Hey, Jindal, still think volcano monitoring is a big joke?

I'm sure Jindal doesn't think American tax dollars should go towards monitoring volcanoes in exotic foreign places.

For some awesome photos of the president's first month in office check these out.

you should remove the false story about Howard Dean for starters from HuffPost Dean is joining McKenna as a consultant on health care and alternative energy issues and an independent adviser on specific projects that he chooses. His job portfolio, while attempting to influence the political debate, won't include the dreaded 'L-word' in it. Also from the article Did Howard Dean unilaterally remove himself from consideration for an Obama administration position?

That's the blaring headline from USA Today, which, citing a report in the Washington Post, says that by signing on with the lobbying firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge, the former DNC chairman has apparently ended his "stated hopes of joining the Obama administration."

Only, it's not true. While McKenna does lobby the government, and the Obama White House has an ethics policy that prohibits (almost all) lobbyists from serving in the administration on an issue on which they've lobbied, Dean himself won't be a lobbyist.

"[Washington Post reporter Al] Kamen got it wrong this morning," said Karen Finney, a spokesman for Dean. "He wrote that without talking to me or Dean. As you know, Dean is an Independent Consultant for the firm and not a registered lobbyist.

Steve, You your blog is the highlight of my day...not only are your words thought provoking but some of the comments are so amusing I get the best laugh I could ever have. The people who comment on this blog are some of the wittiest and intelligent people I have ever run into...wish they lived in my neighborhood since I do dinner every Sunday night for either just family or friends and family and you and your commentators would fit right in.

Sorry about that beginning....my computer did strange things just as I was about to post.. Your blog is how it should have started.

And I apologize about going off message...I just had to say this....

Jim Kramer denounces, but does not file a lawsuit? I wonder why?

Here's hoping he falls under investigation.

Has the Republican Party largely ceded the foreign policy debate to the administration? Apparently so.

The alleged shift of troops to Afghanistan from Iraq is mostly a hoax as you will learn by reading Mudville Gazette. Other than that, Obama has largely adopted Bush's foreign policy except for the blunders like Hillary's button and the Brown gifts.

Born in the USA

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit questioning President Obama’s citizenship, criticizing the case as a waste of the court’s time. Mr. Obama has been dogged by rumors, spread on the Internet, that he is ineligible to be president because he is not a “natural born citizen� as the Constitution requires. In response last summer, his campaign posted his Hawaiian birth certificate on its Web site. But the lawsuit argued that the certificate was a fake and that Mr. Obama was actually born in his father’s homeland, Kenya. The judge, James Robertson of Federal District Court, said the case could have ended up in books “that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do.�

""[H]as anyone else noticed that the since there is a Democrat in the Oval, everything became his fault at 12:01 pm on January 20 -- but everything that went wrong on 43s watch was Clinton's fault?""

Call me slow to the party, but the first time I heard this one was in March or April of last year. As I was told then:" Why yes, Bush has had to overcome the recession that Clinton handed him." Stupid me; I thought that the 90's were very good for way more people than the 2000's have been. But in 2008, they were still blaming Clinton.

So, by their economic history, Bush inherited a recession, we had 52 months of interrupted growth when King George got his way, but then the Dems took control of Congress, things went to Shit, but it was still residual Clinton Shit, and now that Obama is President, this is all left over from Clinton, and if King George hadn't stopped the Democratic Party of our economy, things would be much worse.

King George was the savior of the economy; it might have happened during his watch, but today's economy is the Dems fault. Sure makes sense to me LOL

BUT... Obama is replacing a Stryker brigade going from Iraq to A-stan with another one being called over from Fort Lewis.

And, the one moving from Iraq to A-stan had undergone 10 months of training in Arabic, reportedly; not much use in A-stan.

Mike K's got the link to the details up above. (That's not to say this left-liberal agrees with everything on that blog, by any means.)

Sorry, Mike didn’t have the link. Here it is.

