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A year and half after the government sparked a major financial crisis by forcing companies to adhere to the mark-to-market accounting rule, and after government took $9 trillion from taxpayers by force to fight the subsequent crisis, the government eases the mark-to-market accounting rule. Naturally, financial stocks rebound as a result since their balance sheets that were forced to be artificially low immediately improved.

Why do we outsource our foreign policy and sovereignty to the IMF or any other supra-national organization?

Jupiter's great red spot is shrinking over the last 10 years. It's probably global cooling on Jupiter just like on earth since 1998.

In another case of big government creates problems that must be solved by bigger government, bank regulators will make banks hold more capital. But they only reason they hold so little capital is all the moral hazard created by government in the first place. They have the Fed as a lender of last resort, and the FDIC insuring their deposits, and government squashes competition in banks, so the banks have no reason to take care of their money. Naturally, instead of removing the moral hazard, aristocrats make government even more powerful.

Another Bush administration relic of the war on terror falls. 3 suspects captured outside Afghanistan have been held at Bagram Air Force Base for 6 years. Today a judge ruled they have access to US courts. If these people weren't captured on a battlefield or weren't clearly tied to al Qaeda by a military tribunal or weren't planning to attack the US or US forces, and it seems likely they were not since they were outside Afghanistan, then why are we holding them at all? If they were caught committing crimes in another country, they should be in that country's justice system. Right after 9/11 and Congress invoked Bush's war powers, he should have immediately set up rules for the military to distinquish enemy combatants from criminals. If he had done that, we wouldn't have any of these problems now. We don't want judges second-guessing US troops, but at the same time we can't have criminals held as prisoners of war. It was the failure of the Bush administration that put us in this quandry, and Obama is not a leader who can fix it.

Democrats plan to increase energy taxes to fund their socialized medicine plans. But President Obama said nobody in bottom 95 percent of Americans would pay higher taxes? Surely he would never lie.

Radical leftists are excited that America may be poorer in the future. This is what they've wanted all their lives, and as long as Democrats are in power, just like Jimmy Carter, they're going to get it.

New Homeland Security Secretary delaying illegal immigration raids. Democrats love 'em some illegal immigrants, and hope to buy votes from them.

Anybody who thought Obama would do something other than radically expand the size of govenment was willfully ignorant and shouldn't have voted.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is offering to fix the country's potholes for free as long as they can stitch "Re-Freshed by KFC" on the patches. Chicago has rejected the offer because it prefers potholes to advertising. Any mayor who mayor who rejects this offer should immediately be recalled from office.

Obama blames North Dakota flood on global warming. They probably never had a flood up there before evil men starting having good quality of life.

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." This essay shows pretty conclusively that Ben Bernanke is trying to bring about the latter. Obama supports hyperinflation because the collapse of the currency could lead to the Marxist revolution he wants, so he's piling on with fantastic increases in government debt and empowerment of unions. I don't know whether Geithner and Bernanke are fatally conceited idiots or evil Marxists intending to destroy America like Obama. This essay also explains the findamental difference in the definintion of inflation used by the Austrians and the definition used by everybody else, and just understanding that difference leads to an understanding of how and why the Fed creates the regular 5-7 year boom-bust business cycle.

Sounds like Geithner is an evil Marxist too.

Obama's town hall meeting was filled with Obama plants. Shocker. If George Bush had done this, liberals would be outraged, but since it was Obama, it's cool.

This new UN plan ostensibly to fight global warming is really just a cover for the greatest transfer of wealth from rich nations to poor nations in history.

A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes — all under the supervision of the world body.

This has been the real goal of Al Gore and the profits in his church of man-made global warming all along. Of course it's the highest priority of the UN. It's theft on the largest scale in history - an even bigger scam than the Social Security pyramid scheme. Unfortunately, Obama will lead this attempted theft.

The state of New York plans to raise taxes on people earning over $500,000 by 31 percent and 14.5 percent on people making over $250,000. The consequence of this is rich people will move out of New York, impoverishing New York and enriching surrounding, low tax states. How hard is it for liberals to recognize that big government and class warfare inevitably hurts the people? Apparently really hard.

2 jobs will be destroyed for every so-called green job Obama creates. Duh. Renewable energy is more expensive, which means forcing people to use it instead of cheaper energy makes people more poor. The inevitable result is a net loss of jobs. This is not rocket science, and you don't have to be Milton Friedman to understand it.

Government is force, and government schools are force, and therefore stupid. Government school bans all physical contact between students.

Apparently we can thank German Chancellor Angela Merkel for killing the Brown-Obama global new deal. Thank you. Brown's plan wasn't a bunch of tax cuts. What's that all about? If Brown wants to cut taxes, he can just do it. Brown's plan was for $2 trillion in new stimulus spending. Whatever they're calling tax cuts is a smoke screen.

Sea temperature rise from cleaner, less dusty air, not greenhouse gases.

Earth hour didn't cut energy usage in New York or California. Shocker. Our news seems to filled with the obvious and Democrat lies - nothing else.

Cato scholar calls NATO a hollow shell of an organization and a political honor society, points out that like all welfare, NATO enables European countries to take a free ride off of US security forces, and concludes by calling for pulling out. I concur.

Cato analyzes the consequences of Portugal's drug decriminalization (not legalization) program and concludes it's a great success. None of the bad things predicted by the prohibitionists came true, and many of the bad effects of the black market and criminalization were greatly reduced, just like any rational person would expect.

Cato and 100 scientists respectfully smack down Obama's claim that "the facts are clear" on man-made global warming in new newspaper ad with footnotes backup their claims.

China may not be the military boogeyman government officials make it out to be, but calling China's procative threats to a US Navy vessel "a recitation of the sort of ongoing force modernization that any major power would undertake as a matter of course" is nothing but apologizing for China's threatening behavior.

Remember my theory that the person who wins the presidency is the person who women think look best in their underwear? Check out this quote: 'Warner "launched an email inquiry," which revealed that "many women—not too surprisingly—were dreaming about sex with the president."' My theory has held true at least since 1960. No wonder Ann Coulter says all our problems can be traced to women getting the vote.

Cato says a politicized one world currency would threaten our prosperity, freedom and sovereignty.

Mainstream support for school choice is growing.

