Bisping: Criticism of UFC fighter pay makes me mad

[johnnynoname]

Republicans are opposing the majority of President Obama's jobs bill, including a provision that $35 billion dollars to states so that teachers and firefighters can be re-hired. A new poll shows 75% of Americans agree with this provision even if it adds to the budget deficit. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur explains from Occupy Wall Street in New York City.

[johnnynoname]

Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
Saturday, February 28th, 2009
Washington, DC

Two years ago, we set out on a journey to change the way that Washington works. 

We sought a government that served not the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few, but the middle-class Americans I met every day in every community along the campaign trail – responsible men and women who are working harder than ever, worrying about their jobs, and struggling to raise their families.  In so many town halls and backyards, they spoke of their hopes for a government that finally confronts the challenges that their families face every day; a government that treats their tax dollars as responsibly as they treat their own hard-earned paychecks. 
 
That is the change I promised as a candidate for president.  It is the change the American people voted for in November.  And it is the change represented by the budget I sent to Congress this week. 
 
During the campaign, I promised a fair and balanced tax code that would cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, roll back the tax breaks for those making over $250,000 a year, and end the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.  This budget does that.
 
I promised an economy run on clean, renewable energy that will create new American jobs, new American industries, and free us from the dangerous grip of foreign oil.  This budget puts us on that path, through a market-based cap on carbon pollution that will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy; through investments in wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient American cars and American trucks. 
 
I promised to bring down the crushing cost of health care – a cost that bankrupts one American every thirty seconds, forces small businesses to close their doors, and saddles our government with more debt.  This budget keeps that promise, with a historic commitment to reform that will lead to lower costs and quality, affordable health care for every American. 
 
I promised an education system that will prepare every American to compete, so Americans can win in a global economy.  This budget will help us meet that goal, with new incentives for teacher performance and pathways for advancement; new tax credits that will make college more affordable for all who want to go; and new support to ensure that those who do go finish their degree. 
 
This budget also reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.  Given this reality, we’ll have to be more vigilant than ever in eliminating the programs we don’t need in order to make room for the investments we do need.  I promised to do this by going through the federal budget page by page, and line by line.  That is a process we have already begun, and I am pleased to say that we’ve already identified two trillion dollars worth of deficit-reductions over the next decade.  We’ve also restored a sense of honesty and transparency to our budget, which is why this one accounts for spending that was hidden or left out under the old rules.   
 
I realize that passing this budget won’t be easy.  Because it represents real and dramatic change, it also represents a threat to the status quo in Washington.  I know that the insurance industry won’t like the idea that they’ll have to bid competitively to continue offering Medicare coverage, but that’s how we’ll help preserve and protect Medicare and lower health care costs for American families.  I know that banks and big student lenders won’t like the idea that we’re ending their huge taxpayer subsidies, but that’s how we’ll save taxpayers nearly $50 billion and make college more affordable.  I know that oil and gas companies won’t like us ending nearly $30 billion in tax breaks, but that’s how we’ll help fund a renewable energy economy that will create new jobs and new industries.   In other words, I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak.  My message to them is this:
 
So am I. 
 
The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don’t.  I work for the American people.  I didn’t come here to do the same thing we’ve been doing or to take small steps forward, I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November.  That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I’ll be fighting for in the weeks ahead – change that will grow our economy, expand our middle-class, and keep the American Dream alive for all those men and women who have believed in this journey from the day it began. 
 
Thanks for listening. 

[johnnynoname]

WASHINGTON -- Herman Cain's now-famous "9-9-9" tax plan was crafted by a rank-and-file investment adviser working at a Wells Fargo branch in an affluent rural Ohio town with a population of about 6,000 people.

Cain name-checked Richard Lowrie during Tuesday night's Republican debate on economic policy, and his campaign confirmed to HuffPost that Richard Lowrie Jr., a Wells Fargo employee in Pepper Pike, Ohio, outside of Cleveland, was the official adviser to his campaign who hammered out the "9-9-9" plan. The plan calls for creating a new 9 percent federal sales tax on everything consumers buy, while cutting the corporate tax rate to 9 percent and imposing a flat 9 percent income tax on all wages.

Cain said on "Meet the Press" that his program is "revenue-neutral," meaning it will raise exactly the same amount of tax money as the current tax system. By cutting corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy,the program puts a heavy new tax burden on the poor and the middle class.

It is unusual for a presidential campaign to employ a local investment adviser as an economic policy expert. Major electoral campaigns typically seek out high-profile economists with federal policymaking experience or academic gravitas.

According to Lowrie's LinkedIn profile, his education tops out with a Bachelor of Science in accountancy from Case Western University. He has no formal training in economics, and there is no indication that he has ever worked on public policy. According to that same profile, Lowrie's political experience includes working on the board of advisers for Americans For Prosperity, a hardline conservative outfit founded by the Koch Brothers, until 2008. In 2011, the group ran into trouble for posting fake eviction notices on the doors of Detroit families. Lowrie's LinkedIn profile also says he works on the volunteer advisory panel for the American Conservative Union.

Lowrie was not immediately available for comment.

