. He's not going to completely remove the U.S. from the Middle East, which is a stance I think needs to be seriously consider though I reserve the right to plead ignorance. I reserve that right because there is a good chance I don't fully understand the importance of the U.S.'s relationship with Israel.

I have been consistent in my stance that President Obama can only hurt the economy, but no politician can help it, by my estimation. But he could do a world of help in terms of foreign policy. Let me know what you think about this in the comment section.

Here's the video:

Here's a good article by Andrew Sulivan of The Atlantic:

It popped up on television last night and I had two reactions. The first was a sense of met expectation. Part of the rationale for Obama's presidency from a foreign policy perspective was always his unique capacity to rebrand America in the eyes of the Muslim world. Since even the hardest core neocons agree that wooing the Muslim center is critical to winning the long war against Jihadism, Obama's outreach is unremarkable and should be utterly uncontroversial. Bush tried for a while to do the same. But Karen Hughes is not exactly Barack Obama. And the simple gesture of choosing an Arab media outlet for his first televised interview as president is extremely powerful. It has the elegance of a minimalist move with maximalist aims. It is about the same thing as inviting Rick Warren or supping with George Will: it's about R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

This respect came with the following astonishing words:

Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries ... the largest one, Indonesia. And so what I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I've come to understand is that regardless of your faith – and America is a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers – regardless of your faith, people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.

And my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.

What Obama is doing is appealing over the heads of Muslim leaders directly to Muslim populations. I cannot think of any other president with the same kind of personal credibility in such a critical time. And his appeal is to relieve the state of humankind:

[T]he bottom line in all these talks and all these conversations is, is a child in the Palestinian Territories going to be better off? Do they have a future for themselves? And is the child in Israel going to feel confident about his or her safety and security? And if we can keep our focus on making their lives better and look forward, and not simply think about all the conflicts and tragedies of the past, then I think that we have an opportunity to make real progress.

Onto the choppy waters of religious strife, the old oil of material improvement. It's a way in; a way to change the subject; a subtle appeal to Muslim and Arab peoples on common ground.

And, of course, it begs the question. Is he serious? Is this a huge hinge of history - or just a rebranding of an old policy with the old interests at play? And the truth is: we cannot know. The odds are against him. Israel seems to be entering a period of a defensive crouch so intense it will spurn all efforts to save it; the Arab regimes are as potentially threatened by Obama's opening as anyone; Hamas and Iran and Hezbollah and al Qaeda are temporarily flummoxed but will be eager to foil any grand bargain.

Gorilla Ends Its Silence: America's Foreign Policy Conundrum

2009-01-19T08:20:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I made the claim that I would act solely as a news aggregate. But on the eve of the Inauguration and after only generating one comment in weeks, I have decided to write an op-ed.

The topic is foreign policy and why a less intrusive American approach benefits the millenials.

Here's the article that spurred this action:

America: What in the world does it want

By TED ANTHONY – 1 day ago

NEW YORK (AP) — George Washington, first president, said this: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

Eldridge Cleaver, civil rights leader, said this: "Americans think of themselves collectively as a huge rescue squad on 24-hour call."

Toby Keith, populist country singer, said this: "This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage — and you'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A."

Now: Place those three divergent sentiments in a large bowl. Whip vigorously until blended. There you'll have, in one curious, often contradictory recipe, the world-changing, world-shaking world view of the quixotic species known as the American people.

When 21st-century Americans contemplate their place on the planet, they confront a complex history of isolationism and engagement, a deep instinct to live and let live that coexists with an equally fervent desire to be a robust beacon of freedom — sometimes by any means necessary.

That means that, while a presidential transition offers many limbos, none is quite so stark as the expected change in the approach, method and technique of foreign policy that will come with the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday.

"It's a very plastic moment," says Eric Rauchway, author of "Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America."

The arrival of Obama and his secretary of state designate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, represents a baton-passing between two distinct versions of the American world view — George W. Bush's interventionist, we-know-best foreign policy and Obama's vow to "restore our moral standing."

continue reading

I think the most interesting part of that article is the top. The three quotes exemplifying the evolution of America's foreign policy represent a fundamental problem in this country.

We don't have a clear plan on foreign policy.

I picked up Ron Paul's book, The Revolution, a few weeks ago. I've been a pretty pathetic reader, only getting through the first 30 pages. But it was enough to get through his foreign policy proposal.

The next Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she will implement a system of smart power. I don't know what the fuck that garbage means, but Paul's plan of leaving everyone the hell alone makes sense to me.

Sure, smart power as I understand it (picking and choosing when to intervene in other country's affairs) is a step in a better direction from President George Bush's shoot now, ask later technique. But why can't we just focus on our own problems?

Here's a counter for how much the Iraq war has cost this country:

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The Web site Cost of War has this function that puts the war price into perspective. Check out how many teachers could be employed in Athens, Ohio if we didn't have to pay for this war.

Then there is the other major advantage. The nations that hate America usually do so because we intervene in their business.

Sure, there are instances where there is more of a moral obligation to do the right thing (the whole genocide thing comes to mind). But aren't there better ways of doing so then going all Team America?

Here's an idea, why don't we just support global groups that help these situations like the UN or the Peace Corps? I don't know, there just has to be a less intrusive way of helping people in moments of tragedy and in all other matters we should just let people deal with their own problems. God knows we have enough of our own.

Unemployed With Nothing To Do? Play The Bailout Game!

2009-01-14T05:42:00.000-08:00

Misson

The US economy is failing. Your job is to save it by choosing which major financial institutions to bail out from the financial crisis and which to let fail

Game Board
As you make your way down Wall Street, you will encounter various banks and financial institutions asking for your help. You must decide if these businesses are worth saving. If you choose to save a bank, you must make sure they get enough money. But remember, you cannot save them all.

Ask a Greenspan
If you get stuck you can always Ask a Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan, in all his various incarnations, will give you guidance.

Go Play The Game Now! Save The Economy, Save The World.

The Atlantic Posts Interesting Bush Map

2009-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

The nation Barack Obama inherits

by Timothy Lavin

Then and Now

On March 4, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt addressed a crowd of 400,000 at his first inauguration. The past few years had seen a spectacular decline in the nation’s fortunes, born of what he called the “mad chase of evanescent profits.” Banks were failing, savings disappearing, real estate and commodities collapsing. Fascism was rising abroad. In response, Roosevelt pledged “a disciplined attack upon our common problems.” He didn’t get much more specific than that. And, really, he didn’t have to. The people wanted change, in the current vernacular—or, more precisely, they wanted a government that could respond coherently to the profound changes that were already under way.

Barack Obama assumes the presidency this year amid a similar sense of national crisis, and having made similar promises of change. And, like Roosevelt, he’ll be leading a country very different from the one his predecessor inherited: as the statistics on this map show, change itself is one thing we’ve seen in abundance in the past eight years. Making sense of that upheaval will be the first responsibility of the new administration.

Bye, Bye Voinovich, Hello Democrats!

2009-01-12T12:39:00.000-08:00

Note: This first story affects me emotionally because I despise Rep. Tim Ryan, who is mentioned as a possible replacement for Voinovich.

He went to my high school, though much older than me, and I have encountered him many times. He's arrogant, not an intellectual and just a corny white boy from a large Democratic district.

He spoke at my sister's high school commencement last year and just came off as an elitist moron. He's the Debbie Phillips of Trumbull/Mahoning County, a Democratic party cheerleader suckling from a huge blue district tit.

Sure, he's a young guy who should be able to relate to our generation. But make no mistake. He is a political patsy. One of the, it's us (the Democrats) versus them (the Republicans).

Voinovich retirement could set up tough primaries
Contributed by Reid Wilson
01/12/09 10:13 AM [ET]
Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) announced his retirement Monday, giving Democrats the opportunity to pick up another Senate seat in 2010 and setting up the prospect of competitive primaries for both parties.

"After prayerful consideration and much thought, my wife Janet and I have decided that I will not seek a third term in the United States Senate," Voinovich said in a statement this morning.
"I have never seen the country in such perilous circumstances. Not since the Great Depression and the Second World War have we been confronted with such challenges, as a nation and as a world," Voinovich said. "I must devote my full time, energy and focus to the job I was elected to do, the job in front of me, which seeking a third term â€“ with the moneyraising and campaigning that it would require â€“ would not allow me to do."

Voinovich, the 72-year old former Cleveland mayor and two-term Ohio governor, has been a largely centrist voice in the Republican conference during his two terms in the Senate.

His retirement creates the prospect of a competitive primary on both the Republican and Democratic sides, something both parties are already maneuvering to prevent.

Reps. Tim Ryan (D), Zack Space (D) and Betty Sutton (D) are widely mentioned as potential
Democratic challengers, and the party may look to Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher (D) and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D) to run.

Many Republicans expect ex-Rep. Rob Portman (R) to make a return bid for public office. Appointed President Bush's director of the Office of Management and Budget and U.S. Trade Representative, Portman has been laying the groundwork for a run already. A top GOP source says Portman has signed up businessman Mercer Reynolds, who served as Bush's national finance chairman in 2004, to head Portman's own fundraising committee.

Some expect former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R) to consider a bid for Senate four years after his run for governor came up short. Blackwell, currently a top candidate to chair the Republican National Committee, is focused only on that race, according to a source close to Blackwell. Party sources say the GOP would much rather have Portman atop the ticket than Blackwell.

read the whole story at The Hill

Bush Apologizes: The Farewell Interview We Wish He'd Give

W. comes clean - on his dad, Condi's farts and the time Dick waterboarded the house boy

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Jan 22, 2009 11:45 PM

Despite a financial crisis for the ages, the catastrophic collapse of a Republican Party crippled by his political legacy, and the highest presidential disapproval rating in the history of American polling, outgoing commander in chief George W. Bush has not completely lost his sense of fun. When Rolling Stone caught up with him at the White House shortly after the holidays for what would turn out to be his final extended sit-down interview as president, the graying but still quite fit Texan had just finished his morning exercycle session in an eagle-emblazoned sweatsuit and was fiddling with a new toy.

"They call it a Wii, or a Mee, or something," Bush tells me, smiling as he waves a wandlike plastic device in front of a 54-inch plasma TV in the Treaty Room, a large, brightly lit chamber on the second floor of the Executive Residence that traditionally functions as the president's private study. The president is playing a friendly game of Major League Baseball — the Boston Red Sox against his cherished Texas Rangers — and a computer-rendered Daisuke Matsuzaka drills a hard slider right past him, down and in.

"Huh," says the president. "Might have to choke up a little."

Although now used as a game room, the Treaty Room still has a classic feel, with a century-old painting by Theobald Chartran depicting the signing of the peace treaty after the Spanish-American War, and a magnificent mahogany "treaty table" first used by Ulysses S. Grant. A bookshelf on the north wall displays standard-issue Americana such as Poor Richard's Almanack, but it also contains former swimsuit model Kathy Ireland's Powerful Inspirations: Eight Lessons That Will Change Your Life ("There's a lot of good life stuff in there, a lot of stuff about patience," the president says) and a well-worn copy of 101 Dumb Dog Deaths ("Makes me laugh every time, especially the one about cow-tipping").

Matsuzaka delivers again, but the president looks fastball when the pitch is a change. "Damn it!" he shouts, bouncing the Wii wand off an antique globe in the corner. "Goddamn motherfucking shit!" After collecting himself, he takes a seat at his desk and leans back in his grand leather easy chair, stirring the ice cubes in a glass of Diet Coke with a finger.

So are we meeting up here because Michelle Obama is measuring the Oval Office windows for drapes?
[Laughs] No. I just like it up here. Plus, people tend to get nervous in the Oval Office. Figured I'd make it a little easier on you by doing this here.

While I was waiting, one of your staffers told me a crazy story about a certain member of your Cabinet breaking wind in the Oval Office. Can you confirm that story?
Well, like I said, people get nervous down there. It's — [laughs] — I can't believe someone told you about that.

But you're leaving office in a couple of weeks. Come on. Throw us a bone. Just think, you finally get to talk about all of these things.
Look, I can't. Besides, it wasn't that big of a — OK, fine. It was Condi.

Condoleezza Rice farted in the Oval Office! When she was the national security adviser?
No, this was when she was State. Just after I appointed her. And it wasn't no little whistler, either. She's a little lady, but she let that baby rip. Nearly blew [White House chief of staff] Andy Card's ears off.

continue reading at RollingStone.com

Obama Announces Stimulus Plan, Papa Bear Entertains All and War Spectating

2009-01-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Here's a pretty random daily roundup of political news I find interesting. Enjoy!

Obama Lays Out $750 Billion Stimulus Plan
Politico.com
January 8, 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17214.html

Here is the prepared text of President-elect Obama's remarks Thursday morning in Fairfax, Va., titled "American Recovery and Reinvestment," the name of his proposed $750 billion stimulus package:

Throughout America’s history, there have been some years that simply rolled into the next without much notice or fanfare. Then there are the years that come along once in a generation – the kind that mark a clean break from a troubled past, and set a new course for our nation.

This is one of those years.

We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime – a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks. Nearly two million jobs have now been lost, and on Friday we are likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a twenty-eight year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are watching their life savings disappear. And many, many Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.