The House passed Obama's budget today. $3.55 trillion. Are you kidding me? No debate? No discussion? No hearings? No news? The Republican alternative was just released yesterday and Pelosi didn't allow any debate on it? I expected a couple month of hearings and debate. Boy was I wrong. At least no Republican voted for it.

Boortz asks the obvious question about the Republicans' alternative budget:

OK ... this is all very special. But the obvious question is "Where the hell were these ideas when you were in charge?" Sorry .. but the Republicans still have not done nearly enough to atone for the mess they created when they controlled every branch of government. Many of the problems we're facing today ... including the problem of a U.S. government now controlled by anti-capitalists ... can be laid at the failures of the Republican party over the past eight years.

These ideas weren't politically expedient when they were in power. Anybody who believes Republicans really support smaller government is as loony as an Obama supporter.

Victor Davis Hanson dissects the beliefs of Obama administration officials and in so-doing paints a stunningly pathetic and profoundly naked picture of the leftist movement in America. In what could be a related story, it makes perfect sense that Barack Obama would fawn over the Queen. I can't understand or stand people who fall over themselves over royalty. But I don't think the gift of an I-Pod, a perfect symbol of the tremendous ingenuity and wealth of the citizens of America, is a bad gift for the ultimate anachronistic elitist in western civilization at all.

So it's bankruptcy for GM after all. After government officials gave it a bunch of taxpayer money, of course. Government should have let GM declare bankruptcy months ago. This process should be 2 months farther along and without taxpayer money having been wasted. And why can't GM go through bankruptcy like any other country? More to point, where does Obama get the power to interfere in GM's bankruptcy? You can bet Obama plans to "control" this bankruptcy and pack the board of directors to protect his union voters. If this really happens, there is a bright side: the American people will see that corporate bankruptcy doesn't destroy the business like the aristocrats and the accomplice press have been implying with this too big to fail nonsense. It just reorganizes the company into profitable organizations and sells off the rest of its assets to be used by profitable organizations. But what is this new, government financed auto company? Is Obama following Hitler's model with Volkswagen?

Even the House majority leader wonders where Obama got the authority to tell GM what to do. Pharaoh Obama gets his authority from his divinity.

Once again, Ann Coulter cuts right to the chase:

Apparently, it's OK for Obama to fire the head of General Motors, but Bush can't fire his own U.S. attorneys.

It is stunning that Democrats, the media and most of the people find nothing wrong with Obama effectively firing the CEO of GM, but the press and Democrats and the media complained about Bush firing political appointees, US Attorneys. Ann brings up the obvious: if handing government money out to organizations means the president can start firing people in that organization, there's a whole lot of firing that needs to be done. How come reporters never ask questions about stuff like this? I mean any reporters.

Israel may yet pull our fat out of the fire by bombing Iran's nuclear program. It's a shame it had to come to this. If liberals had let Bush rally our allies and credibly threaten to bomb their program, Iran most likely would have come to the negotiating table, and no bomb would ever have fallen. But with Obama the Appeaser in power, Israeli bombs are probably the only hope for stopping the Mullahs from getting the bomb.

People wait years for Social Security disability claims hearings. This is what liberals want to do to our health care system.

Obama the Transparent (not in the way he claimed) won't release info on the bailout program.

People are abandoning their boats. I don't feel bad for them.

Obama should be happy that the G-20 agreed to reduce the US role in the world marketplace. Actually, that wouldn't be a bad idea if they were reducing all governments' roles, but they're not. Other governments are increasing power and increasing regulations. And tripling the funding of the IMF? Why should my money be going to the IMF for its foreign policy instead of my elected officials using it for US foreign policy? This is all bad.

Our out of control criminal justice system is targeting sports figures for breaking sports rules. In a related story, government wants to put activists in jail for movies that make candidates look bad under the pretense of campaign finance reform.

Political bias is what's killing newspapers. Newspapers would be declining anyway, but if they didn't have that bias, people would not actively be searching for alternatives, and their decline would be slower.

Obama is spending more money on defense than Bush.

Jury finds in favor of parasite Ward Churchill.

Is anybody surprised that the aristocrats are lying about 90 percent of the guns confiscated from drug gangs in Mexico come from the US? I hope not.

This is is how liberals destroy the places they govern.

The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.

This is Atlas Shrugging. Ohio's following Michigan's path, and liberals want to make the entire nation as unlivable as Michigan.

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Republicans roll out alternative budget proposal that spends $4.8 trillion less over the next 10 years. That's a vast improvement. This gives Republicans the opportunity to take the initiative away from Democrats, which would be a wonderful thing. Too bad this apparent fiscal responsibility of Republicans isn't a matter of principle, but only political expediency since Democrats are in power.

The US to defer to the UN on Korea missile launch because the UN is committed to the best interests of the US. What a joke. Obama is too wimpy to have his own foreign policy, so he's outsourcing it to the UN. As long as this missile isn't aimed at the US, I think South Korea and Japan should handle it. I hope the Japanese shoot it down.

US commander in Afghanistan requests 10,000 more troops. That's on top of the 38,000 we already have there and the 21,000 Obama has already ordered to deploy. I have a lot of confidence in Gen. Petraeus, but I don't understand this mission. It appears we're trying to defeat the Taliban, but the Taliban is not our enemy, and we're not going to be able to defeat them as long as they have a huge, lawless safe haven in Pakistan.

Police officer who held NFL player at gunpoint to give him a ticket while the player's mother-in-law was dying in the hospital has resigned. Good riddance. But you can't help but wonder if this power-hungry creep would have been flushed out of the system if his victim had not been famous.

Federal prosecutor ask federal judge to set aside corruption conviction of Alaskan ex-Senator Stevens because the trial prosecutors withheld information relevant to Stevens's defense. Big-government corruption begets even more big-government corruption, and this case also cost Stevens the election. This is the new American way - corrupt prosecutors corrupting the justice system in a trial of a corrupt senator resulting in a corrupt election.

This April Fools joke about Microsoft requesting a bailout isn't nearly as funny as Microsoft actually receiving stimulus money is sad.

US helping UAE develop nuclear energy. I understand the risks, but what's the option? Trying to stop Arab countries from developing nuclear power is doomed to fail. Better to try to create a model of responsible nuclear power development.