[johnnynoname]

March 7, 2009

Miracles Take Time
By BOB HERBERT

Barack Obama has only been president for six weeks, but there is a surprising amount of ire, anger, even outrage that he hasn’t yet solved the problems of the U.S. economy, that he hasn’t saved us from the increasingly tragic devastation wrought by the clownish ideas of right-wing conservatives and the many long years of radical Republican misrule.

This intense, impatient, often self-righteous, frequently wrongheaded and at times willfully destructive criticism has come in waves, and not just from the right. Mr. Obama is as legitimate a target for criticism as any president. But there is a weird hysterical quality to some of the recent attacks that suggests an underlying fear or barely suppressed rage. It’s a quality that seems not just unhelpful but unhealthy.

Mr. Obama is being hammered — depending on the point of view of the critics — for the continuing collapse of the stock market, for not moving fast enough to revive the suicidal financial industry, for trying to stem the flood tide of home foreclosures, for trying to bring health insurance coverage to some of the millions of Americans who don’t have any, for running up huge budget deficits as he tries to fend off the worst economic emergency since World War II and for not taking time out from all of the above to deal with — get this — earmarks.

Earmarks.

More than 4.4 million jobs have been lost since this monster recession officially got under way in December 2007, and we’ve got people wigging out over earmarks. Folks, get a grip. Some earmarks are good, some are not, but collectively they account for a tiny, tiny portion of the national budget — less than 1 percent.

Freaking out over earmarks is like watching a neighborhood that is being consumed by flames and complaining that there is crabgrass on some of the lawns.

In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.

The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.

As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”

That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”

I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.

What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.

Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.

Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.

[johnnynoname]

Herman Cain...King of all House Negroes. 

2012 Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain was on the radio show of right-winger Neal Boortz and Cain had a laugh over Boortz's comments regarding slave ancestors. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

[johnnynoname]

O'Donnell destroys Hermann Cain's 999 Plan

The 411 on 9-9-9: Herman Cain's Deceptive Economic Plan Would Bankrupt The Country

[johnnynoname]

October 9, 2011
Panic of the Plutocrats
By PAUL KRUGMAN

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a “collectivist agenda,” that she believes that “individualism is a chimera.” And Rush Limbaugh called her “a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it.”

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

[johnnynoname]

Obama’s Jobs Plan Prevents Election-Year Recession in Survey of Economists
By Timothy R. Homan - Sep 28, 2011

President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan would help avoid a return to recession by maintaining growth and pushing down the unemployment rate next year, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The legislation, submitted to Congress this month, would increase gross domestic product by 0.6 percent next year and add or keep 275,000 workers on payrolls, the median estimates in the survey of 34 economists showed. The program would also lower the jobless rate by 0.2 percentage point in 2012, economists said.

Economists in the survey are less optimistic than Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has cited estimates for a 1.5 percent boost to gross domestic product. Even so, the program may bolster Obama’s re-election prospects by lowering a jobless rate that has stayed near 9 percent or more since April 2009.

The plan “prevents a contraction of the economy in the first quarter” of next year, said John Herrmann, a senior fixed-income strategist at State Street Global Markets LLC in Boston, who participated in the survey. “It leads to more retention of workers than net new hires.”

Some 13,000 jobs would be created in 2013, bringing the total to 288,000 over two years, according to the survey. Employers in the U.S. added 1.26 million workers in the past 12 months, Labor Department data show.

Obama’s plan, announced on Sept. 8, calls for cutting the payroll taxes paid by workers and small businesses while extending unemployment insurance. It also includes an increase in infrastructure spending and more aid for cash-strapped state governments.

‘What Happens?’

“The important thing to consider is: What happens if we don’t do anything?” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James & Associates Inc. in St. Petersburg, Florida. He said the program “very well could” forestall a recession in early 2012.

“Most of all, it prevents a serious drag on the economy next year” from current programs expiring, said Brown, who estimates the Obama plan would add 0.5 percent to GDP in 2012.

A reduction in government spending, the end of the payroll- tax holiday and an expiration of extended unemployment benefits would cut GDP by 1.7 percent in 2012, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli in New York. Instead, the Obama proposal makes up for that potential loss and may add a net 0.1 percent to the economy, he estimates.
State Aid

Tax cuts account for more than half the dollar value of the Obama plan, which also includes $105 billion in spending for school modernization, transportation projects and rehabilitation of vacant properties, according to a White House fact sheet. The proposal includes $35 billion in direct aid to state and local governments to stem dismissals of educators and emergency personnel.

“Some of this is just extending support that was already in place,” said Julia Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas in New York. “The actual jobs programs themselves, I don’t think that they’re a game-changer.”

She estimates the proposal will add 200,000 new workers, while retaining about 300,000 jobs that might otherwise be lost.

Republican lawmakers in Congress have expressed opposition to parts of the White House legislation. House leaders object to Obama’s plan to cut payroll taxes, saying it would lead to an overly large boost in taxes when the temporary break ended.
Tax Burden

In a memo to House Republicans on Sept. 16, House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and other leaders detailed several criticisms of the payroll-tax idea. The lawmakers said an added tax burden would result when, under the president’s plan, an extension and expansion of a “holiday” on such taxes for employees and employers would expire in 2013.

Herrmann agreed. “We’re setting ourselves up for a big end to the sugar high in the first half of 2013,” he said.

A majority of Americans don’t believe Obama’s jobs proposal will help lower the unemployment rate, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Sept. 9-12 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa.

