The new GM logo - from Malkin

Gore the Hypocrite

Even during Earth Hour. President of the Tennessee Center For Policy Research Drew Johnson takes a Saturday drive by Al Gore’s during the time most environmentalists went dark:

I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.

In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work. (In other words, his house looked the way most houses look about 1:45am when their inhabitants are distractedly watching “Cheaters” or “Chelsea Lately” reruns.)

The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.

I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.

Czech Premier Calls Obama Administration's Economic Policies 'a Road to Hell'

Harry Reid is despicable

Read the story for yourselves

Reid seeks to clarify stimulus rule on casinos.

Can you believe the nerve of this asshole? Read that letter carefully and with a discerning eye. He’s trying to say that the only way those so-called non-profits can operate is if they receive grants out of the stimulus bill that can be spent in his Vegas casinos. Bullshit! So - none of those services can be provided UNLESS they get money from the stimulus bill and they can ONLY operate within the casinos?

How the hell were they operating before the stimulus bill was passed?

I hope you people in Nevada are watching this clown! I’m sure Nevada does not rely on Vegas alone. I’ve been to Vegas - it’s not exactly a really large town. The county I live in here in Florida is twice the size of Vegas and all of the same similar services in my country don’t need no damned hotels and casinos as locations for providing these services. If you jokers in Nevada re-elect this idiot - you all deserve to go to hell with him. He doesn’t give a shit at all about the rest of this country. All he cares about is providing pork to the casinos in his state.

This isn’t about getting money to provide services to those small groups - it’s about getting money that can be funneled in to the casinos.

As predicted, Iran is not going to be sitting down with Obama

Iran's Leader Did Not Feel A Thrill Up His Leg After Watching Obama's Holiday Video

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is less than impressed with President TelePrompter public outreach efforts thus far.

He mentioned U.S. sanctions against Iran, U.S. support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during his 1980-88 war against Iran and the downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf in 1988.

He also accused the U.S. of provoking ethnic tension in Iran and said Washington's accusations that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons are a sign of U.S. hostility. Iran says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, like energy production, not for building weapons.

"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged," Khamenei said.

Khamenei, wearing a black turban and dark robes, said America was hated around the world for its arrogance, as the crowd chanted "Death to America."

I think it's safe to say Iran's fist is still clinched. Unfortunately I doubt that means Obama isn't devising new and exciting ways to suck up to these bastards in private talks that are no doubt going on or about to start.

From Confederate Yankee...

Cradle and All

If you thought that American media outlets are little more than extensions of JounoList and the White House Press Office... well, you might be on to something.

Unlike the eight years that ended January 20th, the sharpest critiques of our failing and flailing government are now coming from those outside of America, as foreign newspapers do the job Americans won't do:

Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is dropping trillions of fresh paper dollars on the world economy, the President of the United States is cracking jokes on late night comedy shows, his energy minister is threatening a trade war over carbon emissions, his treasury secretary is dithering over a banking reform program amid rising concerns over his competence and a monumentally dysfunctional U.S. Congress is launching another public jihad against corporations and bankers.

As an aghast world — from China to Chicago and Chihuahua — watches, the circus-like U.S. political system seems to be declining into near chaos. Through it all, stock and financial markets are paralyzed. The more the policy regime does, the worse the outlook gets. The multi-ringed spectacle raises a disturbing question in many minds: Is this the end of America?

Probably not, if only because there are good reasons for optimism. The U.S. economy has pulled out of self-destructive political spirals in the past, spurred on by its business class and corporate leaders, the profit-making and market-creating people who rose above the political turmoil to once again lift the world out of financial crisis. It’s happened many times before, except for once, when it took 20 years to rise out of the Great Depression.

Past success, however, is no guarantee of future recovery, especially now when there are daily disasters and new indicators of political breakdown. All developments are not disasters in themselves. The AIG bonus firestorm is a diversion from real issues , but it puts the ghastly political classes who make U.S. law on display for what they are: ageing self-serving demagogues who have spent decades warping the U.S. political system for their own ends. We see the system up close, law-making that is riddled with slapdash, incompetence and gamesmanship.

One test of whether we are witnessing the end of America is how many more times Americans put up with congressional show trials of individual business people and their employees, slandering and vilifying them for their actions and motives. And for how long will they tolerate a President who berates business and corporations as dens of crime and malfeasance? If the majority of Americans come to accept the caricatures of business as true, then America is closer to the end of its life as a global leader, as a champion of markets and individualism.

Our incompetent Congress and President are so lacking in situational awareness that they can't see that nearly every move they've made has compounded the problems facing our country. Every massive spending bill passed, every angry attempt at placing the blame on others, every pathetic foreign policy rookie mistake and unforced diplomatic error, every abortive attempt to impose massive new government controls over American life, is pushing us closer towards a point where we have no confidence in our nation's supposed "leadership." Closer to a failed state than we could ever imagine.

A member of our Senate last week had the audacity to proclaim that businessmen should resign or commit suicide for accepting money they were owed under contract.

Perhaps some people should eat a bullet, or swallow a handful of pills with a bourbon chaser, or at least resign as a result of the horrific decisions they've made that have threatened and wrecked not just individual lives, but entire economies.

But there is no honor among thieves, and the thieves in our Congress and White House lack the integrity to do the honorable thing. They won't admit their incompetence and resign. They sure as Hell won't voluntarily die to assuage some foreign (to them) sense of honor.

I still hold out hope that we'll find a way to pull out of our current economic collapse, but the more Congress grandstands in order to ignore real problems, and the more our President bogs himself down in constant gaffes, petty dalliances, and dreams of social engineering the America of his dreams, the less likely it seems that will happen.

I am SO glad I voted for Mr. Obama!
He is MY hero! Yeaaaa!

Taxpayers should be more than a little scared

Maybe Jay Leno should host Meet the Press. Bowling and canine questions aside, Leno pressed President Barack Obama hard on the House’s vote to strip AIG employees of their retention bonuses via the tax code:

Well, here’s something that kind of scared me. Today they passed this thing that says we’re going to tax 90 percent of these bonuses. And the part that scares me is, I mean, you’re a good guy — if the government decides they don’t like a guy, all of a sudden, hey, we’re going to tax you and then, boom, and it passes. I mean, that seems a little scary as a taxpayer.

