A wise old Lakota-Sioux Woman

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The old photo to your left is an important one:Chief's Red Cloud and Sitting Bull. (Update: a fellow blogger notified me and corrected the Warrior next to Red Cloud is American Horse. Also see picture of American Horse in full headress at bottom of this blog) I'm a Lakota-Sioux ,born and raised in Central Wyoming on the Arapho/ Shoshone Rez. My wisdom comes from the school of hard knocks,and the paths I choose to take. Along with the advice and stories from my elders, my road has lead me here.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Obama's just not that into you


Share/Save/Bookmark OBAMA'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU

By DICK MORRIS

March 24, 2009


Does President Obama truly believe that he can castigate and condemn Wall Street on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and then secure its cooperation on the other days of the week?

Does he not understand that when he ignites a public furor over AIG bonuses and then incites Congress to pass a punitive tax, he sends shivers down the spines of every other corporate executive who makes a lot of money?

Does he seriously believe that Wall Street investors will not worry that their winnings, should they join the Treasury as partners in risky investments, would be subject to public abuse, publicity and confiscatory taxation?

Of course he realizes that his rhetoric makes it unlikely that his program will succeed. He obviously gets it that the entire concept of a public-private partnership is impossible amid a climate of waging class warfare, taxing the rich and heaping contempt on anyone who makes money. The president is quite bright and certainly understands that you cannot shake hands with your right while you launch a roundhouse with your left.

So why does Obama persist in his aggressive rhetoric? Why does he continue to treat Wall Street as something out of Dante's Inferno?

Because he's just not that into you! He doesn't really care if the public-private partnerships work out.

He sends Geithner out to announce the program because he doesn't want to make it his own. When he announces a stimulus plan or a new spending bill, it's Obama's moment before the teleprompter. But the public-private partnerships he leaves to his Treasury secretary to announce.

The most rational explanation for Obama's puzzling conduct -- sabotaging his own program by way of his own rhetoric -- is that he truly wants to be forced to nationalize the banks in pursuit of his ultimate goal of a socialist economy.

Obama has to oppose nationalization today in order to achieve it tomorrow. He has to show the country and the world that he is doing all he can to help the private sector to sort things out with government help. He must ostentatiously invite the hated demons of Wall Street to join him in rescuing the banks in order, later, to say that he did his best to avoid having to take over the banks. Only then will nationalization be an acceptable alternative -- when he has run out of other options.

Meanwhile, he makes sure the private sector won't play ball by going after their bonuses, sending an implicit message to the other executives on Wall Street that reads: Stay away.

Even when he takes over the banks, as he almost inevitably will, he is going to have to dress up the nationalization as a temporary measure forced on him by the economy and the previously unrealized depth of the problem. He will cite the example of Sweden, where the government nationalized the banks only temporarily and returned them to private hands quickly.

You can't be for nationalization. But Obama hopes to accomplish it nonetheless.

Already, in the TARP and TALF programs, we can see how eager he is to use government power to manipulate the once-private sector. Consider the mandates piling up on any financial institution that takes government funds: limits on executive pay, corporate travel and conferences; a strong Buy American recommendation; and aggressive action to get them to make consumer loans. Can affirmative action, low-income lending and diversity outreach be far behind?

If Obama can bring banks and the healthcare industry under government control, we will have de facto socialism. Is this Obama's goal? It is obviously where he is headed.

Is Obama a socialist? Rather than throw around labels, let's do the math. The best measure of whether an economy is government- or private sector-oriented is the percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) that flows through government expenditure. Before the current fiscal crisis, the major nations stacked up as shown in the chart on page 27.

Obama's stimulus package, alone, comes to about 6 percent of GDP, vaulting the United States past Japan to 40 percent on the list above. If we add in the extra spending in the supplemental appropriations bill and the likely increases for healthcare, the total government percentage will rise well past 40 percent and probably close in on the United Kingdom's 43.

That's pretty socialistic, but Obama has three more years to get us up around Germany and really ruin our economy!
***COPYRIGHT EILEEN MCGANN AND DICK MORRIS 2009.

Man I just couldn't have said it any better than Dick Morris [Fox news] and Alex Castellano [CNN]. My eyes are tired,I've cried till my eyes are dry. I cannot cry anymore. My heart has broken for the children of the future.

And I see that John McCain is moving the bennett freeze bill through quietly, My Navajo brothers and sisters will loose their land sooner than I predicted. As soon as it gets signed by Obama, the Peabody mining company and McCain will be there mapping out the sections of the rez.to steal the coal from them. I hang my head in sorrow.....