“It’s not really going to have anything more than a marginal impact,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. “It’s just maintaining the status quo: extending the payroll-tax cuts and unemployment benefits. The bulk of the money is going to go to firms that would’ve hired anyway.”

Stanley estimated the program would increase payrolls by 50,000 and add 0.25 percent to GDP next year.
Fiscal Policy

While the White House hasn’t given an estimate of how the proposal would affect GDP, Geithner cited the plan Sept. 24 in an address at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Without additional near-term support, “fiscal policy in the U.S. will be overly contractionary and the U.S. economy will likely grow below its potential in 2012,” Geithner said.

He said private economists estimate the proposal could increase real economic growth next year by around “one and a half percentage points and create more than 1 million jobs at a critical moment in the recovery.”

In the Bloomberg survey, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimated the plan would add 1.5 percent to the economy, while Macroeconomic Advisers LLC said 1.3 percent and UniCredit Research, up to 2 percent.

The U.S. economy faces “significant downside risks,” the Federal Reserve said in a statement on Sept. 21 as it announced a plan to shift $400 billion of its Treasury securities holdings into longer-term debt to bring down borrowing costs.

The world’s largest economy grew 3 percent last year before slowing to a 0.4 percent annual pace in the first three months of 2011, followed by 1 percent in the second quarter, according to Commerce Department figures.

The economy will expand 2.2 percent next year, according to a separate Bloomberg survey of economists conducted Sept. 2 to Sept. 7. The same survey said the unemployment rate would average 8.8 percent in 2012.

============================================================
                        Table of Forecasts
============================================================
                 GDP     GDP     Jobs (thous)     UR Change
                2012    2013    2012    2013    2012    2013
============================================================
Median           0.6     0.2     275      13    -0.2    -0.1
Count             34      30      28      28      28      26
------------------------------------------------------------
Action Eco       0.0     0.0       0       0     0.0     0.0
AIG              0.7     0.1     250     100    -0.5    -0.2
Aletti           0.4     0.0     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a
Anderson Eco     0.5     0.5     500     500    -0.5    n/a
BBVA             1.3     0.9     900     900    -0.8    -0.7
BNP Paribas      0.5    -0.3     500    -300     n/a     n/a
Clearview Eco    0.8     0.8     750     750    -0.5    -0.5
DB               0.0     0.0       0       0     0.0     0.0
Econoclast       0.0     0.0       0       0     0.0     0.0
Euler Hermes     0.0     0.0       0       0     0.0     0.0
Fact & Opinion   0.5     0.5     500   1,000    -0.1    -0.3
Faifield         n/a     n/a     300     200    -0.2    -0.3
Fannie Mae       0.7     0.0     500       0     0.0     0.0
Goldberg Inv     n/a     n/a     150     100     n/a     n/a
Goldman Sachs    1.5     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a
Guerrilla        1.5    -1.0     200       0    -0.2     n/a
H. Johnson       0.2     0.3      25      45     0.2     0.2
JP Morgan        0.1     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a
MacroEco         1.3     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a
MacroFin         1.5     1.5   1,000   1,000    -1.0    -1.0
Manulife         1.5     0.5   2,000     700    -1.0    -0.3
Mizuho           0.2     0.0     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a
Moodys           2.0     1.0   1,000       0    -1.0    -0.4
NFIB             0.0     0.0       0       0     0.0     0.0
Niagara          1.0     0.1     125       0     0.0     0.0
Nord             0.4     0.5     n/a     n/a    -0.2    -0.4
Parsanec         0.5     0.5   1,100     700    -1.0    -0.5
Pierpont         0.3     0.0      50       0    -0.2     0.0
Raymond James    0.3     0.2     350      25    -0.5    -0.1
SPSU             0.9     0.1     110       0     0.0     0.0
SocGen           1.7     0.8       1       1    -0.4    -0.2
State Street     1.2    -1.0     340    -370    -0.2     0.3
Standard Charter 1.0     0.5     600     300     0.0     0.0
Unicredit        2.0     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a     n/a
W Hummer         0.2     0.2     150     200    -0.1    -0.1
J Forest         1.0     1.0     n/a     n/a    -1.0    -0.5
============================================================

[johnnynoname]

N.J. Gov. Chris Christie can't douse buzz over possible presidential bid
Michael Finnegan | McClatchy-Tribune News Service

September 28, 2011 06:31:14 AM

LOS ANGELES — With speculation swirling anew about whether he intends to join the field of Republican presidential candidates, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie referred a crowd in California on Tuesday to a string of his previous comments on the matter, strung together in a Web video.

The video, on the Politico website, represented his "answers back to back to back together on the question of running for the presidency," he told hundreds of Republicans gathered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley - several of whom asked him to run.

Among the responses on the video: "I'm 100 percent certain I'm not going to run," "I don't want to run" and "I don't feel ready in my heart to be president."

Despite the demurrals, the latest surge of Christie-mania - particularly among some party donors anxious for new options - has only raised Christie's national profile and enhanced his draw on the campaign money circuit. He's scooping up checks for the New Jersey Republican Party this week at events in Beverly Hills, Santa Ana, Silicon Valley, Missouri and Louisiana.

So it came as little surprise that Christie added another dash of fuel to the talk by taking a shot at Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a leading Republican contender for president.