And taxpayers should be scared by this Administration. Especially considering Obama’s answer:

I think that the best way to handle this is to make sure that you’ve closed the door before the horse gets out of the barn. … The change I’d like to see in terms of tax policy is that we have a system, going back to where we were back in the 1990s, where you and I who are doing pretty well pay a little bit more to pay for health care, to pay for energy, to make sure that kids can go to college who aren’t as fortunate as our — as my kids might be. Those are the kinds of measured steps that we can take.

Translation: the only problem Obama has with Congress targeting specific groups for astronomical tax hikes is that they didn’t do it early enough! And there is nothing “measured” about the steps Obama wants the federal government to take. The Obama Administration budget: 1) increases government spending by $1 trillion over the next decade; 2) permanently expands the federal government by nearly 3 percent of gross domestic product; 3) raises taxes for 3.2 million taxpayers by an average of $300,000 over the next decade; 4) raises taxes on all Americans by $1.4 trillion over the next decade; 5) leaves permanent deficits averaging $600 billion even after the economy recovers; and 6) doubles the publicly held national debt to over $15 trillion.

When pressed earlier in the day at a rally in Los Angeles about whether the federal government’s borrow and spend policies might “create here a chance that we may follow in the footsteps of Iceland and one day just simply be broke” all Obama could do was attack the previous administration: “[W]hen I hear some folks from the other party in Congress start howling about the deficits, I’m starting to think, well, where have you been? What have you been doing?”

The Bush Administration and the Tom DeLay Congress will have to speak for themselves, but true conservatives fought against the explosion of Washington spending every step of the way. The Heritage Foundation was opposed to the idea that more federal spending and control were good for education. We opposed the idea that more federal spending and control were necessary for transportation. And we so opposed the idea the Medicare ought to be expanded to include prescription drugs that DeLay banned Heritage research from his office.

But enough about the past. Looking ahead to the future, both the Democrat controlled Senate Budget Committee and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office offered some stark reality to contrast with Obama’s Hollywood budget pitch. Senate Democrats say that Obama’s budget will push federal deficits “as much as $1.6 trillion higher” than the Obama Administration claims. The CBO places the number at $1 trillion. The Obama Administration is not going to cut any of its spending priorities. So yes Jay, you should be scared … you and every other taxpayer should be very, very scared.

Bonus outrage

Speaking to a crowd of 1,500 supporters in Costa Mesa, California, about the bonuses given to employees of 80% taxpayer owned AIG, President Barack Obama said: “I know a lot of you are outraged about this. I’m outraged, too.” We’ll leave for others to decide the level of Obama’s outrage, especially considering reports this morning that the Obama Administration found out about the bonuses on February 28, not March 10, as they originally claimed. But what we would like to see some genuine outrage over are the millions of taxpayer dollars going to executives at the taxpayer owned companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Fannie and Freddie reported combined losses of about $108 billion last year. But the damage they caused the entire economy goes far beyond the losses on their balance sheets. Fannie and Freddie are at the core of the current economic meltdown. Although they were only recently fully taken over by the government; for much of their existence Fannie and Freddie were quasi-governmental agencies that made no actual home loans. Instead they buy loans from banks, and then bundle and repackage them as securities. For years Fannie and Freddie leveraged their government-sponsored advantages — including exemptions from state and federal taxes, lower capital requirements, and the ability to borrow at rates well below those paid by private companies — to create a co-monopoly in the housing finance sector.

Contrary to what the left claims, Fannie and Freddie were integral to the creation and expansion of the subprime loan industry. With Fannie and Freddie as their largest customer, subprime king Countrywide Financial grew from a tiny institution to the largest mortgage lender in the country. Fannie and Freddie’s subprime business was not isolated to Countrywide. Fannie and Freddie both bought subprime securities since 1995, and by 2004 they were purchasing $175 billion worth of such securities a year, or 44% of the entire market. From 2003 through 2006 Fannie and Freddie bought more than a half trillion dollars in subprime securities. That is more than any other purchaser in the entire world.

In 1991, following the Savings and Loan disaster, Heritage pushed for the full privatization of Fannie and Freddie, predicting that “maintaining secondary mortgage firms in a twilight zone between the public and private sectors … may be a recipe for an eventual taxpayer bailout.” We just didn’t realize how huge that bailout would be.

Back in California, Obama told his audience: “We’re going to do everything we can to fix it. So for everybody in Washington who’s busy scrambling, trying to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me, because it’s my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don’t make them.” President Obama did not create the Fannie and Freddie disaster, but he is not fixing it either. Instead of learning from the disastrous consequences of Fannie and Freddie’s market distorting housing interventions, the Obama Administration is doubling down by making Fannie and Freddie a center piece of their housing plan. Now that is something to be outraged over.

Quick Hits:

* For the first time in Gallup’s 25-year history of asking Americans about the trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, a majority of Americans say economic growth should be given the priority.
* Births to unwed mothers reached an all-time high of about 40 percent last year, with more than three-quarters of these women were 20 or older.
* Some of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners could be released into the United States while others could be put on trial in the American court system, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday.
* Holder also said the Justice Department has no plans to prosecute pot dispensaries that are operating under state laws in California and a dozen other states.
* President Obama said yesterday it’s important for longtime illegal immigrants to have a path to citizenship so they can join unions.

Pelosi says it is unamerican to enforce immigration law

AIG bonuses are .09% of the 173 BILLION Congress gave to AIG

Shep tells it like it is - the AIG bonus debacle

AIG blowing up in Obama's face

Obama is shifting the spotlight to the AIG executive bonuses, but his own hand-picked Treasury Secretary is responsible for far more of the AIG mess than Obama cares to acknowledge.

Tim Geithner is one of the architects of the fraud-ridden AIG black hole and other bailouts. He's been wrong for years and still is wrong, and so have all those around him who participated in this travesty.

Washington still has announced no definitive procedures to separate banks from their toxic assets, even though the FDIC procedures are readily available for this purpose and could be reasonably fair in zeroing out the equity and subordinate debtholders. The only Washington plan has been to bail out those crony banks and financial firms that have made loans to banks. These creditors deserve their losses. They brought them on to themselves by making such poor investments and not evaluating the risk of their counterparties.

The entire epsiode is the largest single fraud against taxpayers in history. Multi-billions are being and have been paid to AIG's creditors (counterparties), including hedge funds and banks. The millions paid as bonus money to executives need not have been paid anymore than the amounts paid to creditors because the company has been de facto bankrupt for months and would have been de jure bankrupt, had it not been for Geithner's folly, which is also the FED's and Washington's folly.