Boortz claims Obama took 12 teleprompters with him to London and 1 friend to play basketball. You don' t think he can find somebody among the 500 courtiers he took with him who would play basketball?

Barney Frank's House subcommittee passes out bill that would empower the government to set the salary for every employee of every company that received bailout money. This is to crush those zombie companies, guaranteeing that the taxpayers' money is wasted, then Obama, Frank, Rich, Pelosi and Reid can all blame the private sector and nationalize the companies. This is all part of the radical Democrats plan for Marxist revolution in America.

If Obama was going to fire the head of GM, shouldn't he fire the head of the UAW union too? Of course not, even though I bet GM gave more money to Obama than McCain.

Mark Steyn describes how easily once-free people slip under the spell of government control.

Washington has created a black market in dishwashing liquid in the name of environmentalism.

Where did President Obama get the power to guarantee automobile warranties?

Obama is using this crisis to force his Utopian vision on the US auto industry. How do you think that's going to work out for us? Bow down before the somuch smarter than everybody else combined Obama.

I'm not surprised the New York Times spiked a story about the cozy and potentially illegal relationship between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign during the election.

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

Ms. Heidelbaugh then told the congressional panel:

“Upon learning this information and receiving the list of donors from the Obama campaign, Ms. Strom reported to Ms. Moncrief that her editors at The New York Times wanted her to kill the story because, and I quote, “it was a game changer.”’

That's how those radical leftists at the NYTimes roll.

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Record drop in home prices. I have a plan to stabilize home prices: adopt the FairTax. When Americans can keep 100 percent of their paychecks, they can save their money without penalty, and they are not rewarded for assuming debt, far more Americans will be able to buy homes. How hard is that to figure out?

Governments force ISS astronauts and cosmonauts to use national toilets and eat national food. This should be a reminder to any wide-eyed idealists that the petty men who like to lord power over others who always rise to the top of government will push their petty human natures into space, and that we can never allow an enemy to gain the strategic advantage of weaponizing space first.

If you ever needed proof that the war on drugs is a horrible, tyrannical, destructive policy, Iran joining the US in fighting the drug war in Afghanistan should make it clear. When our policies align with the mad Mullahs', something is wrong with us.

The G-20 summit in London prompted the biggest security operation Britain has ever seen. Maybe Britain should take a clue and recognize they're doing something wrong if they have to turn their capital city into a fortress to guarantee the safety of the attendees. This is what you would expect in a police state... hmmm.

The Pakistan Taliban threaten a terrorist attack in Washington D.C. That would be stupid. Right now, the Taliban aren't a threat to the US, and they would smart to stay that way. Attacking us would lead to them being bombed into oblivion.

Netanyahu takes power in Israel.

I fully agree with Richman's Law: "No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains."

The role mathmatics played in Wall Street's failure to quantify risk. As the Austrians love to point out, because our eocnomy so complex, mathmatics has no chance of making predictions about the future.

Sec. Geithner has repeated the theme of the entire Obama team: don't let a good crisis go to waste - grab all the power you can as fast as you can.

Congressman Murtha basically admits his corruption and makes excuses for it.

Government's idea of tax amnesty is reducing the penalties on money coming back from overseas, not the tax rate or the interest. Why would anybody fall for that?

Republican congressman says he would have voted against the AIG bonus punishment tax if he had know it was unconstitutional. I just don't know what to say.

Yet another Obama nominee busted for not paying taxes. I've lost count of how many this is.

Boortz reminds us that Rahm Emanuel pocketed $320,000 when he was on the board of corrupt Freddie Mac.

Mitt Romney's socialized medicine program in Massachusetts is drowning in red ink and rationing care. And this is the guy most "real" conservatives wanted instead of John McCain. Romney ranks right up there with Hillary Clinton on his support for freedom and limited government.

Brazil's President blames the financial crisis on blue eyed white people. Blaming everything on the Jews has been done.

The UN jumped all over the idea of one world currency because it makes the most unaccountable and corrupt aristocrats in the world all tingly for one world government.

Swiss banks ban their executives from traveling out of the country for fear they will be detained over bank secrecy practices. We like to pretend we're free, but really we live in a world where governments can and do detain anybody they want for any reason they want, and we need to wake up and take our freedom back and re-institute the rule of law. As the AIG fiasco showed, unaccountable aristocrats in Washington can and will pass a law in an instant targeting anybody for anything even though that's expressly forbidden by the Constitution.

Government is effectively paying people not to farm because it keeps carbon in the ground. It's hard to imagine how people as stupid as us created the greatest country in the world. That's not fair. America's pioneers made America great. It's the people who want to change that who are stupid.

In liberals ongoing attack on private charity, Congress will debate expanding a government community service program, putting more people on the tax payer dole and shutting down more charities.

No 5' tall 50 year old woman should be able to pin a 6'2" 28 year old knife wielding man to a wall for 10 minutes, unless a big old doorman assists. Still, that was pretty brave on her part.

You know it's time to leave Afghanistan when the president we support signs a law allowing husbands to rape their wives and the wives are forced to ask permission to leave the house. But Obama is determined to turn Afghanistan into a modern Vietnam, except unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan really is unwinnable if you define winning as creating a successful state.

A super-pill for every person on the planet to cut the risk of heart disease?

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President Obama is on TV again today dictating terms to yet another segment of our economy - auto makers. Barack Obama is living his lifelong dream of being dictator of the US, and I hope every American is as sick of it as I am. Let bankruptcy run its course. Get out of my life, Obama. I'll buy whatever car I want, and I don't want you or anybody else in government dictating what kind of cars are available for me to buy. That's for free people working together in a voluntary market to determine. Making the GM chairman a scapegoat won't fix the broken system of government domination of our economy.

I've never heard of the radical 1980 London based market reforms from called the Big Bang, but I find it hard to believe that any financial system founded on the communist institutions of central banks (a government monopoly on the means of production of a good is a decent definition of communism) could possibly be mistaken for unfettered capitalism. Naturally the competition unleashed by the Big Bang is the source of today's financial problems. This sounds like the same old tired tripe from central planners to me. You would think the WSJ would know better, but I guess it's a statist organ like any other.

Dear AIG, I Quit

Open resignation letter copied from the New York Times Op-ed.

The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.

