Category Archive

Jeez: Sen. Charles Grassley is standing by his earlier comments suggesting some embattled AIG executives should "resign or commit suicide," but told CNN Tuesday he was merely speaking rhetorically. "Of course I don't want people to commit suicide," the Iowa Republican said. No, I didn't think so. It says something odd about the state of political discourse in this country … Read More

This is lazy blogging on my part, but The Anonymous Liberal's explanation of AIG's role in our troubled economy is as good a primer as it gets: Imagine, for a moment, that there was a company that offered stock market insurance. For a small premium–pennies on the dollar–you could buy an insurance policy that compensated you in the event your … Read More

Pay the AIG executives' bonuses with the toxic assets they created. UPDATED —  A better idea:  Congress is thinking about taxing the bonuses at 100%.  No, no, no.  Tax them at 150%.  That way, the exec will simply refuse to take them. RELATED — From John McCain's twitter feed: If we hadn't bailed out AIG = no bonuses for greedy execs … Read More

Busy day, so I won't be able to comment as much as I'd like. First of all, it was riveting television.  Far more riveting than I expected. Stewart didn't sugarcoat.  Of course, his main beef wasn't with Jim Cramer per se — he told Cramer: “as Carly Simon said 'This isn’t about you'". And it wasn't.  It wasn’t about Cramer making … Read More

Republicans' tactic of late is to point out how much money is being spent on the stimulus bill and the omnibus bill. The latest comes from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "In just 50 days, Congress has voted to spend about $1.2 trillion between the Stimulus and the Omnibus. To put that in perspective, that's about $24 billion a day, … Read More

Gotta be a little optimistic about this: The recession-hit U.S. economy is proving weaker than economists expected just a month ago, but forecasters still think a recovery is in the cards for later this year, a survey released on Tuesday showed. "Consumer spending and residential investment are expected to turn positive and begin boosting GDP growth in the third quarter … Read More

Find out how stimulus money will be spent in North Carolina here.  They've already isolated some construction projects.  Not much here in Forsyth, except for some work on I-40 near Clemmons. For other states, look here.

(1) Allow same-sex marriages before your neighboring states do: "Right now, so few states provide for marriage for same-sex couples that there is a kind of marriage tourism that goes on," Gates explains. In other words, states that legalize same-sex marriage — and that are among the first to do so — would see the biggest uptick in tourism due … Read More

…but not entirely unexpected: Another 651,000 jobs were lost in February, adding to the millions of people who have been thrown out of work as the economic downturn deepens. In a stark measure of the recession’s toll, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the national unemployment rate surged to 8.1 percent last month, its highest in 25 … Read More

Obama is in Columbus, Ohio this morning.  Why? The President will deliver remarks at the Columbus Police Graduation Exercises. The 25 Columbus police recruits graduating Friday learned in January that instead of being sworn-in as officers, they would be let go. However, Mayor Michael Coleman announced last week that he would use money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act … Read More

And take note, this is a Fox News poll:   Also, from the same poll… "Do you support or oppose raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year and, at the same time, lowering taxes for most other households?" The answer: Support 66%, Oppose 30%. Even 41% of Republicans like the idea.

From kos: Dear media, 95 percent of Americans are getting a tax cut with Obama's budget. So framing this as a tax hike makes you look pretty stupid. And dishonest. And wrong. So stop it. Hugs and kisses, kos He's right.  It should be noted that Obama's budget not only should be viewed as a tax cut, but one of … Read More