I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. We could lose a generation of potential and promise, as more young Americans are forced to forgo dreams of college or the chance to train for the jobs of the future. And our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world.

In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

This crisis did not happen solely by some accident of history or normal turn of the business cycle, and we won’t get out of it by simply waiting for a better day to come, or relying on the worn-out dogmas of the past. We arrived at this point due to an era of profound irresponsibility that stretched from corporate boardrooms to the halls of power in Washington, DC. For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn’t afford. Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline, and too often focused on scoring political points instead of the problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets, and our government.

Now, the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it is not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are rooted in past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness. It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that lost trust and confidence. We can restore opportunity and prosperity. We should never forget that our workers are still more productive than any on Earth. Our universities are still the envy of the world. We are still home to the most brilliant minds, the most creative entrepreneurs, and the most advanced technology and innovation that history has ever known. And we are still the nation that has overcome great fears and improbable odds. If we act with the urgency and seriousness that this moment requires, I know that we can do it again.

That is why I have moved quickly to work with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will immediately jumpstart job creation and long-term growth.

It’s a plan that represents not just new policy, but a whole new approach to meeting our most urgent challenges. For if we hope to end this crisis, we must end the culture of anything goes that helped create it – and this change must begin in Washington. It is time to trade old habits for a new spirit of responsibility. It is time to finally change the ways of Washington so that we can set a new and better course for America.

There is no doubt that the cost of this plan will be considerable. It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short-term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes, and confidence in our economy. It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy – where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit.

That is why we need to act boldly and act now to reverse these cycles. That’s why we need to put money in the pockets of the American people, create new jobs, and invest in our future. That’s why we need to re-start the flow of credit and restore the rules of the road that will ensure a crisis like this never happens again.

That work begins with this plan – a plan I am confident will save or create at least three million jobs over the next few years. It is not just another public works program. It’s a plan that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment – the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work, even as, all around the country, there is so much work to be done. That’s why we’ll invest in priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century. That’s why the overwhelming majority of the jobs created will be in the private sector, while our plan will save the public sector jobs of teachers, cops, firefighters and others who provide vital services.

To finally spark the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years. We will modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. In the process, we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced – jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.

To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs – it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system.

To give our children the chance to live out their dreams in a world that’s never been more competitive, we will equip tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries. We’ll provide new computers, new technology, and new training for teachers so that students in Chicago and Boston can compete with kids in Beijing for the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future.

To build an economy that can lead this future, we will begin to rebuild America. Yes, we’ll put people to work repairing crumbling roads, bridges, and schools by eliminating the backlog of well-planned, worthy and needed infrastructure projects. But we’ll also do more to retrofit America for a global economy. That means updating the way we get our electricity by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation. It means expanding broadband lines across America, so that a small business in a rural town can connect and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world. And it means investing in the science, research, and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries, and entire new industries.

Finally, this recovery and reinvestment plan will provide immediate relief to states, workers, and families who are bearing the brunt of this recession. To get people spending again, 95% of working families will receive a $1,000 tax cut – the first stage of a middle-class tax cut that I promised during the campaign and will include in our next budget. To help Americans who have lost their jobs and can’t find new ones, we’ll continue the bipartisan extensions of unemployment insurance and health care coverage to help them through this crisis. Government at every level will have to tighten its belt, but we’ll help struggling states avoid harmful budget cuts, as long as they take responsibility and use the money to maintain essential services like police, fire, education, and health care.

I understand that some might be skeptical of this plan. Our government has already spent a good deal of money, but we haven’t yet seen that translate into more jobs or higher incomes or renewed confidence in our economy. That’s why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan won’t just throw money at our problems – we’ll invest in what works. The true test of the policies we’ll pursue won’t be whether they’re Democratic or Republican ideas, but whether they create jobs, grow our economy, and put the American Dream within reach of the American people.

Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made transparently, and informed by independent experts wherever possible. Every American will be able to hold Washington accountable for these decisions by going online to see how and where their tax dollars are being spent. And as I announced yesterday, we will launch an unprecedented effort to eliminate unwise and unnecessary spending that has never been more unaffordable for our nation and our children’s future than it is right now.

We have to make tough choices and smart investments today so that as the economy recovers, the deficit starts to come down. We cannot have a solid recovery if our people and our businesses don’t have confidence that we’re getting our fiscal house in order. That’s why our goal is not to create a slew of new government programs, but a foundation for long-term economic growth.

That also means an economic recovery plan that is free from earmarks and pet projects. I understand that every member of Congress has ideas on how to spend money. Many of these projects are worthy, and benefit local communities. But this emergency legislation must not be the vehicle for those aspirations. This must be a time when leaders in both parties put the urgent needs of our nation above our own narrow interests.

Now, this recovery plan alone will not solve all the problems that led us into this crisis. We must also work with the same sense of urgency to stabilize and repair the financial system we all depend on. That means using our full arsenal of tools to get credit flowing again to families and business, while restoring confidence in our markets. It means launching a sweeping effort to address the foreclosure crisis so that we can keep responsible families in their homes. It means preventing the catastrophic failure of financial institutions whose collapse could endanger the entire economy, but only with maximum protections for taxpayers and a clear understanding that government support for any company is an extraordinary action that must come with significant restrictions on the firms that receive support. And it means reforming a weak and outdated regulatory system so that we can better withstand financial shocks and better protect consumers, investors, and businesses from the reckless greed and risk-taking that must never endanger our prosperity again.

No longer can we allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks. No longer can we allow special interests to put their thumbs on the economic scales. No longer can we allow the unscrupulous lending and borrowing that leads only to destructive cycles of bubble and bust.

It is time to set a new course for this economy, and that change must begin now. We should have an open and honest discussion about this recovery plan in the days ahead, but I urge Congress to move as quickly as possible on behalf of the American people. For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs. More families will lose their savings. More dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

That is not the country I know, and it is not a future I will accept as President of the United States. A world that depends on the strength of our economy is now watching and waiting for America to lead once more. And that is what we will do.

It will not come easy or happen overnight, and it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better. But that is all the more reason for Congress to act without delay. I know the scale of this plan is unprecedented, but so is the severity of our situation. We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning.

That is why the time has come to build a 21st century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded. That’s why I’m asking Congress to work with me and my team day and night, on weekends if necessary, to get the plan passed in the next few weeks. That’s why I’m calling on all Americans – Democrats and Republicans – to put good ideas ahead of the old ideological battles; a sense of common purpose above the same narrow partisanship; and insist that the first question each of us asks isn’t “What’s good for me?” but “What’s good for the country my children will inherit?”

More than any program or policy, it is this spirit that will enable us to confront this challenge with the same spirit that has led previous generations to face down war, depression, and fear itself. And if we do – if we are able to summon that spirit again; if are able to look out for one another, and listen to one another, and do our part for our nation and for posterity, then I have no doubt that years from now, we will look back on 2009 as one of those years that marked another new and hopeful beginning for the United States of America. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless America.

© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC

Bill O'Reilly May Be Outrageous, Loud But He Makes For A Good Clip
Cracked.com
http://www.cracked.com/video_16942_5-most-ridiculous-bill-oreilly-moments.html?ref=email

The 5 Most Ridiculous Bill O'Reilly Moments -- powered by Cracked.com

Israelis Watch the Fighting in Gaza
Where do I get my Israeli army jersey?
WSJ.com
January 8, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123136613816062175.html?mod=article-outset-box

By CHARLES LEVINSON

GAZA BORDER -- Moti Danino sat Monday in a canvas lawn chair on a sandy hilltop on Gaza's border, peering through a pair of binoculars at distant plumes of smoke rising from the besieged territory.

An unemployed factory worker, he comes here each morning to watch Israel's assault on Hamas from what has become the war's peanut gallery -- a string of dusty hilltops close to the border that offer panoramic views across northern Gaza.

He is one of dozens of Israelis who have arrived from all over Israel, some with sack lunches and portable radios tuned to the latest reports of the battle raging in front of them. Some, like Mr. Danino, are here to egg on friends and family members in the fight.

Moti Denino and other residents of Sderot in Israel call themselves the "hill people", watching attacks unfold between Israel and Gaza from a hillside. WSJ's Sivan Raviv reports.

Others have made the trek, they say, to witness firsthand a military operation -- so far, widely popular inside Israel -- against Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Over the weekend, four teenagers sat on a hill near Mr. Danino's, oohing and aahing at the airstrikes. Nadav Zebari, who studies Torah in Jerusalem, was eating a cheese sandwich and sipping a Diet Coke.

"I've never watched a war before," he said. A group of police officers nearby took turns snapping pictures of one another with smoking Gaza as a backdrop. "I want to feel a part of the war," one said, before correcting himself with the official government designation for the assault. "I mean operation. It's not a war."

The spectators share hilltop space with an army of camera-toting Israeli and foreign journalists, who have so far been banned by the Israeli military from entering Gaza to report on the conflict.

Mr. Danino has a personal link to the fighting. His 20-year-old son, Moshe, is a soldier in an infantry unit fighting somewhere below his hilly perch. From the sidelines, he is here to root for his son the soldier, he says, just as he once sat on the sidelines of soccer fields cheering for his son the high-school athlete.

"The army took all the soldiers' cellphones away before the attack, so this is my way of staying in contact," he says.

View Slideshow
[SB123126505270157947]
Pavel Wolberg/European Pressphoto Agency

Orthodox Jews watched smoke rise over the northern Gaza Strip Tuesday.

On another hilltop overlooking Gaza, Sandra Koubi, a 43-year-old philosophy student, says seeing the violence up close "is a kind of catharsis for me, to get rid of all the anxiety we have inside us after years of rocket fire" from Hamas.

Jocelyn Znaty, a stout 60-year-old nurse for Magen David Adom, the Israeli counterpart of the Red Cross, can hardly contain her glee at the site of exploding mortars below in Gaza.

"Look at that," she shouts, clapping her hands as four artillery rounds pound the territory in quick succession. "Bravo! Bravo!"

Ms. Znaty lives in Sderot, the immigrant community on Gaza's border that has long been a target for rockets fired from Gaza by Palestinian militants. Her daughter lives on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, an Israeli community even closer to the Gaza Strip.

Last year, Gaza-launched rockets struck Ms. Znaty's home twice in a single week. She escaped both attacks unscathed but has a simmering anger for those living on the other side of the Gaza fence.

She acknowledges an uncomfortable, self-conscious awareness that she is cheering on a deadly war. Israeli planes, ships and artillery have blasted the small, sealed-off territory for more than a week, killing more than 680 Palestinians and injuring about 3,000. Ten Israelis have been killed, including three civilians, according to U.N. officials.
More

* Israel Resumes Gaza Attacks
* Strike Kills 30 Outside Gaza School
* Wash Wire: Bush, Obama Talked About Gaza
* Egypt Becomes Flashpoint Over Gaza
* Iran Has Much at Stake in Outcome
* Notebook: Doctors Struggle With Shortages
* Interactive Map: Day-by-day developments

Discuss

* What is the best way to end the violence?
* How should the U.S. respond?

Video

* What Could Happen to Gaza After War?
* In Combating Hamas, Israel Looks to the Past
* Israeli U.N. Ambassador Shalev on Gaza Conflict
* Israel May Consider Egyptian Peace Plan
* Gaza Fighting Eases, But Many Still Dying
* Strike on Gaza School Kills Many
* Moussa: Israel's Offensive is 'Naked Aggression'
* Israeli Troops Push Deeper Into Gaza Melee

The weekend ground assault has sent civilian casualties climbing, overwhelming hospitals and triggering the International Committee of the Red Cross to declare a humanitarian crisis inside the small, seaside enclave of 1.5 million.

On Tuesday, the UN said one of its schools in Gaza was hit by an Israeli strike, killing 43 civilians who had sought refuge from the attacks and injuring about 100.

"It's weird that we have to take lives in order to save lives," Ms. Znaty says. "But we were held hostage by Hamas while our government ignored us, and now we fight back. I am sorry, but I am happy."

War watching is not a new phenomenon. Up until World War I, when more powerful weapons began to be used on the battlefield, it was common for civilians to perch on grassy lookouts on a battlefield's periphery.

Nor is it unique to Israelis in the current conflict. On the Egyptian side of the border, across from southern Gaza, Arabs, too, were coming from miles away to watch the aerial bombardment.

But at Gaza's border crossing in the dusty town of Rafah, the mood was of anger and somber resignation amid the punishing Israeli attacks. Egyptians in Rafah, and many of the Arab aid workers who have flocked there to help evacuate Gaza's wounded, share deep ethnic, family and economic ties with the territory.

Over the weekend, as ambulances ferried out bloodied Palestinian casualties, plumes of black smoke, accompanied by dull thuds and trembling earth, rose across the border, just a hundred yards across a no man's land marking the border with Egypt.
[Gaza Conflict]
Gaza Conflict Intensifies

See the steps that led up to Israeli troops entering Gaza.

"We feel helpless. We feel like we are so close but we can't do anything," said Rami Ibrahim Shahin, a 20-year-old mechanic, whose family is originally Palestinian. His brother lives on the other side of the border, now under Israeli fire. They talk every day, when phone connections work. Each evening, Mr. Shahin walks several miles to reach the border crossing, where he can get a better view of the attacks.

