Vicious Congress Slams AIG Angel to Hide Incompetence
March 22nd, 2009
AIG CEO Edward Liddy took on the ills of the insurance giant with a sense of public service not seen since titans of industry answered the same call during the great depression. His compensation for this task: $1 per year. None the less, the Congress needed a scapegoat to avoid scrutiny from passing a Stimulus Package that included a clause protecting those bonus payments paid by AIG that prompted the public outrage and these congressional hearings. While none of the congressmen grilling Liddy bothered to read the mammoth $787 billion stimulus bill before voting to pass it, they were more than happy to turn the public’s outrage over the $165 million in bonuses toward Liddy rather than having it reflect on their own incompetence and deception. Read the rest of this entry »
The throngs of youth and hopeful who had faith in Candidate Obama’s promise of change will dwindle as President Obama prepares to sign a bill crafted in Democratic committees on Thursday and rammed through Congress by Democratic majorities a day latter before anyone could possibly review the details of the monstrous package that exceeded 1,000 pages. It appears approximately $500 billion will be spent on infrastructure, education and public housing as dictated by Democrats. The only portion that will find it’s way into the economy immediately is the $287 billion in tax relief pleaded for by Republicans. The Congressional Budget Office called the plan a spending bill rather than a stimulus plan and added that future growth would be better served by doing nothing than the drag borrowing for the massive spending bill will cause. 
Shiites, Kurds, Christians and, most importantly, the Sunnis who boycotted the 2005 elections turned out in mass to participate in Iraq’s provincial elections today. Faced with threats of violence thousands or Iraqi security forces sealed the country’s borders, shut airports and banned vehicles in polling areas. Iraqi election officials gained accolades of U.N. and other foreign observers sent to monitor the election process. While the event was marred by mortar shells falling in Takrit, Saddam’s former home town, and a car bombing in Tuz Kharmatu where ethnic strife continues between rival Kurds and Turkman factions, proud Iraqis, men and women alike, crowded polling places, often with children in tow, to express their belief in their emerging democracy. 
Christians represent a dwindling minority of the Iraqi population. But those that remain were able to celebrate Christmas as an official holiday for the first time this year. While estimates vary greatly it is believed there are still a few hundred thousand Christians remaining in the country. Christian leaders in Iraq have stated the number has declined by two-thirds since the U.S. invasion of 2003. But this Christmas has come without the extreme levels of violence that drove so many out of Iraq during the same period in 2004 and subsequent years. 
Whenever I talk to Obama supporters, with little exception, they seem to impart their hopes and wishes upon the the vision of the candidate with little or no regard for what he has said or done. But then, he has made promises in his speeches that cover nearly every possible scenario. Whether it be NAFTA, health care, taxation, energy, the war in Iraq, his associations with shady characters, anti-American pastors, unrepentant terrorists or the bailout bill, he has constantly changed his story to cater to the feedback of the polls; move over Bill Clinton, there is a new master of chamillion politics. 
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, Democrat from California, began dragging Wall Street titans from failed institutions in front of his committee on Monday to answer for the world wide credit crisis that has devastated markets around the globe. There is no doubt, as confirmed by their own testimony, that greed in these institutions ran rampant with generous bonuses being dolled out to parting executives even as those institutions became insolvent and headed toward bankruptcy. These true confessions make for great theater and give those affected by the rapidly declining economy a target for their disgust and frustration but ignore the fact that the primary cause of the failures were the non-performing portfolios dominated by sub-prime mortgages generated in staggering dollar amounts under guidelines set by the quasi-government mortgage institutions of Fannie Mae [FNME] and Freddie Mack [FMAC]. 
Campaign politics came to a halt yesterday as Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama both attended ceremonies at the pit where the World Trade Center proudly stood as a symbol of the American free enterprise system prior to September 11, 2001. Families of victims and dignitaries gathered in Arlington, Virginia in the morning to dedicate a memorial to those who perished in the attack on the Pentagon that day. Others visited the temporary memorial at the crash site of United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where valiant Americans charged armed hijackers and thwarted their attack on the United States Capitol. Nearly all Americans regardless of political persuasions honored those who died on that horrible day seven years ago. 
All the glorious rhetoric about the achievements of the socialist revolution won’t put a Russian can opener on the shelves of Wal-Mart. Any hopes the former core of the Soviet Union and one time beacon of the world wide communist revolution would join the world economy with the reforms of Gorbachev and Yelstin have been dashed by the regressive rule of Vladimir Putin. For all practical purposes Russia is a resource rich third world country with nuclear weapons intent on reviving it’s expansionist aspirations using it’s energy resources to subdue Europe and expand it’s control of those resources by reasserting political control of any former republic that could supply energy to the West on it’s own. 
As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeated his threat to shut down the straight of Hormuz on Monday it becomes apparent that development of domestic oil supplies is as much a matter of national security as it is a solution for skyrocketing gasoline prices and all other petroleum related products. After dragging oil executives into hearings time and again [ 
Barack Obama warned us on Wednesday that his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, will try to scare us saying Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.” Anyone who rides a bus in a major metropolitan area from time to time is quite aware of, and comfortable with, the ethnic diversity we encounter. None of us would deny the trepidation we experience with the occasional presence of gang bangers, skinheads or mischievous teens we encounter regardless of our own ethnic composition. But I doubt our elected representatives have been inclined to take advantage of the experience in the districts or states they represent. Nor has the press that covers them.