At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,

Jake DeSantis

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"From France to Poland, from the Czech Republic to China, many nations are rebuffing the president and offering little wiggle room for him to negotiate economic and security policies." But it's not just foreign leaders. American liberals are having the same reaction. '[O]ne of [Vanity Fair's] writers, media writer Michael Wolff, took an axe to the president, in a posting beginning “Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter,” ending “This guy is leaden and this show is in trouble,” and titled “Barack Obama is a Terrible Bore."' Yet another shocker. That's because Obama appears incompetent, but really he's following his plan, just like Bush wasn't very bright, but he knew exactly what he wanted. Obama's going to regret following his Marxist dogma.

Hillary Clinton is right that the US bears significant responsibility for the drug violence in Mexico. Too bad she can't see the obvious solution - end the war on drugs - and advocates the exact wrong solution - escalating the war.

Geithner says he's open to China's suggestion of one world currency. Fortunately, Obama previously panned the idea, but we got another peak behind the curtain at the ideals of the Obama adminstration. Geithner also says the market can't solve our financial problems. Only a genius like him using the government's power of force can. I guess since bankruptcy requires the government, he's trivially right, but that's not what he means. These excepts are scary because Geithner seems to have no clue what really created this crisis, and his conceit that a handful of people can solve this problem using government force is religious, not rational.

Congress puts 2 million acres off limits for oil and gas drilling. That's going to bite us very shortly.

The Post Office isn't looking for a bailout. It's looking for a shortened work week. Why don't GM and Chrysler try that?

Unions and big government are crushing California, and this is the model Obama wants to force on the entire country.

FedEx is so concerned about the costs of being forced to unionize, it placed an order for 30 Boeing planes on hold. This is how creating overpriced union jobs costs more jobs elsewhere.

Green Senator Feinstein proves once again that the modern green movement is predominantly a Marxist movement that resists all human advancement by blocking solar and wind farms in California.

How does President Obama address the teleprompter criticism? By repositioning the teleprompter out of the camera view. That's the kind of window dressing change we can expect from Obama.

This resignation letter shows the kind of damage that happens to people when government starts dictating terms to companies.

Obama says he won't send US troops into Pakistan. I don't think I'd make that promise even if I never intended to put troops in there. Presidents should never take options off the table.

Now Obama wants us to believe he knows more about running an auto maker than the people who've been doing it their entire careers. There are so many classic lessons in this fiasco. The problems caused by big, bad government, in this case empowering labor unions to use force to build their numbers and loose monetary policy, always lead to bigger, worse government. This is classic central planning - dictating sacrifices to everybody - and a classic example of the fatal conceit of believing that 1 person or a handful of people can run the economy better by using government force than hundreds of millions of people running it through voluntarily transactions. To Obama and his cronies, it's just so easy and the management of the companies and unions is just too dumb to figure it out on their own.

Obama forces GM chairman to resign. I'm sure many people will say Obama's doing the right thing here. That may or may not be true, but even if it is true, then this should and would have happened long ago if government hadn't gotten involved and propped up these zombie car companies. The Chairman could have been long gone if GM had declared bankruptcy months ago. The contracts could have been renegotiated, factories sold off or closed and GM reorganized and on its way to profitability if government had stayed out of it and let the process work. We have a bankruptcy process for a reason, and it should have been allowed to work.

Reason's analysis of Geithner's TARP II toxic asset purchase program shows that taxpayers assume 93 percent of the risk while private investors assume only 7 percent. This will lead investors to overpay for the assets, artificially inflating them long enough for banks to fix their balance sheets, then the taxpayers can eat the losses on many of them. Thanks, government. It's just another flavor of corporate welfare. All the aristocrats are in a hurry to spend trillions of dollars we don't have, but the studies of the mark-to-market accounting rule won't be finished for months. I have a better solution: change the mark-to-market accounting rule, that's what triggered this entire mess, we'll examine the consequences and call it a study, and stop putting us trillions more in debt.

Regulators plan to relax the mark-to-market accounting rule in April. April? Why not today? Why not last April when we saw the damage? The problem with applying the mark-to-market account rule to these toxic assets is that the toxic assets are a mix of slices of bad mortgages and good mortgages. The good mortgages are still worth something, but because of the way the mortgages are sliced and bundled, with slices of good and bad mortgages bundled together, nobody can tell how to price the assets. Therefore nobody will buy them, and the mark-to-market accounting rule forces banks to value them at effectively zero. You watch. After trillions have been allocated by the government and the Fed in an attempt to free up the credit markets, changing this mark-to-market accounting rule will make all the difference, and that will end up being all that ever needed to be done from the very beginning.

George Will reports that TARP is unconstitutional because Congress cannot pass its responsibility to allocate funds to the executive branch. It seems to me this same argument applies to the FCC, the FDA and probably 100 other federal agencies.

The resurgence of nuclear power.

Ralph Peters nails it when he says Obama's Afghanistan policy sounds a lot like LBJ's Vietnam policy.

Want a truly fresh strategy that would work? End all support of any kind to Pakistan. Close our embassy. Do what makes military sense and reduce our forces in Afghanistan to a level that can be supplied by air. And concentrate on destroying al Qaeda, not on "owning" village X. (Obama's approach just stinks of Vietnam.)

Well said.

Speaking of NATO, Pat Buchanan says the US is stuck to the carcass of a dead policy. One of America's historic great strengths was our ability to adapt to fast changing situations. Our government has taken that strength from us along with many others.

House Republicans blow an opportunity to grab the initiative in the budget debate because of internal squabling. How long will Americans continue to empower these 2 failed parties?

Just back from knee surgery, Tiger Woods comes back from 5 strokes down to win. He shames every other golfer on the planet.

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US President Barack Obama has vowed to wipe out terrorists from Pakistani safe havens, warning that al-Qaida is plotting catastrophic new attacks.

If George Bush had said that, liberals would have gone nuts and accused him of fearmongering and using the War on Terror for political gain. Funny how silent they are when Obama says the same thing.

Instead of fixing their own onerous tax codes to stop citizens and companies from putting their money in tax havens, the G-20 is going after tax havens. Switzerland, Austria, Belgium already caved to pressure so the G-20 wouldn't consider them tax havens.

Researchers discover huge Chinese-based internet spy operation that has infiltrated the computer networks of 103 governments.