"All day long, it's like this, we see the attacks with our own eyes," shrugs Rafah resident Osama Al-Beyali, a 51-year-old porter in torn gray coveralls. As blasts ring out across the border, onlookers swear at Israel or offer prayers for victims.

A father of six, Mr. Al-Beyali says he thinks of the Palestinian children suffering in the cold, with little food or safety, under the barrage. "When I see my children, I feel ashamed and guilty. I feel like I should find a way to go over there and fight the Israelis."

"Injustice, injustice," he mumbles.

Many Israelis see the Gaza offensive as a welcome change. "I come here because our army is finally doing something, showing the world that we are not weak," says Mr. Danino, the unemployed factory worker. On his hilltop overlooking Gaza, Mr. Danino has taken to quarterbacking the assault from his folding chair.

Having sat here for much of the past week, he now fancies himself something of an expert. He says, for example, that Palestinian militants are fond of firing rockets from the cover of a distant block of greenhouses.

When a plume of smoke -- the result of an Israeli attack -- rose from what appears to be empty farmland Monday, Mr. Danino shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "We should be hitting the greenhouses."
—Farnaz Fassihi in Rafah, Egypt and Margaret Coker in Tel Aviv contributed to this article.

The Gorilla Has A New Look

2009-01-07T18:36:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Athens, working for the man and learning from the man. Soon I will kill the man in his sleep...

Just kidding.

I have been busier than poodle in heat at a Milkbone testing facility. I don't see things slowing down either.

I know what you're thinking. Every one is busy. So I won't complain. But this blog will need to take a new format if it is going to survive.

Instead of being a place for me to comment, this will now function strictly as a news aggregation site.

I will copy and paste stories (and their URLs), videos and photos from other sites. The content will all be political issues that directly affect our generation (The Millenials in case you are a virgin to the 800 lbs Gorilla. I know there's a joke to be made after that sentence, but I choose to let it go).

I'll try to do this a couple days a week and visitors should be able to use this site as a place to get news, rather than reading all of the shit I go through.

Here we go...

How To Get Rich Off Wall Street Scum

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Hiding Gold - David Leonhardt

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Obama Appoints Government Performance Officer
The goal of government is to be efficient? Who knew?
January 7, 2009
Updated 4:02 p.m. ET
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/01/obama_picks_government_perform.html?hpid=topnews

President-elect Barack Obama has picked Nancy Killefer to serve as the federal government’s chief performance officer (CPO), a newly created post designed to help improve government efficiency and reform budget practices.

“We can no longer afford to sustain the old ways when we know there are new and more efficient ways of getting the job done,” Obama said during a news conference this morning at his transition office. “Even in good times, Washington can’t afford to continue these bad practices. In bad times, it’s absolutely imperative that Washington stop them and restore confidence that our government is on the side of taxpayers and everyday Americans.”

The new chief performance officer will also serve as the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director for management, according to two congressional sources. During the presidential campaign Obama originally proposed having a CPO report directly to the president.

Obama said Killefer is “uniquely qualified” to serve as the nation’s first CPO, calling her “an expert in streamlining processes and wringing out inefficiencies so that taxpayers and consumers get more for their money.”

To illustrate her strong desire to enact reforms, Obama said that when she was offered the opportunity to serve in the Clinton administration, Killefer said “If you’re willing to embrace significant change, then you’re looking at the right person. But if you just want to keep the trains running on time, don’t ask me to do this job.”

Killefer served as assistant secretary for management and chief financial officer and chief operating officer at the Treasury Department from 1997 to 2000. At McKinsey, Killefer worked with the retail, hotel and pharmaceutical industries on management, marketing and efficiency issues. She also chaired the IRS Oversight Board from 2001 to 2005 and has served on the board of the Partnership for Public Service since 2006.

In a brief statement, Killefer made it clear she understands the personal element of government service -- a comment sure to bring praise from federal workers unions and the rank-and-file.

“The people who deliver those services, the government employees themselves, will be central to this effort,” she said. "I am convinced that the success of every policy of this administration will be influenced by the people executing it. And I am committed to engaging and drawing on the talents of the federal workforce in order to deliver on our promise of a new, more efficient and effective government."

Killefer has drawn wide praise from colleagues.

“You couldn’t design a better person for this job,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service.

“You often find management consultants who are amazingly adept in the private sector, and McKinsey certainly has a lot of them, but the translation to government is a challenging one,” he added. “What Nancy brings is a wealth of experience of working in the government on management issues. That combination of expertise from the public and private sectors will be what she needs to draw on to do a very challenging job.”

"Improving the performance of public sector organizations is an important objective at a time when governments everywhere are being challenged to do more with less," McKinsey managing director Ian Davis in a written statement. "Nancy brings a unique blend of skills and experience to the task."

In a written statement, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised Obama's pick, saying it demonstrates "real commitment to changing Washington by ensuring lofty campaign ideals are not forgotten when governing begins."

As for what Killefer might do with her new job, she wrote in a 2006 Business Week article that:

"Government is a sector -- structured and regulated in ways that can foster or stunt productivity growth at its "firms" (agencies). And while it may not be possible to use competition in government to exert pressure to perform, Congress and the White House or state legislators and governors have plenty of tools to improve public agencies."

In that article, Killefer also proposed a model for measuring government performance:

“A body we call 'Gov-Star,' modeled after fund-rating agency Morningstar, to provide completely independent measurement of government program performance; to develop comparable program data over time – between programs, between governments, and with the private sector; and to make the data and their implications clear to appropriators and citizens.”

During the presidential campaign, Obama proposed the creation of a “SWAT team” composed of “top-performing and highly-trained government professionals” that would work with government agency leaders and the Office of Management and Budget to eliminate government waste and improve efficiency.

"The CPO will work with federal agencies to set tough performance targets and hold managers responsible for progress," according to the campaign proposal. "The president will meet regularly with cabinet officers to review the progress their agencies are making toward meeting performance improvement targets."

Obama said that Killefer will work on “identifying where there are areas that we can make big change that lasts beyond the economic recovery plan and save taxpayer money over the long term.”

But observers say the CPO will need at least some budget control of government agencies in order to make a meaningful impact.

"The chief performance officer has to have some linkage, some control of the budgets of the agencies,” said Ken Mead, a former inspector general at Treasury. “That’s what gets their attention.”

“I think the challenge for her is to figure out what are the good aspects of the way the government currently evaluates government performance, and where are the bad parts," said Adam Hughes, director of federal fiscal policy at OMB Watch.

“History has shown us that’s not an easy task. Plus, whatever recommendations she develops, she’s going to have to get them through Congress.”

Killefer's appointment requires Senate confirmation and will be handled by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which promises to consider the pick "as quickly as possible so the President-elect has his budget team in place at the earliest possible date," said committee spokeswoman Leslie Philips.

Stimulus on Track, Despite Huge Deficit
Accumulate debt and pass it on down. That's American.
January 7, 2009
The Wall Street Journal Online
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123134135565860959.html#

President-elect Barack Obama's economic team is pressing ahead with a costly economic-stimulus plan despite a projected $1.2 trillion budget deficit this year.

The incoming administration is convinced that international lenders will be more likely to keep the U.S. government afloat if they see aggressive action to emerge from recession, and that the potential costs from insufficiently bold action are greater than the dangers of rising interest rates from swelling deficits.

And Mr. Obama appears ready to up the ante. In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday, he acknowledged that the plan's price tag, currently $775 billion, is likely to rise. "We've seen ranges from 800 [billion] to 1.3 trillion and our attitude was that given the legislative process, if we start towards the low end of that, we'll see how it develops," he said.

Mr. Obama and his senior economic aides confronted projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday that the federal deficit will reach $1.2 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. That would shatter the nominal dollar record of $455 billion set in fiscal 2008. Measured against the size of the economy, the deficit -- at 8.3% of gross domestic product -- is expected to eclipse the postwar record of 6% in 1983.

Mr. Obama pledged Wednesday to attack surging spending on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, and he promised to lay out specific federal programs to cut when he unveils his first budget blueprint next month.

But he also framed the dilemma he is inheriting Wednesday as he introduced at a news conference a new federal "chief performance officer," Nancy Killefer, a senior director at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. "If we do nothing, then we will continue to see red ink as far as the eye can see," the president-elect said. "And at the same time, we have an economic situation that is dire, and we're going to have to jump-start this economy with my economic recovery plan, creating three million jobs. That's going to cost some money."

Mr. Obama will deliver what aides describe as a major speech on the economy Thursday morning at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where he will detail his plans to tackle the recession.

In the next decade, the CBO forecasts the federal government piling on more than $3.1 trillion in additional debt. In the short run, the government faces a $166 billion plunge in tax revenue compared with last year, the CBO says.

Spending will grow this year by almost $622 billion. More than half of that growth will come from the Wall Street rescue fund and the federal takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Unemployment compensation will nearly double, to $79 billion from $43 billion last year. Nutrition assistance will surge to $50 billion from $39 billion.

But those figures likely understate the problem. The debt total doesn't include the stimulus plan, estimated at $775 billion but likely to go higher as it winds through Congress. It assumes all of President George W. Bush's tax cuts will expire on schedule in 2010, although Mr. Obama has promised to extend all of them except those affecting families earning more than $250,000. And it assumes that Congress will allow the alternative minimum tax to grow unchecked. The AMT went into effect in 1969 to ensure that the super wealthy pay income tax, but it is increasingly hitting the middle class. Extending the Bush tax cuts and holding the AMT at bay by linking it to inflation would add a further $761 billion in debt.

In past recessions, surging deficits have been fed by an upward spiral. The Treasury had to sell more government bonds. To attract buyers, interest rates would rise, leading to ever higher interest costs for the government and higher deficits. This year, federal interest payments are expected to plunge by more than 20%.

That is because foreign governments, financiers and savers are stashing their money in Treasury bonds. They will continue to do so until the world economy recovers, Obama aides and congressional leaders agree. But deficit hawks worry that economic recovery will present other investment opportunities and could lead to a rapid flight from U.S. government debt. That would cause a surge of interest rates and possibly "an inflationary bow wave out in the future," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota.

Senior Obama economic officials have been studying that scenario closely. For now, Democratic economists say even with a trillion-dollar deficit, there aren't enough Treasury bills to satisfy world demand for a savings safe harbor. The economic crisis has actually put much of the world at more risk than the U.S. And an aggressive response -- both through fiscal stimulus and the second $350 billion tranche of the Wall Street bailout fund -- will be more reassuring, not less.

But the Obama team recognizes that position won't last indefinitely. The ratio of debt to GDP has to stop growing and must stabilize at what they see as a reasonable rate. The problem is determining when to ratchet back the stimulus. Obama officials are determined not to pull back too fast for the sake of fiscal discipline and risk plunging the economy back into recession.

"When you start seeing the private sector lending again, when credit is flowing to families and businesses, they can get auto loans, they can support their mortgage, that the job market has stabilized, then we will want to pull back," Mr. Obama said on CNBC.

On Capitol Hill Wednesday, top Democrats for the first time broadened the stimulus discussion to rank-and-file lawmakers, beginning Wednesday to lay the groundwork for action in the House and Senate later this month.
—Greg Hitt and Naftali Bendavid contributed to this article.

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

I wrote up this blog post for the company blog I manage and sent out the link in our Christmas e-mail card.

Check it out, 10 Holiday Video Clips to Get You in the Mood.

My Dad is Mr. Letter to the Editor

2008-12-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

There's something revolutionary in writing a letter to the editor of a local newspaper.

Last quarter, I took History of American Journalism and heard lecture upon lecture on how the opinion pages of newspapers thrived as dialogue between editorial boards and community members.

In the end, this is what will probably save newspapers through the convenience of commenting on Web editions and on blogs. Heck, I get that same feeling when writing this blog that I'm sure revolutionists got in the early years of the American press and civil right activists got during the time of the black press.

Sometimes I feel like James Franklin only with a computer. It doesn't bother me if I get zero hits, just being out hear makes me think I'm contributing to a necessary public forum.

My dad, who has recently embraced the digital replacement form of letter to the editor in the company blog I manage, loves to write into local papers.

Here's his latest gem with a crafty pull quote, pasted from The Youngstown Vindicator's site.

This ran in print on Sunday Dec. 21. I'll just copy paste it for your reading pleasure.

EDITOR:

This time last year Johnson Rubber in Middlefield filed for bankruptcy. The company’s roots went back to 1895, predating GM. Their business was 70 percent auto related and much of their workforce came from the Trumbull County area. About 500 employees lost their jobs. Creditors lost millions, including my company. It was my decision, my risk, and ultimately my bad.

Rightly or wrongly nobody much cared about these people. Where was Governor Ted, Senator George, or Timmy Ryan? I don’t recall any editorial outrage or sympathy from the local talking radioheads. Not even a peep from Jim Graham.

Those against the loan are called names for being anti-labor. Personally, I’m anti-stupid.