The bonus debacle is designed to hide what is really going on

From Glenn Beck:

Congress is outraged about the bonuses at AIG even though Chris Dodd penned an ammendment to TARP that allows the bonuses. So....Congress knew about the bonuses months ago. What you don't know is this. AIG gave money to the following organizations:

Merrill Lynch - 7 Billion

Goldman Sachs - 13 Billion

Bank of America - 5.5 Billion

Even worse, money went to other countries:

Switzerland - 5 Billion

Germany - 17 Billion

France - 19 Billion

44 Billion went to America and 62 Billion went overseas.

Huh???!!!! Everyone is screaming about 165 Million which is nothing compared to the billions that went overseas.

Do you still think Bush is worse than Obama?

Read this article from The Heritage Foundation:

Morning Bell: Accelerating Us Off a Cliff

Speaking to House Democrats at their Kingsmill Resort & Spa retreat last month, President Barack Obama defended his economic stimulus plan, claiming: “[We] are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. … If you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.” Our public policy definitely needs a change in direction. But the Obama Administration’s budget is not a change in direction. Instead, it is a foot on the accelerator taking us off that cliff. Consider:

• President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
• President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
• President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.
• President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.
• President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.
• President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
• President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

The only sharp break President Obama takes away from President Bush is the amount of money he takes from the American people. President Bush reduced taxes by approximately $2 trillion; President Obama has proposed raising taxes by $1.4 trillion. Yet even after taking $1.4 trillion more out of the private sector, Obama’s budget still would double the public debt level to $15.4 trillion. Between 2008 and 2013, the budget will add $5.7 trillion ($48,000 per U.S. household) in new government debt. The annual interest on this debt would nearly equal the entire U.S. defense budget by 2019.

How does the Obama budget raise taxes by $1.4 trillion yet still double the national debt? By exploding government spending. Domestic discretionary spend­ing (including stimulus funds) has been hiked over 80 percent over 2008 levels. Even if we set aside the stimulus spending, and take the Obama Administration’s word that all of that spending will be temporary, the expansion of government under Obama’s budget is historic. In 2007, before the recession, Washington spent $24,172 per household. By 2019, the President’s budget would spend $32,463 per household—an inflation-adjusted $8,000 per household expansion of gov­ernment.

Summarizing his findings Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl writes: “President Obama has framed his budget as a break from the “failed policies” of the Bush Admin­istration. Actually, his budget doubles down on President George W. Bush’s borrow, spend, and bail­out policies.”

Quick Hits:

• White House budget director Peter Orszag rejected Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-SC) request for a waiver to use a portion of his stimulus money to pay down the state’s debt.
• Responding to protectionist measures in the omnibus spending bill, Mexico threatened Monday to impose tariffs on American imports worth at least $2.4 billion.
• Two “handlers” close to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) collected nearly $250 million in federal funding for one Pennsylvania firm that then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha’s campaign supporters.
• Stimulus funds for infrastructure are not being spent as fast as the White House planned.
• Telecom lobbyists are fighting over how the federal government should spend $7.2 billion in stimulus money set aside for new high-speed Internet lines.

Now Mexico is pissed

Obama Backtracks on Bungled Mexico Policy

You Would Hope The Democrats Did Not Intend To Have Mexico Slap Tariffs On U.S. Goods

Posted by Dan McLaughlin (Profile)

Monday, March 16th at 5:12PM EDT

6 Comments

President Bush’s critics often accused him of alienating key U.S. allies. Frequently that case was overstated, as the Bush Administration forged stronger bilateral ties with many strategically important allies, and as the Administration’s foreign critics were often engaged in faux outrage for domestic political purposes over purely symbolic issues. That said, at least when the Bush Administration set out to do something our allies didn’t like, it (1) did so to advance concrete U.S. interests and (2) stuck to its guns.

With the Obama Administration, neither is true. Fresh off a bizarre series of unnecessary gaffes in dealing with friend (the U.K.) and foe (Russia) alike, and after already rattling sabers and then caving on trade war threats with Canada and the EU, Obama and Congressional Democrats have brought us to the brink of a full-blown trade war with Mexico - and they are stuck trying to climb down from the ledge. Brian Faughnan has some of the background here; today’s news is the desperate scramble to avoid the consequences of the Democrats’ own policies as Mexico escalates with new tariffs for the Administration’s violation of our treaty obligations under NAFTA:

The White House says it wants to work with lawmakers to restore a program that allows cross-border trucking with Mexico.

Mexico Monday put in place tariffs on 90 U.S. products after Washington canceled a program that allowed some trucks from Mexico to operate in the U.S. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the administration wants to work with Congress to come up with a plan that would restore that program.

+++

The Mexican Economy Department says the U.S. decision violates a provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was supposed to have opened cross-border trucking years ago. Department officials told a news conference Monday that the measure will affect about $2.4 billion in trade, covering agricultural and industrial products from 40 U.S. states.

Following a financial crisis with a trade war is, of course, the textbook laid out by the Hoover Administration; even the Obama team seems to understand this, but they are squandering American credibility by making threats they know full well they can’t afford to back up.

Greenwald: Decriminalizing Drugs Works

by Turkana

Working with the Cato Institute, Glenn Greenwald went to Portugal to study the results of that country's decriminalization of drugs. In April, he will present his findings. At Salon, he offers a brief summary:

Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.

Via Jeralyn, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano now says the Obama Administration is going to get more actively involved in battling the Mexican drug war. But Greenwald points to the obvious:

A survey of 17 countries has found that despite its punitive drug policies the United States has the highest levels of illegal cocaine and cannabis use. The study, by Louisa Degenhardt (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) and colleagues, is based on the World Health Organization's Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) and is published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

The cost of the U.S. "War on Drugs" has been estimated to be as high as $40,000,000,000 a year. That's money well burnt.

Greenwald:

There is clearly a growing recognition around the world and even in the U.S. that, strictly on empirical grounds, criminalization approaches to drug usage and, especially, the "War on Drugs," are abject failures, because they worsen the exact problems they are ostensibly intended to address. "Strictly on empirical grounds" means excluding from the assessment: (a) ideological questions regarding the legitimacy of imprisoning adults for consuming drugs they choose to consume; (b) the evisceration of Constitutional and civil liberties wrought by drug criminalization; and (c) the extraordinary sums of money devoted to the War on Drugs both domestically and internationally.

