Bailouts

Who cares if we're like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, careening in his pickup toward the brink of the rock quarry?  At least we're moving fast!That seemed to be Claire Shipman's logic in urging speed in the implementation of the stimulus plan. The ABC correspondent made her curious comment today during the roundtable segment of This Week.CLAIRE SHIPMAN: Don't you think that, I mean as George […

Newsweek's Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas are tired of all this talk of socialism. We need to stop talking about yesterday's news, they say, and embrace the great new fact that America is already a socialist country. They chortle that America is just like France. Meacham and Thomas chide Sean Hannity for using socialism as a dirty word because it "seems strangely beside the point." The pair is…

Stimulometer on the Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, February 5, 2009.

Roughly five months after Joe Biden informed the nation that paying higher taxes is patriotic, it now appears radically increasing government spending and the federal debt is as well.At least that's what one gets from a New York Times piece Saturday applauding a Senate compromise on President Barack Obama's stimulus package.Here are the paragraphs where patriotism was prominently mentioned (…

Say goodbye to hope and change. It's time to embrace the politics of doom and gloom. MSNBC host Contessa Brewer, in an interview that seemed a lot like a lobbying campaign for the stimulus set for a vote in the U.S. Senate, quizzed Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., about the possibility that his vote against a stimulus bill could send the country spiraling into a Depression - and endanger the public's…

He might be on the Forbes list of billionaires with a net worth of $1.3 billion and he may appear frequently in the financial media, but Pimco's Bill Gross doesn't have a grasp of how much "trillions" are. Gross recently called for a massive government intervention or face certain catastrophe.  "This economy requires support from the government, a check from the government in some form or…

Have you ever wondered how the geniuses who report business news know why the stock market opens or closes up or down on any given day -- especially when they venture into political explanations? I received this e-mail from CNN just after the markets opened: Gosh, those e-mail drafters at CNN are smart. Who knew that the markets want the stimulus package so bad? Can't you hear, senators? The…

Chris Matthews is rooting for Barack Obama to get his so-called stimulus package passed so much, he offered him advice on how to sell it, on Thursday night's "Hardball," and cautioned him if he doesn’t succeed in that sales job he'll "let us down." Matthews, the former Jimmy Carter speechwriter, offered the following piece of advice to Obama on the February 5 edition of "Hardball":

It's time to wave the white flag and surrender to "post-partisan" unity. Yes, it's time for conservatives to abandon core principles and just allow the Pelosi/Reid/Obama pork-a-palooza, also known as the stimulus or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009, to pass into law. At least that's what one Newsweek columnist would have conservatives do. Now is not the time for political…

On Thursday's "Today" show NBC reporters offered little skepticism of Barack Obama's dictations to corporate America, instead buttressing Obama soundbites with sloganeering as, Meredith Vieira declared, "President Obama lashing out at Wall Street and clamping down on corporate fat cats," and Savannah Guthrie underlined, "The President bashed Wall Street," and "took a shot across the bow." The "…

While most of the liberal media gush and fawn over President Barack Obama's plans to radically expand government while imposing constraints on the private sector and ridiculing companies for actually wanting to make a profit -- oh the humanity!!! -- Fox News's Glenn Beck Wednesday night asked a question that should be on the minds of all Americans:When did socialism become a happy thing for us?…

If former President George W. Bush said 500 million Americans are losing their jobs each month, do you think media would report it?Probably every hour on the hour until all 300 million Americans had heard about it, right?Well, during a press conference on an undetermined date, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.) -- you know, the second in line for presidential succession right behind the vice…

Here are the January 2009 results (source articles - Detroit Free Press, Associated Press; December 2008 results on the right are from this USA Today report [scroll to bottom left at article]): General Motors - Down 48.9%Ford - Down 40.3%Chrysler - Down 54.8%Toyota - Down 31.7%Honda - Down 27.9%Nissan - Down 29.7%Relatively minor players Subaru and Hyundai posted gains (that's right) of 8% and…

The stimulus package being discussed on Capitol Hill contains a "Buy American" provision that smells a tad like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 which most economists believe turned a bad recession into the Great Depression.Despite such overtones, press members on this side of the Atlantic have mostly failed to make this connection, or, at the very least, chosen not to share it with their…