Now with the shoe on the other foot we’re all supposed to rally around the GM/UAW flagpole. This combo has managed to lose $15 billion in the past two years or so. Now they want the taxpayers to give them a “loan” not supported with collateral or any guarantee that it will be paid back. Those against the loan are called names for being anti-labor. Personally, I’m anti-stupid. Some point to the financial industry bailout as precedent yet fail to see the difference. The financial mess was caused by our government and all those that run it. Of course they are going to cover their rears.

We have become a country that rewards incompetence. Our system re-elects leaders that don’t lead. We bail out the losers and tax the winners. Some motivation.

The fact is that GM has been bankrupt in all but name for years. The solutions to their problems need to come from within. Henry Ford knew he had to make a car people could afford to survive. My guess is that if GM/UAW and the retirees get down to it and made a $10,000 Cobalt you’d have these shifts humming along 24/7. And maybe some of the forgotten Johnson Rubber people could land a job.

TIMOTHY RYAN

Newton Falls

Come On Stewart, Do Two Wrongs Make A Right?

2008-12-05T08:57:00.000-08:00

I love the Daily Show and will continue to watch it no matter what Jon Stewart says or does.

If he goes out and says he is pro-Cancer, it won't change my opinion that he's funny because the two would be completely unrelated.

But he said something stupid last night and I feel the need to comment. Here's the clip:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Autoerotic Explanation

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

He's not the first to make the argument that we should bailout Detroit because we bailed out Wall Street. But he's probably the one you were most likely to listen to (and I don't blame you for that).

Sure, GM's proposal sounds good. All three CEO's pledged to cut their salaries to $1 per year. They'll be in the poor house for sure after that, according to Slate's new baby The Big Money.

I posted earlier that the UAW concessions are a step towards this bailout working.

But I posted before digesting the details.

According to a New York Times article I also linked to two paragraphs ago, the Big Three spend an average of $78/hour per employee when you consider all the benefits.

Plus, retired workers get a lot of those same health care benefits, even though they don't work.

(Quick note off topic: In my opinion, I don't think the government should control retirement planning at all. I think we should be given our full pay check and deal with planning ourselves. That means give me back social security and give me what my employer puts into everything and let me manage my own money.)

Sure, the salary for an auto worker is only an average of around $30 an hour. But the issue is what it costs the employer. (After four years of college, I won't make anywhere close to that for years after I finish if I stay in journalism. Cue the violins and Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me A River")

WSJ.com's Evan Newmark broke down the GM plan brilliantly and I wish I would have just read this rather than everything else.

It took me a solid 15 minutes to track that post back down so enjoy this pull quote as well:

The U.S. car industry has been a credit junkie that now has to go cold turkey.

Which provides a good transition to my last link to a recent statement by Rep. Barney Frank (D, Mass.) who says an automotive bailout would negatively affect the credit crisis.

I'm a little upset that I can't find out how this would negatively affect the credit crisis, other than the obvious, if more people are unemployed then there will be less spending. (And we all know spending and racking up credit card bills is the answer rather than saving.)

But shouldn't bankruptcy be less expensive to the government than this bailout? Seriously, I'm not a bankruptcy expert so if I'm wrong, let me know.

To close, here's Bill O'Reilly giving it to Frank. I don't watch the O'Reilly factor and I think he's a little to Republican for my taste, but at least he's entertaining and a true economic conservative. Enjoy the clip:

Hookers And Adultery? I'm Still Listening

2008-12-04T06:07:00.001-08:00

The following contents are comments to a recent story on Slate regarding the federal bailout written by former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

The first comments come from someone else and the second is mine. Then I'll paste the story. Enjoy.

Spitzer is an IDIOT
by Dean Scholes
12/04/2008, 8:44 AM #
Rate this topic Favorites Reply

Hey Slate, I've never visited your site before, nor did I read this article. I discovered your partnership with a criminal, an adulterer, a liar and a bully from another source and couldn't resist submitting this post.

I am a Republican who voted for Spitzer, and I am discusted with the S.O.B. for what he did with my vote and the millions of others who put faith in his promises and opinions. Screw you Spitzer, and you too Slate. Now neither one of you should be considered as reliable sources of credibilty.

Spitzer, you need to spend more time underneath the heaping, steaming dung pile you covered yourself with before sharing anything you have to say in a public forum. No one cares about you, or what you think, except you.

Dean Scholes

Angelica, New York

Re: Spitzer is an IDIOT
by Corey_Ryan
12/04/2008, 9:06 AM #
Delete Favorites Reply

Wow, what blatant ignorance to the topic at hand. So if someone is an adulterer, then you're just going to completely ignore them no matter what?

If someone came up with the cure for cancer, but he or she had an affair, even though the two topics are completely unrelated (cancer and sex), you wouldn't want that cure?

If you are a conservative, than you have to love Spitzer's commentary. I picked up on this story from The Cheat Sheet (pretty aptly named for a link to Spitzer, I suppose) and I'm glad I went to it. I'm going to share it on Facebook and comment on it in my blog.

Spitzer has the Wall Street credentials and illustrates a very good point.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS ARE PAYING FOR THESE HUGE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS TO GET BIGGER!

Right here in Northeast Ohio, PNC received bailout money to purchase National City, making it a bigger, stronger bank. Spitzer points out that bigger and stronger was the problem in first place.

Reading and agreeing with Spitzer's article doesn't mean you are pro-adult[e]ry just as being friends with someone who has had an abortion doesn't make you pro-choice.

But ignoring a valid opinion just because something unrelated to the topic happened with the author puts you underneath the heaping dung pile.

--
the best policy
Too Big Not To Fail
We need to stop using the bailouts to rebuild gigantic financial institutions.
By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008, at 5:59 PM ET

Last month, as the financial crisis and the government rescue plan dominated headlines, almost everyone overlooked a news item that could have enormous long-term impact: GE Capital announced the acquisition of five mid-size airplanes—with an option to buy 20 more—produced by CACC, a new, Chinese-government-sponsored airline manufacturer.

Why is that so significant? Two reasons: First, just as small steps signaled the Asian entry into our now essentially bankrupt auto sector 50 years ago, so the GE acquisition signals Asia's entry into one of our few remaining dominant manufacturing sectors. Boeing is still the world's leading commercial aviation company. CACC's emergence—and its particular advantage selling to Asian markets—means that Boeing now faces the rigors of an entirely new competitive playing field and that our commercial airplane sector is likely to suffer enormously over the coming decades.

But the second implication is even bigger. The CACC story highlights the risk that current bailouts—a remarkable $7.8 trillion in equity, loans, and guarantees so far—may merely perpetuate a fundamentally flawed status quo. So far, at least, we are simply rebuilding the same edifice that just collapsed. None of the investments has even begun to address the underlying structural problems that are causing economic power to shift away from the United States, sector by sector:

* Our trade deficit has ballooned from about $100 billion to more than $700 billion annually in the past decade, and our federal deficit now approaches $1 trillion. These twin deficits leave us at the mercy of foreign-capital inflows that may diminish as Asian nations, in particular, invest increasingly at home.
* Our household savings rate has been close to zero—and even negative in some years—not permitting the long-term capital accumulation required for the investments we need; China's savings rate, by comparison, is an astonishing 30 percent of household income.
* U.S. middle class income has stagnated over the past decade, while the middle class in China—granted, starting from a lower base—has seen its income growing at about 10 percent annually.
* Our intellectual advantage could soon turn into a new "third deficit," as hundreds of thousands of engineers are being created annually in China.
* We are realizing that the service sector—all the lawyers, investment bankers, advertising agencies, and accountants—follows its clients and wealth creation. This, not over-regulation, is the reason investment-banking activity has begun to migrate overseas.

The great irony is that our new place in the global economy is a direct consequence of our grand victory over the past 60 years. We have, indeed, converted virtually the entire world into one integrated capitalist economy, and we must now bear the brunt of serious and vigorous competition. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States was essentially the only nation with financial capital, intellectual capital, skilled labor, a growing middle class generating consumer demand, and a rule of law permitting safe investment. Now we are one of many nations with these critical advantages.

This long-term change frames the question we should be asking ourselves: What are we getting for the trillions of dollars in rescue funds? If we are merely extending a fatally flawed status quo, we should invest those dollars elsewhere. Nobody disputes that radical action was needed to forestall total collapse. But we are creating the significant systemic risk not just of rewarding imprudent behavior by private actors but of preventing, through bailouts and subsidies, the process of creative destruction that capitalism depends on.

A more sensible approach would focus not just on rescuing pre-existing financial institutions but, instead, on creating a structure for more contained and competitive ones. For years, we have accepted a theory of financial concentration—not only across all lines of previously differentiated sectors (insurance, commercial banking, investment banking, retail brokerage, etc.) but in terms of sheer size. The theory was that capital depth would permit the various entities, dubbed financial supermarkets, to compete and provide full service to customers while cross-marketing various products. That model has failed. The failure shows in gargantuan losses, bloated overhead, enormous inefficiencies, dramatic and outsized risk taken to generate returns large enough to justify the scale of the organizations, ethical abuses in cross-marketing in violation of fiduciary obligations, and now the need for major taxpayer-financed capital support for virtually every major financial institution.

But even more important, from a structural perspective, our dependence on entities of this size ensured that we would fall prey to a "too big to fail" argument in favor of bailouts.

Two responses are possible: One is to accept the need for gigantic financial institutions and the impossibility of failure—and hence the reality of explicit government guarantees, such as Fannie and Freddie now have—but then to regulate the entities so heavily that they essentially become extensions of the government. To do so could risk the nimbleness we want from economic actors.

The better policy is to return to an era of vibrant competition among multiple, smaller entities—none so essential to the entire structure that it is indispensable.

The concentration of power—political as well as economic—that resided in these few institutions has made it impossible so far for this crisis to be used as an evolutionary step in confronting the true economic issues before us. But imagine if instead of merging more and more banks together, we had broken them apart and forced them to compete in a genuine manner. Or, alternatively, imagine if we had never placed ourselves in a position in which so many institutions were too big to fail. The bailouts might have been unnecessary.

In that case, vast sums now being spent on rescue packages might have been available to increase the intellectual capabilities of the next generation, or to support basic research and development that could give us true competitive advantage, or to restructure our bloated health care sector, or to build the type of physical infrastructure we need to be competitive.

It is time we permitted the market to work: This means true competition with winners and losers; companies that disappear; shareholders and CEOs who can lose as well as win; and government investment in the long-range competitiveness of our nation, not in a failed business model of financial concentration and failed risk management that holds nobody accountable.

This point will be all too well driven home when the remaining investment bankers in New York board a CACC jet to fly to Washington to negotiate the terms of a government bailout of yet another U.S. financial institution that was deemed too big to fail.
Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2205995/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Renegotiate With UAW And I May Be OK

2008-12-03T12:57:00.000-08:00

So my dad recently engaged in a dialogue with a certain future professor of mine (he teaches a required course I need to take in the spring) after said professor wrote a Plain Dealer column (and apparently in the Dispatch as well) promoting the Detroit bailout.

That's my dad's thing, you see, reading newspapers and writing to them. He keeps his published Letters to the Editor tucked away in his room in the family basement like trophies. He loves to argue and to push the economic conservative agenda.

And he loves to attack unions.

He worked for U.S. Gypsum Steel back in the 80s and there was some sort of union action (I don't know if it was a strike/lockout or a threat of strike/lockout), but he once told me a crowd of union workers ended up at his house and threw paint at it.

The point of all that is not that my dad has a personal vendetta with unions. I mean to point out that he has had experience with unions from both sides (he worked labor in steel mills through college). He knows what he's talking about when he argues against them.

Because I can only attest a knowledge of the basic when it comes to labor unions (a group of employees of a certain occupation or industry who come together to collectively negotiate wages, benefits, etc.), I usually defer to him on such topics.

Plus, I am pretty much against anything that pins one group squarely against another unless it's sports or a superhero battle. (the Superman image came from here.)

One could argue that automotive industry is completely different from steel, but apparently the comparison can be easily made.

Now that steel has been reformed and broken up into smaller companies, we actually produce more of it. This .pdf from the American Iron and Steel Institute brings in the facts.

Notably, that document states that in 2006 we could produce one ton of steel per two man hours as opposed to one ton per 10.1 man hours in the 1980s.

So where am I going with all of this?

It's hard to argue against my dad ( or with Professor Suddes) because there is clearly a problem with the UAW's contract.

But I may be okay with some sort of Detroit bailout if the the automakers can negotiate with the UAW. This is what sparked the mid-day post, so here's the article from the Wall Street Journal pasted below.

I also embedded a video off WSJ.com because I'm curious what you think of their videos.

As for those who came hoping to read something of a lighter note, I apologize. I'm working on my Photoshop skills for a series of regular posts where I manipulate photos of America's finest. Currently I'm working on an image of GM CEO Richard Wagoner taking it from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but it's taking me a minute.

Cheers!

Auto Union Open to Changes in Contract
DECEMBER 3, 2008, 3:48 P.M. ET
by Sharon Terlap
WSJ.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122832097499675993.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1&

DETROIT -- The United Auto Workers will allow U.S. auto makers to delay payments into a massive health-care trust and suspend the controversial jobs bank program for laid-off workers, part of an effort to help Detroit's struggling auto makers secure emergency federal loans.

