The Cellar - The Obamanation

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Obama and the Press and people bitched about Bush using the press. They are no different.

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The Prez, The Press, The Pressure
Networks Grouse About Obama in Prime Time

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 3, 2009

In the days before President Obama's last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top.

Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom.

Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the current economic downturn.

The networks "absolutely" feel pressured, says Paul Friedman, CBS's senior vice president: "It's an enormous financial cost when the president replaces one of those prime-time hours. The news divisions also have mixed feelings about whether they are being used."

While it is interesting to see how a president handles questions, Friedman says, "there was nothing" at the July 22 session, which was dominated by health-care questions. "There hardly ever is these days, because there's so much coverage all the time."

Had Obama not answered the last question that evening -- declaring that the Cambridge police had acted "stupidly" in arresting Henry Louis Gates at his home -- the news conference would have been almost totally devoid of news. And that raises questions about whether the sessions have become mainly a vehicle for Obama to repeat familiar messages.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...202045_pf.html

Obama's program not working, small fractions helped.

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Mortgage aid program helping fraction of borrowers

By ALAN ZIBEL, AP Real Estate Writer Alan Zibel, Ap Real Estate Writer – Tue Aug 4, 6:24 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The government's $50 billion program to ease the mortgage crisis is helping only a tiny fraction of struggling homeowners, and a list released Tuesday showed which lenders are laggards.

As of July, only 9 percent of eligible borrowers had seen their mortgage payments reduced with modified loans. And the first monthly progress report showed that 10 lenders had not changed a single mortgage.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090804/..._mortgage_help

So now ole Rahm it Through wants to stifle Free Speech?

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White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel warned liberal groups this week to stop running ads against Democratic members of Congress.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25900.html

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Originally Posted by TheMercenary (Post 586469)

So now ole Rahm it Through wants to stifle Free Speech?

Oh No!

He's invoking Reagan's 11lth Commandment:

"Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican (Democrat)"

How could he stoop so low!

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Originally Posted by Shawnee123 (Post 585105)

Closed-minded. Always right. Never any real reasons for being so except for what you've been spoon-fed, which satisfies your hunger for being a power. Oh, and using too many question marks. ;)

Actually, Shawnee, it is less that we're always right, than that you are so often so consistently wrong.

Capitalism's the way of the future, basically because the future goes to the money, not to the poverty. Our reasons are realer than any reason you can muster up, and we stand ready to demonstrate that over and over and over and over and over and over ad infinitum until even the worst, most economically illiterate fanatic Socialist must be convinced. Or else left isolated in his own cyst, walled away from the body politic by his own opinions. This eternal willingness is because what is true doesn't change... and it's more truth than you've ever possessed. Here's a teachable moment. Will it teach Shawnee enlightenment, or teach the enlightened that Shawnee has the brains of a planarian?

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Will it teach Shawnee enlightenment, or teach the enlightened that Shawnee has the brains of a planarian?

Um duh, um, mebbe I kin larn to think, ya think? Buts I only gots ONE brains so I can't live in that there planetarium your talkin' 'bout.

Now I see the problem: you are multi-brained, while little old me only has the one. :(

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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla (Post 586587)

I would suggest that the so called drift to socialism is, in fact, simply a series of short term measures to correct the economy that was broken and heading towards collapse as a result of drifting away from any government regulation....to be followed by the restoration of reasonable regulations to keep the free marketeers from returning to those excesses.

They said "short term" about FDR's New Deal too. And its opponents opposed it on the grounds that if it was different from state socialism, they'd sure wouldn't want to live on that difference. It's not very much talked about, but might they have had a point then? You're not going to hear about this in high-school American History class, are you? (American history is not, I think, very well taught in grades 1-12 -- in spite of my always enjoying it and getting good grades. I could see why some people got bored and tuned it out and I could watch them getting bored stiff too.)

And the present bureaucracy and multiplicity of Federal Agencies of this that and the other is still here, even after the Supreme Court dissolved the National Recovery Administration.

That Other NRA

It's best if most of us don't get fooled again. That way we can resist the harebrained headlong national debt increase and the inflation that will follow in its wake if implemented, and vote out the dopes who've enacted this whole attempt to dismember a fifth of the world's economy, namely the American economy.

The finger of blame has been pointed at the Federal Government, particularly certain named Congresscritters like Barney Frank, for rejiggering investment risk and lending risk to induce a too-large expansion of debt as a part of the national economy. This would not have occurred without Congressional mandate, now would it have? Earlier Federal financial regulation was designed to contain the excesses of debt mismanagement that crashed the stock market and then everything else into the Depression. This earlier regulation was replaced by removing such regulation and insisting that credit be extended wider and wider and deeper and deeper -- and whattaya know, the debt burden grew to enormous size. It's a matter of public record, d'ya know. I mean, if Fox News Channel can find it, surely you can too, if you think you're smarter than a Fox.