Responding to a question from the audience, Christie said he opposed laws that allow the children of illegal immigrants to pay lower in-state tuition at public colleges. Perry, who has taken heat from rivals for approving such a law in Texas, has said critics of the policy have no heart.

"From my perspective, that is not a heartless position," Christie said. "That is a common-sense position."

In a half-hour speech paying tribute to Reagan, Christie also took swipes at President Barack Obama, saying the Democratic incumbent was trying to "divide our nation to achieve re-election."

"This is not a leadership style," Christie said, referring to the president's proposal to raise taxes on high-income earners. "This is a re-election strategy - telling those who are scared and struggling that the only way their lives can get better is to diminish the success of others ... insisting that we must tax and take and demonize those who have already achieved the American dream."

"That may turn out to be a good re-election strategy, Mr. President, but it is a demoralizing message for America," Christie said. The crowd burst into applause.

While saying Obama lacked "the courage to lead," Christie was more mild in his implied criticism of fellow Republicans who control the House of Representatives.

"We watch a Congress at war with itself because they're unwilling to leave campaign-style politics at the Capitol's door," he said. "The result is a debt ceiling limitation debate that made our democracy appear as if we could no longer effectively govern ourselves."

Rumors on Christie's potential presidential run were stoked earlier in the day in a National Review report that Thomas Kean, a former New Jersey governor, said Christie was giving a lot of thought to appeals "from major figures around the country."

"I think the odds are a lot better now than they were a couple weeks ago," Kean said.

During questioning, the subject of a run was raised by three people in the Reagan Library audience. One woman got a standing ovation after telling him, "I really implore you as a citizen of this country to please, sir, reconsider."

"Your country needs you," she said.

Christie joked that only "a crazy egomaniac" would see such appeals as a burden.

"It's extraordinarily flattering," he said. "But by the same token, that heartfelt message you gave me is also not a reason for me to do it. That reason has to reside inside me."

Michael Finnegan writes for the Los Angeles Times. Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com.

[johnnynoname]

Many Republicans are practically begging Christie to run for president. But would they feel differently if he actually jumped into the race?
Published September 30, 2011


New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may be eyeing a run for the Republican presidential ticket, but critics say his stance on immigration and gun control will hold him back.   Photo: Robert Sciarrino/Star Ledger/Corbis

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has said over and over again that he isn't running for president in 2012 — a line he repeated once again just this week. Still, Republicans dissatisfied with their options are turning up the pressure on Christie to jump into the race. The GOP base has gotten its hopes up before — over Donald Trump, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and, most recently, Texas Gov. Rick Perry — only to promptly find fault with each new candidate (or, in Trump's case, would-be candidate) and resume the search for a savior. Here are five reasons Christie would fare no better:

1. Christie is no hardliner on immigration
"The biggest chink in Rick Perry's armor so far has been his record on illegal immigration," says Dan Amira at New York. It's a problem for Christie, too. He has said being in the country without proper papers is an "administrative matter," not a crime. And between 2002 and 2007, as U.S. attorney in New Jersey, he prosecuted so few illegal immigration cases that then-CNN host Lou Dobbs said Christie was "an utter embarrassment."

2. He has a soft spot for gun control
In 1995, when Christie was running for state general assembly, he distributed flyers calling opponents "radical" and "crazy" for supporting repeal of the federal assault-weapons ban, says Daniel Foster at National Review. And he still fights any move to let people carry concealed weapons in New Jersey. In 2009, he told conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity that New Jersey had a "handgun problem," and that he supports some of the gun-control measures the state uses to contain it. "Bad idea," Hannity said.

3. Hardliners won't like his stand on the "ground zero mosque"
Last year, Christie accused politicians on the Left and Right of using the proposed "ground zero mosque" as a "political football," says Thomas Fitzgerald at The Philadelphia Inquirer, suggesting he thought conservatives were exploiting anti-Muslim emotions stirred up by the 9/11 attacks. This summer, he faced another backlash after appointing Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim lawyer, to be a New Jersey Superior Court judge. Critics were angry that he would appoint a lawyer who had defended a cleric accused of terrorist sympathies. Christie responded: "I'm tired of dealing with the crazies."

4. He's got an uncomfortable Madoff connection
In his days as a lobbyist, Christie once fought for the rights of Wall Street. On his client list: The Securities Industry Association, then led by none other than Bernie Madoff. That, says Abe Sauer at The Awl, is the kind of thing "that's easy to understand no matter who you are, involves a universally despised villain who has come to represent all the illegality of the 2008 market collapse, and it would be devastating to Christie in much-needed Florida" — a critical presidential swing state where many Madoff victims lived.

5. A possible clincher: He believes people are causing climate change
Perry delights the Right by saying that climate change is "phony," says James Oliphant at the Los Angeles Times. Christie says 90 percent of the world's scientists have concluded that the climate is changing and humans are playing a role, so "it's time to defer to the experts." If Republican voters are looking to nominate a hardcore conservative, this is pretty solid proof that Christie "does not fit the mold."