The UAW will modify the contracts reached last year with the Detroit Three to help cut costs as the companies try to convince Congress they can survive if given a federal bailout. Modification will require the UAW to assemble bargaining committees and commence negotiations with the companies.

"'Concessions," I used to cringe at that word. But now, why hide from it? That's what we did," Mr. Gettelfinger said.

His comments came one day after General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC submitted wide-ranging restructuring blueprints to Congress in the hopes of qualifying for a combined $34 billion in low-interest federal loans. GM and Chrysler say they both need money immediately to avoid collapse, while Ford says it would hope not to have to draw from any credit line.

Cutting Costs

The auto makers are hoping to negotiate concessions from the UAW to bring the cost structures of the Detroit Three more in line with those of foreign auto makers in the U.S.

The health-care trust, commonly referred to as VEBA, was supposed to begin paying benefits to retirees starting Jan. 1, 2010, and is considered a key component of the companies' efforts to reduce labor obligations. However, the auto makers are running short of liquidity and likely unable to come up with the billions of dollars needed to initially fund the trust.

U.S. auto makers are burning through cash at an alarming pace as auto sales in the U.S. and abroad plunge. On Tuesday, Ford reported a 30% decline in its U.S. sales in November versus the year-ago period, while GM and Chrysler each saw their sales drop more than 40%.

As for the jobs bank program, which provides many laid-off workers with most of their pay and benefits, Mr. Gettelfinger said the program has shrunk dramatically, but remains a "lightning rod" for critics of the domestic auto industry.

"Jobs bank has become a sound byte that people use to beat us up," he said. GM and Ford have reduced their jobs banks by nearly 80,000 workers in recent years. The Detroit Three auto makers currently have 3,500 workers in the jobs bank.

'Change With The Times'

Mr. Gettelfinger made the case that a failure of one of Detroit's auto makers would trigger a collapse of at least one of the other auto makers along with suppliers, auto dealers and other companies that depend on GM, Ford and Chrysler for business.

Auto makers made similar statements in the letters sent to Congress on Tuesday.

The UAW will drive that point with an ad campaign that asks for help for Main Street and reminds Congress that the auto industry is not the banking system, which just received a $700 billion federal bailout.

"If Wall Street can get help so should Main Street," one spot will say.

Mr. Gettelfinger also emphasized that the auto makers are presenting a detailed plan that promises to repay the loans. He also noted that other nations are being asked to extend support to their auto industries.

Hundreds of local UAW officials convened for Wednesday's meeting, which Mr. Gettelfinger described as an "unprecedented" gathering of officials representing workers from all three auto makers.

Several said they believe members would grudgingly support the concessions, though some said they planned to oppose further givebacks.

"We're in a fight for survival," said Doug Rice, president of UAW Local 122, representing Chrysler workers. "We're going to have to look at how we do things so we can live today to survive tomorrow."

Rory Gamble, a regional UAW director for Ford, said union leaders have to present a plan that's fair and appropriate for members.

"I'm pretty sure they'll accept that," he said. "You've got to change with the times," he added, noting that the union will look for guarantees down the road when the companies rebound.

GM shares were down 1% at $4.80 in mid-afternoon trading, while Ford shares were up 6.6% at $2.88. Chrysler, owned by investment group Cerberus, doesn't have publicly traded shares.

Write to Sharon Terlep at sharon.terlep@dowjones.com

Politics Make Good Conversation, If The Conversers Have A Buffer Zone

2008-12-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

Has your family left yet?

By now, you should be home. Or maybe you never left, butUncle Benny who drinks too much just went back to Western Pennsylvania.

All the left over turkey is either gone or way too dry to consume (I recommend using some mustard to soften it up if you must finish it).

I had a quite dinner with the immediate family and our Kimmy Gibbler-like neighbor after a mid-day nap and a morning tackle football game. (the Gibbler link takes you to where I got the photo)

But the next day, I had a conversation with my mom that led me to an interesting hypothesis.

I don't know if it's because she doesn't get to talk about current events or politics with anyone, but she seems to relish in the opportunity to show off her strong Republican sentiments. And I think this is how most families are.

If you are the kind of family or group of friends that gets to see each other everyday, conversation tends to be limited to water cooler "Did you believe what Michael Scott did last night?" But what changes with those people you only see three times a year?

People take political ideology very seriously and we love to express our ideals whenever possible (this could be because it makes us feel knowledgeable or because we just inherently want to piss each other off, I don't know). When conflicting serious political ideals clash, people get angry. Therefore, we talk about politics only during holidays and scheduled get-togethers because of the buffer zone.

A buffer zone, as defined by Seinfeld, is the comfort zone between a child from his parents. The greater the buffer zone, the more comfort (Del Boca Vista to Manhattan being the ideal buffer zone). I think this applies to friends as well.

Remember that football game I mentioned earlier? My friends from high school and I play in a game every year. We've done this for seven years. The only time anyone mentioned Washington is when I have worn my Redskins Deon Sanders jersey for the game (here's where I got that photo).

Everyone started talking about Obama. I had to ask how other campuses reacted to the results.

It may be important to note that nothing got heated in this discussion, probably because we started playing football. And it was like 30 degrees outside.

I just know we grew up in different families and we go to different schools. Some of us care more about politics than others. If we would have been in a more suitable setting, someone's face would have gotten flushed with rage.

So the question that arises from my hypothesis is this. Why do we only want to piss off those close family and friends we take time to visit with on select special occasions?

After a weekend of watching my sister harass my mom about her weird dance moves that she performs miles away from traditional dance floors and my dad bringing up every embarrassing moment from my childhood (wouldn't you like to know), I realized something.

Pissing each other off is the foundation of family. Aren't you glad it's the holidays?

And They Said This Was Only Going To Be $700 Billion

2008-11-30T18:49:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting article I came across. The origin is noteworthy. Recently, I came across a Web site called The Daily Beast, I think because political satire extraordinaire Christopher Buckley writes there.

Anyway, they put together this section called The Cheat Sheet, which is a collection of the day's top news articles. I go there and to Buzzfeed for my news first when I sign online.

As for my two cents on the following article, it's like that episode of South Park. If you give the loch ness monster $3.50, he's going to keep coming back. Except instead of a giant cretaceous from the paleolithic era, we're talking about the government. Ain't life a bitch?

Here's a link to the story on latimes.com. Below I pasted the entire thing because I think the information is that important.

Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion
Heavy spending to battle the financial crisis is unlikely to abate soon. Analysts say next year's deficit could top $1 trillion.

By Jim Puzzanghera
November 30, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- With its decision last week to pump an additional $1 trillion into the financial crisis, the government eliminated any doubt that the nation is on a wartime footing in the battle to shore up the economy. The strategy now -- and in the coming Obama administration -- is essentially the win-at-any-cost approach previously adopted only to wage a major war.

And that means no hesitation in pledging to spend previously almost unimaginable sums of money and running up federal budget deficits on a scale not seen since World War II.

Indeed, analysts warn that the nation's next financial crisis could come from the staggering cost of battling the current one.

Just last week, new initiatives added $600 billion to lower mortgage rates, $200 billion to stimulate consumer loans and nearly $300 billion to steady Citigroup, the banking conglomerate. That pushed the potential long-term cost of the government's varied economic rescue initiatives, including direct loans and loan guarantees, to an estimated total of $8.5 trillion -- half of the entire economic output of the U.S. this year.

Nor has the cash register stopped ringing. President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are expected to enact a stimulus package of $500 billion to $700 billion soon after he takes office in January.

The spending already has had a dramatic effect on the federal budget deficit, which soared to a record $455 billion last year and began the 2009 fiscal year with an amazing $237-billion deficit for October alone. Analysts say next year's budget deficit could easily bust the $1-trillion barrier.

"I didn't think we'd see that for a long time," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "There's a huge risk of another economic crisis, a debt crisis, once we get on the other side of this one."

But the Bush administration and the economic team that Obama is rapidly assembling like a war Cabinet are vowing to spend whatever it takes to avoid a depression; they'll worry about the effect later.

"I don't think that there's any way of denying the fact that my first priority and my first job is to get us on the path of economic recovery, to create 2.5 million jobs, to provide relief to middle-class families," Obama told reporters last week.

"But as soon as the recovery is well underway, then we've got to set up a long-term plan to reduce the structural deficit and make sure that we're not leaving a mountain of debt for the next generation."

The mountain is already there, and rising faster than at any time since the 1940s, when the United States was fighting a global war.

Analysts say the current flood of red ink calls into question Obama's ability to launch programs such as middle-class tax cuts and a healthcare overhaul. In 1993, a deficit only a third the size of next year's projected $1 trillion prompted President Clinton to abandoned his campaign pledges of tax cuts.

Once the financial crisis eases, higher interest rates and soaring inflation will be risks. If they materialize, they could dramatically increase the government's borrowing costs to meet its annual debt payments. For consumers, borrowing could become more expensive even as the price of everyday items rise, holding back economic growth.

"We could have a super sub-prime crisis associated with the meltdown of the federal government," warned David Walker, president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former head of the Government Accountability Office.

But even deficit hawks such as Walker acknowledge that the immediate crisis is priority No. 1. Just as with World War II, the government can worry about paying the bills once the enemy is defeated.

"You just throw everything you have at the problem to try to fix it as quickly as you can," said David Stowell, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. "We're mortgaging our future to a certain extent, but we're trying to do things that give us a future."

Washington could wind up spending substantially less than the sum of the commitments. Though the total estimated cost of the government's efforts adds up to $8.5 trillion, only about $3.2 trillion has been tapped, according to an analysis by Bloomberg.

And not all the money committed is direct spending. About $5.5 trillion in loan guarantees and other financial backing by the Federal Reserve is included in the total.

"The only way those commitments would become obligations would be if the economy completely collapsed, in which case it's a whole new ballgame anyway," said John Steele Gordon, a business and economic historian.

The government even stands to make money on some expenditures, such as the $330 billion it has used to buy equity in banks and other financial institutions through the Treasury Department's Troubled Asset Relief Program.

In the $1.2-billion bailout of Chrysler in 1980, the government ended up gaining $311 million when it sold stock options back to the company three years later.

But the federal efforts to forestall a depression are still historic in scope.

A $1-trillion deficit next year would represent about 7% of the nation's total economic output, or gross domestic product. That would top the 5.9% reached during the height of the Great Depression in 1934 but would fall well short of the deficits of World War II. In 1943, the high point, the deficit amounted to 30% of GDP.

The national debt is soaring too. In September, the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of digits as the figure ticked over $10 trillion. The debt is now larger than the 45% of GDP it reached at the end of the Great Depression, but less than in 1946, when war spending had pushed the debt to 129% of GDP, said Gordon, author of "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt."

There's a potentially crucial difference, however, between the spending then and the commitments now:

Much of the Depression-World War II spending was on industrial production -- building new factories and converting existing plants to produce tanks, planes and ships. Huge sums also went into developing new technologies.

Those investments, combined with pent-up consumer demand and savings from the lean war years, quickly led to budget surpluses and sharp economic growth in the late 1940s as the baby boom began.

Analysts warn not to expect that to happen again. This time the government spending is largely ethereal, with the Federal Reserve printing more money to inject liquidity into the financial system and keep banks and other institutions afloat. And savings rates are low.

"Too many Americans have overextended themselves with regard to credit and debt, and too many have been following the bad example of the government," Walker said. "It is imperative that we recognize that this country has been living beyond its means and that we face large and growing structural deficits even after we turn the economy around."

Walker said he understands the need to attack the financial crisis. But the spending only adds to the looming problems of unfunded Social Security and Medicare commitments as baby boomers begin to retire.

He noted that the Moody's bond-rating firm fired a shot across the government's bow in January with a warning that spending on entitlement programs poses a long-term threat to the triple-A rating for government bonds. And that was before the financial crisis.

Interest rates remain low because of the crisis. But they will rise, particularly when the U.S. government starts borrowing more money to cover its growing debt, analysts predict. That could cause inflation to increase as well.

"We could easily enter into a highly inflationary situation because of all the stimulus we have and all the borrowing we have once it works its way through the economy," MacGuineas said. "The single most important priority right now is to stabilize the economy . . . but it really means that there is a huge risk on the other side."

Puzzanghera is a Times staff writer.

jim.puzzanghera@ latimes.com

If They Take My Cheap Beer Away, I'm Leaving

2008-11-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

Have I had you sitting on pins and needles this past 10 days, waiting for that next post?

Don't fret, I have been allowing my professor to grade this as a project and waiting for the opportune topic to address.

So we have the reemergence of the Detroit Bailout (here's an interesting look about how the steel industry may provide as an example for automotive), the ongoing assemblage of President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet, the gay marriage issue and the Citigroup bailout all as possible discussion topics.

Luckily, all my readers are way to informed to care about listening to me go on a rant about how there is one simple solution to all of the three topics that are fixable (Obama's cabinet being a news story while the other issues being problems). The government should butt out of people's lifes!

Rather than focus on that junk, I'm going to go off the beaten pat with this post and address something that may be off your radar. Heck, this little nugget was off the epic New York Times Sunday edition.

England is considering a ban on happy hour! Forget the threat of bears, with all of this government intervention these days, is it not possible that the U.S. could follow the footsteps of those crazy Brits!

