It reported, and didn't really add anything to what we didn't already know.
Six Democrats and four Republicans did interviews and investigation, and probably could have read Sorkin's book TOO BIG TO FAIL and derived the same information. They also could have read Simon Johnson and James Kwak's book 13 BANKERS. Both of those shed a good bit of light on the situation.
The majority report is 545 pages, and from the reviews I have read, most of it just repeats the same things found in the above books, although I doubt it makes the allegations made in 13 BANKERS. That would not have been politically correct. I don't think I will bother, but it is available on Amazon in paperback for under ten bucks.
What it boils down to is that a partisan majority blames the banks, a partisan minority (of one) blames the government, and the rest of the Republicans blame everything and everybody.
So much for that waste of time. The government at least appears to have "done something" when, in fact, it has done nothing but perpetuate the problems at the expense of the taxpayers.
And all the politicians wonder why the Tea Parties are gaining influence.
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Bill Clinton and the Tea Party
Former President Bill Clinton, best known for having soiled a blue dress in the Oval Office, weighed in on the Tea Party menace a few days ago.
He is afraid the limited government rhetoric of the Tea Partiers will lead to another act of domestic terrorism like the Oklahoma City bombing.
Naturally, he leaves out the really pertinent point: that McVeigh bombed Ok City in response to Bill Clinton's mangement of the seige at Waco.
You can read a good story on the subject by Tony Blankley here.
At the same time that he was trying to trash the Tea Party, a real incident of domestic violence was taking place.
A young woman staffer for the Republican Governor of Louisiana and her date were leaving a function in New Orleans when they were set upon by left wing thugs, viciously assaulted and hospitalized. This for wearing Sarah Palin pins. More on that here. And parts of the police reports are here.
Of course, there has been no media coverage, and certaily no comments from Clinton or other Democrats who are so concerned about violence in the political sector.
Double standard?
Trashing the Tea Party won't work.
Mr. Clinton needs to slither quietly back under his rock.
He is afraid the limited government rhetoric of the Tea Partiers will lead to another act of domestic terrorism like the Oklahoma City bombing.
Naturally, he leaves out the really pertinent point: that McVeigh bombed Ok City in response to Bill Clinton's mangement of the seige at Waco.
You can read a good story on the subject by Tony Blankley here.
At the same time that he was trying to trash the Tea Party, a real incident of domestic violence was taking place.
A young woman staffer for the Republican Governor of Louisiana and her date were leaving a function in New Orleans when they were set upon by left wing thugs, viciously assaulted and hospitalized. This for wearing Sarah Palin pins. More on that here. And parts of the police reports are here.
Of course, there has been no media coverage, and certaily no comments from Clinton or other Democrats who are so concerned about violence in the political sector.
Double standard?
Trashing the Tea Party won't work.
Mr. Clinton needs to slither quietly back under his rock.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Musing On a Rainy Friday Afternoon
There has been a lot of moisture out here in West Texas the last few months. Right now, we are at about 2 1/2 times normal, and our rainy season has just begun. I suppose its the El Nino that has been in progress, but the Winter sure felt like Global Cooling.
That does bring to mind the issue of Global Warming that all the liberals were panicked about. We have not heard a lot about that lately, since the science has been shown to have been unscientific. It appears that a lot of it was based upon scientists wanting to be politically corrrect so they could get more government money for research. The rest was based upon doctored evidence that was never disclosed, and "conveniently" lost before it could be checked.
Poor Al Gore. It now appears he will not make the billions of dollars he would have made if the "cap and trade" fiasco had passed.
The problem is, the globe does warm and does cool, and we should be prepared for it. Right now there appears to be temporary cooling, but by the time we really establish that, it may well be warming again.
That is what the earth does. It warms for a while, then it cools. In the last 100,000 years we have had several cycles of warming and cooling. Humans have always adapted to it. We need to be prepared to adapt to it again. We can't stop it, and to try would be foolish.