[johnnynoname]

The Slogan is "Yes WE Can" Not "Yes HE Can"



A significant challenge facing the Obama Administration as it gears up for the 2012 re-election campaign is that the President is not positively defined in the minds of many voters.  A look at the entire record of President Obama shows that he has been a pragmatist who, while far from perfect, has led our country through daunting times and achieved significant progressive victories in the face of intractable opposition.  Yet far too many progressives see him as a compromiser always ready to sell out progressive values, while many moderates see our President as a failure who has achieved very little.  Neither of these views is accurate and, consistent with the slogan “Yes We Can,” we must all pitch in to help get out to the public an accurate portrayal of the Obama Administration, its successes, and the areas where improvement is needed.

Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller recently addressed the ill-defined perception of the Obama Presidency in a recent column entitled “Fill in the Blanks.”  In it, Mr. Keller identifies four reasons why, in many people’s eyes, the President has been defined by the circumstances around him rather than defining himself: 

    the intractable legacy bequeathed by George W. Bush; Republican resistance amounting to sabotage; the unrealistic expectations and inevitable disenchantment of some of the president’s supporters; and, to be sure, the man himself.

Each of these points has merit.  President Bush handed President Obama the keys to a car that was firmly in the ditch and, after President Obama got the car out of the ditch, the GOP has done everything they can to push it back in.   And there can be no dispute that the Obama Presidency has been far from perfect from a progressive perspective.  For example, President Obama’s record on civil liberties has been highly problematic, some of his education policies troubling, the dive on the ozone air quality standards inexcusable, and the decision to focus on deficits over jobs earlier this year a mistake.

But Keller’s third point – “unrealistic expectations and inevitable disenchantment of some of the president’s supporters” - gets at a key issue – the failure of progressives to help define our President in a fair but positive light.  While we have noted a number of disappointments above, the Obama Administration has also moved the progressive agenda forward more than any President since Johnson.  Under President Obama’s leadership, we have passed historic health care reform legislation, repealed DADT and taken numerous other significant steps towards LGBT equality, enacted air quality standards that will save tens of thousands of lives, made significant investments in energy efficiency and renewable energies, passed significant reforms of the financial and credit card industries, created a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, kept the economy from sinking into a depression, held off radical Republicans who are hell-bent on destroying government as a tool for social good, and helped unseat tyrants in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.  These are progressive victories that we should all be shouting from the rooftops about.

Yet instead of focusing our efforts on highlighting these successes and attacking the conservative critics of those successes, far too many progressive activists focus almost all of their energy on attacking the President for compromises and disappointments.  Some even go so far as to make the laughable claim that President Obama is no better than Bush.

The problem with this approach is that it means that voters – most of whom spend very little time thinking about politics – virtually never hear a positive message about President Obama or Democrats.  The simple fact is that the President cannot do the work of defining his Administration alone given the intractable opposition from a well-funded and organized conservative movement and a media that largely echoes right-wing talking points or engages in “he-said, she-said” reporting that does little to educate its viewers and readers.  That is why we progressives must be involved in helping to highlight the progressive successes of President Obama, challenging conservative attacks, and offering criticism of the Administration that is constructive rather than destructive. 

The need for progressives to be actively involved in defining, supporting, and constructively critiquing President Obama has always been at the heart of Obama’s campaigns and Presidency.  It is why the campaign slogan in 2008 was “Yes We Can” rather than “Yes He Can.”   As Obama explained in his Presidential campaign announcement speech back in 2007:

    That is why this campaign can’t only be about me. It must be about us – it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice – to push us forward when we’re doing right, and to let us know when we’re not. This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.

And it is a theme that President Obama returned to in his fiery speech to the Congressional Black Caucus last weekend:

    The future rewards those who press on. (Applause.) With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. (Applause.) I’m going to press on for equality. (Applause.) I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. (Applause.) I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on. (Applause.)

    I expect all of you to march with me and press on. (Applause.) Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. (Applause.) Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC. (Applause.)

None of this means blind adherence to everything that President Obama does.  A key part to advancing the progressive agenda is to constructively push back when the President or congressional Democrats make the wrong decision and to build the political pressure necessary to get them to do the right thing.  But advancing the progressive agenda also requires being able to distinguish between one’s friends and enemies.  And the record today is clear that the GOP is the political enemy of our progressive goals, while President Obama, for all of his faults, is the best friend that progressives have had in the White House in a long time.  Let’s act accordingly and make sure that as we enter the 2012 election season, our rallying cry is still “Yes We Can.”

[johnnynoname]

September 30, 2011
Anwar al-Awlaki, American-Born Qaeda Leader, Is Killed in Yemen
By LAURA KASINOF and ALAN COWELL



SANA, Yemen — In a significant and dramatic strike in the campaign against Al Qaeda, the Defense Ministry here said American-born preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, a leading figure in the group’s outpost in Yemen, was killed on Friday morning.

In Washington a senior Obama administration official confirmed that Mr. Awlaki was dead. But the circumstances surrounding the killing remained unclear.

It was not immediately known whether Yemeni forces carried out the attack or if American intelligence forces, which have been pursuing Mr. Awlaki for months, were involved in the operation.

A Defense Ministry statement said that a number of Mr. Awlaki’s bodyguards also were killed.

A high-ranking Yemeni security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Mr. Awlaki was killed while traveling between Marib and al-Jawf provinces in northern Yemen — areas known for having an Al Qaeda presence, where there is very little central government control. The official did not say how he was killed.