Very recent events demonstrating this evolving public debate over drug policy include the declaration of the Drug War's failure from several former Latin American leaders; a new Economist Editorial calling for full-scale drug legalization; new polls showing substantial and growing numbers of Americans (and a majority of Canadians) supportive of marijuana legalization; the decision of the DEA to make good on Obama's campaign pledge to cease raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in states which have legalized its usage; and numerous efforts in the political mainstream to redress the harsh and disparate criminal penalties imposed for drug offenses, including Obama's support for treatment rather than prison for first-time drug offenders.

Particularly in the U.S., there is still widespread support for criminalization approaches and even support for the most extreme and destructive aspects of the "War on Drugs," but, for a variety of reasons, the debate over drug policy has become far more open than ever before.

There's no evidence that Obama wants even to consider daring a bolder approach. He's moving in the right direction, but on drug policy, it's well past time for transformational change.

The mainstream media refuses to call a spade a spade

Pelosi Air strikes again

Obama's Pick for Information Officer Raided by FBI

Awesome - another pick goes down in flames

What hacks me off on March 12, 2009

Air Pelosi

Somalis are disappearing, are they coming back as terrorists?

The government's pro-labor idea is hurting Wal-Mart's stock price

Rising Tension with Iran

Card Check Will Cost 600,000 jobs in the first year

List of my gripes for March 11, 2009

Scholarships for terrorists?!

http://chronicle.com/news/article/6092/clinton-announces-million-dollar-scholarship-program-for-palestinian-students

Who are you hiding from, Our Dear Leader, in the new era of government transparency? Now that the bill is signed, we are going to do something about earmarks. What a bunch of crap.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/President44/story?id=7061084&page=1

We should spend more money that isn't ours:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/11/key-democrat-prepares-possible-stimulus-package/

Even the Victicrats are getting worried:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/11/nervous.dems/index.html?eref=rss_politics

What happens when these idiots are faced with a real crisis and are unreachable by Great Britain?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cabinet-chief-obama-team-unreachable-1642088.html

We're going to reach out to the moderate terrorists:

http://in.reuters.com/article/email/idINIndia-38433020090310?sp=true

Where is the mainstream media when crazies are building dirty bombs on U.S. soil?

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/The_%22dirty_bomb%22_that_disappeared

We continue to release terrorists into the wild:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/03/023038.php

Obama gets an F by economists:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123671107124286261.html

And another liar speaks:

On CNN's "State of the Union" on March 8, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said, "Look, the earmarks have come down significantly, 75 percent."

Joe Biden is a doofus

From Gateway Pundit:

Joe Biden impressed his European colleagues this week with his vast knowledge of the Taliban terrorist organization:

5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being -- getting paid.”

Unfortunately, the Taliban disagree with Joe Biden and Barack Obama about the so-called moderate elements of the organization:

Obama, in an interview with the New York Times, expressed an openness to adapting tactics in Afghanistan that had been used in Iraq to reach out to moderate elements there.

"This does not require any response or reaction for this is illogical," Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a purported spokesman for the insurgent group, told Reuters when asked if its top leader Mullah Mohammad Omar would make any comment about Obama's proposal.

"The Taliban are united, have one leader, one aim, one policy...I do not know why they are talking about moderate Taliban and what it means?"

Just wondering... Does Team "O" have any idea who we are at war with?

50 Days That Changed the World - from Gateway Pundit

50 Days That Changed the World
...It's hard to imagine we're only 50 days into the Barack Obama Presidency.

** Obama is on track to spend more money than any person in the history of the planet.
** Obama and Pelosi's stimulus bill was the largest spending bill in the history of the planet.
** Obama and democrats have already saddled America's children and grand children with massive debt. Not that this bothers them.

** He's lost at least 3 administration nominees due to tax fraud.
** He's promoted a tax cheat to run the IRS and Treasury.
** He's insulted America's greatest ally, Great Britain.
** He's reneged on missile agreements with allies Poland and the Czech Republic.
** His administration has already met with the murderous Assad Regime from Syria.

Rescue workers and soldiers stand around a huge crater after a bomb attack that tore through the motorcade of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut, Lebanon. Investigators have linked the Assad regime to the attack. (SMH)

** Obama signed legislation to close Gitmo.
** Obama freed a dirty bomber from Gitmo to Great Britain.
** Obama told US soldiers and marines in Afghanistan, "We're losing."

It's a safe to say that Barack Obama could never have led America during WW II without surrendering. (Numbers from Iraq Casualties and GP)

** Obama's VP told US soldiers and marines that US deaths will rise in Afghanistan.
** Obama has already discussed holding peace talks with the Taliban.

** The Obama stock market had its worst January in 113 years.
** The stock market had its worst February since 1933.
** The Dow has dropped faster under Obama than any other new president in 90 years.
** Obama's budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, and adds more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined.
** Obama managed to spend more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

** Obama will quadruple the deficit this year.
** Cap & trade was introduced that will cost America 4 million jobs and cost Americans at least $700 per family per year.

** Team Obama announced easing restrictions with communist Cuba.
** Meanwhile, democrats further restricted free trade with ally Colombia.

** Obama passed legislation to fund foreign abortions.
** Obama passed legislation to fund embryonic stem cell research.

** Democrats already banned offshore drilling.
** Democrats scrapped oil and gas leases in Utah for energy development.
** Obama's party permanently banned drilling in ANWR. posted by Gateway Pundit at 3/10/2009 04:39:00 AM |

Interesting....Saturn dealers my buy Saturn

Obama is overwhelmed - an understatement

'Obama is overwhelmed.'

Perhaps it's just some Obama ally speaking out of school. But these are probably some of the most terrifying words to come from an unidentified source in some time:

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. "I think it's right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn't quite understand the British concerns and didn't get what that was all about."

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything."

It's at moments like this I'm reminded of this assessment of Obama, back in 2007: "I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training."

That assessment came from . . . Vice President Joe Biden.