You want to spark a revolution Mr. Governement, take my happy hour and I will rain fire and brimstone all over your ass! It's right up there with football, apple pie, Internet porn and SUVs with America's past times.

Be sure to check out updates on this story because I sure as hell won't let those bastards get away of they try and pull this stunt in my U.S.A.

God Bless America!

Election Wrap-Up One Week Later

2008-11-12T06:03:00.000-08:00

I am sorry blog, I neglected you too long.

But can you blame me? I haven't felt that burned out since I watched a 24-hour marathon of Dawson's Creek.

There are a few things I want to respond to and post in here, so this will be sort of a mix bag of blog goodies. Oh, and I may have to neglect this blog for another week or so because the official class project ends today and I think my professor needs to grade this as is.

Don't worry, though, I will post during winter break and up until someone pays me lots of money for my brilliant insights. That's right. I will sell out and never look back.

First things first, last time I posted was early morning after the election concluded. I ferociously tapped at the keyboard trying to get my election story into the Athens News so I could sleep. Here is a link to that story.

And now I will respond to my story

Things got a little weird after Barack Obama won the election. Everyone I encountered seemed happy, they just didn't know how to react.

The two reactions to transpire were tears of joy and run wild and scream like you have a banana in your pants and a monkey chasing you.

As I wrote in that last post, an Obama victory was one for the youth because so many felt a sense of duty for his victory.

My article states that even students who did not volunteer for the campaign still felt that Obama is the president elect because of their vote.

But the turnout numbers were not as overwhelming as I would have hoped. Even though the youth numbers went up for the third election in a row, 52 percent just doesn't cut it.

According to that Rock the Vote Blog, the 18-29 demographic accounted for 23 million votes. But, there are 44 million in that demographic.

What the fuck dudes?

Who didn't pull their weight? If the number doesn't continue to go at least expand from their in coming elections (and I don't just mean in 2012), then nothing is going to change.

It doesn't matter that the high voter turnout predictions for everyone didn't happen.

The point of this blog is and always will be to push a political agenda for the millennials. But that can't be done without votes.

I will now climb down my soap box and address two other things. But first, check out these cool maps of how the election would have turned out if only a certain demographic had vote d. And check out this Racist Belt Theory.

Now onto Rob's insanely long, but totally appreciated comment

If you scroll down to the very bottom of this page, there's a list for followers. Rob would be my only one (this is when I nudge you on the arm and give you a little wink).

And as a loyal follower, Rob did two things. First, HE COMMENTED! Second, he completely disagreed with the man he was following.

Let me make one thing clear. I voted for John McCain knowing there were two flawed candidates. Because I lean right on economic policy (though the Republican party now leans not so right these days), I chose the most conservative candidate in hopes that he would choose the right people to solve the economic crisis.

Rob wrote that he is happy to have an intellectual in the White House, one of the reasons he voted for Obama. I don't know how much smarter Obama is than anyother politician because most seem to have that Ivy League pedigree, but Obama does sound smart and look smart.

I think Presdient George W. Bush has taken a lot of unwarranted criticism (though he did earn his fair share). But it would be difficult to argue that President Bush has come off as the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

So I will agree with Rob there. The other area where I agree with Rob is his fourth point where he states "I think the Republicans need their ass kicked."

McCain was maybe the worst candidate out of the primary pool. My explanation for the low voter turnouts, specificaly the low Republican turnout like in Ohio, is a result of a bad candidate.

Even though the numbers did not meet my expectiations, a lot of sources are writing about how the youth helped Obama get elected. So maybe with that ass kicking, the Republicans will have to get a youth friendly candidate who's not Sarah Palin.

Caution, this next link jumps into the Delorian to talk about 2012. Do not click here if you aren't ready. Although I haven't read enough on him yet, I think I like the idea of Gov. Bobby Jindal running with my only concern being a pro-life agenda (For the record, I am pro-choice because I think the issue is too religious for the government to be meddling with. If put in a position for a personal decision on abortion, I would never do it. And that's all I have to say about that).

Okay, and now to end the epic wrap-up post.

An email from Ohio University College Republican President Mellissa Short answering my pre-election question, what if Obama becomes president?

You pose an interesting question. Having worked personally on the McCain
campaign no doubt I will feel let down and a sense of disappointment after
working hard for a candidate that didn't win. Realistically the only option I'll
have is to express my views and concerns to my Congressman and hope they can
represent my views in Washington. Here on campus I'll undoubtedly have to deal
with a gloating population of Obama supporters, a handful of them being my
friends. But I think it will be interesting to see what happens when things
aren't magically fixed when Obama gets into office and his own supporters turn
on him, if that were to happen that is. Personally I don't see a Republican or
Democrat solution to the problems our country is facing today, I just see a
solution that will be even slower to present itself once all levels of the
Federal government are left leaning. I hope I answered your question, feel free
to edit and paraphrase any of my above comments. I'm looking forward to the
response of an Obama supporter will be.

I was glad that I didn't get a fearful response as some Republicans gave prior to last Tuesday. But the main point I want to drive home pulled from Mellisa's response is this.

Whether you voted for Obama or oppose him, we as citizens (and me as a journalist) need to hold politicians responsible for their actions. As voters, if an Obama administration screws things up, then don't vote for him when that time comes around. If he invokes the kind of change he promised, then give him another four years.

That applies to all elected officials. That will be the roll of this blogs in weeks and months to come, so stay tuned.

Obama Wins One For Youth Voters

2008-11-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

I voted for John McCain, and I was not wrong in doing so.

Yes, earlier I posted that I wouldn't share my selection. But now it doesn't matter. The votes are in and I doubt you would have been influenced by me.

I voted McCain because I agree with a conservative ideology (though considering McCain a conservative may be a stretch) more than that of President-Elect Barack Obama and the Democrats. This article really influenced my decision.

But when I was uptown and in Baker Center tonight, watching the Obama supporters react to their candidate's victory, it legitimized him as a candidate for the young voters.

Now, I do not know if his policies are ideal for our generation. But he enfranchised us and that's why a President Obama is the best choice for our generation.

Obama made a significant amount of our generation care about voting. And because our voice was so essential in getting him elected, future elections will be forced to focus on us. That has always been the goal of this blog.

Here are some photos I took tonight and captions to explain each photo's significance. I'll post a link to my Athens News story in this post after it's published on Thursday.

Here is freshman Whitney Barksdale waiting in line to get free food. She told me that voting in her first election made her feel like her opinion was heard. It meant a lot to her to be apart of history in voting for the first African American for president. She said she believes in the change Obama can bring.

This is Skippers, the spot where the College Democrats and local Obama campaign volunteers congregated to watch the election coverage. Do you see the girl in the blue sweater with the arm on her shoulder? That's Liz Clark, the president for OU Students for Obama. I met her when researching for this article last year. She has worked for over a year in helping to get Obama elected.

Tuesday night, she glowed as tears of joy dripped down her cheek. I talked to her early in the night, before Obama captured the presidency. But when I came back to ask her about her final reaction, I couldn't interrupt the moment. During Obama's acceptance speech, he called his victory a victory for those who supported him and Liz has to be one of the people he was referring to.

Sure, these students were in line to get free food. But students are offered free food all the time and don't show up with these numbers. I talked to a few people in line and they all were interested in the election, the kind of enthusiasm that should carry over to future elections with our generation gaining political power.

Here is one of the Court Street mobs that took to screaming and running up and down the street. To be honest, this portion of the night got a little weird as Obama supporters took to skipping and yelling with one guy climbing a street light. I swear some people drove in circles just to honk their horns and yell "Obama" out their windows as much as possible.

The other mob started singing "We Are The Champions" outside of the Scripps Journalism building. When they were finished, they ran and skipped towards me like the herbivore dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

Where To Get The Best Election Coverage

2008-11-04T19:30:00.001-08:00

I'm guessing if you're reading this now, near the peak of election coverage, you are sitting at home, with your laptop on your lap, watching some coverage.

If you just settled in and went straight to this blog, then you are in luck my friend. Between myself and this random graduate student I met at the Donkey cafe, I think I know where you need to go to get the best information.

I think election coverage begins and ends with CNN at this point. My assignment for the Athens News is to cover the election on campus, which has led me to at least peak into four different locations where people are congregated and watching election coverage.

All are tuned into CNN.

Tonya Woodbridge, a graduate student at Ohio University studying education, is parked inside of Donkey armed with a laptop and continuing supply of coffee.

Although Tonya is an absolute Obama supporter, sporting her white t-shirt with the Obama campaign symbol, she is the kind of cynical thinker that I could talk to .

Tonya will not rest until they call the necessary 270 electoral votes and she is positive they are correct.

"I already was tricked once," she told me referring to the 2000 Presidential Campaign. "I went to bed then thinking one guy was going to be president and woke up to find out it was the other guy. I'm not going to let that happen again."

Tonya said she will wait until California's results come in, which probably won't happen for another three hours because the polls there will not close until 11 p.m.

Okay, I'll get back on topic now. From what I have been watching and hearing about the coverage, MSNBC seems to be the most trigger happy. They called Ohio (in favor of Obama) at least fifteen minutes before CNN.

So CNN is probably the best choice for watching TV, unless you are like me and would rather watch Indecision 2008 on Comedy Central. Check out comedian Patton Oswald's live blog from the Indecision 2008 Web site. It's complete bull shit that Comedy Central isn't streaming the coverage over the Web, giving us library patrons a chance to watch.

MSNBC has the best interactive map, in both mine and Tonya's opinions. Here's a look at it:

The wild card in all of this election coverage, in terms of Web production, would have to be Fox News. With an extreme Obama lead from the other two networks (CNN and MSNBC), Fox is taking the ultra conservative, gun shy approach when calling states.

Now their interactive map isn't working for me, but when it was, it may have been the most interesting of the three stations' interactive maps because it is the most different. As I type this, Fox News is calling Ohio for Obama, a mere 40 minutes behind CNN.

So this looks to be in the books, if everyone has reported results accurately. It interests me that the popular vote is so close, 51-48 Obama, but I'm sure that'll change by the end of the night if the stations have been accurately calling state victories. I'll post later tonight with a wrap up of the winner and some photos.

2008-11-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

I voted this morning at 9 a.m, did not wait in any line and voted in about five minutes. Some of you may be wondering after all these posts and all the cynicism who I did I give my vote to?

I'm not going to share.

Although I cannot deny my admiration of the passion the Sen. Barack Obama supporters have displayed these past two weeks, I can't take them anymore. I don't care who you voted for, and you shouldn't care who I voted for.

If you want to debate me on something, challenge my cynicism towards both candidates. Tell me why I am wrong when I write that both candidates suck.

All I care about is that you go vote because a vote from a 18-25 year old, no matter who the vote is, should contribute to getting a more quality candidate in 2012. I'm going to make at least two posts tonight, so be ready for that.

Note: I'm well aware that face makes me look like I have a tickle in my anus. It's supposed to be kind of a dazed look I suppose, with elephants and donkeys humping through my head. The graphic is meant to show that I have been battling complete disdain for this election.

I Support Small Government, But McCain May Be Senile And I Ain't Down With That

2008-11-03T15:47:00.000-08:00

Finding a Republican on the Ohio University campus is like finding someone who supports the HIV virus.

Okay, that may have been an exaggeration. I'm sure the Republican students are out there, but they aren't exactly coming out to support their candidate. And who can blame them.

Sen. John McCain is old, out-of-touch, computer illiterate, and has been a little erratic (Oh, God, I used the "e" word). Trinity Bracey, my favorite Sen. Barack Obama supporting freshman, told me that McCain makes her fall asleep.

While wearing that Obama/Biden pin or t-shirt has become as trendy as Northface fleeces and Ugg, a McCain/Palin sticker is more like wearing a beret.

Here's a photo from the former Burger King space on Court Street. As far as I can tell, this place is filled with Republican posters and nothing else. In the month or so it's been there, I have seen zero people enter. Is this why nothing has replaced Burger King here?

Okay, I'm not going to ramble onto a long-winded post here. My main concern with McCain is his age (72) and his inconsistency.

McCain has ran an awful campaign. check out this article for some campaign analysis. It was awful because he didn't run as himself, a bi-partisan moderate Republican. Instead, he tossed around the idea of being a Maverick, whatever the hell that means, but really just came off as a confused old man.

As a moderate Republican, he could have distanced himself from President George Bush and not lost the Republican vote because the GOP would see him as the better of two evils in comparison to the very left Sen. Barack Obama.

I know the statistic, that McCain voted with Bush 90 percent of the time, but this is Washington we're talking about. Just because you vote with someone, in the end, doesn't mean you didn't put up a fight. Here' s a quote from a Times Online article:

From then on he became the most reliably anti-Bush figure in the whole Republican Party. He clashed with the President over tax cuts, judicial appointments, the conduct of the war in Iraq, the treatment of detainees in the War on Terror and on campaign finance reform.
When he sought his party's nomination in the primary this year, he was attacked by almost all the other candidates for being insufficiently supportive of President Bush's policies and core conservative principles.

But with winning the nomination, McCain took on a responsibility to be as much like the rest of his party as possible. which led to a connection to Bush.