Mr. Awlaki’s name has been associated with many plots in the United States and elsewhere after individuals planning violence were drawn to his engaging lectures broadcast over the Internet.

Those individuals included Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas in which 13 people were killed; the young men who planned to attack Fort Dix, N.J.; and a 21-year-old British student who told the police she stabbed a member of Parliament after watching 100 hours of Awlaki videos.

Mr. Awlaki’s death could well be used by beleaguered President Ali Abdullah Saleh to reinforce his refusal to leave office in face of months of protests against his 30-year rule, arguing in part that he is a critical American ally in the war against Al Qaeda.

Earlier this year, the American military renewed its campaign of airstrikes in Yemen, using drone aircraft and fighter jets to attack Qaeda militants. One of the attacks was aimed at Mr. Awlaki, one of the most prominent members of the affiliate group, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Awlaki’s death seemed likely to be welcomed in the United States, where Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in July that two of his top goals were to remove Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s new leader after the death of Osama Bin Laden in May, and Mr. Awlaki.

Word of the killing came after months of sustained American efforts to seriously weaken the terrorist group.

In August an American official said a drone strike killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who in the last year had taken over as Al Qaeda’s top operational planner after Bin Laden was killed.

In July, Mr. Panetta said during a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan that the United States was “within reach of strategically defeating Al Qaeda” and that the American focus had narrowed to capturing or killing 10 to 20 crucial leaders of the terrorist group in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

A month earlier, an American official said the Central Intelligence Agency was building a secret air base in the Middle East to serve as a launching pad for strikes in Yemen using armed drones.

The construction of the base was seen at the time a sign that the Obama administration was planning an extended war in Yemen against an affiliate of Al Qaeda, called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has repeatedly tried to carry out terrorist plots against the United States.

The American official would not disclose the country where the C.I.A. base was being built, but the official said that it would most likely be completed by the end of the year.

Last year, the leader of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen sought to install Mr. Awlaki as the leader of the group in Yemen, which apparently thought Mr. Awlaki’s knowledge of the United States and his status as an Internet celebrity might help the group’s operations and fund-raising efforts.

Mr. Awlaki was accused of having connections to the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former engineering student at University College London, who is awaiting trial in the United States for his attempt to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it landed in Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009. The bomb did not explode.

Mr. Awlaki has been linked to numerous plots against the United States, including the botched underwear bombing. He has taken to the Internet with stirring battle cries directed at young American Muslims. “Many of your scholars,” Mr. Awlaki warned last year, are “standing between you and your duty of jihad.”

Major Hasan, the American Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Awlaki beforehand. Mr. Awlaki’s lectures and sermons have been linked to more than a dozen terrorist investigations in the United States, Britain and Canada. Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in May, 2010, cited Mr. Awlaki as an inspiration.

Laura Kasinof reported from Sana, Yemen, and Alan Cowell from London. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

[johnnynoname]

September 17, 2011
Israel: Adrift at Sea Alone
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I’VE never been more worried about Israel’s future. The crumbling of key pillars of Israel’s security — the peace with Egypt, the stability of Syria and the friendship of Turkey and Jordan — coupled with the most diplomatically inept and strategically incompetent government in Israel’s history have put Israel in a very dangerous situation.

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Israel is not responsible for the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or for the uprising in Syria or for Turkey’s decision to seek regional leadership by cynically trashing Israel or for the fracturing of the Palestinian national movement between the West Bank and Gaza. What Israel’s prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, is responsible for is failing to put forth a strategy to respond to all of these in a way that protects Israel’s long-term interests.

O.K., Mr. Netanyahu has a strategy: Do nothing vis-à-vis the Palestinians or Turkey that will require him to go against his base, compromise his ideology or antagonize his key coalition partner, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, an extreme right-winger. Then, call on the U.S. to stop Iran’s nuclear program and help Israel out of every pickle, but make sure that President Obama can’t ask for anything in return — like halting Israeli settlements — by mobilizing Republicans in Congress to box in Obama and by encouraging Jewish leaders to suggest that Obama is hostile to Israel and is losing the Jewish vote. And meanwhile, get the Israel lobby to hammer anyone in the administration or Congress who says aloud that maybe Bibi has made some mistakes, not just Barack. There, who says Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have a strategy?

“The years-long diplomatic effort to integrate Israel as an accepted neighbor in the Middle East collapsed this week, with the expulsion of the Israeli ambassadors from Ankara and Cairo, and the rushed evacuation of the embassy staff from Amman,” wrote Haaretz newspaper’s Aluf Benn. “The region is spewing out the Jewish state, which is increasingly shutting itself off behind fortified walls, under a leadership that refuses any change, movement or reform ... Netanyahu demonstrated utter passivity in the face of the dramatic changes in the region, and allowed his rivals to seize the initiative and set the agenda.”

What could Israel have done? The Palestinian Authority, which has made concrete strides in the past five years at building the institutions and security forces of a state in the West Bank — making life there quieter than ever for Israel — finally said to itself: “Our state-building has not prompted Israel to halt settlements or engage in steps to separate, so all we’re doing is sustaining Israel’s occupation. Let’s go to the U.N., get recognized as a state within the 1967 borders and fight Israel that way.” Once this was clear, Israel should have either put out its own peace plan or tried to shape the U.N. diplomacy with its own resolution that reaffirmed the right of both the Palestinian and the Jewish people to a state in historic Palestine and reignited negotiations.