Great bumper sticker: OneBigAssMistakeAmerica

Barack Obama and the Death of America

WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation’s unemployment rate bolted to 8.1 percent in February, the highest since late 1983, as cost-cutting employers slashed 651,000 jobs amid a deepening recession. Jobless rate bolts to 8.1 pct., 651,000 jobs lost

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Calling the latest job losses astounding, President Barack Obama said Friday he will not accept a future marked by a recurring cycle of Americans forced out of work due to the economic crisis. Obama calls latest job losses astounding

NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street has given up early gains and has turned lower as the severity of U.S. job losses began to register with investors. Stocks turn lower after February jobs data

WASHINGTON - The truisms have been familiar to generations of Americans: As General Motors goes, so goes the nation; Citigroup is too big to fail; General Electric, one of the 12 original companies in the Dow Jones industrial average in 1896, brings good things to life. America’s corporate giants crumbling

WASHINGTON - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd has moved to allow the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to temporarily borrow up to $500 billion from the Treasury Department, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Report: Bill seeks $500 billion for FDIC fund

The above is just a sampling of the financial and business news from the reports today.

The jobless rates have gone UP, in a large way. Barack Obama, the guy that never really held a JOB, is ‘astounded‘. The stock markets are all but in the tank because of the financial mess this nation is in, and the stock markets are responsible for that situation, in a very large way. The biggest corporations in America are crumbling, Obama and Company are throwing BILLIONS of our TAX dollars at them in an effort to save them, and then the news comes out that it appears that no matter what is done, some of these corporations are done for anyway.

That’s bad news folks, it’s terrible news, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the last little blurb concerning the FDIC.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is a United States government corporation created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. It provides deposit insurance, which guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks, currently up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. FDIC

I don’t mean to be an alarmist, but for some reason, when the FDIC has to borrow money to guarantee MY deposits, I get a bit nervous! What I get from this story is, the Feds are propping up the FDIC in an effort to make this stimulus and all the extended credit that Obama and Company believe will bail out this nation become a reality with an infusion of an additional $500 BILLION.

Seems to me that all we are doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul. I believe what we are seeing is called shuck and jive on the street, and unless you are the gullible *mark* that falls for the 3 card shuffle and the shell game, you know as well as I do, this crap is NOT going to work and all Obama and Company are doing is throwing good money after bad.

And now we are hearing that Bernie Madoff may be about to enter into a plea deal, Prosecutors indicate Madoff plea may be in works, I’ll bet that makes the folks that lost BILLIONS in his ponzi scheme feel a lot better…

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My head is ready to explode!!! What the heck happened to this country?

…and that would not be a pretty sight at all! Is there anybody else out there that is having an extremely hard time trying to keep up with everything that Obama and those Dems are doing up in D.C.? Every time I come across a news article, see something on the T.V. or hear something on the radio - I get an excellent idea for a blog discussion. But…no more than 10 minutes later something else comes up..and again and again and again.

I’m almost quite convinced that the White House is throwing all of this out there at one time just to keep our minds so totally boggled that we can’t possibly figure it all out. When you really start putting it all together it just absolutely makes my head want to explode because I just can’t keep track. I’m not even going to attempt to put all the links up to this list - because it could take me almost a freakin’ month alone to liste everything that Obama has thrown at us:

$787 Billion Spending Bill completely loaded with pork

$410 Billion Omnibus Bill completely loaded with pork

Secret videotaped messages to the AFL-CIO meeting declaring Congress WILL pass the “Employee Free Choice Act” doing away with secret ballots - a complete erosion of the constitution and violation of our privacy.

Healthcare Reform Summit stating that the debate is settled and there is nothing anybody can do about it - Universal Healthcare is coming to America.

Economic Reform Summit held where the end outcome is that there is not one smart individual in all of D.C. that can figure out that smaller government and lower taxes is the appropriate way to heal this economy.

Hillary Clinton, on behalf of Obama, delivering $900 Million to a terrorist organization so they can rearm themselves to lob more missiles in to Israel - and criticizing Israel while she handed them the check.

Iran is less than one month away from a nuclear bomb and Obama has not said one word about it.

Hillary Clinton, on behalf of Obama, goes to China to beg for money. Essentially, China is propping up this economy right. We will all be speaking Chinese shortly if they decided to call in our debt.

Obama sends a letter to Russia opening up dialog with them and hinting the U.S. might back down from the missile defense shield (a great sign of weakness).

John Kerry, on behalf of Obama, goes and visits with Asshat Bashir in Syria opening dialogs with another state sponsorer of terrorism.

Obama openly tells our enemies exactly what date we are withdrawing from Iraq - another great sign of weakness and inexperience.

Gordon Brown comes to visit Obama talking about a Global New World Order and it appears Obama is open to this socialist notion and giving up American sovereignty.

Four cabinet nominees are tax cheaters - and one of them actually gets appointed to oversee the very organization he cheated.

Several Anti-gun measures (in direct violation of the 2nd Amendment) being introduced in Congress.

FDIC in threat of going insolvent - you know - the agency that guarantees funds in your bank up to $250,000.00 to the point now they get a $500 Billion bailout.

Honest homeowners all around this country are bailing out other homeowners against their will.

Several Congress persons ready to introduce the Fairness Doctrine again - only they’re gonna call it something else.

Obama introduces proposal for bogus Cap and Trade scheme that would ensure inflation and increased energy prices.

Obama set to increase taxes on the upper-middleclass income earners making more than $250,000 which would effectively shut down small businesses across this country.

Obama set to reduce charitable benefit deductions whereby forcing charities to take money from the government - meaning the government would control which charities should live and which should die.

The government now owns 80% of AIG and 40% of Citi-bank.

Every time Obama opens his mouth the Dow tanks.

Tax cheater Geithner chastises tax cheating individuals and files suit against UBS for “secret” offshore account information. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

That racist attorney general calls all Americans cowards because we won’t talk about race! For crying out loud man - the freakin’ POTUS is black! Isn’t that enough for you? Isn’t that proof that we have pretty much broken that barrier? The only one’s continuing this race issue are black racists like yourself.

Nancy Pelosi takes a trip to Rome and forces Congress to vote on the spending bill without giving them time to read it - then Obama signs it immediately not giving the American people the 5 days he promised us.

No Republicans were allowed to provide input on the spending bill and no republican amendments were allowed - but - they fully expect republicans to vote for it?

The Govenor of Arizona is made the Director of Homeland Security - yet - she couldn’t even protect her own state from the invasion of illegal aliens. Phoenix, Arizona is the number 2 city in the ENTIRE world for kidnappings - over 400 reported last year - note - that is REPORTED.

The Governor of Kansas has been named as the Director of HHS - this is the same individual who has given free tuition, free healthcare, and amnesty to illegal aliens in her own state. She also shut down the building of new coal-fueled plants in her state. If she did it in her state - What do you think will happen to America?

