We are all a little biased towards ourselves and most people are likely to not judge themselves harshly. Even mass murderers tend to justify or view their actions as moral or for the greater good, well many of them anyhow. My point is that when we are faced with a question about our performance we tend to spin it in the best possible light, another great example is Goldman Sachs spinning their huge bonuses as God’s work. The reason why I bring this up is because our President was asked to grade himself during an interview a few weeks ago and he gave himself a “solid B+” which is absurd.
The reason why he should have avoided the question altogether is because he has not completed one campaign promise to the people, except for higher taxes. Health care was done behind closed doors, Gitmo is open, Iraq is still somewhere, Afghanistan is getting more involved 9a big mistake I might add), and unemployment is sky high (add back in those “marginally attached” people and we are pushing 11%). Let us not forget that the annual deficit is 4 times what it was under the last President, who was certainly no peach, and we are quickly approaching 100% debt to GDP, not good.
All of this while Democrats keep blaming Bush for everything and the Republicans accept that argument, what? Oh, how quickly we forget the recent past. Before I go any further I did not like Bush, at all, and firmly believe he was one of the worst President’s of all time, so save the hate mail. However, Democrats are just as guilty of where we are today as the Republicans as they were ushered into power in 2006 in congress, the real power in politics. They rebuffed any attempt to rein in the GSE’s and they rubber stamped all of bush’s policies for 2 years. So, to say “we inherited this problem” is utter nonsense and has to stop.
When you have the power to say no and stop crazy spending and you do not you are just as guilty as the person who proposed it. That is exactly what the Democrats did for 2 years and to make matters worse, they simply allowed things to continue the way they were without a peep. Don’t believe me, check YouTube.com for the GSE hearing meetings or go check Democrat voting records for raising the debt ceiling, 7 times. They did not inherit anything, they helped create it, end of story.
If you actually believe that they inherited all these messes and did nothing to create them then you have a poor knowledge of politics, history or simply are blinded by partisan politics. I, on the other hand, do not care as I see all politicians for what they are, parasites on the backs of the American people who care about 2 things, reelection and power, not necessarily in that order. To sit here now and say that the stimulus is working is simply crazy, babbling, rabid partisan bickering because it is clear that it did not. If it did work GDP would not be at 2.2% in 3Q09, I know we will get an initial estimate of 4 or 5% for 4Q09, but that to will be adjusted lower and will be all government heroin.
Never before had the US government spent $787B in any stimulus plan and not seen any results. Instead the best argument Democrats can muster is that it stopped us from going over the abyss, oh really? Are these the same Democrats who said that not all the money has come into the system yet so we don’t know how well the stimulus is working? So, how can you say that on one hand it stopped us from falling off a cliff, but on the other hand say we don’t know how well it is going to work? You can’t because that is political double talk for we spent a bunch of money on stuff and we made many mistakes, but will not admit it. Instead, they decide to lie to us and then launch secret stimulus packages, i.e. the jobs bill passed at the dead of night.
What no one ever talks about is this, what would have happened if the stimulus was not enacted? I am willing to bet that things would have probably followed about the same track it is following now. Well, I think there would have been an exception to that, employment would have bottomed sooner and we would be seeing real recovery a lot sooner. Considering even Jim Cramer has admitted that the CEO’s he has spoken to have not seen one dime of stimulus I am pretty sure that the stimulus did not work at all. I mean, even the government is not adding tons of jobs, yet, until the census begins. Of course we do have more government employees making over 100K than ever before in history, but who cares, right?
If the original stimulus saved us and is going to get us back to growth then why in the world do we need a second stimulus? Simple, the first one was the greatest fleecing of America next to TARP in the history of the world. However, never fear because it is all Bush’s fault, a year later. I absolutely hated it when Bush blamed Clinton for the recession in 2000 just as much as I hate Obama blaming Bush now for one simple reason, the President has very little to do with the economy. I say that with a caveat, unless they implement policies that impact the economy like ridiculous stimulus packages, unpaid for tax cuts or Medicare advantage plans and things like that. What I mean is that the last 2 administrations, in my opinion, have had a greater impact on the economy than previous administrations mostly because of their lackeys in Congress happen to be in power at the same time.
Because of the absurdity of what is going on, even though I cannot stand the hypocritical Republicans, I am praying the Republicans take all of Congress in November and grid lock this thing for the next couple of years. Why would I want that to happen? Simple, I do not want my currency to be toilet paper around the world and I certainly do not want more spending. I also do not want more unionization of government employees, we need more firings in government, not hiring’s or raises. What I am trying to say is that we need balance restored back in Washington, it worked in 1994 and perhaps it could work again.
In the meantime, our President should not be issuing any grades for himself as he certainly did not earn a “solid B+” as I am pretty sure his math teacher would have flunked based on his estimates on health care costs and budget deficits. I am fairly sure a big “I” is what the President should have given himself for incomplete since he has not even kept the transparency promise he made. When C-SPAN says what is going on, you got an image issue Mr. President. So, keep some promises, fire some government workers, starting with all of you Czars, and let’s really figure out the deficit before the dollar does crash.