It's a global recession alright, but again I heard the fallacy about destroyed wealth from lost prices of assets. Tonight on NBC Brian mentioned a report stating that 50 trillion "of wealth" (NBC wording, not necessarily in the original) has been lost. Yes it's a hardship because of the interdependence of financial instruments etc, but: No, it isn't lost "wealth" (by logical standard if not "usage" standard.) Consider: the price of X (like a stock) has gone down since whenever. OK, now so and so gets less for it by selling it than before, but the buyer pays the exact same amount less to have it - that's no change in "wealth". Changes in prices of things do not and cannot destroy wealth. Real destruction of wealth is when buildings burn down, cars crash, war destroys things, and (in effect, but not counted that way) when Albert Einstein died, etc.

Other than that, Obama has largely adopted Bush's foreign policy except for the blunders like Hillary's button and the Brown gifts.
Posted by: Mike [thank Goddess, not "Myke") K.

Well Mike, since you're a rightie/libertarian type, are you happy about that?

Joan, on the commentariat here: how true! I think some people actually picked up on the arguments in these posts and threads against Bushian Social Security "reform." I saw very similar wording in comments and letters elsewhere and it seemed to have actually moved the debate.

1)Tonight on NBC Brian mentioned a report stating that 50 trillion "of wealth" (NBC wording, not necessarily in the original) has been lost

2)that's no change in "wealth" - Neil B

How about we compromise and just call it stolen.

Maybe someone can clear this up for me. McCain, Shelby and others are calling for large banks to file for bankruptcy. Several in the media seem to think this is the same as nationalization. It seems to me the difference is that bankruptcy would cancel a lot of debt, including a lot of bond debt. If nationalized, would the gov't be able to cancel payables? It seems to me that one option would be the end of foreign investment, while the other would cost a hell of a lot of money.

Hey all!

I owe you a correction and an apology (assuming you read my original comment).

The other day I mentioned that Monica Goodling was married to Erick Erickson from RedState. I got the basic story right but the wrong RedStater. She is (presumably married by now - engaged when I read the story) to one of the originator's of RedState, Michael Krempasky.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/26/monica-goodling-engaged-to-conservative-blogger/

My apologies for getting that wrong.

For the first time since World War II, the global economy will fall into a global recession.

That seems authoritative but didn't the world bank select that neocon idiot (Wolfowitz) and his girlfriend to run it a couple years back?

Steve: "Hey, Jindal, still think volcano monitoring is a big joke?"

I'd go even further than the linked MSNBC article, and note for the record that the mountainous plumes of noxious sulphur dioxide fumes currently being emitted from Kilauea volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii have sometimes reached us here in Honolulu, some 220 miles to the northwest.

On such voggy occasions, our air is literally worse than L.A. on a very bad day. Your eyes can sometimes feel very irritated, and "Esso-Two" can play havoc with people like myself who have active or latent asthma. I actually had to make my first trip to our local hospital's emergency room last summer, laboring to breathe, only to discover upon arrival that I wasn't the only one there for that particular reason.

Karl Rove is now trying to argue that Bush had no important role in the Wall Street bailout last fall.

There would be no reason to disturb the President of the United States about the largest financial crisis in several generations. He might be reading a children's book or something.

The Chinese word for “crisis� contains the characters for danger+opportunity. Our economic collapse should show anyone that our culture was an unaccountable hollow shell of unsustainability. The real part of our economy, consumer spending and debt, has turned on us; one part died and the other rules. The houses of cards can’t fix themselves, and that only leaves our government ; ourselves in representation and credit.

Moody Financial Services analyzed stimuli monies and derived that tax cuts of $1.00 delivered $1.02 back into the economy. Weak, but hey, it’s stimulation, GDP growth. Not a lie, but not the truth. Truthiness. Direct government spending into the economy delivers $1.59 for every $1.00 spent. Food Stamps return $1.73 to the economy for every government $1.00. Tax cuts are obviously the weakest way to stimulate a flaccid economy.

Since we’re funding the recovery, we should steer it in a new direction. If the world is as flat as Tom Friedman explains, then we will face a huge downward compromise. Tariffs are illegal. Think of this : Denmark doesn’t make cars, so they can and do have a 300% tariff on imported cars. That could be our future without uniting and revising our course.

Well Mike, since you're a rightie/libertarian type, are you happy about that?