Obama signs an executive order closing GITMO and starts releasing terrorists.

Obama signs an executive order reversing offshore drilling again.

Obama signs an executive order reversing the Mexico City Policy that stated America would not provide funding to foreign countries that have state-sponsored abortion. Well - now apparently we American taxpayers are now paying for abortions in other countries.

Obama reversed all of the welfare reform policies that Clinton had in place - back to giving free handouts to free-loaders. We’re back to generational welfare recipients.

Expanded the SCHIP program to include “kids” up to age 25. Excuse me! If you are not a full-time student in college - if you are 18 years old - you better be out there looking for a job taking care of yourself and getting your own insurance. Last time I looked - 25 is not a kid. I had two kids of my own by the time I was 25.

Obama’s Director of Labor is extremely pro-union and pro-amnesty for illegal aliens. Do you think we’ll be rounding up illegal aliens and deporting them under an Obama presidency? Illegal aliens cost this country $80 Billion a year for crying out loud.

Obama’s Director of the EPA is a known socialist and was a leader within the socialist environmental global warming movement. She was extremely proud of that and even had her profile on the website - until they took it down after she was nominated to the EPA position. BTW - she’s one of those global warmongerers that also believe the “science is settled” and the “debate is over” despite all the evidence that has come out showing we have been in a cooling state for the last decade. Where do you think she’s going to lead this country?

His spending bill gives $500 tax rebate to those who don’t pay taxes at all. Sounds like wealth-redistribution to me - which I believe is a Marxist philosophy - but - oh noes - he ain’t no socialist is he?

Newly Added - Then there’s the Freedom of Choice Act that has been reintroduced that if enacted makes it illegal for medical practitioners to refuse to do abortions on moral grounds and also makes it illegal for pharmacists to refuse to dispense Plan-B and birth control pills on moral grounds. This would be an assault on their First Amendment rights to Freedom of Religion. Additionally, the Hippocratic oath taken by physicians say they will do no harm. Some physicians view abortion as doing harm. This essentially will cause the 600+ Catholic hospitals around this country to be shut down.

Good lord people! And those are just the stories that are coming off the top of my head that I KNOW of!!! How can one man do so much damage in less than 60 days? There wasn’t this much freakin’ activity in the whole 8 years Bush was in office!!! There are a helluva lot more stories out there that I have forgotten about and I’m sure there are even more that I don’t KNOW about - with much much more to come given we still have 3 Years and 10 months to go in this first term.

Is it any wonder this economy is tanking? Individually, these all seem harmful in their own right. But - collectively - my God people - look at all of this!!! For those of you on the left that think Obama is not a socialist - just look at all the stories. Every one of them lead us down that path. You guys on the left who so cherish your liberties are about to get a very rude awakening. All of Obama’s policies thus far lead to more government intrusion of your privacy and giving you less control of your own decisions. Where is the ACLU on this? Perhaps they haven’t fully understood it yet either.

Come on people - wake up! WE ALL heard these stories throughout the past 2 months - but - have you ever seen them all just listed out yet? Where do you think all of these stories and the actions of Obama and his administration are leading us? If you can think of some stories that I forgot or don’t know about - please post them here in the comments - I’ll drag them up in to the main discussion for all to see and ponder.

UPDATE: Looks like Texas Fred - is thinking along the same lines today - go check this out: Barack Obama and the Death of America.

Obama in Trouble

POSTED March 6, 2009 | 5:13 PM

Did you feel it? The political ground shifting beneath President Barack Obama since his speech last week to Congress? It's been downhill since and I'm not referring mainly to the Dow Jones record-setting dive. The pivot point of the shift was the speech, or rather what the speech did to the evolving public narrative of Obama.

Let's review:

* Since the first of the year, Rush Limbaugh's audience has exploded , according to Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, even as his daily assaults on Obama have intensified. The conservative Talk Radio maestro has become quite possibly the most listened-to radio personality in America since before Paul Harvey (God rest his soul).

Demand for his air time hs suddenly become so intense, Limbaugh told The Examiner's Byron York earlier today, that his network sold 80 percent as much advertising in January 2009 as it did in all of 2008, and expects to sell-out the year by the end of March. That was before Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launched an explicit counter-attack against Limbaugh that seems only to be making him bigger.

* Glenn Beck's eminently forgettable presence on CNN has been transformed, according to The Los Angeles Times, by his move to Fox News where his main theme has been variations on this question - Wake Up! Wake UP! What in Heaven's name does Barack Obama think he is doing to America? Beck has a tough time slot from which to win big ratings because he's in the middle of evening drive-time. Even so, in a very short period of time at Fox, his audience has grown to the point that it is now exceeded only by those of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

* Obama remains personally popular with the public, but worries and even outright opposition to some of his cornerstone proposals are growing. Democrats in Congress are even beginning to express in public print their worries that Obama has reached too far with the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill and the $3.6 trillion budget proposal (and the trillions more senior aides whisper are coming in further bailouts, loan guarantees, "tax cuts" that are really just grants, and other spending accountrements of Leviathan Unleashed.)

* Paralleling these developments, a potentially devastatng conservative case against Obama is coming together rapidly. Two influential columns this week tell the tale: On Thursday, Daniel Henninger offers this crucial observation in a WSJ piece otherwise devoted to asking why Republicans aren't more eagerly and quickly taking advantage of the fact the Obama Democrats have all but declared war on the 75 percent of the U.S. economy that is private and therefore productive of the nation's wealth:

"Beyond the stock market, there is a reason why, despite much goodwill toward his presidency, the Obama response to the faltering economy has left many feeling undone. There isn't much in his plan to stir the national soul. It's about 'sacrifice' now so that we can live for a future of small electric cars and windmills. This may move the Democratic Party's faith communities, but it cannot revive a great nation. If the Democrats want to embrace market failure as a basis for their ideology, let them have it. As politics, it's a downer."

The second column appeared today in The Washington Post and was written by Charles Krauthammer. Obama's mastery of public speaking has heretofore served to deflect attention away from the details of what he is actually proposing. And there is in those details, according to Krauthammer, a fundamental deception: Obama summons visions of catastrophe that are the result of too little government regulation of the financial markets and he offers as a solution vastly more government regulation of .... health care, energy and education.

"The 'day of reckoning' has now arrived. And because 'it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament,' Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

"Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people," Krauthammer said.

