I did a piece last week on Obama’s first few days in office and was rightly chastised by some who thought it a bit premature to be judging the performance of a president who had been in office for so short a time.

Yeah, so bite me.

I’m getting the notion that this is not one of your “high minded” essays.

In truth, the “Stimulus Package” may be slipping under the bus – at least the package in its present incarnation.

Well duh. The Democratic majority in the House crafted a bill, and so did the Democratic majority in the Senate. The House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, and then it goes to committee for reconciliation. The President, meanwhile, is triangulating between all the parties, including (gasp!) the Republicans. This is not throwing it under the bus… this is how Congress works, for better or for worse. I guess you have an issue regarding understanding of Congress.

Clearly, the White House has lost control of the process in Congress as support among the public plummets; only 42% now support the stimulus down from the mid-50’s last week. The White House PR strategy is obviously failing.

Sorry, Rick, but you have no clue as to what the White House strategy is. You see a bill that you think is bad, and I agree… it’s larded up with unnecessary stuff. And it’s the kind of bill that is easy to demagogue against… there’s something in it for EVERYONE to hate. Now, if President Obama is stupid, then he will use up all his Bully Pulpit chits on getting it passed just the way that Pelosi and Reid want it. But maybe, just maybe, that’s NOT his goal.

I agree that “the new Administration is feeling its way in Congress.” But having a Democratic majority and a Democratic President does not mean that they will be anywhere CLOSE to lockstep.

Sorry if this comment was too high-minded. I know that you get annoyed if the comments don’t match the tone of your post. I tried.

Obama wants this big bill to demonstrate his leadership ability, for people to know “I won”. To his advantage, Obama has the same Congress that knows no other solutions other than to throw money at the problem.

The bill is attractive to Democrats because it has all of their dream programs. The problem is it clearly will not work as you have pointed out. Currently they are operating like a monkey with a hand in the cookie jar. They have a handful of cookies but the hole in the jar is too small to get their stuffed hands out.

Much, much more complex. Banks took those loans, bundled them together, and sold them as securities to banks like Lehman and Morgan Stanley. Those biggies then bundled them into even bigger packages and sold them around the world. A market developed for them in the stratosphere of high finance and these pieces of paper were bought and sold numerous times, each profit or loss being recorded as if the damn things had actual value outside of the small market that was trading in them.

When housing prices collapsed, the bubble burst on these mortgage backed securities. All of a sudden, you had trillions of dollars in paper that no one knew what they were worth. They sure weren’t worth what people had been trading them for.

These are known now as “toxic assets.” I don’t understand the mechanism for trading them except it was a small change to an obscure law that allowed these securities. Passed in 1999 by a Republican Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president. In short, the libs are right for saying you can’t blame this on people who took out bad loans. That amount is a pittance compared to the amount in bad paper carried under these mortgage backed securities around the world. It might top $13 trillion dollars when the value of all bad mortgages is around $1.2 trillion.

Basically, we have a banking system that has less than zero net worth. That’s why everyone is so afraid we will have a depression.

ed.

Jim

One can dream.

Suppose the Democrats are so sneaky that they would intentionally load up the bill with ridiculous pork, knowing that we would balk.

Like terrorists, they are willing to lose a first round, knowing that patience will pay off. They make a show of supporting what they know is crap, knowing that a lot will get cut, but in the end the party gets what it wanted in the first place.

It gets two things. A big “halo” for The Messiah, because he came in, worked things out with his awesome negotiating skills, and oversaw passage of a more streamlined bill (but way too big still for conservatives; and

More government control of business/the economy/our lives. This experienced, politically savvy bunch now running things must know they can’t get everything they want all at once. So, by appearing to compromise, they get a damn good start.

My guess is that the Democrats/Marxists are laughing their heads off at the simplicity of the plan behind closed doors, as I post this. They KNEW they’d never get $350,000,000 for STD prevention. Come on.