Mises scholar rips Krugman's babysitting economy analogy.

5 truths lost in today's discussions. I disagree with savings being a requirement for the division of labor, but that's a trivial quibble. The rest is dead on.

Yet another Obama nominee withdraws. This is just astounding.

Marxist revolutionary tide is rising as radicals attack bank CEOs home in Britain. Obama's ACORN partners are taking note. Obama and his Marxist buddies are stoking this violence, and they're taking us closer to a French Revolution while fantasizing of a workers paradise.

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Warning about the dangers of extreme solar weather to electrical systems on Earth. Since we have no idea of how often these occur, it's awful tough to plan for.

Obama doubles down on troop and financial commitments to Afghanistan. That's more blood treasure the US will lose in that rat hole. Using aid to influence development in Pakistan and Afghanistan makes sense, but expanding this war does not. I also think a little, well targeted aid goes a long way, while a lot of aid feeds corruption.

Zimbabwe opposition PM says he'll arrest Mugabe's land thieves. This is not going to end well.

South Park pries open the back rooms of Washington to expose how they determine how to deal with crises.

Daniel Hannan for British Prime Minister! Too bad we don't have as eloquent a champion in the US government to stand up to the socialists of both parties.

But that's not surprising. It's ludicrous to expect that a professional politician would stand up for the private sector. That's like expecting lizards to stand up for the good of mammals. The aristocrats make their livings off the backs of the taxpayers. It's not in their interest or the interests of their families for any professional politician at any level of government to empower the private sector. It's in their personal interest to expand the power of government at the expense of the private sector. The inevitable result is big government, corruption, cronyism, nepotism, corporatism, fascism, and socialism all working for the elites at the expense of the people.

The solution is simple - stop electing professional politicians and return to a government of citizen-representatives. Any person who wants to spend their lives lording power over others has a mental defect that should disqualify them from elected office. These people don't want to lead productive lives, creating wealth that improves the quality of life for every American. They want to siphon the wealth out of the private sector, lowering the quality of life for every American to enrich and empower themselves. We need term limits to force politicians to work in the private sector, not as a lawyer, government contractor, lobbyist or any other government powered job, but in a real wealth creating job far away from the influence of government.

Obama makes uneasy truce with bankers. That's like saying arsonist makes uneasy truce with buildings. How do you think that's going to end?

NATO negotiator meets with Iranian ambassador. Have I mentioned NATO is obsolete and is little more than a welfare program for Europe?

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Somebody please tell President Obama to shut up. He thinks he needs to be on TV every day. I guess with this plans spinning out of control and the country rising up against him, that's to be expected, but I'm sick of seeing him.

Paul Krugman unleashes his anti-freedom views on readers.

The Executive Vice-President of AIG's financial products division, who was working for a salary of $1, resigned because his CEO is dancing for the government aristocrat lynch mob. He'll donate his bonus to charity instead of giving it back to the aristocrats. I don't know if this guy was in charge when AIG was making all its mistakes, but I like to see this guy standing up to principle. This is another tiny example of Atlas shrugging. Our ruling aristocrats are driving the best and the brightest from the wealth producing parts of our society.

Czech Prime Minister calls Obama's stimulus boondoggle the "road to hell", also saying it undermines international financial stability. The Czechs know first hand how devastating socialism is. I think every liberal should have to live in a socialist country for 5 years. Those that like being poorer and less free can stay.

Lots of graphs and charts nailing Bush, Republicans and conservatives on 8 years of irresponsible spending. When I read or hear some pundit talking about conservatives being for fiscal responsibility, I almost spit all over my keyboard.

The left hates private charity because liberals in general aren't nearly as compassionate as they pretend to be, preferring to take money from others by force to support their causes instead of reaching in their own pockets and voluntarily giving their own time and money. They also want to control everything, so Obama is trying to crush private charity and socialize it completely.

Cute graphic of how much money government has taken from taxpayers and allocated and delivered to financial institutions. This corporate welfare on a scale the world has never seen or imagined.

How the same policies Obama and Bernanke are undertaking today was the last straw that caused the collapse of Yugoslavia.

If it were true that government can merely use its brute force to create a successful economy than all the totalitarian countries throughout history would have been prosperous paradises!

Thank you.

Chris Dodd's wife was director of a company owned by AIG. Shocker. This is just typical of how these aristocrats work. They're all corrupt.

Obama's stoking up hatred of the private sector on purpose. He stoked up anger at AIG on purpose. That anger is the anger of Marxist revolution, and that's Obama's goal.

The Heritage Foundation breaks down Obama's welfare programs that he pretends are tax cuts, but they aren't, and shows this is just a mechanism for Obama to spread the wealth around.

10 mostly really bad ideas for government grabbing AIG bonuses. I like the first one and last one though.

Bloomberg illustrates why punishing the rich with higher taxes is a bad thing.

Government is force, and it can only be force, so it's not surprising that in an attempt to address the failure of government schools, government would open a school in conjunction with Marines. That's the best way to insure that government school kids grow up to work for and fight wars on behalf of the kids of the aristocrats who are going to private schools and who will rule the government school kids.

Yet another Democrat aristocrat caught cheating on his taxes. The funny thing is, these Democrats want us to believe that raising taxes doesn't change people's behavior - it doesn't push jobs overseas, it doesn't make people work less, it doesn't cost Americans anything - but it sure turns Democrats into tax cheats.

Michelle Malkin has a funny parody of the presidential seal for the teleprompter president.

Mother of girl who killed herself after sending naked pictures to her boyfriend who forwarded them all over Cincinnati blames others for her daughter's suicide and is calling for laws. I have a better idea. Teach your kids not to send naked pictures of themselves over the phones or internet. If you aren't a responsible enough parent to do that, don't let your kids have camera phones or internet cameras. (I've never understood why parents allow their kids to have these phones anyway - get a phone that only you can program and give it to them.) And if you're not responsible enough to do either, don't use the consequences of your failure to take away my freedom.