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Originally Posted by Shawnee123 (Post 586598)

Um duh, um, mebbe I kin larn to think, ya think? Buts I only gots ONE brains so I can't live in that there planetarium your talkin' 'bout.

I devoutly hope that you can.

For it would be pleasant. I like pleasant, and all the more for not always being so myself.

Sidereally yours,
UG/Reid
___________

"Keep Looking Up." -- Jack Horkheimer

Fox News Channel :eek:

Of course they blame Barney Frank, rather than eight years of a nearly totally deregulated financial services industry that ran amok.

In all fairness, Clinton and the Republican Congress of the late 90s share the blame with Bush and Republican Congress (of 2000-06) and the lack of any serious oversight for six years. The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 was an unmitigated disaster waiting to happen..and to no surprise, it happened.

It didnt just happen in 2007 when Barney Frank rose to the chairmanship of a House committee.

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Originally Posted by sugarpop (Post 548847)

This only covers banks getting TARP funds, and only until they pay back the money. Why should that bother you? After that, they can go back to their old behavior. Which sucks. We NEED pay reform in this country.

Apparently, they can't repay the loans, pop.

source

Text:

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As you know, I did not support the legislation creating the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Among the many reasons I could not support the legislation was the fact that, despite verbal assurances by your predecessor and others about the purposes for which the TARP program would be used, once monies were appropriated there were virtually no meaningful safeguards against them being used for – quite literally – any reason and in any manner whatsoever.

Sadly, almost immediately after Congress funded what amounted to a blank check, the TARP was put to other purposes than those used to sell the program. One such use was the ‘Capital Purchase Program,’ through which the federal government has become a stockholder in many financial institutions.

But we now know that the very largest institutions were summoned to Washington and essentially informed by Secretary Hank Paulson that the government was buying into their businesses through the Capital Purchase Program – whether they liked it or not. In fact, one of Mr. Paulson’s “talking points” for that meeting was that “if a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware your regulator will require it in any circumstance.” Other institutions were merely ‘urged’ by their regulators to participate in the Capital Purchase Program. Tony Soprano could not have been more direct.

Unfortunately, it now also seems that – as with Tony Soprano – getting Uncle Sam out of your business is much more difficult than letting him in. Now many healthy institutions (institutions that have just passed government “stress tests”) have concluded they no longer want the government as an investor in their businesses. They want to pay back the TARP funds and conduct their businesses without the aid or interference of government.

But, rather than hearing “hallelujah” from a federal agency eager at the prospect of recovering taxpayer money and winding down the TARP program, these institutions find themselves at the end of a growing list awaiting “permission” to repay the government! It gives the appearance that the Troubled Asset Relief Program – which was sold to the people as being one thing, but which has been conducted as another – might not be so eager to go out of business.

Reports that Treasury’s TARP office recently signed a 10 year lease on new office space in downtown Washington do not give comfort to those who question the motives of those running the ‘temporary’ TARP program. And I am sure that they do not give comfort to private sector institutions that do not understand why they need to get “permission” to give the taxpayers their money back.

Mr. Secretary, the federal government had no business making banks “an offer they couldn’t refuse” and muscling its way into their businesses by threatening regulatory retaliation. Now, when institutions want to return taxpayer money, their government should take it – and do so while refraining from any inference of reprisal.

The time has come for the federal government to exit the bailout business, and accepting returned Capital Purchase Program investments would be an excellent first step in that direction. Anything less is unacceptable.

Walter B. Jones, Jr.
(R), Representative of North Carolina.

I've been dragging my bagpipe case out lately -- with its Kingdom of Atlantia sticker centered on its lid.

Actually, Redux, Fox News does and did apportion blame all over. Barney was just one of the ones they fingered. They found the things you found. See? -- they can't be wrong just because they sound a little more Republican than everybody else except the blogoverse.

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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla (Post 586649)

I've been dragging my bagpipe case out lately -- with its Kingdom of Atlantia sticker centered on its lid.

:luv:

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Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla (Post 586635)

I devoutly hope that you can.

For it would be pleasant. I like pleasant, and all the more for not always being so myself.

Sidereally yours,
UG/Reid

:) I'm not always pleasant either. But next time I have a hankerin' for being pleasant I'll be sure to shower some on you. :)

Economy recovering? No wai not with them stupid dems and Obama in charge...o wait...

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. unemployment rate fell in July for the first time in 15 months as employers cut far fewer jobs than expected, giving the clearest indication yet that the economy was turning around from a deep recession.

U.S. employers shed 247,000 jobs in July, the Labour Department said on Friday, the least in any month since last August, taking the unemployment rate down to 9.4 percent from June's 9.5 percent. ....
U.S. stocks rallied on the data as investors took the view that the recession was ending. The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 1.2 percent at 9,370.07. The dollar surged, while government bond prices tumbled. ...

Link

BUT WHERE ARE THE JOBS???!!!

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Originally Posted by shawnee123

Now now, we're just fragile females. We can't be worryin' ourselves with men issues.