Good thing he’s not a socialist – UPDATE
May 24, 2009
Update on my earlier post about The One’s takeover of the means of production –
USA could lose AAA rating! It’s almost like the government is acting as irresponsibly as those nasty speculators Obama keeps talking about…
It is getting old.
May 24, 2009
Is it finally dawning on people that there is no substance to The One?
I too was taken in when I first heard him speak. I remember thinking when I heard that measured, steady voice with its pleasant but authoritative timbre that here was a guy fit to govern the world. He sounded cool. Clint Eastwood “Make my day” cool.
Now, though, that novelty has worn off. Now, it’s becoming clear that this carefully worked, glacial poise is all there is to Obama. He’s just a hollow man spouting empty rhetoric.
My only question is, What took so long to figure this out?
h/t – Jennifer Rubin
Good thing he’s not a socialist….
May 23, 2009
A round up of stories about The One’s takeover of the means of production from the past few weeks:
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General Motors, facing the almost certain prospect of a bankruptcy filing, said Friday that it had drawn another $4 billion from the Treasury Department, raising its total from the government to $19.4 billion.
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Unemployment in the United States has risen to European averages, and seems likely to pass them when international data for April is calculated.
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What we now face is a nationalized car maker [GM], with the government owning 51 percent of the company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union holding a stunning 38 percent of shares. Bondholders, who normally have first claim on a company’s assets, receive only 10 percent instead, and the current stockholders get the remaining 1 percent.
…
The UAW, acting for its members who are former workers and GM pensioners, did indeed represent something like $20 billion worth of GM’s liabilities. So the idea that the union should get an equity stake in return for that is fair enough. However, the UAW is getting three times as much as the bondholders, who represent $28 billion of GM’s outstanding liability. When the bondholders protested, the administration refused to meet with them.
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The Treasury Department is preparing to announce as early as today that it will invest an additional $7.5 billion in GMAC LLC in a deal that could allow the U.S. government to hold a majority stake in the Detroit-based auto finance company.
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A report Friday said federal officials are pressuring Bank of America Corp. to revamp its board and bring in directors with more banking experience.
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Obama cuts Chrysler advertising budget in half.
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The government will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates.
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Just imagine how bad things would be if Obama were a socialist?!?!!
Update - USA could lose AAA rating! It’s almost like the government is acting as irresponsibly as those nasty speculators Obama keeps talking about…
Change.
May 23, 2009
Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: “The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e., slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e., the surge) — and now Guantanamo.”
Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition — turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets — claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus — to detainees in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.
The liberals who apoplectically condemn Bush for his war policies are either lying through their teeth or are so hopelessly naive that they do not belong anywhere near executive power.
Restoring our standing in the world.
May 23, 2009
“As Zardari’s offensive against the Taliban uproots more than a million Pakistanis, a seething mistrust of the United States only grows.”
So says Eleanor Clift, one of the most reactionary Democrat defenders of all time. Has Obama come through on any campaign promise?
Change.
May 9, 2009
“The Obama administration is preparing to revive the system of military commissions established at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, under new rules that would offer terrorism suspects greater legal protections, government officials said.”
Really, “greater legal protections”??? As Andy McCarthy explains, not really:
The Obama commissions will be, in every material way, exactly the same as the Bush Commissions: they will allow the trial of terrorism suspects in a setting that favors the government and protects classified information, and they will be criticized – perhaps not quite as sharply, but sharply – by the same hard Lefties that Obama and Holder were courting during the campaign.
Again, these clowns are something else.
Change.
May 9, 2009
The Obama administration said Friday that it would retain a wildlife rule issued in the last days of the Bush administration that says the government cannot invoke the Endangered Species Act to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases threatening the polar bear and its habitat.
Thugs.
May 8, 2009
Update on the Obama Administration’s threats to Chrysler debt-holders.
Wasn’t Obama supposed to be so charming and brilliant and enchanting that he could bring people together and end all bickering? Instead, he has goons out threatening fund managers – who have ethical and legal obligations to their investors – to take a much smaller return on their (investors’) money.
h/t – Glenn Reynolds
Transparency.
May 8, 2009
President Obama’s choice for the government’s No. 2 housing job is embroiled in the largest fine in U.S. history for “blatant violations” of open records laws after the Washington State Supreme Court chastised his office for withholding documents detailing taxpayer costs for a new professional football stadium in Seattle.
Change.
May 7, 2009
The Obama Justice Department is engaged in the worst type of hypocrisy. Its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is nearing completion of a 220-page report which will recommend that Attorney General Eric Holder refer former Bush administration lawyers to their state bar disciplinary committees over purported ethical lapses in the legal analysis those lawyers drafted to justify harsh interrogation techniques that critics — including President Obama himself — have labeled “torture.” …
Yet, even as the OPR report is being finalized, even after Obama declared himself open to the possibility of criminal prosecution against the Bush officials, and even after Holder promised to conduct an investigation that would “follow the evidence wherever it takes us, follow the law wherever that takes us” (emphasis added), the Obama Justice Department is relying on the very same legal analysis in order to urge a federal appeals court to reject torture claims….
These clowns are something else.