In his efforts to make people forget about the AIG bonuses, Friends of Angelo’s mortgages, Freddie and Fannie and the fact the Senator Dodd has never held a real job outside of politics he is attempting to bribe the public with an $8,000 tax credit. I am referring to the first time home buyer tax credit, which is likely to be expanded to everyone through July of 2010 at an estimated $16.7B, which is up to its eyeballs in fraud I might add, but to hell with it, he needs to get reelected!
Clearly, Senator Dodd, who is garnering praise from Barney Frank, does that indicate how much he fears losing the 2010 election, worked very hard to keep the heroin in the housing market. However, what he is really doing, and why he needs to go, is keeping hardworking Americans from getting good deals on homes, he hates Americans! I jest of course, he merely just does not understand the real world. The housing market is still overvalued, according to Schiller, of the famed Case-Schiller Index, where he said certain areas look like bubbles, again.
There are others including Dave Rosenberg, Bill Gross, Whitney Tilson and me who say housing is overvalued by some 20% or more. This means more pain on the way down, but Washington through their programs to pump up failed credit bubbles refuses to let the bubble fully pop. By not letting the bubble pop this means they are letting people over pay for homes that should be much lower in price. So, now we are getting a fresh new wave of first time homeowners who will be underwater in a couple of years and what is worse is the US government, through the FHA, is underwriting the mortgages.
Not only are we losing money on the $8,000 tax credit, but we will ultimately lose money by having to bailout the FHA itself. Yet, here I am doing the right thing by looking and buying a home I knew I could afford in good times and bad, I should have known the government would hook me up, what was I thinking. Einstein, I believe it was, once said the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing expecting a different result, or something like that, but here we are doing exactly that. Except this time we are doing it bigger and better with all of our money, not just private investors, but public funds, it worked out so well the first time this time has to be different, right?
Ladies and gentlemen, this government is insane. It is totally out of control and needs to be brought to its senses. How in the world can we say that trying to repeat 2002-2005 is a good idea? Well, that is exactly what we are doing now, but bigger. All for what, so some political figure can look better or a few jobs could be created, that was what we spent a trillion dollars for, remember? I have no problem with extending unemployment insurance, which makes sense and the people deserve it, but a tax credit for a new house that someone probably can’t afford anyhow? No way. The cost just does not make sense and clearly Senator Dodd is trying to save his backside, but he should have thought of that before he signed that Friends of Angelo contract.
I am an honest to God political neutral as I voted for Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 which makes me probably one of the worst voters in the history of the world, but I voted my conscience and for what I believed was right. As it turned out, they are all crooks and the one thing I learned is we need balance in government, no matter who occupies the Whitehouse. When that balance is out of whack, like we saw when the Republicans had absolute rule and like we see now with Democrats with absolute rule things get ugly, real fast.
Most of all, corruption runs amuck and there is no accountability to anyone. Just look at Senator Dodd, he was guilty as sin and my 5 year old could tell he knew he was getting favors on his mortgages from Countrywide, but not the ethics committee who let him off Scott Free. Now we see the same thing with Representative Rangel who is clearly guilty as sin as well, yet he is still the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, possibly the most powerful committee in all of Washington and the committee that writes tax laws.
Just so you are keeping score at home, we have Timmy Geithner who is Treasury Secretary who “forgot” to pay his taxes, Sen. Dodd who gets sweetheart mortgage deals, campaign contributions from AIG (then let’s them keep their bonuses which he included in the stimulus bill), takes money from Fannie and Freddie while leaving them largely unregulated and so on only to collapse later on. Now we have Rep. Rangel who has spent eons in Congress only to make a small fortune for himself including property in Dominican Republic and some fancy apartment dealings in NYC.
Either these people are the dumbest people in the world, which should scare you because they are leading our country, or they are simply lying to you (more than likely the case) which means they should resign for the good of the public, which would never happen. Either way, how could these people get reelected? What is wrong with people? If this “happened” to you or I and we used the same lame excuse as I forgot or whatever we would be bed mates with Bubba in a heat beat, but not these guys. Nope, there is definitely a two tiered system in place because not only are these guys not in prison, but they still have jobs.
Not only that, but when a vote comes to the floor to remove Rep. Rangel as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee while the investigation is completed the Jackasses, I mean, the Democrats knock defeat the vote. So much for transparency in politics and fighting for the American people and all that other BS Obama fed us during the campaign. We sure as hell know that Pelosi doesn’t care about us, she is trying to impose a VAT, value added tax, to pay for health care, yeah, ever been to Europe? VAT’s are horrible regressive taxes that stifle growth and punish everyone, especially the poor, equally. You don’t even need to go to Europe to see it in action, just go to Canada.
Anyhow, this is just unbelievable to think that these crooks are able to stay in their jobs as if nothing is wrong when they are under investigation. It’s like someone being accused of murder being released by a judge and allowed to have his gun back because it is the only fair thing to do as the investigation is not complete yet, even though the ballistics test already matched. We know their all guilty, but if you are part of the political class, no problem. Enough is enough already, vote them out and for the love of God let’s get some balance back into government (any party will do!).