Mr. Netanyahu did neither. Now the U.S. is scrambling to defuse the crisis, so the U.S. does not have to cast a U.N. veto on a Palestinian state, which could be disastrous in an Arab world increasingly moving toward more popular self-rule.

On Turkey, the Obama team and Mr. Netanyahu’s lawyers worked tirelessly these last two months to resolve the crisis stemming from the killing by Israeli commandos of Turkish civilians in the May 2010 Turkish aid flotilla that recklessly tried to land in Gaza. Turkey was demanding an apology. According to an exhaustive article about the talks by the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper, the two sides agreed that Israel would apologize only for “operational mistakes” and the Turks would agree to not raise legal claims. Bibi then undercut his own lawyers and rejected the deal, out of national pride and fear that Mr. Lieberman would use it against him. So Turkey threw out the Israeli ambassador.

As for Egypt, stability has left the building there and any new Egyptian government is going to be subjected to more populist pressures on Israel. Some of this is unavoidable, but why not have a strategy to minimize it by Israel putting a real peace map on the table?

I have great sympathy for Israel’s strategic dilemma and no illusions about its enemies. But Israel today is giving its friends — and President Obama’s one of them — nothing to defend it with. Israel can fight with everyone or it can choose not to surrender but to blunt these trends with a peace overture that fair-minded people would recognize as serious, and thereby reduce its isolation.

Unfortunately, Israel today does not have a leader or a cabinet for such subtle diplomacy. One can only hope that the Israeli people will recognize this before this government plunges Israel into deeper global isolation and drags America along with it.

[johnnynoname]

Get his back

Middle-class families shouldn't have to pay a higher tax rate than millionaires and billionaires.

So President Obama has proposed the "Buffett Rule," which would require the wealthiest Americans to pay a tax rate at least as high as the middle class. Republicans are already calling this "class warfare," and they will fight this plan with everything they have.

But it's just common sense. Tell the President you've got his back on this one.


Warren Buffett doesn't think his secretary should pay a higher percentage of income in taxes than he does, and most Americans agree. Tell Congress it's time for millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share!

[johnnynoname]

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly threatened to stop doing his job if President Obama raises the top marginal tax rate on the richest Americans. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur gives his take.

[johnnynoname]

Dow gains nearly 240 on good news on banks, GM
Thursday March 12, 4:44 pm ET
By Madlen Read, AP Business Writer
Dow gains nearly 240 on day of good news about banks, General Motors and retailers

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investors have been clamoring for months for a bit of good news. On Thursday, they got a load of it. The Dow Jones industrials shot up 240 points, bringing its gains over the past three days to 622 points. It was the index's biggest three-day jump since last November.

This week's rally got an extra dose of adrenalin after an accounting board told Congress Thursday it may recommend a let-up in accounting rules for troubled banks in three weeks.

Hope that financial institutions might finally get relief in how they value their bad assets spurred a flurry of buying on Wall Street, which accelerated when Bank of America Corp.'s CEO told reporters his bank was profitable in January and February. Citigroup Inc. triggered this week's rally Tuesday with similar remarks.

"We might find that the banks are not as bad, or not bad at all, if these assets are marked differently," said Doreen Mogavero, president of the New York floor brokerage Mogavero, Lee & Co.

Stocks also got a boost as retail sales figures came in better than anticipated, General Electric Co. got its credit rating cut by less than expected and General Motors Corp. said it will not need a $2 billion loan it previously requested from the government.

"There's a lot of money on the sidelines, and a lot of people who've been waiting for the turn to come," Mogavero said.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow rose 239.66, or 3.5 percent, to 7,170.06. The Standard & Poor's 500 index climbed 29.38, or 4.1 percent, to 750.74. The Nasdaq composite index gained 54.46, or 4 percent, to 1,426.10.

After a modest decline Monday and three days of buying, the Dow is up 8.2 percent so far for the week. The S&P 500 index is up 9.9 percent and the Nasdaq is up 10.2 percent.



Stocks Power to Close, S&P 500 Up 4 Percent
Posted By: Cindy Perman | Writer
CNBC.com
| 12 Mar 2009 | 04:02 PM ET

Stocks powered into the market close Thursday, completing a strong rally that took the major indexes up more than 3 percent and nearly 8 percent for the week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained nearly 240 points, or 3.3 percent, led by bank and pharma stocks as well as General Electric. The Standard & Poor's 500 jumped more than 4 percent to 750, while the Nasdaq tech gauge gained 4 percent.

The surge marked the third straight gain for the Dow, after a tiny gain on Wednesday and a nearly 6-percent burst on Wednesday, the best rally in more than three months. Stocks have been getting pounded this year, and this week fulfilled hopes for a bear rally long in coming even as the averages remain 18 percent lower for 2009.

[johnnynoname]

Stock Answer

Quit blaming the market's collapse on Obama.

Jonathan Chait,  The New Republic  Published: March 13 2009

The one conservative talking point that has gotten the most traction since Barack Obama won the election is that he's killing the stock market with his big-government agenda. Conservatives pundits started saying this in November, and mainstream news implies it constantly. "Stocks are down almost 19 percent since the Obama administration took office," reported ABC News recently. MSNBC has been endlessly featuring a graph of the stock market's decline since Obama took office. While Obama's economic policies have gotten plenty of things wrong, the idea that they can be judged by the stock market is unbelievably fatuous.