In other words, Krauthammer said, Obama tries to have it both ways, with the alleged errors of deregulation being compounded into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression by America's failure to nationalize health care, shift our economy to alternative energy sources and give everybody a free pass to college. Obama is trying to make the cause and the cure synonymous. "Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core," Krauthammer said.

I would only disagree that the Obama deception represents a clever political strategy. The deception proceeds from the fundamental contradiction in the Obama strategy - talking like Ronald Reagan but walking like the second coming of Norman Thomas - and indeed that of all Washington liberals. Sensing the political fragility of the moment, they are racing to enact as much of their statist agenda as possible before the 2010 election puts the brakes on what, God willing, will ultimately be seen as an unfortunate interregnum between Republican Bush and a genuinely conservative regime to come.

Again, the speech to Congress was the pivot point. Before the speech, Obama was protected by a kind of political equivalent of the Star Trek Shield. His symbolizing of an historic milestone, which alone moved millions of white voters to his column, combined with his soaring rhetoric, which negated criticism from John McCain and other Republicans of the substance of Obama's proposals, to protect him through election day and into the transition.

But the magnetism of his historic moment began fading once the economic stimulus, the omnibus and the budget were on the table. As people focused more on the details and how they didn't square with what they thought he had promised during the campaign, the soaring rhetoric lost much of its power. It may even now be approaching a net negative because it throws so much more light on the inaequacies of the policies.

And so the ground has shifted and the essential narrative is changing. Before, supporting Obama was an act of personal and national affirmation made all the more pleasant and attractive by the seeming reasonableness of his policy proposals and the winsomeness of his public personality . He succeeded admirably in making himself a comfortable and reassuring choice, thus making it not merely "safe" to vote for him, but positively compelling.

Now, though, the mask is off and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality is emerging as the dominant driver of the Obama narrative. The contrast is no longer between the young, personable, historic candidate Obama and a creaky, cranky old Republican White Guy, it's between what America thought it was getting in a President Obama (cool, reasonable and beyond partisanship) and what it now sees as the reality of a President Obama (government spending out of control, an uncertain hand on foreign policy, broken promises, more bureaucrats, etc. etc.).

Put another way - what we see now is neither what we were promised, nor what we expected.

Forgive me, please for saying so, but, if you read my Valentine's Day column on why Obama seemed locked in on a strategy that was likely to make him a one-term occupant of the White House, none of the above would come as a surprise to you. My only surprise today is that the shift has begun so quickly.

Obama spurs interest in the outdoors

From Confederate Yankee:

A friend from high school told me via Facebook and later in email that she and her family in Tennessee are going to be buying a small farm as a fallback in case of economic collapse. Neither she nor he husband have experience farming, but feel that having land and a farmhouse where they can grow and stock food is perhaps the best insurance they can have to ensure their kids have a roof over their heads and food on the table if things get really bad.

I've talked to one or two other people who are also thinking about or developing "worst-case" scenarios, both short and long term, but most people are quiet about their preparations. But preparing they are.

They are obviously not alone. This book, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life, is #18 on Amazon's Best Seller list this morning, and Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life is #29.

And as you already well know, both firearm and ammunition sales have skyrocketed, and more popular guns and the ammunition for them cannot be had in many locations, at any price, due to scarcity and hoarding.

Individual families are preparing, but they also know many people aren't, and so they are stocking up quietly. They do not want to become targets for those who either can't afford to prepare, or who refuse to out of some variation of "it can't happen here" groupthink.

Incidentally, Atlas Shrugged, which was written by an author who saw communism take over her country and the damage it wrought, is also once again selling well on Amazon, at #37.

The mortgage entitlement bailout: Even worse than you think

By Michelle Malkin • March 6, 2009 01:51 PM

Hans Bader at OpenMarket.org looks at the Obama housing bailout and finds that it is even worse than it looks at first glance:

Yesterday, I wrote about how high-income people with $700,000 homes, who are in no danger of becoming homeless, would benefit from the Obama Administration’s massive taxpayer-financed mortgage-bailout plan, and how it would harm the economy in the long-run.

But now, it has become clear that I massively understated the case. The bailout would reduce borrowers’ payments to far below what many borrowers have long paid, with no difficulty whatsoever — reducing the payments of some to 15 or 20 percent of their income! In some regions of the country, much of the population will be eligible for a bailout.

As the New York Times explains, “To qualify, your monthly housing payment needs to exceed more than 31 percent of your gross monthly income (that means before any payroll deductions are made). Keep in mind that your “payment” includes more than just your mortgage’s principal and interest. It also includes real estate taxes” and other charges.

So if you pay 16 percent of your income in mortgage payments, and another 16 percent in real estate taxes, and the total adds up to just 31 percent, you can have your mortgage payments cut under the bailout!

At the time I took out my mortgage in 2004, my combined mortgage and real estate tax payments were over 40 percent of my income (32 percent mortgage, 8 percent property tax). I had no difficulty paying that, since I was thrifty. But people who pay far less of their income than I did will receive a bailout, provided they didn’t save any money (other than in their retirement plan). Why? Because if they have no non-retirement savings, they can claim (as is sufficient to qualify for the bailout) that they “do not have enough liquid assets to pay [their] mortgage at its existing level. [Their] retirement assets are not included in that equation.”

All of this unfairness might be tolerable if the plan had any hope of spurring an economic recovery. But it doesn’t. The stock markets have fallen like a stone since the Obama Administration pushed through its bailout and stimulus packages. And investors are spooked, as Stanford University economist Michael Boskin notes in his Wall Street Journal column, “Obama’s Radicalism Is Killing the Dow.”

Hearing President Urkel cackling: “Did I do that?”

Obama parties like it's 2007 - ON OUR DIME!!!

From Michelle Malkin:

An organization that serves as a watchdog on the U.S. government for American taxpayers has launched a campaign to uncover exactly how much tax money is being spent on parties at the Obama White House.

The president has shown a penchant for lavish galas, such as the huge assembly orchestrated in Denver when he accepted his party’s nomination for president – an outdoor gathering for some 75,000 featuring a stage with Greek columns. He also held a multimillion-dollar victory celebration in Chicago, and his fancy inauguration cost an estimated $170 million, according to ABC News.

Now, Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch, told WND today he’s seeking information about the partying in the White House since the Obamas moved in…

…Klayman said the reports of the partying at the White House, “with the likes of Steve Wonder and other high priced entertainment stars,” will be the focus of document requests being submitted to the General Services Administration. The requests will seek to determine how much taxpayer money is being used.