Tim Geithner calls for unprecedented government power to not only regulate, but to control and seize financial firms. Who said Obama wasn't a socialist? How many times have we talked about an unprecedented power grab since Obama took office just over 2 months ago? Geithner doesn't think this idea is radical. He thinks it prudent because out system is too fragile. That begs 2 questions: is it really fragile, and if it is, why is it? Government interference in our economy like termites infesting a home makes our economy weaker. More termites is not the solution. If Geithner really wanted to limit risk, he'd extract the government from our economy, putting an end to the moral hazard that powers extraordinary risk and enabling free competition that would provide a break on risk taking. Remember it was the Fed, which is a regulator, and the regulators Fannie and Freddie and the CRA that caused this crisis.

Obama preaches to the converted in online town hall to keep the money flowing in for his 2012 run. The power of incombency is overwhelming.

It was a bad idea when George Bush nominated active military personnel to head the NSA and the CIA, undermining the division between the civilian leadership of the country and the military, and continuing his role of playng George Bush on steroids, Obama names an acting general to be ambassador to Afghanistan.

My Republican representative thought it was a good thing to put a 90 percent tax on TARP executive bonuses. Put him on the list that have buried the Constitution.

House Democrats yank global warming provisions from Obama's budget so they will be subject to Republican debate. They're still protecting the health care provisions from debate though.

Barack Obama's budget would give the US a higher percentage deficit than Cuba. Democrats respond with cheers because they want turn America into Cuba.

Zogby reports Obama's approval rating has plummeted to 50 percent. It's going to keep dropping like a rock. I never heard liberals complain about Zogby when his polls gave them absurdly high numbers.

This is a pretty effective ad showing that Obama is governing far different than he promised.

Obama flip-flops on armed pilot plan, deciding to expand it. That's a good thing.

Chicago is privatizing police. You have to be kidding me. That's one of the few legitimate powers of government. Chicago has everything backwards.

Bill would allow newspapers to become non-profit companies.

Man convicted of drunk driving even though he didn't drive his car. He just started it.

How many plane crash stories begin by talking about how wealthy the victims were?

Every day I walk my dog, I look at literally tons of heavy equipment sitting idle. Since Dayton is building or repairing 8 bridges at once, fixing I-75 through downtown, building a new bus terminal downtown, and I live at the intersection of I-75 and the river across the river from downtown, I see many of these construction projects every day. Big earth movers, bulldozers, cranes all sit idle at 4 building sites nearly every day. When I see the other bridges, the equipment is typically sitting idle. The equipment sitting next to our bridge to nowhere hasn't been touched in weeks. That's government waste, and we're paying for every dime of it.

Cato describes how and why each government policy since the financial crisis hit drove down stocks, and explains that the recent stock rally had nothing to do with Geithner's bank plan, contrary to what the press is telling us, but was sparked by good news in the housing market. There's even a sensible comment from Bernanke about regulation causing problems in this essay. Too bad Bernanke, like all central planners, thinks the only problem with central planning is he isn't in charge of all of it.

The price of oil is about to skyrocket again. I bet this is already built into the price of oil futures though.

Ann Coulter provides the numbers and explodes the myth that Wall Street support Republicans. In fact, Wall Street pays much more money to Democrats than Republicans. I've long known this, but she's right that the media very successfully cover it up and make it appear otherwise.

California just gets stupider every day. Now they're planning to ban black and dark cars to fight global warming.

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Geithner to ask for unprecedented new powers to seize financial firms and insurers. Just say no. He also wants the power to limit how much risk a company can take on. This is another big-government non-solution to a big government created problem. Big government creates moral hazard, privatizing profits and socializing losses, empowering companies to take excessive risks. Then big government tries to limit the risk, which in some cases won't work and in other cases will stifle business. That's no solution. The solution is to stop creating moral hazard.

Get the government out of our economy so Americans can fix all the damage government caused.

One of the things Geithner is pushing is that only certain people or companies will be able to participate in this corporate welfare, once again showing that socialism always benefits the elite at the expense of the people.

Congratulations to big, oppressive, dangerous government for inciting a lynch mob and credibly threatening to destroy AIG executives, coercing them to return their legal, contractually agreed upon bonuses. The rule of law and the sanctity of contracts means nothing to aristocrats. It would be easy to say this is government at its worse, but what this illustrates is government can and will get much worse.

Mises scholar predicted the call for one world currency, which China has now called for. Russia calls for it too. As if the US central bank hasn't created enough problems, imagine how much a one world government central bank would cause.

Obama writes letter to Jacques Chirac, saying he wants to work with him in the future. Unfortunately for Obama, Jacques Chirac hasn't been president of France for some time. Obama is a dunce.

Where's the outrage over retentions bonuses for Fannie and Freddie? Politician must be a synonym for hypocrite.

Moderate Senate Democrats organize to oppose Obama's radical agenda. Thank goodness.

Some unknown Obama official named Clinton says insatiable appetite for drugs in US to blame for Mexican violence, but she fails to point out the obvious solution. And it isn't just the appetite for drugs in the US. Every human has it. Americans just have more money because historically we've been freer to make more money.

The AP's fact check of Obama's speech, a mainstream media organ, however lamely questions Obama's facts.

The comparison that Keynesian economists think the economy is a perpetual motion machine slowed by saving should help non-economist scientists and engineers see through the big government smokescreen. This idea may seem right, if you were willing to live in a static (statist) economy. At first glance it would seem there would be no change and 100 percent employment would be achieved. But that wouldn't last long because the capital we depend on to make products would degrade. Tractors can't last forever. Factories can't last forever. Somebody has to maintain the capital we use just for us to break even, and that maintance cost goes up each year. Without ever more resources devoted to capital maintanence, we'd soon be back to the stone age. But worse yet, economic growth depends on innovation and therefore depends new capital, and savings funds both new capital and capital maintanence. Sorry Keynesians. You lose again.

Bizarre yet moving song sung by Mises's students and collegues as he fled from Austria to avoid German troops. It's impossible for us to imagine today the kind of desperation that those people felt, especially champions of freedom in the face of overwhelming tyranny and evil, and the kind of comradere it produced.

Malou Innocent responds

Dear Lostinwilderness,

For something like this, there simply won't be a document or quote definitively establishing the culpability of high officials like Cheney. Such people are usully too sly to incriminate themselves like that.

Hitler didn’t sign anything calling for the extermination of the Jews, either. Almost everyone (except Holocaust deniers) knows Hitler was one of the primary engineers of the Holocaust, though. (Cheney doesn’t compare to Hitler, of course, but the principle is similar in kind, not in degree.) That’s because a lot of other indications link Hitler to the crime.