Back to the rain. It caused the postponement of the Tax Day Tea Party on Thursday. Too bad. I was going to go, as I did last year.
It has been very interesting to see how our political left and their minions in the media have treated the Tea Partys over the last year.
At first they were "right wing extremists" then moved on to be racists and Nazis. That did not work, of course, because none of it was true. They also tried to set up some individuals as "leaders" of the Tea Party and tried to tear the Partiers down by attacking those "leaders." That didn't work, either, mainly because the Tea Party groups are all local folks. Its a movement, not an organization.
The lastest is a New York Times/CBS poll that asserts they are rich and well educated, and not representative of a cross section of the citizenry. That will fail as well, because its not true. Obviously, the media has not covered the actual Tea Partys enough to have a clue about them. Or they don't care about the truth.
I wonder what they will try to come up with next.
That does bring to mind the issue of Global Warming that all the liberals were panicked about. We have not heard a lot about that lately, since the science has been shown to have been unscientific. It appears that a lot of it was based upon scientists wanting to be politically corrrect so they could get more government money for research. The rest was based upon doctored evidence that was never disclosed, and "conveniently" lost before it could be checked.
Poor Al Gore. It now appears he will not make the billions of dollars he would have made if the "cap and trade" fiasco had passed.
The problem is, the globe does warm and does cool, and we should be prepared for it. Right now there appears to be temporary cooling, but by the time we really establish that, it may well be warming again.
That is what the earth does. It warms for a while, then it cools. In the last 100,000 years we have had several cycles of warming and cooling. Humans have always adapted to it. We need to be prepared to adapt to it again. We can't stop it, and to try would be foolish.
Back to the rain. It caused the postponement of the Tax Day Tea Party on Thursday. Too bad. I was going to go, as I did last year.
It has been very interesting to see how our political left and their minions in the media have treated the Tea Partys over the last year.
At first they were "right wing extremists" then moved on to be racists and Nazis. That did not work, of course, because none of it was true. They also tried to set up some individuals as "leaders" of the Tea Party and tried to tear the Partiers down by attacking those "leaders." That didn't work, either, mainly because the Tea Party groups are all local folks. Its a movement, not an organization.
The lastest is a New York Times/CBS poll that asserts they are rich and well educated, and not representative of a cross section of the citizenry. That will fail as well, because its not true. Obviously, the media has not covered the actual Tea Partys enough to have a clue about them. Or they don't care about the truth.
I wonder what they will try to come up with next.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Don't tell us......
On February 19, 2009, a guy named Rick Santelli, a CNBC business news broadcaster, set the Internet afire with a rant about taxpayers having to bail out defaulting mortage holders. A Youtube version of the rant spread over the Internet like wildfire. You can find it here.
In it he called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest the bailouts.
Boy did the idea catch on. All over America, mad citizens determined to protest what was happening in our government. It was a spontaneous movement, not created or led by anyone, unless you want to credit Mr. Santelli with it. He, of course, had no idea how his rant would catch on with the people.
Now in its second year politicians and press from all sides of the spectrum seem to amazed, even frightened by the movement. They should be.
Many are even setting up strawmen in the movement to tear it down. We see the press trying to set up a lot of people as "leaders" of the movement, then attempting to discredit the movement by being critical of the "leaders." (Some of the people they have described as "leaders" or "founders" of the tea party are pretty bad people, others very controversial.)
This is an attempt by them to discredit a grassroots citizens' movement falsely and by design.
There is no particular leader, although there are many activists who speak up. Most who claim to be leaders are doing so for their own purposes. So don't believe it.
But on to the title point.
A dear friend of mine, who happens to be a liberal, sent me two articles today from Politico.com, a reputable online source for political news.
One titled Republicans woo wary tea partiers dicusses how GOP Chairman Steele is engaging with 50 "leaders" of the tea party in hopes of enticing them into the Republican Party. For most of them, that will not work.
The other article was entitled Conservative manifesto coming soon. This is a story about a large group of Republican leaders and thinkers are getting together a new manifesto describing the basic Republican mission statement. This is also a response to the tea party movement.
