Background here. Basically, USA Today printed an article which (from the headline) made it seem that Obama was sterring stimulus money to counties that voted for him, while steering it away from counties that voted for McCain. From the article itself, one can glean that this simply isn't true, and that poorer counties (the ones most in need of stimulus … Read More
Read The Whole Article, People
Shame on USA Today for their article entitled: Billions in aid go to areas that backed Obama in '08 Why, that kind of makes the reader think that Obama is rewarding the parts of the country that voted for him at the expense of those who voted for McCain. Certainly there's support for that theory. As the article explains, 872 … Read More
Unemployment Rate Highest In 26 Years
It's now at 9.5%. Thanks Barack quips the rightwing Gateway Pundit. Gateway Pundit is either stupid or disingenuous. Unemployment numbers are a lagging indicator, because employers tend to wait until economic improvement is solidified before they start rehiring again. Plus, the unemployment rate dropped only 0.1% from May's 9.4%. This is good news, as it appears that we might not … Read More
Financial Regulation
This subject is waaaay above my pay grade, but — shooting from the hip here — I think Obama needs to do at least these things: (1) Get rid of the alphabet soup of federal regulators. Just as our national defense and security was merged under the new Department of Homeland Security, many financial regulation departments can be merged/eliminated with … Read More
Who’s Deficit Is It?
To answer this question, David Leonhardt of the New York Times crunches the numbers (from the CBO). The self-explanatory results are in this graph (click to embiggen all the way): The GOP is gearing up to paint the deficits as "Obama's fault". And clearly, Obama has, by his own admission, run up deficits in order to get the economy back … Read More
What Obama’s “Socialism” Looks Like
Conor Clarke in The Atlantic: Have you heard that the United States is headed toward socialism? Jonah Goldberg says it is. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby says it is. Phyllis Schlafly says it is. Richard Viguerie says it is. The Republican National Committee says it is. We must be getting pretty close. How close? This is what socialism looks like: … Read More
Michael Moore On GM
No love lost.
Reagan Did It
Wasn't it Rush Limbaugh who once said of Ronald Reagan: "We as a nation owe Reagan a debt that can never be repaid" or something like that? Well, Nobel Prize in Economics award winner Paul Krugman points out the ironic truth of that tribute: “This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a … Read More
Still Bad But Better?
The big news today is the latest unemployment number. It stands at 8.9% with another 539,000 jobs shed. It's the highest unemployment number since 1983 and is up from last month's 8.5 percent. BUT…not reaching the 600,000 jobs lost, as many expected we would, is important psychologically, and it could be an indicator of a slowing in the recession. Hopefully.
Bachmania!
Time to spread a little lovin' once again to "America's Worst Legislator"TM, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN). First of all, she weighs in with her thoughts about the swine flu pandemic alert: "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter," said Bachmann. "And I'm not … Read More
Change We’re Believing
For the first time since 2004, most Americans think we're going in the right direction. [T]he percentage of Americans saying the country is headed in the right direction rose to 48 percent, up from 40 percent in February. Forty-four percent say the nation is on the wrong track. Not since January 2004, shortly after the capture of former Iraqi dictator … Read More
Metered Bandwidth Fail
A lot of people didn't know this, but Time Warner announced that it wanted to test the idea of metering bandwidth. What does that mean? Well, basically, the idea was to start charging more to Internet users who used more bandwidth. If you access/download songs or video (like YouTube), you would end up paying more for Internet service. It's what Time … Read More
Robert Reich’s Tax Day Guide
…specifically as it relates to the tea party protests: No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it. Herewith a short citizen's guide (that is, a citizen's guide that's short rather than a guide for short citizens) responding to the … Read More
Shhhh! Ix-Nay On The Overnment-gay Ending-spay
From The Washington Times: Michelle Poland, 33, a project manager from Southern Maryland who subcontracts map-making projects for the federal government, stood on the fringes of the rally with a large hand-painted sign that read, "Tax slavery sucks." "I'm completely against the way my money is being spent," Ms. Poland said. "If we already have an extreme debt, we shouldn't … Read More
Report From The Winston-Salem Teabag Event
While I could only stay for the first hour or so of the 3 hour "protest", I can report the following: First of all, I take bad pictures, made even worse by the fact that I used a cell phone camera which was set to black/white (which actually seems to be blue/white). I'll pepper the most legible photos here. [UPDATE: … Read More