Alex and I are on the same page


Share/Save/Bookmark By Alex Castellanos
CNN Contributor

Editor's Note: Republican strategist Alex Castellanos was a campaign consultant for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign and has worked on more than half a dozen presidential campaigns. Castellanos is a partner in National Media Inc., a political and public affairs consulting firm that specializes in advertising. For a rival view, click here


Alex Castellanos says President Obama's spending will create a mountain of debt and problems for Democrats.

(CNN) -- Things I learned Tuesday night from President Obama's press conference:

Obama and congressional Democrats are angry that greedy Wall Street executives took $165 million in bonuses that the president and congressional Democrats gave them.

We have made them give it back, but they have to keep the trillion-dollar bailout.

Apparently, our education system is worse than we thought. Neither the president nor Democrats in Congress actually read the bailout-bonus bill.

Per-family household debt more than doubled from 1989 to 2007, going from $42,000 per family to $97,000 per family, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Most of it, 85 cents of every dollar, is home equity or mortgage debt. This is not the consumer's fault for borrowing it, nor Congress' fault for legislating it, nor the Fed's fault for enabling it, nor Fannie Mae's or Freddie Mac's fault for packaging it. This is all Wall Street's fault.

It is also all George W. Bush's fault.

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If there were an inheritance tax on problems, Obama could pay off any deficit.

Taxpayers living next to a toxic waste dump is a bad idea. Taxpayers buying a trillion dollars worth of toxic assets is good idea.

Taxpayers borrowing a trillion dollars to buy those toxic assets is an even better idea. Though it is still Bush's fault.

Obama isn't on the ballot next year, but Democrats in Congress are. You can make money betting they will lose more than 25 seats, but not as much money as by purchasing toxic assets with taxpayer dollars.

The problem with America's economy is that the last bubble, the "home-mortgage, derivative, credit default swap bubble" popped, as all economic bubbles eventually do. We must never let that happen again.

It is imperative that we re-inflate this bubble immediately.

If we all loan a lot of money we don't have to each other, we will all be more prosperous.

An Obama press conference offers hope to everyone. Both those who want to drive the deficit up and drive it down receive encouragement.

A dollar when given to failed auto companies or hollow banks has great stimulative value for the economy, but there's almost no dampening cost to the economy when the dollar is taken from taxpayers, who will have to pay our debt back.

If he does not drive the deficit down, within this decade, interest on the Obama debt will total more than a trillion dollars a year.

Bush was laughed at for saying, "Yes, we are getting the job done. It's hard work," though it's OK for Obama to say only hard decisions reach his desk.

Enhanced border security was a bad idea when Sen. John McCain and Republicans proposed it but a good idea now that Obama is for it.

Trickle-down economics from Republicans got us into this mess. Trickle-down government from Democrats will get us out of it.

Washington was doing such a great job making things work before the meltdown that we should give it more to do, like running health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business.

Our economy is so complex that millions of Americans can't plan for it, but Timothy Geithner and a couple of other smart guys in Washington can.

Political greed is more noble than corporate greed.

We have to short-change charities that help people, so government can help people.

Wall Street and the U.S. government are too big to fail though the American taxpayer isn't.

The Barack Obama experiment, conducted by this 47-year old man, is the riskiest economic wager the world has ever seen.

Next year, when this experiment in European-style socialism isn't working, the Democrats up for re-election will panic and make the spending this year look like an appetizer. To appear responsible, they then will raise taxes on "upper-income taxpayers" to the stratosphere, paralyzing investment and the economy.

Obama's communications gifts are powerful and poetic -- but round-the-clock campaigning on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "60 Minutes" and this press conference won't save bad policy. Nothing kills a bad product quicker than good advertising. iReport.com: What did you think of Obama's press conference?

Obama has never built a business, created real wealth or produced tangible prosperity. His understanding of our economy is theoretical and academic.

Obama is a privileged young man who has not yet made many mistakes in his life. Having a president who belongs to the Harvard elite and the community-organizer streets is not the same as having a president who has lived a long life among middle-class Americans and understands them.

Impatience lies not deep beneath the surface of Obama. There is no shortage of self-confidence in this young man. It is a short step from such confidence to arrogance.

Arrogance in a politician is not healthy. Hubris, combined with inexperience, can be fatal. Obama could be a one-term president.

Obama is looking a little older. There would be nothing wrong with acting like it.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Alex Castellanos.