I have but one question for the Obama loyalists.  Do you guys ever get tired of saluting the flag?   Just because we support Obama and all agree he was 1,000 10 times better than anyone else running doesn’t mean we have to put our brains on a shelf.  

Why did he lie to us, and why aren’t the Democrats holding him accountable?  We are not stupid.  We can see what is going on.   All this distraction about bi-partisanship as if millions of unemployed, broke, and homeless middle class Americans care.

No salary caps for CEOs.  No torturers, war profiteers, or WS crooks going to jail.   Just lots of hot air surrounded by smoke and mirrors.

How about a truth commission on the bailout?

I shouldn’t be surprised by now. But I still was when I read the article this morning in the Washington Post explaining that the cap on executive pay has been removed from the stimulus bill. I knew what Congress was doing yesterday by bringing the Wall Street executives in and scolding them in public was a dog and pony show. But I had not realized how profoundly full of shit these politicians are.

Nationalize the damned banks already.  They’re stealing us blind.  Geithner is a WS insider, and the wrong man for this job. If we aren’t getting tax dodger and Republican appointments, we are getting the cat assigned to guard the canary.  If I have to bailout their sorry asses, I want to own them.  

While we are at it, who did us this favor?

A Sanders-Grassley amendment to demand TARP recipient banks stop firing U.S. workers and replacing them with foreign guest workers was ripped out of the bill.

Last but not least, what’s all this noise about Obama and Social Security?  We can pay for  the Bush war profiteers and the ongoing WS bailout of Washington’s financiers and cronies, but they, by god, are going to save us from the burden of  social security.

You have no idea how bad Democrats are starting to look on the heels of all that campaign rhetoric.  Change  my ass! I am getting sick and tired of all of them and the horses they rode in on.  

No matter what one’s point of view is on Obama or his policies, there is no doubt that he is under estimating his mandate for change and in real danger of losing the war for the hearts and minds of the people that gave him that mandate.

Frank Rich

Slumdogs Unite!

The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle’s overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain’s trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.’s bonus. It’s even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president’s best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn’t get in front of the mounting public anger.

While I don’t think an old dog can learn new tricks, I’ll concede that Obama felt a need to at least “try” for bipartisanship so that he could say he did.   So now that it has failed and Republicans and Blue Dogs have seen how easy it is to beat him, what next?  

Maureen Dowd

Face facts: Republicans cleaned Obama’s clock this week.

In his first weeks padding around a White House that still has nails on the walls waiting for new pictures, and phone and e-mail kinks, Barack Obama could not locate the bully pulpit and ended up being bullied.  –snip–

The lawmakers had been feeling disillusioned that they were carrying Mr. Obama’s water on the bill, while Obama aides triangulated and promised that the bill would “improve” in the Senate.

Nancy Pelosi told her leadership team that she had told the president, “I don’t mind you driving the bus over me, but I don’t appreciate your backing it up and running over me again and again.”

The same way the man made levees in NOLA were no match for Katrina, the stimulus bill, no matter how big, is unlikely to hold back the destruction brewing in the American economy and just waiting to hit millions of American families across the land.

The dozen banks receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.

The figures are significant because they show that the bailed-out banks, being kept afloat with U.S. taxpayer money, actively sought to hire foreign workers instead of American workers. As the economic collapse worsened last year – with huge numbers of bank employees laid off – the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP’s analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in fiscal 2007 to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.  

Detroit Free Press

Guardian:  The classic definition of “chutzpah” is the kid who kills both of his parents and then begs for mercy because he is an orphan. The Wall Street crew are out to top this. After wrecking the economy with their convoluted finances, and tapping the US Treasury for trillions in bail-out bucks, they now want to cut Social Security and Medicare because we don’t have the money.

If there is any effort in Congress to follow-up on this talk about taking away people’s Social Security and Medicare, then there will have to be some very serious pain inflicted on the politicians in Washington. Let’s start with some facts.

Unlike Robert Rubin’s Citigroup, Social Security is solidly funded long into the future. According to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office (pdf), it can pay all promised benefits through the year 2049, with no changes whatsoever. Even after that date it will always be able to pay benefits that are far higher than what current retirees receive.

–snip

(cross-posted in orange)

On Borrowed Time is a 1939 film about the role death plays in life, and how we cannot live without it.  Set in a more innocent time in small-town America, the film stars Lionel Barrymore, Beulah Bondi and Cedric Hardwicke.

Lionel Barrymore plays Julian Northrup, a wheelchair-bound man, who with his wife Nellie, played by Beulah Bondi, are raising their orphaned grandson, Pud. Another central character is Gramps’s beloved old apple tree.  By making a wish, Gramps has made the tree able to hold anyone who climbs.

One day the fedora-wearing Mr. Brink (the personification of death, played by Cedric Hardwicke), who has recently taken Pud’s parents in an auto wreck, comes for Gramps. Not knowing who he’s talking to, a crotchety old Gramps orders Death off the property. Later, Mr. Brink takes Nellie, and then returns again for Gramps. Now realizing who Mr. Brink is and determined not to die, Gramps tricks Death up into the old apple tree where he must remain until Gramps lets him down. While stuck in the tree, he can’t take Gramps or anyone else, for that matter.

Meanwhile, Pud’s aunt (his mother’s sister), has designs on Pud and especially the money left him by his parents, and Gramps spends much time fighting off her efforts. Gramps is also fighting efforts to have him committed to the insane asylum for claiming that Death is trapped in his apple tree. He proves that no one can die until he allows Death down from the tree by shooting the man who has come to take him to the asylum – the man lives, when he should have died.

Gramps’s doctor is now a believer, but he tries to convince Gramps to let Death down so people who are suffering can find release. Gramps refuses – he has to remain alive to take care of Pud and keep the wicked aunt away from him. But Mr. Brink manages to coax Pud to climb the fence Gramps had built around the tree to protect people from Death – any person or animal who touches the tree dies. Pud balances on the top of the fence and then falls, crippling himself for life. Distraught, Gramps takes the boy out to the tree and begs Death to take them both, which he does – and both Gramps and Pud find they can walk again.

The final scene has them joyfully walking together up a beautiful country lane, listening to Grandma calling to them from beyond a brilliant light.

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As a child, I saw this movie on TV sometime during the late 50s; and I have never forgotten it.