Ok, he is only the people’s senator when reelection is close and he is in political trouble. I have relatives in Connecticut and I often ask them why they vote this guy in and they tell me it is because he answers the phone when they call. Well, that is great, but frankly this guy has taken millions from the institutions he is supposed to be regulating and has known about their abusive practices for years and did nothing, nothing, to stop it.
However, now that the election season is starting he is going to introduce a bill to curb abusive overdraft charges, but he can’t even do that right. I will say that it is a step in the right direction, but he is missing the real crime of what banks do. You see, it is not the amount of the fee, even though it is way too excessive, it is how the bank puts the transactions through that is the issue. As I discussed before, banks run transactions from the largest to the smallest, which maximizes fees, and the banks say it is to make sure big bills get paid first, but they clear all of the transaction so any excuse they give is a lie, period. Mr. Dodd mentions it, but I did not see any information that he wants to stop it.
Mr. Dodd simply wants the consumer to have the ability to opt out of the “overdraft” program, again that is a great start, but misses the mark. How about banks that charged their poorest customers those outrageous overdraft charges be made to repay those people, now that is punitive. Darn, I forgot, its reelection time so he is hitting banks up for contributions so he won’t get too tough on them. Instead he will pay people lip service that after 26 YEARS in the senate he is finally doing something to benefit them instead of himself and his campaign supporters.
Let’s face it, he will sit on this, if it even comes out of committee at all, until just before the 2010 election so he can use it to get votes. This guy is a crook or simply the dumbest person in politics, which is a very tough award to win I might add, because he didn’t realize that the VIP treatment from Countrywide was a term meaning he is getting a special deal, even though the terms and rates were far superior than the competition. Let us also not forget that he pressured AIG employees to give to his campaign in 2006 as he was going to be in charge of regulating the firm, guess what he got huge cash that year. I forgot how AIG ended, of yeah we bailed them out. Then there is Freddie and Fannie, do we really need to know anymore to figure out this guy is in politics for himself, not for the people.
So, Mr. Dodd, if you are reading this then get this bill out of the committee and put some teeth in it to make the banks finally pay for killing the little guy. Don’t do the lip service like all politicians do and make these banks pay up. After all, who made out the most over the last year? The banks. They got bonuses last year, when they least deserved them, and this year they are getting record bonuses when we bailed them out and, on top of that, they raped us for some $38B in bogus overdraft fees. The banks are ruling the world and we are letting them get away with it as long as we reelect assholes like Chris Dodd, Spector, Schumer, Rockefeller, Barney Frank and every other piece of shit that has spent more than 10 years in office.
Sorry for the language, but come on people, get your damn act together and vote these assholes out already!
Support and vote for Peter Schiff, go to his website HERE
Seriously, when is America going to wake up and realize we are electing lawyers to lead this country. Lawyers are good for one thing, suing people and making sure lawyers will always have a job. I just read that Barack Obama, a lawyer with zero business experience, said he did not misread the economy, but was didn’t know how deep the problem was. Are you kidding me? We had Bear, Lehman, Freddie, Fannie, AIG all go under and you did not think it was as deep as it is?
Yup, this is what we elected and do not forget he was a Senator for a few3 years before he was President, so he does share some of the blame along with Frank, Dodd and the other numb sculls. Here is what he said; “[My administration] came in [on] January 20th. It was only after the first-quarter numbers came in, if you recall, that suddenly everybody looked and said the economy shrank six percent so it was happening much more rapidly at an accelerated pace than the projections out there at the time.”
Blame everything on the last guy, who was an idiot by all accounts, regardless, he was a senator and a serious contender for the presidency and he did not know this was bad? He spent $787B saying this is bad, but now he did not know how bad it was? I mean how much would he have spent if he knew it WAS this bad??
Keep in mind that the “stimulus” package was just spending for every Democrats wet dream project with no real prospect of helping America. Let us not forget that California will now have a monorail to Las Vegas, seriously that was what Harry Reid wanted and he got it, although it may be out now who the hell knows.
What he does know, Barack Obama, is that it is the other guys fault, not his. This is the same guy who ridiculed McCain when he wanted to go and help with the bailout package, now we know why, Obama doesn’t have a God Damned clue. He knows nothing about economics and refuses to believe that government intervention is horrible for the US, it did not work in the 1930′s and it will not work now.
However, this is who America elected and is swooning over. This guy is also going to hike your energy bill, raise taxes and probably impose controls not seen since the 1970′s. Here is the kicker, HE TOLD YOU THIS BEFORE YOU ELECTED HIM! Now, we are stuck with at least 4 years of on the job training and inept economic policies.
Yeah, yeah you probably think I was for the other guy, which is part of the problem we need a third party, regardless you would be incorrect. I was for Ron Paul, period. Now we must listen to this narcissistic jackass explain why he knows nothing and continues his already failed policies. Here comes the second spendulus package!
I hope I am wrong, but I do not think so.
Before the nasty emails start, I am not a racist, I said the same things about Bush and every other politician, so spare me the emails and comments about racism. The guy is a good speaker, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is a dope.
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