My second concern is really that McCain could die in office because he has lived such a full life. It would be awful to lose a president in office and even more awful without a strong contingency plan.

There is nothing presidential about Sarah Palin.

In my opinion, McCain would have had a real legit shot at winning tomorrow if he would have done one thing. Stood up against Bush and the rest of Congress when it came to this Wall Street bailout.

I have a big decision tomorrow and I don't know what I'm going to do. Either a) vote McCain because I don't think government should get any bigger and hopefully he would find a way to do so, b)vote for Obama because things are messed up right now and with a favorable Congress he can at least invoke change while McCain would have difficult; or c) vote for Libertarian candidate George Phillies or write in Ron Paul (my favorite candidate in the primaries) because they may see things more my way.

The idea is this. I'm skeptical about both candidates and do not see either as ideal. All I want out of this election is for the 18-25 voter demographic to go out there and put up a big turnout number so maybe that won't be the case in 2012.

I'll be posting tomorrow with my final decision first after I go vote at 9.

Bullwinkle In The White House? Ain't Nothing Wrong With That

2008-10-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

I know what all of you sitting on either side of the fence are thinking. If (insert either John McCain or Barack Obama) gets elected utter chaos will ensue in the United States.

We're talking real Old Testament stuff. Real wrath of God. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes. The dead rising from the grave. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.

And I don't even know what could happen if Barack Obama really is a closet Muslim! Would we see the wrath of the Biblical God or the God of the Qur'ran?

Once your head stops spinning, take a deep breath. Relax. Despite all the fear both campaigns have used in an attempt to get your vote, real chaos is unlikely.

And after watching the video below, I am 100 percent convinced Obama is not a Muslim:

So what can voters expect if (insert McCain or Obama) wins Tuesday's election? Here are the two scenarios, one for each candidate with a positive spin.

Bad Scenario One: McCain Wins Only To Die From A Heart Attack After He Mistakes A Visit From Charlie (Sheen) With The Vietcong

There is a lot on the Web about this scenario. But a Palin presidency may not be so bad. With a Democrat majority in Congress what could she possibly accomplish with her limited experience as Alaska's Governor?

She could put Bullwinkle in the oval office.

Once those God hating Democrats veto her first suggestion of Vice President Jesus Christ, she'll be sure to fire back with the same kind of VP pick that landed her in the oval office.

A fun loving character who just makes you laugh. Who better than Bullwinkle J. Moose?

The Democrats will be okay with it because they think they can make America hate VP Moose just like they hate VP Dick Cheney.

I know the two have clashed in the past, but Bullwinkle will let bygones be bygones to be vice president. He'll have such a great opportunity to fight for animal rights and isn't it time those animals had a voice in Washington?

The idea isn't that far-fetched of a Palin-Moose administration. Someone already beat me to the two as a dynamic duo:

There was one more perspective I found online of what could happen with a President Palin:

Personally, I like mine better.

Bad Scenario Two: Obama Wins And Turns The U.S.A To The U.S.S.A.

Well, first things first, I cannot be optimistic about an Obama victory leading to us losing a Baldwin brother. But Socialism can't be that bad.

We won't have to worry about picking our doctors, saving for retirement, choosing which banks we can borrow from or what school we want to go to. It'll all be controlled by the government!

Don't you sometimes worry about how much thinking we have to do? It can't be good.

It would be great to just sit back and let the government make all of our decisions. I just hope they can pick my religion too!

All everyone talks about is China this and China that. Look at those people. They don't have to think about anything expect work. That kind of focused thinking has to the ticket to get us out of this crisis.

I know the Chinese is a communist government, but you say tomato, is say tomauto (which doesn't work in print, but you know what I mean).

Does This All Sound Like A Stretch To You?

In case you are wondering if I have gone crazy, you can relax. This is what we like to call a bit of satire. The last journalist at Ohio University used such a device, and people flipped so I thought this disclosure would be necessary.

I would also like to clarify that the video I used in the third graph under the link "Barack Obama really is a closet Muslim" is a farce. I laughed when I watched the video in it's entirety. I respect that my audience would understand that, but I figured I should put this disclaimer just in case you're coming to this blog for the first time. Seriously, if you can't find at least some humor in how ridiculous that video is then maybe this isn't the blog for you.

But I think this is an appropriate post now, five days before the election, because people actually sound scared if the election doesn't go their way.

Remember, though this election is important, there is nothing to fear. The probability of a moose in the White House is the same as the probability of the world ending because Obama or McCain becomes president.

Breath a sigh of relief and don't take all of this so seriously. I would love to hear some other ideas of what you think could happen as a result of the winner's inauguration.

I'll be posting tomorrow why I am skeptical of McCain. And I'll have one more post at least before Tuesday.

On Tuesday I will be posting all day, so forget CNN. I'll have links to everything as it happens and will be reporting stories from various election related locations around Athens.

Until then, drink a beer and have a happy Halloween.

Obama Speaks To Me, But I’m Still Skeptical

2008-10-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama entered my life on February 18, 2008 while I was just trying to make a quick buck covering a speech.

Bill Clinton’s 1992 Campaign Adviser, Dave Wilhelm, came to the Ohio University Inn to talk about his recent endorsement of Sen. Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Signs of Hope and Change plastered the walls like graffiti in an ally. Young adults and academics transpired excitement. When Wilhelm took the podium, he played orchestrator to an eager choir.

“Fire it up!” Wilhelm yelled.

“Ready to go!” audience members shouted back.

During the primaries, I did a little investigating into the two Democratic campaigns and without a doubt Obama was head and shoulders above Clinton in youth appeal.

The Obama campaign headquarters, then located in a former thrift store, had a feel of youth collaboration. Volunteers painted murals on the glass that sent a message of exuberance. The inside looked like your average college students room, the kind of organized chaos that looks unkempt and incomprehensible at the first glance but you can eventually get a sense of cohesion and function for everything in the room.

Without a doubt, the Obama campaign’s vibe grabbed our generation’s vote and led him to the Democratic nomination. According to an April 2008 Harvard poll, Obama led the youth vote (18-24) 70-30 over Clinton.

Eight months after that first encounter, there is no doubt in my mind that Obama has been the best candidate of my lifetime in appealing to college voters.

Are Young Obama Voters Idealists?

If you are not convinced that Obama has become a borderline rock star, then you have not met OU freshman Trinity Bracy.

I met Trinity, a volunteer for the Obama campaign, this year through my sister, also a freshman at OU. Last month, my sister left her single dorm room and moved in with Trinity, which is why I found myself in their room.

The picture below is of Trinity’s Sen. Joe Biden autographed Obama-Biden poster.

"I feel like (Obama is) the one who can make a difference,” Trinity told me. “I think the country is not in the right direction and Barack Obama can be the change we need."

Trinity is not alone in feeling this way. Her friend Mike Desposito, another freshman, sat next to her and reiterated the same kind of unbreakable optimism.

"The way Obama speaks, you just feel like there's hope,” Mike said. “I've heard McCain speak and I've listened to Bush speak. But I just feel that when I listen to Barack there actually is some light at the end of the tunnel."

Obama supporters can be refreshing. I was in the middle of some Obama campaign activities before the Ohio primary and those volunteers gave me the same idealist vibe that Mike and Trinity spewed out seven months later.

A lot of young voters trust Obama. A lot of young voters think his inexperience is a breath of fresh air in a failed system. A lot of young voters think his main campaign slogan, the word “Change,” will happen with an Obama administration.

So why with less than a week until Election Day am I not waving the flag on the Obama bandwagon?

Here’s Why I’m Skeptical of Barack Obama

A black candidate appeals to me because it’s a huge step in the right direction, which is to put the best people in the position to lead, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or religious belief.

He’s not a Muslim, but that would not bother me in the least bit if he was.

I have to agree with something Mike said, Obama’s inexperience may actually be an advantage. Because being the presidency is a team game and experience can be obtained.

In the YouTube, sound bite world we live in today, a speaker like Obama reigns supreme because he works so well in that forum. But I do not think we have seen everything that works into who Obama is.

No, I’m not referring to William Ayers or Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I want someone to address the $603 million elephant in the room.

According to the Web site for the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group aimed to inform citizens about how money in politics, $603 million is how much Obama has raised in this campaign. To put that into context, Sen. John McCain has only raised $358 million. (Here's a link to this cool image of the two candidates campaigning like they are NASCAR drivers)

Combine that $961 million to the $221 million Sen. Clinton raised and the $107 million Mitt Romney raised and you get $1.29 billion dollars.

It comes down to this, Obama has ran on this idea of Change, but it seems like he has been playing the same game as other politicians, he’s just been dominating it.

In 2004, President George Bush raised just $367 million and Sen. John Kerry collected $328 million.

Now, I’m not an expert on lobbyists or anything, but here is what I do know. People do not give money and expect nothing in return. Goldman Sachs, the financial firm that is supplying the brains behind how to use the bailout money, donated $874,207 to Obama. (Note: Goldman Sachs also donated money to McCain, just not as much. You click here to check out this site for him. This note comes after my original post.)

That could spell zero change with the bailout game plan under an Obama administration to me.

There are more reasons why I am skeptical of Obama, specifically on labor issues and economic ideology, but I’ll save that for another day once I get in touch with more expert sources.

In no way is this me making a decision on who I will vote for next week. I plan on posting later this week my reasons for not liking McCain either. But I think it’s necessary to have some healthy skepticism (not fear) of each candidate.

Will You Be Able To Support Yourself, Wall Street and Detroit When You Get That First Job?

2008-10-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of bullshit being flung sort of behind our backs. While we are all looking at the election and feeling sorry for ourselves as we head into a recession, the government is using the bailout money to pick and choose who stays and who goes.

PNC will be using bailout money to purchase National City Corp. serving as a

precedent for how Henry Paulson wants to resolve the economic crisis.

My other big riff, which I admit stems down from my dad who constantly writes letters to the editor of local papers on the subject, is the governments continued bailout of Detroit.

Here's a Wall Street Journal blog that I felt the need to comment. Basically the article talks about how GM is going to be asking for money to purchase Crysler so two bad companies can become one ever larger bad company. Here's my comment:

no one can afford the inefficient American car anymore, especially when price is going to keep rising as more and more baby boomer union members retire.

the unions and the Big 3 should be condemned for their actions. a more efficient American auto industry will emerge, though it will not rival “the big 3 model” because that industry bit off more than it could chew. this just in, the U.S. isn’t the only country that can build cars anymore, so it’s time to start from scratch and figure out how to compete in a global market.

it’s not fair to ask me to support both myself and bad business during my first 20 years in the workforce. it’s not fair to ask any tax payer to pay for bad business. so let’s stop the this now.

we need to hold politicians liable for catering to bad business. target them, and vote them out of office.

Comment by the800lbsgorillia - October 28, 2008 at 2:11 pm

I'll be getting back to election related posts tonight, but I just wanted to throw this up because it's very relevant to those about to enter the work force (ie. anyone in college now who plans on getting a job in the next five years). After the election some time, I'll write more extensively on the subject.

College Studets Evaluate Credibilty Behind Endorsements

2008-10-23T15:48:00.000-07:00

The silence startled me today when I walked through the center of campus without political solicitation. I must have become addicted to the noise because I find myself stomping crunchy leaves whenever I get the chance just to create some sort of background noise.

Despite the tranquility, there are still reminders that the campus has not forgotten the forthcoming election. Today at college gate, students stuck messages of why they voted for all to see.

Strangely, endorsements were not on any of the messages, unless you count the one that stated: "I voted because a corporation paid me to."

So what is the value of the endorsement?

If Chuck Norris couldn't get Mike Huckabee elected, what chance does John McCain have with Stephen Baldwin?

Surely Oprah has all the money in the world, but will she be a driving force in sending Barack Obama to the White House? You don't want to get on the bad side of Oprah's audience, just ask these mortgage bankers.

But do college students get caught up in the allure of a Luke Perry endorsement or any other celebrity hunk or skank?

"I'm ultimately going to vote for whoever I think is worth supporting," said Ohio University freshman Dominique Aaron. The Cleveland native said she is voting for Obama because she thinks he is the better candidate, a conclusion she came to in her senior year of high school.

On the other hand, McCain supporter Katey Mueller, a sophomore political science major at OU, said one Obama turned her off him as a candidate.

"If I was going to vote for Barack Obama, then I would be upset by Oprah Winfrey's endorsement," Katey told me earlier this week. "I just hate Oprah."

Granted, Katey did not straight up make her decision based on an endorsement, she does serve as an example of how people do care about endorsements to some degree. Think about it. If endorsements don't at least sway some voters, why would talk show hosts and journalists press so hard to get people to publicly throw themselves behind a candidate?

"Creditability is what matters of course," OU freshman Trinity Bracy said to me as we talked politics in her dorm. "Justin (Timberlake) is cool and all, but compared to Colin Powell, he's like an ant on the flag pole. Colin Powell is the flag. What can he say? 'I'm Justin Timberlake. I brought sexy back. Vote for Obama.'"