I want to break the news to Mr. Steele and the other Republicans and to the Democrats: you people have had your chance. You had the chance to govern well and you blew it. Badly. Both parties.
The time is over for you to tell the people how and what you will or will not do. No more top down pontificating and then continuing on as usual. That day is over for now.
It is time that political power again starts flowing from the citizens to the politicians rather than the reverse.
What we want to see from you is actions. Your words are not meaningful. So listen instead of talk. Act instead of pontificate.
Show us.
In it he called for a Chicago Tea Party to protest the bailouts.
Boy did the idea catch on. All over America, mad citizens determined to protest what was happening in our government. It was a spontaneous movement, not created or led by anyone, unless you want to credit Mr. Santelli with it. He, of course, had no idea how his rant would catch on with the people.
Now in its second year politicians and press from all sides of the spectrum seem to amazed, even frightened by the movement. They should be.
Many are even setting up strawmen in the movement to tear it down. We see the press trying to set up a lot of people as "leaders" of the movement, then attempting to discredit the movement by being critical of the "leaders." (Some of the people they have described as "leaders" or "founders" of the tea party are pretty bad people, others very controversial.)
This is an attempt by them to discredit a grassroots citizens' movement falsely and by design.
There is no particular leader, although there are many activists who speak up. Most who claim to be leaders are doing so for their own purposes. So don't believe it.
But on to the title point.
A dear friend of mine, who happens to be a liberal, sent me two articles today from Politico.com, a reputable online source for political news.
One titled Republicans woo wary tea partiers dicusses how GOP Chairman Steele is engaging with 50 "leaders" of the tea party in hopes of enticing them into the Republican Party. For most of them, that will not work.
The other article was entitled Conservative manifesto coming soon. This is a story about a large group of Republican leaders and thinkers are getting together a new manifesto describing the basic Republican mission statement. This is also a response to the tea party movement.
I want to break the news to Mr. Steele and the other Republicans and to the Democrats: you people have had your chance. You had the chance to govern well and you blew it. Badly. Both parties.
The time is over for you to tell the people how and what you will or will not do. No more top down pontificating and then continuing on as usual. That day is over for now.
It is time that political power again starts flowing from the citizens to the politicians rather than the reverse.
What we want to see from you is actions. Your words are not meaningful. So listen instead of talk. Act instead of pontificate.
Show us.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Election Lessons
Neither side gets it.....yet.
The election of Scott Brown to the US Senate from Massachusetts has been the big election story of the past week.
Republicans are ecstatic and they think that this was a triumph for Republicans.
Democrats are, of course, very disheartened, but blame the loss on a poor campaign, not their policies.
They are both wrong. It was a victory for the great political center of our country.
What is occuring is that the political center of the country is , to paraphrase Finch's yell from Network, mad as Hell, and they aren't going to take it any more.
In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned as a "post-partisan" who was going to bring change in the way Washington works. He promised more transparency and a bi-partisan approach.
This was what the center wanted to see, John McCain represented the old ways, so they moved into the Democratic column and voted largely for Obama.
Of course, the economy was headed into the tank and the Bush administration had started a huge Federal bailout of the very people who caused the problem, and that had everyone unhappy as well.
Hope and change seemed to be a good thing, so Obama won the election handily.
Almost by the time of his inauguration, it had become clear that hope and change meant more of the same. A huge and mostly wasteful stimulus bill was rushed through Congress, and it became apparent that the United States was facing huge deficits as far as one could project. Cap and Trade was pushed through without any debate and without anyone knowing exactly what was in the bill. And the huge bailouts continued.
All that could be discerned was that the Cap and Trade bill was going to be extremely costly to ordinary Americans, but that the owners of the trading markets, such as Al Gore, were going to get very rich.
So the Tea Party movement started....and grew and grew.
During the Summer of 2009 the ObamaCare bills started to be crafted....in the dark. Rather than transparency, we saw secrecy. People became more outraged, and appeared at Town Hall meetings to protest.
