Blog Archive: March, 2009

There is clearly a double standard at work: Just a few days ago, Wall Street executives were hosted at the White House for a cheery photo op and reassurance that they will be getting hundreds of billions more in no-strings-attached bailout cash. Then this week, Obama demanded the firing of GM's CEO, and said he may withhold the mere $30 billion or so that the automakers are requesting.

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Remember Gordon Gekko from Wall Street? Specifically, remember how Gekko's entire scheme for the airline industry was based on crushing the blue-collar union that Bud Fox's dad (Martin Sheen) was part of? read more »

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President tells House Dems we need health care, clean energy reforms this year. Conservative blame unions for GM. Carbon cap bill to be introduced today.

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I missed president Obama's press conference last week. And, thanks to the blogosphere bringing me up to speed, I know I missed a moment that would surely have had me yelling, "Are you kidding me!?" at the television screen.

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GM CEO forced out. Prospects for global stim dim at G-20. EFCA fight doesn't stop after Specter flip-flop.

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The Associated Press reports that "General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will step down immediately at the request of the White House, U.S. read more »

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I don't know whether to praise the Republicans or pity them.

On one hand, they've been given chance after chance to "bring it," in term of ideas to address the crises we face — an act of astounding generosity, if you ask me, extended to a party that worked very hard for a very long time to bring us to this point — and they've consistently shown up empty-handed. I muster some admiration for someone who brings a knife to a gun fight, because at least he brought something. But to show up empty-handed is, well, pitiful.

On the other hand,I have to give them credit. In the face of current political and economic realities, it takes work — hard, grueling work — to not "get it." Their "(Dead End) Road to Recovery" shows that when it comes to not "getting it," Republicans are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and plunge in.

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Today President Obama put forward his own answer to the conflict in Afghanistan, and that leaves many people in the progressive movement asking: If Obama has a better diagnosis of the problem than the previous snake-oil merchants in the White House, why does he seem to be using the same failed medicine, only in a different location? Getting direct answers to blunt questions such as that one must be the urgent priority of Congress and of the progressive movement.

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Sen. Reid won't take off table use of Senate budget rules to pass health care and carbon cap, and may even link the two. Sen. Baucus expresses tepid support of public health plan option. House GOP budget roundly mocked.

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In the movie Lars and the Real Girl, the main character imagines that a female blow-up doll is his fiancé. To humor Lars, his brother and sister-in-law go along with the charade. Over the course of the movie, more people are drawn into the circle, until eventually the whole town is treating Bianca the blow-up doll as one of its leading citizens. read more »

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