“Barack and Michelle Obama have been throwing taxpayer funded parties nearly every night with their ‘friends’ and supporters, with Michelle Obama even exhorting them not to ‘break’ White House property,” Klayman’s announcement said.

“This party atmosphere sends the wrong message to the American people. As the Obama-Clinton crowd party on, the American people are suffering greatly,” Klayman said.

A Gloomy Outlook for Home Sales’ Big Season

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Christian Punsal, 24, bought this three-bedroom home in Elk Grove, Calif., for $193,000.

By VIKAS BAJAJ

Published: March 6, 2009

The “For Sale” signs are just starting to sprout, but already experts worry that this spring home-buying season will be even grimmer than the last.

Predicting the Future of a Housing Crisis

Related

U.S. Sets Big Incentives to Head Off Foreclosures (March 5, 2009)

Obama Housing Plan: What You Need to Know (March 5, 2009)

Times Topics: Housing

Despite tentative signs of recovery in hard-hit areas like California and Florida, the broader housing market is far from reaching bottom, economists say. Across much of the nation, prices are likely to keep falling into 2010.

So this March-to-June season, when most homes are bought and sold, will be bad, perhaps the worst since the market began to spiral down in 2006.

Across the nation, 19 million houses and apartments — nearly one out of every seven — are vacant, the highest percentage since the 1960s. But only about six million of those homes are for sale or for rent. That means millions more could still flood onto the market, depressing prices further.

For would-be sellers, the bad news keeps coming. This week, one new report showed that one in nine mortgages was delinquent or in foreclosure, while another showed that January contract signings for sales of previously owned homes fell at their fastest pace in two years.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration announced details of a plan that will pay banks to lower monthly payments for troubled borrowers, hoping to avert millions of foreclosures and keep more homes occupied. Despite that effort, most analysts expect the outlook to worsen.

But as the recession deepens, the downturn in housing, where the economic crisis began, is starting to play out in new, unexpected ways. Cities where home values held up last year are suffering now, while some suburban areas where prices plunged are slowly starting to improve.

In inland areas of California, for instance, sales are surging now that prices have fallen sharply. But most of the sellers are not individuals but rather banks that foreclosed on homeowners who could not or would not pay their mortgages.

By contrast, in cities like New York and San Francisco, where prices have not fallen as much, the market is largely frozen.

“The further you get from the city, the more prices have declined, and that’s where we see sales increasing,” said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin, a real estate brokerage firm. “Eighteen months ago, the city was the only place where people were still buying homes.”

Christian Punsal, a 24-year-old city employee in Elk Grove, Calif., near Sacramento, is among the first-time homeowners and investors swooping in.

Mr. Punsal bought a three-bedroom home for $193,000. On a monthly basis, the house will cost him $100 less than the rent on his two-bedroom apartment. The home sold for $336,000 four years ago, when he was a junior in college.

“I just felt that this would be the perfect time to buy,” he said.

Others like him are wading into the California market. In January, home sales in the state jumped by 54 percent from January 2008. But about 60 percent of the previously owned homes sold had recently been in foreclosure, according to DataQuick, a publisher of real estate information.

Carlos Kozlowski, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker in Sacramento, said virtually every home he sold recently, including the one Mr. Punsal bought, was owned by the bank or a “short sale,” in which the price was less than the property’s mortgage.

Prices are down as much as 50 percent from a few years ago, and many properties are getting multiple bids, he said.

Still, home sales fell nationally in January, reflecting a sharp drop in the Northeast, which, with parts of the Northwest and South, has lagged the real estate downturn in the Southwest.

In Manhattan, for instance, sales of condominiums and co-operative apartments fell 52 percent in January, according to Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm.

The market has been hammered by layoffs on Wall Street, tighter lending standards and a glut of new buildings, said Jonathan J. Miller, chief executive of the firm.

“The leverage is being squeezed out of the economy.”

New York is not alone. Real estate sales have also slumped in cities like San Francisco and Seattle, which previously seemed impervious. California’s recent experience might offer one roadmap of how the housing slump will play out in other places. But the process will be painful and slow.

So April, when buying traditionally picks up, could be the cruelest month yet for the housing market.

“You are really looking at a very, very ugly outlook,” said Ivy Zelman, chief executive of Zelman & Associates, a housing research firm.

In recent months, many banks and mortgage companies have suspended foreclosures voluntarily or because of state moratoriums meant to encourage negotiations between delinquent borrowers and lenders. Experience, however, shows that these suspensions merely delay foreclosures, and that foreclosed homes soon flood the market.

Another big concern is that homeowners with solid credit records will fall behind on their mortgages in greater numbers as unemployment rises.

So for now, the American dream of homeownership is a dream deferred for many people. Growth in the number of households — defined as families or unrelated people living together — slowed last year, to 1.1 million, from an average of 1.4 million a year from 2000 to 2006, according to George Masnick, a researcher at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Economists say the growth rate will likely fall further in 2009.

Many of the vacant homes are concentrated in far-flung suburbs in the Southwest and in Florida, which means that prices there may not return to their highs for many years. It also suggests that much of the country does not have as large an oversupply of homes.

But for now even areas that did not see a boom in construction and home prices in recent years are suffering. Brad Hunter, chief economist at Metrostudy, a housing research firm, cited North Carolina as an example. From 2000 to 2006, home prices in Charlotte climbed only an average of 3.7 percent a year; but last year prices fell 7.2 percent.

One of his colleagues who works in the state told Mr. Hunter, “We got the hangover but we never had the party.”

Troubled housing markets do not rebound quickly. The first thing to turn up are sales of homes as banks and individuals acknowledge that prices are no longer what they were; some of that is already happening in California and Florida.

Home prices tend to lag sales by a couple of years. That is what happened in Massachusetts and California in the early 1990s.

How long will the current slump last?

A futures market for home prices provides one sobering forecast. Trading in contracts that track home prices in 25 metropolitan areas suggests that home prices will fall about 15 percent this year and hit bottom in 2010, according to Radar Logic, a firm that created the index on which the trading is based. The market is also predicting that the Los Angeles area is closer to the bottom than New York.

Geithner - gone by June

WASHINGTON (March 6) — More than half of the nation's foreclosures last year took place in 35 counties, a sign that the financial crisis devastating the national economy may have begun with collapsing home loans in only a few corners of the country.