Democrats in the House and Senate were very disparaging of the folks that were protesting.
Tone deaf.
The gubernatorial election in Virginia followed wherein a huge turnaround from the vote in 2008 occurred and a Republican was elected. The Democrats remained tone deaf and continued to try to ram ObamaCare through Congress.
So we get to the election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat. A liberal Democrat runs in the traditionally liberal Democratic state, and is deemed a shoe in. She even took a vacation in the midst of the campaign!
Her opponent, running on the Republican ticket was not a conservative. It was, after all, Massachusetts. But he did tap into the anger of the regular folks.
And he won.
In the aftermath, both political parties remain tone deaf.
The Democrats think they ran a poor campaign and they did not sell their program very well.
The Republicans think the election means a turn toward conservative Republican principles.
Both are wrong.
Each party has its right or left wings, but both of them have to attract the center to govern. Both of them need to understand what the center does and does not want, and neither seem to have a clue that what they have both been offering is not what is wanted. Or needed.
Bush fooled them, and Obama fooled them.
My suspicion is that incumbents of either party are going to have a hard time. They should.
It is time that both parties get a clue, or there will be a party that comes along that will.
The election of Scott Brown to the US Senate from Massachusetts has been the big election story of the past week.
Republicans are ecstatic and they think that this was a triumph for Republicans.
Democrats are, of course, very disheartened, but blame the loss on a poor campaign, not their policies.
They are both wrong. It was a victory for the great political center of our country.
What is occuring is that the political center of the country is , to paraphrase Finch's yell from Network, mad as Hell, and they aren't going to take it any more.
In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned as a "post-partisan" who was going to bring change in the way Washington works. He promised more transparency and a bi-partisan approach.
This was what the center wanted to see, John McCain represented the old ways, so they moved into the Democratic column and voted largely for Obama.
Of course, the economy was headed into the tank and the Bush administration had started a huge Federal bailout of the very people who caused the problem, and that had everyone unhappy as well.
Hope and change seemed to be a good thing, so Obama won the election handily.
Almost by the time of his inauguration, it had become clear that hope and change meant more of the same. A huge and mostly wasteful stimulus bill was rushed through Congress, and it became apparent that the United States was facing huge deficits as far as one could project. Cap and Trade was pushed through without any debate and without anyone knowing exactly what was in the bill. And the huge bailouts continued.
All that could be discerned was that the Cap and Trade bill was going to be extremely costly to ordinary Americans, but that the owners of the trading markets, such as Al Gore, were going to get very rich.
So the Tea Party movement started....and grew and grew.
During the Summer of 2009 the ObamaCare bills started to be crafted....in the dark. Rather than transparency, we saw secrecy. People became more outraged, and appeared at Town Hall meetings to protest.
Democrats in the House and Senate were very disparaging of the folks that were protesting.
Tone deaf.
The gubernatorial election in Virginia followed wherein a huge turnaround from the vote in 2008 occurred and a Republican was elected. The Democrats remained tone deaf and continued to try to ram ObamaCare through Congress.
So we get to the election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat. A liberal Democrat runs in the traditionally liberal Democratic state, and is deemed a shoe in. She even took a vacation in the midst of the campaign!
Her opponent, running on the Republican ticket was not a conservative. It was, after all, Massachusetts. But he did tap into the anger of the regular folks.
And he won.
In the aftermath, both political parties remain tone deaf.
The Democrats think they ran a poor campaign and they did not sell their program very well.
The Republicans think the election means a turn toward conservative Republican principles.
Both are wrong.
Each party has its right or left wings, but both of them have to attract the center to govern. Both of them need to understand what the center does and does not want, and neither seem to have a clue that what they have both been offering is not what is wanted. Or needed.
Bush fooled them, and Obama fooled them.
My suspicion is that incumbents of either party are going to have a hard time. They should.
It is time that both parties get a clue, or there will be a party that comes along that will.
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