No, I only want his economic policies to quickly show how bad they are so we can get things back on track before the Dow hits 1,000. I fear it may be too late. This is not all Bush's or Obama's fault but Obama is wasting money on Democrat pork while serious efforts to get banks recapitalized are idle or in reverse. There are $70 trillion in credit default swaps in existence, last I heard. Most of the blame goes to the people who bet everyone else's money on exotic derivatives. Still, the housing bubble was at the root of a lot of it. We cannot reflate that bubble. Suspending mark to market might help right now. All I see is dithering and some people see a war on business. It looks like it here most of the time. It doesn't help.

Democratic pork? Have you read none of Steve's pieces? 2% of the entire package is "pork" and 40% of that 2% is GOP pork.

And pork is not bad...unidentified and unknown pork is a big difference to earmarked monies for solid programs.

Do you cherry pick the posts Benen writes?

Some key Republican senators are prepared to let major banks fail.

Can the federal government save every major bank that is close to failure without damaging the banks that are not close to failure (or not as close), and without damaging the financial system as a whole? If it is true that the Republicans are hypocrites, does it follow that the Democrats should double down on the Republican mistakes?

Economies don't usually bounce back until investors have some confidence that the worst of the crisis is past -- the longer government action postpones that bottoming out, the longer government action postpones the recovery. As long as government is threatening to take over nearly every large unsuccessful enterprise, investors will be afraid to invest in anything else, for fear of getting into competition with a government owned (hence infinitely supported) enterprise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/opinion/09krugman.htm

Paul Krugman thinks that Obama's economic plan as now presented is nearly certain to fail, and that Obama needs to start spending a lot more money really soon.

That's odd. Didn't PK write just last week or so that the federal budget was "about right"?

To date, Obama's "change we can believe in" consists of mostly minor modifications to Bush's policies accompanied by major modifications of Bush's rhetoric. The "stimulus" bill and "omnibus" bill are the biggest changes, and Paul Krugman now says that Obama is not borrowing anything like enough money. I think that you can forget about Republicans for a while: Obama's biggest problems are with liberals and Democrats.

1-2-3... pin

>> Other than that, Obama has largely adopted Bush's foreign policy...

> Well Mike, since you're a rightie/libertarian type, are you happy about that?

Double-reverse devil's advocate,
Body slam...
Pin.

Call a medic someone. I think Mickey swallowed his tongue...

"[H]as anyone else noticed that the since there is a Democrat in the Oval, everything became his fault at 12:01 pm on January 20 -- but everything that went wrong on 43s watch was Clinton's fault?"

Because Republicans are responsible for nothing. That is the entire point. They're innocent.

"Karl Rove is now trying to argue that Bush had no important role in the Wall Street bailout last fall. I often wonder if he can even hear the words coming out of his mouth."

Maybe Rove is right, and that raises the question of who was the President for the last 8 years?

"Karl Rove is now trying to argue that Bush had no important role in the Wall Street bailout last fall. I often wonder if he can even hear the words coming out of his mouth."
I made the mistake of argueing with a conservative friend about this very point. His take was GW passed the measure to appease the President elect. I told him that was very nice of GW considering he would not even let the President elect stay at the White House before he took office.

Mike K wrote: I only want his economic policies to quickly show how bad they are so we can get things back on track before the Dow hits 1,000. I fear it may be too late. This is not all Bush's or Obama's fault but Obama is wasting money on Democrat pork blah blah blah...

Really, why do we need the parody "Myke K" when the genuine article is this ridiculous?

Matthew R Marler wrote: I think that you can forget about Republicans for a while: Obama's biggest problems are with liberals and Democrats.

As long as Republicans like you operate with the gleeful bad faith and dishonesty you bring to your postings here, Republicans and you will continue to be the problem.

Jackass.

"[H]as anyone else noticed that the since there is a Democrat in the Oval, everything became his fault at 12:01 pm on January 20 -- but everything that went wrong on 43s watch was Clinton's fault?"

Wrong! The Start Date for the Obama Debacle was November 4th according to the wingnuts. To the wingnuttiest, it's even earlier - it's whenever the stock market started declining. That's Obama's fault because that's when it became inevitable that he'd win.

So obviously it's his fault. What happened 8 months into Bush's term doesn't count, but Obama's responsible for the economy from 8 months BEFORE he took office.

Re the Dean comment which remains linked to an inaccurate presentation of Dean's new job, how about a little fairness here? Why no correction? What was Dean supposed to do, wait around forever for crumbs to be thrown him by an exceedingly ungrateful administration which treated him shabbily?