In one night, I went into a dorm and interviewed six students: Trinity, Katey, Dominique sophomore Katey Gelett and freshmen Mike Desposito and Kershauna Young. Three of the six declared they were going to vote (or already voted) for Obama. One said she was going with McCain. The other two remain undecided. Out of the six, only Trinity and Mike mentioned the endorsement by Colin Powell (one had no idea who Colin Powell is). Both saw it as a big deal.

"That could be the difference in getting a vote," Trinity said. "Someone could be pro Colin Powell and be unsure and that will be the difference between Barack and McCain."

In case some one is reading this and thinking who the hell is Colin Powell, he was the a general in the U.S. Army and then became the Secretary of State for President George W. Bush. He was a member of the Republican party, but he went with Obama. Check out the video from last Sunday's "Meet the Press":

So my interviews did not exactly turn up a black and white answer to the question of endorsement value. But the gray answer may be that endorsements act as a declaration of friendship.

In my opinion, I could care less if you served on an education board with a washed-up terrorist or if a Baldwin brother threatens to leave the country if you aren't elected.

As for Colin Powell, I do not think his endorsement will sway undecided millennial voters. But I wanted to bring attention to his endorsement specifically because I think his entire message is extremely important if the United States is to get where it needs to be.

"What if Barack Obama is a Muslim?" Powell asked, even though without a doubt Obama has always been a Christian.

A girl I used to work with posted this video on Facebook and brought up another good question. How did we get this far into the election, which has been filled with ignorant voters screaming their fears of a closet-Muslim president.

That message of tolerance is something worth endorsing.

--
Check out this site to see a million reasons to vote.

Socialism!!!! Wait a Second, Didn't We Just Nationalize the Banks?

2008-10-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

Oh, you haven't heard? There are a bunch of crazy socialists running a muck on Capital Hill! We must stop them!

Wait a second, didn't 263 members of the House of Representatives vote to nationalize the banking system! That's a lot of witches to start a witch hunt.

That included Sen. John McCain. Check these videos out:

Here's Jon Stewart hitting the nail on the head

Let he without sin cast the first stone! $700 billion is a lot of dough. This is why it's okay to be an undecided voter with only 13 days until the election.

Thank you Mr. David Sedaris for pointing this out! I'll end this post with a quote from his piece in the New Yorker:

I wonder if, in the end, the undecideds aren’t the biggest pessimists of all. Here they could order the airline chicken, but, then again, hmm. “Isn’t that adding an extra step?” they ask themselves. “If it’s all going to be chewed up and swallowed, why not cut to the chase, and go with the platter of shit?”

It feels good to think I am not the only voter who thinks this way.

I Don't Know If You Know This, But This Economic Crisis Is Kind of a Big Deal

2008-10-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

I know how this works. Most college students will say the economy is the number one issue for this election because caring about the economy sounds good.

But chances are you have zero clue what's wrong with the economy.

That's okay. This is so complicated that an Ohio University professor who consults Congress on economic issues said he doesn't think either presidential candidate understands the crisis and that there are "smart people in Washington who don't know what to do," today at a discussion with students.

I like a challenge, so I am going to try and explain things for you with a simple analogy. I have gotten my information by extensively reading a variety of newspapers and Web sites for the past month (this one's one of my favorites, though the least informative), talking to my dad who is one of the most informed persons I know and my attendance at a lecture today with Dr. Richard Vedder, who is testifying before Congress next week on economic issues, and Mark Tatge.

Essentially, the shit hit the fan. That's right, greedy financial institutions grew more and more constipated and let out a gargantuan dookie. Think about that for a second. What happens when a piece of shit hits a ceiling fan?

That's right, it shoots out and makes a big, smelly mess that scares everyone out of the room.

Banks and lending companies got rich making risky loans. The government backed off and let the financial institutions loan out money like it was going out of style. The banks would just buy insurance or securities on these loans, covering their backs.

So if you can limit your risk for giving a loan because you have purchased insurance, then it's like eating P.F. Changs without consequence.

People got mortgages that exceeded the value of their homes. A mortgage is a loan that is placed against your house, so if a house is worth less than the amount loaned, the loaner will get screwed if the loan recipient cannot make the loan payments.

Housing prices were booming because getting these loans was so easy. People who could not afford houses were buying houses. When people want something (aka demand) price will increase. These companies giving mortgages were going by the market value. If a lot of people want to buy houses and can buy houses, then a house is worth a lot of money because there is a high demand.

This all lead to a giant housing inflation gas bubble.

So people could get be lent more money to purchase houses because the demand inflated value. This caused some people to engage in house flipping.

Because eventually these huge mortgages and subsequent mortgage payments caught up to people, the banks had to go to the insurance companies to make up for the defaulted loans and the insurance companies could not pay off all the securities.

We're talking about the biggest corporations in the country, Tatge said today. One institution made equal to 1/13 of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (the country's total profit). Take into account how there were multiple giant financial institutes on the verge of or in bankruptcy and you get the makings of a global crisis.

That's the shit hitting the fan. What comes next? Everyone tries to get out of the room, which was starting to happen in the last few weeks when the market dropped like fecal matter hitting the porcelean pond.

Fear drives the market more than anything. That's what started the Great Depression, everyone got scared about their investments and savings they all went to remove it at the same time, leaving banks unable to give everyone their money. Vedder said this past three weeks was the closest we have been to that level of panic, which is why you hear or read comparisons to the Depression and today even though the national unemployment rate is 20 percent less today.

Links for Further Reader/Listening
So my poop analogy did not do it for you? Well, you can make that argument, but you cannot argue that poop isn't funny. Anyways, here are some links to some news packages, stories and blogs that may explain things better:

My friend and co-worker Alex Hazlett wrote this breakdown of the crisis in the Athens News. She recommends listening to this NPR cast

I thought this Harvard professor's blog would be boring in explaining the economic crisis, but it actually is entertaining. I recommend giving this video a peak.

Everything else seems to be pretty similar, but if you're still having trouble, try the NYTimes.com for updated news. If you want to learn as much information as possible, try this Wall Street Journal blog.

What can the presidential candidates do?
Neither candidate really understands the crisis, Vedder and Tatge both said. Vedder said he has been on phone conferences with the White House and he got a sense of complete panic.

What it's going to come down to is who each candidate has advising them on the economy now, who more than likely will be advising them if they are elected. This USA Today article breaks down who the people are, or you can save yourself some time and take Vedder's recommendation. He said both candidates have smart people backing them.

But I said earlier in this post, Vedder also said smart people do not know what to do, which leaves me to this conclusion.

Fixing the economy is going to be left in fate's hands. If you agree with myself and Vedder, you do not think an economic stimulus package, such as the one Congress's Democrats are trying to pass now, will be ineffective and costly.

Other than that, we just have to try and understand as much as possible. We need to act as watch dogs on this $700 billion bailout and hold the government responsible if they lead us to depression.

Candidates Can't Buy Votes, But Can Sell T-Shirts

2008-10-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

I left one thing out of my post from yesterday at the Sen. Joe Biden rally. Has their ever been an election with so much merchandise?

As soon as my girlfriend and I got out of the car yesterday, a group of four or five vendors bombarded us demanding that I buy my pretty lady a shirt (Why doesn't the girl ever get harassed to buy her sexy man something? I'm sick of vendors trying to make me buy an overpriced flower or unimpressive t-shirt every time they encounter me with my girl. The only justice would be if beer vendors roamed the world and they harassed the women walking with their boyfriends. That's the America I want to live in).

Granted, this is the most I have ever paid attention to a presidential election, but I think young people are getting into Sen. Barack Obama's bandwagon because his t-shirts.

I guess I have to give credit to Obama for taking advantage of my generation's desire to wear their emotions on their chest. McCain's t-shirts suck. Personally, here is my campaign merchandiser of choice.

Doesn't that t-shirt scream patriotism? I should have asked this guy how much he makes

That's what I want, solicitation as soon as I get out of my car. Is there no peace! But I guess this does back my claim in my last post that only decided voters go to campaign rallies. What undecided voter would wear a candidate t-shirt?

Joe Biden Visits Athens Though No Undecided Voters Noticed

2008-10-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

I never thought I could hate Kool and the Gang so much until this morning.

Today's trip to the Athens County Fairgrounds was my last venture to a political rally. Plagued with "Celebrate Good Time." I would have chosen the water board over going to the Sen. Joe Biden rally again.

For either a job (I work at the Athens News) or out of curiosity, I have attended four rallies since last February. They have all been for Democratic candidates because they are the only ones who come to the very left Athens County. The most interesting rally, if you would call it that, was when Chelsea Clinton came and someone asked her if she thought the whole father getting an oval office bj would affect her mother's campaign.

I was a fool for thinking Biden's visit to the Fairgrounds would be interesting (though I was moderately interested in the sign language lady standing tall and signing from her podium). I was a fool for posting last night that I would be able to talk to some undecided student voters at the rally.

Those events are for the early voters, reserved for those who have watched Sen. Barack Obama's Democratic National Convention speech from 2004 on YouTube at least 200 times.

After talking it over with my girlfriend, a left leaning independent with a low political interest, I think I have come up with a few reasons why I would discourage anyone from going to a political rally unless they are either paid or bribed with free punch and pie.

One, they love to turn it into "us" versus "them." Athens Councilwoman Debbie Phillips is running for a seat in the state legislature and she is notorious for ranting about how it is our duty as voters to not let a single Republican to win a seat.

Because the Democrats clearly are the one true answer? That would be like a Catholic priest telling everyone to go out and convert everyone to Catholicism right now because that is the ultimate answer.

Second, the music at this debate was awful and annoying. It makes things worse when the main speaker never shows up on time and the opening speakers reiterate the same partisan message over and over again to the droning cheers (enter Phillips, Ohio Attorney General candidate Rich Cordrey, Strickland and Sen. Sherrod Brown).

Third, no one explains anything. Biden kept mentioning why Sen. John McCain will not work, slipping in anti-Republican, anti-McCain and anti-Sarah Palin remarks throughout his speech. These attacks were not nearly as vinegary as those from the McCain campaign, but they are still annoying.

Now to be fair, Biden at least talked to a young audience, making an anecdote to visiting OU and our beloved Court Street (I don't know if I'm buying the whole story though. He said he came because of an OU vs. his alma mata Delaware had a football game. He claimed he was arrested for being in a girl's dormitory, but only saw the first floor. A good story to tell students, especially because he's old and needs to relate to us, but I don't know if it's real).

But what was interesting to me, from listening to what my girlfriend had to say as we waited in the post-rally traffic, was how much television advertising affects her political opinions. For a future post, I am going to look into if that's a trend among young voters and see what some other college students around campus think about this year's advertisements.

Until then, I'll be watching the debate and will post about that tomorrow.

Millennials Will Be Heard

2008-10-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

If you uncovered this blog thinking it would be the chronicles of an African biologists living with a pack of wild gorillas, then I would like to apologize now.

But you have heard the term, to watch out for the 800 lbs. gorilla in the room. You know you would be scared if a humongous gorilla stood in your proximity.

So what is this blog about and what is with the staring gorilla eyes?

First you should know what my political stance was six months ago. I felt like voting was useless, just like this freshmen at Ohio University writing in today's The Post. Tony Hennan wrote in a letter to the editor:

"Yet this is exactly what voting is: a majority of people telling the rest of the country what they’re allowed to do and how they can live. Not only is there no right over another individual, but the two presidential candidates in this election are the same; the only difference is in the magnitude of their beliefs."

There is not a whole lot there I can argue with, even today when I am pro-voting. So why do I think we, the children of the Baby Boomers, should go out and vote in record numbers?

Because if we show politicians that we will vote, then they will have to come talk to us.

According to this poll from Rock the Vote, there are 44 million potential voters between the ages of 18-and-29, more than one-fifth of the eligible voting demographic. According to the U.S. Census, 26 percent of the population was under 18 in 2000.

We are that 800 lbs. gorilla, though I do not know what would be scarier, an 800 pound gorilla, or one of those freaky, roid-raged gorillas from the movie Congo.

For years, politicians have not catered to America's youth because they think we are flaky voters. We will show up for one election, then miss the next one. Well I am mad as hell that I have to choose between two candidates I do not like. I am sick of reading about lobbyists like Michael Cantrell who make a buck because politicians are corrupt. And I am sick of mainstream media only writing about the partisan students who lean either far left or far right.

The truth is, most college age students, in my estimation, do not give a fuck about being a Republican or Democrat. That is goal no. 1 of this blog, to cater to the non-partisan or independent young voters who just want to know which candidate is going to be the best for them. I do not condemn involved students engaged in College Democrats or College Republicans, but I think the undecided college student gets neglected the most.

For the next three weeks, the time until the election and the bulk of when this blog will count for my Online Fundamentals class project, I will research the issues in the upcoming election and break down, with the help of expert sources, each candidates stance. I will convince the unconvinced why it is important to vote, and finally I will throw in a dab of entertainment because that's what we, the Colbert Report generation, respond too.

Tomorrow will be a big day for me, starting with a trip to see Sen. Joe Biden speak at the Athens Fairgrounds. There I will go talk to students, specifically looking for the undecided voters and see what their concerns are.

In case you do not get a chance to go to see Sen. Biden, feel free to leave me some comments about what you are concerned with and check out the links to the right for other blogs and places of information.