I will say Obama's first 100 days have been busy. It's as if he's trying to get as much of the left's agenda accomplished as soon as possible before the American people discover who he really is. My impression is he's a puppet. Why? It's the teleprompter thing. Why does he need it to make announcements? Doesn't he know what he's announcing? Without it he makes Bush look articulate. I think he's been thrust into a position so overwhelming he can't handle it without aides spoon feeding him everything. I also think his "handlers" are aware of a unique opportunity to pull the puppet's strings. Thus the flip flops on things like whether to prosecute those involved in "enhanced interrogation" techniques. And things like "being intimately involved" in the pirates situation, but not knowing that HIS aircraft, Air Force One, is buzzing Ground Zero. And not being able to thoroughly vet Cabinet appointees. His being referred to as the messiah bothers me. But I will say one of the reasons the people who waved palm branches at Jesus were able to crucify him within a week was because, in their minds, he did not live up to their expectations of what a king should be. I think the American public is in for a rude awakening. And when that happens, as the 'ole saying goes, "Pity the fool."
These are some of his "accomplishments" as I see them:
- Closed down Guantanamo
- Set a withdrawal date for Iraq
- Appointed numerous tax dodgers to his administration
- Trashed any hopes of becoming energy independent
- Embarrassed the US by going to summits and apologizing for past US actions
- Embarrassed the US by giving world leaders tacky gifts
- Embarrassed the US by bowing to an arab king
- Embarrassed the US by kissing Chavez's butt
- Embarrassed the US by kissing Castro's butt
- Tripled the deficit
- Emasculated the DOD
- Emasculated the CIA
- Emasculated the FBI
- Nationalized the banking industry
- Nationalized the auto industry
- Watched and did nothing as N.Korea grew their nuclear program.
- Watched and did nothing as Iran grew their nuclear program.
- Appeared on a comedy show and made fun of Special Olympics participants
- Authorized blowing the heads off three pirates
- Lost Air Force One
- Signed an Executive Order to allow Hamas sympathizers to migrate to the US. (Didn't know about that one, did you? Check it out.)
- Is dealing with the swine flu near pandemic with an HHS department that's 19 executives short of complete.
- Gave up on the idea of quitting smoking
- Blamed Bush for everything
Let's hope the next 100 days aren't quite so "productive" - for all our sakes.
3 comments:
You're making me nervous-a lot of "emasculating" going on in those first 100 days. Hope it doesn't lead to a National Emasculation Day.
Style over substance at it's best.
I'm sure we will soon see a blog post that complains about how Obama has stiffed the poor hedge funds on Wall Street in the Chrysler bankruptcy. And that "poster" will be right- Obama jammed it down their throats, and rightly so! These funds took a big risk and bought secured debt last fall when Chrysler started getting in trouble and they paid about 30 cents on the dollar-simply betting and hoping that Chrysler would end up in bankruptcy, then liquidate, and they would get paid off at 40-50 cents on the dollar(all legal). Now they refuse(see article below)to accept the approx. 30cents on the dollar the other stakeholders agreed to. Except this time, Bush is not in charge , and Obama stepped up to the plate and gave thousands of workers and retirees and communities more priority than the "speculators".
Some empty suit-just a little substance there right between the eyes:
A Laughably Late Conversion to the Cause of Fairness
By Steven Pearlstein
Friday, May 1, 2009
There may be nothing more pathetic than a hedge-fund manager worked up in a moral lather, complaining that he hasn't been treated fairly.
Since when did any of these guys ever worry about fairness?
Certainly fairness was not an overriding concern of hedge-fund managers when they threatened to move even more of their operations to the Cayman Islands if forced to pay a regular tax rate on their exorbitant management fees.
Nor do I recall receiving even a single e-mail from a hedge-fund manager complaining about how unfair it was that the government stepped in to bail out creditors and counterparties of Citigroup, Bear Stearns and AIG.
But now that these hedgies are looking at the butt end of a government-imposed cramdown that would give them only 30 cents of each dollar owed by Chrysler, suddenly they're all about fairness and the rule of law.
What you need to know about these vultures is that their idea of fairness is throwing 100,000 people out of work and denying retirees their pensions and their health benefits just so they can liquidate the company and maybe squeeze an extra 15 cents on the dollar from their Chrysler debt.
Of course, to get that extra 15 cents, the hedge funds would probably have to fork over a penny or two to pay the army of $700-an-hour lawyers needed to spend two years working it through the bankruptcy process. Add to that another couple of cents for the battalion of $10-million-a-year investment bankers needed to sell the assets to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, every day that goes by, the value of those assets would decline a little more.
And what exactly are these precious Chrysler assets that the hedge funds think would fetch them so much in liquidation? Aside from a few valuable brands, they're auto plants and machinery and large tracts of contaminated industrial land in some of the most economically depressed cities in the United States. No doubt folks would be lining up around the block for a chance to snatch up those babies.
A few years ago, when Americans were buying cars at the rate of 17 million a year, creditors might have gotten enough for them to pay off the $6.9 billion in secured debt held by the banks and hedge funds. But today, with vehicle sales running at a 9 million annual rate and with virtually no financing available, it's not clear that those assets would fetch the $2.25 billion in cash they were offered by the government.
The creditors are right when they say that Obama offered a sweetheart deal to Chrysler's employees and retirees, who as unsecured creditors would have stood in line behind banks and hedge funds in a liquidation and would probably have received nothing. It's also true, as the unhappy creditors point out, that it was the above-market wages and benefits negotiated by the United Auto Workers that helped to bring Chrysler to the brink of bankruptcy in the first place.
But those arguments are really beside the point. If the U.S. government wants to lend billions of dollars to help save the jobs, pensions and health benefits of hundreds of thousands of workers, that is certainly its prerogative. And it doesn't have to extend the benefits of that bailout in equal measure to the banks and hedge funds that stupidly lent $6.9 billion to finance a highly leveraged buyout of a long-troubled automaker.
The only "fairness" test that the bankruptcy judge must apply is to determine whether those secured creditors will get as much from the government's proposed reorganization plan as they would from selling off the company in pieces. It shouldn't take a judge more than a few weeks to conclude that 30 cents on the dollar is the best they're going to do.....
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