Likewise, a lot of indications point to Cheney’s involvement in the abuses during interrogation. For example: Cheney, Others OK'd Harsh Interrogations and Cheney Defends Use of Harsh Interrogations.

The CNN interview that sparked my piece: “In a wide-ranging interview with CNN's ‘State of the Union,’ Cheney said the harsh interrogations of suspects and the use of warrantless electronic surveillance were ‘absolutely essential’ to get information to prevent more attacks like the 2001 suicide hijackings that targeted New York and Washington.”

Are we really supposed to believe Cheney was completely supportive of “harsh interrogations” in public and pushed behind closed doors for them to be used, but that he had no idea of and has no responsibility for the extremes to which interrogators were going?

Lastly, Cheney has endorsed waterboarding. Waterboarding has historically been considered torture, including by our own government after World War II.

So we have Cheney on the record supporting torture. It doesn’t shock the conscience as it should because of the detached, antiseptic way the media covers it, so our government officials feel safe discussing their culpability.

But still, there is Cheney supporting torture. From the interview quoted on the Al Jazeera page:

Asked if he thought, in hindsight, any of the tactics went too far, Cheney said, "I don't."

"I was aware of the programme, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said.

Let me repeat: When asked if he thought “any of the tactics went too far,” Cheney replied, “I don’t.”

I hope this helps clear the air!

Color and errors are hers. I don't have time to respond to her right now, but invoking Hitler in this context shows that she's not being rational in her analysis. I think we should believe the information we have - Cheney was instumental in designing the harsh interogation techniques the government does sanction, including waterboarding. But she has no reason to go beyond that and accuse Cheney of supporting other techniques that the US does not endorse.

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Treasury unveils toxic asset purchase program - more corporate welfare. I don't see the point of this. Why is taxpayer money being used to buy these assets when private sector money could buy them without taxpayer money? It looks to me like private buyers and sellers have just been sitting on their hands since the government got involved in this back in Sept., waiting for government to sweeten the pot with taxpayer money for both of them. Now that taxpayers are assuming the risk, the stock market is happy. That theory is born out by the sharp rise in stocks. Of course when companies get taxpayer money, their stock goes up, lifting the market. But the reality is government interference has crippled this recovery for 6 months. Obama and Congress will figure out a way to do the maximum harm to the American people with this plan like they do everything else.

If I'm not mistaken, this is exactly the plan Paulson outlined before TARP was passed. That's more of the same from Obama we can believe in.

Stocks are up 497. Wall Street loves 'em some big time corporate welfare.

Geithner explains his bank plan in a WSJ op-ed. Paul Krugman says it won't work.

Here's more newspeak from Obama. He says energy independence in his budget is not subject to wheeling and dealing. But his budget doesn't promote energy independence. It harms domestic energy development and makes us more dependent on foreign sources of energy. We get nearly half our energy from coal, and the rest from oil, nuclear and natural gas. Obama's energy plan attacks every one of those domestic sources of energy, and we'll have no choice but to rely on foreign sources because of it.

Mises blogger highlights an onerous tax law worthy of Democrats but passed in 2004 when Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. This tax law punishes any Americans who expatriate the country. This law is a thinly disguised attempt to trap taxpayers, or at least their money, in the US for government aristocrats to use as they wish. If today's Congress considered this law right now, Republicans and conservatives would feign outrage, but 4 years ago, those same people considered it good policy.

ACORN sends stooges to AIG executive's homes to protest bonuses. But they love their partner in crime, Obama.

The Congressional Budget Office says Obama's budget will increase the deficit by $9 trillion over 10 years. But that's Obama's plan. His plan is to crush the American people under the weight of government in order to foment Marxist revolution. He knows his budget would destroy the country as we know it. We better start figuring that out, because information like this won't change his behavior, it just reinforces it. The Heritage Foundation reminds us Obama promised a net spending cut during the campaign. Anybody who bought that lie and voted for Obama should never be allowed to vote again. Obviously that's a joke, but Obama is not funny.

And congratulation to the Heritage Foundation for pointing out Obama is doubling down on Bush's failed policies. It's about time a powerful conservative voice finally took on Bush and tied Obama to him. Hope for America is growing. If more conservatives join the Heritage Foundation recognizing Obama is just following Bush's destructive lead, but bigger and faster, and are willing to criticize both, we can turn this thing around.

Great parody of the Teleprompter Messiah. I nominate this guy for poet laureate.

Even the mainstream media recognizes that America is swiftly turning on President Obama.

Pasting this logo on Obama's economic package is worse that putting lipstick on a pig.

First Paul Krugman ripped Obama's bank bailout plan, now Frank Rich thinks Obama is stuck in a Katrina moment. Obama's staunchest supporters are already turning on him.

Essay on Obama's lies about cutting taxes focuses on cap and trade but also quotes this gem of a lie from Obama,"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

South Caroline Governor Mark Sanford makes an eloquent argument for rejecting the discretionary parts of Obama's stimulus spending.

Cato explains that the European style train systems Obama plans are used only by tourists and the elite and wasteful compared to highways.

Cato advocates the US join a mission to put a no-fly zone over Sudan. I'm sure Obama will follow whatever lead the UN tells him to. On the face of it, a no fly zone over Sudan sounds like a great, humanitarian idea, but you know that government would somehow pervert it into something bad.

No, it would not be legit for Congress to target the AIG bonuses. That's why the House legislation targets all bonuses for all time for executives of companies receiving TARP funds with a household income over $250,000. I don't know why these writers keep setting up this straw man. Congress did not just target AIG.

It should go without saying that government should stay out of the news business, can you say Pravda?, but I'm glad reason said it.

Because our government is stupid, the best and the brightest immigrants who created wealth for all of us are heading back to their native countries.

Obama is anything but a regular guy. Enjoying basketball is not what makes a regular guy. Regular guys don't spend their entire adult lives seeking out and surrounding themselves with Marxists, partnering with anti-American pastors and domestic terrorists, and trying to foment Marxist revolution in America. I wish I had archived all the articles I saw saying Obama was a regular guy so I could pull them back out later and thrash the authors.

"I voted for Barack Obama largely on the basis of his temperament, which I thought superior." Are you kidding me? That's how you chose to pick a president? This author is not a serious person, or else he's making fun of himself and I didn't get it.