To understand this ubiquitous notion, let us start at the bottom of the conservative intellectual food chain and work our way up. The crudest version of the Obama Bear Market hypothesis is put forward by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Fred Barnes. Their favorite data point is that the market tanked at several key moments: the day after the 2008 presidential election, the day of Obama's inauguration, and the day he signed the economic stimulus bill. Clearly the markets panicked in reaction to Obama's incipient big-government, wealth-confiscating agenda, right?

Sure, unless you realize that those events just might have been priced into the market already. Obama, in case you forgot, was considered a lock before Election Day. (On election eve, Intrade had given Obama a 92 percent chance of winning.) Likewise, the vote that made the stimulus bill a fait accompli took place several days before the bill's signing. The real market-driving news came even earlier, when Obama unveiled his plan. Contemporaneous reports on the market reaction-The New York Times, December 9: "WALL STREET SURGES ON STIMULUS HOPES"-dug up little evidence of fears about socialism.


You may not believe me that pundits are citing the market's drop on January 20 as an indictment of Obama. It's true! "The Dow fell 332.13 points on inauguration day," noted Barnes, holding this up as evidence that "The market's view is that an Obamanomics-driven economy looks grim." I'm trying to figure out the operating theory here. One possibility is that, before January 20, investors thought Obama would get cold feet, or that maybe President Bush would surround the White House with tanks and stay forever. Alternatively, the markets did know Obama would assume the presidency that day, but got really depressed when it actually happened. Neither of these possibilities speak well of the stock market as a rational gauge of the country's economic future.

It is true, of course, that stocks have fallen sharply since Obama won the election. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 25 percent over the first two months of the year. "The dismaying message here," fretted the oh-so-earnest Journal editors, "is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem."

Well, this is more persuasive than the "Oh my God, some long-anticipated event has finally happened so I'm selling my stocks" hypothesis. But it still lacks some key details. Such as: maybe some other economic events triggered the sell-off? No way, continues the Journal:

So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. . . . What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama's agenda and his approach to governance.

Huh? First of all, Obama's agenda was unveiled well before the election. Second, there have been constant new economic shocks, from the massive downward revision of fourth quarter (pre-Obama) GDP to the collapse of economies across the world.

Indeed, American stocks are merely suffering the same drop as stocks in countries not subject to Obama's socialist agenda. While the Dow did fall by 25 percent over the first two months of 2009, the Global Dow fell by 26 percent. If Obama's agenda was the problem, then you'd think U.S. stocks would fall further and faster.

The larger fallacy here is to assume that the stock market is a proxy for the entire economy. Many people realize that the stock market is an imperfect gauge. But it's not just an imperfect gauge of the economy-it doesn't even attempt to measure the economy. Stock prices represent the market's guess at the profitability of corporations. While that's related to the health of the overall economy, it's not the same thing, and sometimes the two diverge sharply. During the Bush administration, for instance, corporate profits soared while wages for most families flatlined.

One clear instance where Obama hurt the stock market came when Tim Geithner announced the administration's financial rescue plan. Stocks dropped that day. Was this a fair indictment of the plan? Or a reaction to the possibility that the government might wipe out shareholders? In other words, was the market drop a signal that Obama's plan was bad for the economy as a whole or just bad for bank stocks? The two propositions mean very different things.

This, alas, is the very distinction the stock-mongers on television fail to grasp. The stock market has become the media's real-time economic report card. Economic statistics that actually measure broader material well-being come out once a month, some once a year, others once a decade. The stock market updates instantly, making it irresistible.

Cable channels, especially CNBC, have come to represent the stock-centric view of the world. Stock televangelist Jim Cramer, who has assailed Obama for "wealth destruction," perfectly embodies the narrowness of this view. "Stocks, along with housing, are our principal forms of wealth in this country," he asserts. In fact, according to University of Wisconsin economist John Karl Scholz, the richest 10 percent has more than half its net worth in stocks, but those in the middle have less than 4 percent of their net worth in equities.

As a case in point, Cramer assailed Obama for "destroying the profits in health care companies (one of the few areas still robust in the economy)." The United States has the most expensive, least efficient health care sector in the advanced world. The flipside of that inefficiency is massive profits in the health care sector. Anything that reduces waste necessarily reduces that profit. Cramer naturally sees this as a disaster. But why should the rest of us care?

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic.

[che]

JNN brings  lots of information so we  can  convert that information to knowledge.

Best poster on Getbig .

Che approved.

[_bruce_]

Benny Bottom getting killed with his own gun.

[Radical Plato]

Looks like some Political wannabe monkeys hijacked the thread - oh well - it had potential until the spammers got to it.

[Benny B]

Benny Bottom getting killed with his own gun.

Not at all...its great to see my posts again. Now more will read them.   

It seems that the unfortunate, facially-challenged homosexual is quite upset that I won't fuck him. Sorry jnn, waste your life going through my old posts every day if you want. lol I don't do that Brokeback Mountain shit. 


"_bruce_"...another gimmick of one of my butthurt fans.