When explaining how Democrats have fallen behind Republicans in the generic polls, Michael Barone writes, "I think what we are seeing is more disillusionment toward Democrats than any positive feeling toward Republicans." Tell me about it.

Obama threw Chris Dodd under the bus on the bonus legislation in Obama's stimulus boondoggle.

The alternative to pinning the blame on [Dodd] would have been to be straight from the beginning—meaning to admit that it was Geithner, presumably with Obama's blessing, who championed the provision that paved the way for the AIG bonuses. But to do that would have meant sacrificing Geithner, whose two-month tenure has already been marred by controversy and limited public confidence.
...
But at a personal level, Obama's willingness to abet the scapegoating of Dodd is as cold as cold gets.

During the campaign we learned Obama had no compassion or compunction to do the right thing (remember his Kenyan brother living on $100 per year and Obama never lifted a finger to help him even after meeting him?). Anybody who thought Obama would be honest and take a hit for the actions of his administration when he could use one of his cronies as a political shield did not do their homework on Obama. How can people be so blind to something so obvious?

"The Middle East may be on the verge of a nuclear arms race triggered by the inability of the West to stop Iran's quest for a bomb." And apparently representatives of every Middle Eastern government are visiting recently freed A.Q. Khan on Pakistan to solicit his help. How much you want to bet Hugo Chavez is talking to him too? If liberals hadn't torpedoed Bush's attempt to credibly threaten Iran with bombing its nuclear program, this most likely wouldn't have happened. Liberals' inability to either understand or acknowledge, I don't know which it is, the consequences of their policies and actions might kill us all. Obama should rally US allies, including the Arab nations, and make that credible threat ASAP, because it will soon be too late.

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It looks like card check is going to fail, even Democrats understand it's a job killer, so why would these comes propose a compromise?

Henry Hazlitt on Marx and wealth envy.

Chicago columnist reports that Chicago-style politics have taken over Washington. Ya think?

You know Obama's plan for banks and the financial markets is bad when Paul Krugman rips it. Obama is playing another round of privatize profits and socialize losses. It's worked so well so far.

In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

As narcissistic and dumb as Obama is, surely his advisers have told him this is a bad idea, but he's going to try to force it down our throats anyway.

It's good to see conservatives suddenly waking up to the true nature of government. I could have written these paragraphs.

Everybody makes mistakes, and I made a beaut the other day. I was wrong to call members of Congress blow-hards and buffoons and declare them worse than useless.

I was too kind.

I should have said our representatives are gangsters in pinstripes and pearls. They are petty tyrants and the more power they grab, the more at risk we are. Homeland Security should flash Code Red any time this Congress is in session.

We've needed conservatives to think this way for 8 years, but better late than never. They need to understand the anger felt by the great mainstream of America has been building under Bush, and is just now boiling over because Obama is like Bush on steroids. If conservative voices like this guy carry this to the next step and realize that Bush and his Republicans were nearly as bad and that government itself is the problem, we have some hope for the future.

The problem is the author limits his criticism to this Congress. Granted, this Congress is easily the worst I've ever seen, but the last 4 or 5 have been almost this bad, and Congress has been controlled by petty power-hungry tyrants for 100 years. Still, this essay provides a glimmer of hope.

AIG is not the problem, Obama and the Congress are the problems. Contrary to what the crooks running our government want us to think, the AIG bonuses were no secret.

"A November SEC filing by the company details $469 million in 'retention payments' to keep prized employees."

In January, two House members urged the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to block such bonuses. Last month, the Senate passed an amendment outlawing such payments by companies getting federal bailout funds -- and then dropped it.

The White House was also in the loop. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) says that the administration asked him to attach a provision to the stimulus bill that authorized such bonuses. Dodd protests that he only agreed because he didn't understand what the measure would do.

Maybe other people who voted for it in the Senate and House didn't either. Maybe Dodd and the rest ought to read legislation before they approve it.

It turns out I was right about those bonuses being used to keep top talent from fleeing the sinking ship. Let's redirect the pitchforks where they belong - the White House and the Capitol. I still think this all a smoke screen for a far broader tax that will pass constitutional muster and never be applied to the AIG employees.

This double standard burns me up. Here's a conservative calling for the end of corporate welfare, which wonderful position, but he blames all the corporate welfare on Democrats. Give me a break. Do you think he's had a lobotomy making him forget that Bush and bipartisan effort from Republicans and Democrats started this mess? The author mentions Paulson, but you'd never know he was a Republican, and the article never mentions Bush. Did his lobotomy make him forget that both Republicans as well as Democrats have supported corporate welfare for decades? For America to recover, conservatives need to get over this partisan crap and start acknowledging the governments of both parties are the problem, both parties are destroying America, and it's just that Democrats are doing it more quickly than Republicans.

Police seizing money despite no crime being committed.

Though the processes may differ with each case and whether it’s handled by federal or state prosecutors, people who typically have money seized must file a claim if they want it back. They have to show how they got the money and that it was procured legally.

This is insane. Citizens should not have to account to policemen for how much money they have, no matter how much it is. Apparently cops and prosecutors have never heard the term burden of proof. Why hasn't the Supreme Court put an end to this? The Constitution is spinning in its grave.

Depending on the subtleties of the case and what court is involved, the money usually ends up divided among prosecutors and the police agency or agencies responsible for seizing the money.

Hello? This is supposed to be a America. This is just theft pure and simple. "Hey, wer'e running a little short on cash." "Don't worry, we'll just go sieze some today." Naturally the article doesn't mention under what authority the police do this.

Hot girls don't have to worry about jobs in the recession. They can always do porn.

I don't have a problem with allowing the Taliban to form a political party in Afghanistan. That's for the Afghans to decide, not us. I have a problem with continuing to try to build a state in Afghanistan that is doomed to fail. If the Afghans want to embrace the Taliban, that's their choice. Our concern in Afghanistan should only be US security.

Democrats in Chicago are so corrupt they even manage to screw up privatizing parking meters. Because of the high rates, Chicago residents aren't parking on downtown streets anymore. Chicago, California, Michigan, Ohio and other are all suffering from self-inflicted pain from big government.

Moody's list of 283 troubled companies.