Heckuva Job, Barack

From Political Wire:

"It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced."

-- President Obama, quoted by Think Progress on April 2, 2010.

Just 18 days later a rig operated 41 miles off the Louisiana coast exploded and caused what may be the largest oil spill in history.

The picture above is one of those technologically-advanced oil rigs that generally don't spill anymore.

It is STILL spilling oil as I write this.

They haven't figured out how to shut the rig off.

It is leaking 5,000 barrels of oil per day.

Spill, baby, spill.

I Think We Just Might Have To Have An Accountability Moment

Political Wire reports that President Accountability has rolled out his strategy for the 2010 midterm elections:

In in a new video, President Obama lays out the 2010 election strategy for Democrats.

It essentially boils down to re-engaging the voters who propelled him to the White House in 2008. Obama also warns that only by keeping the House and Senate under Democratic control will he be able to pursue his agenda.

President Accountability says only by keeping the House and the Senate under Democratic control will he be able to pursue his agenda!

Who wants to break the news to President Accountability that all those teachers who voted for him and walked door to door for him and worked the GOTV machine for him on Election Day '08 and sent him their hard-earned cash WON'T be doing ANY of that this time around?

Not after Race to the Top.

Not after Central Falls, Rhode Island.

Not after his proposals in No Child Left Behind Jr. - the Obama Years.

Not after the administration encouraged that abomination of a bill down in Florida that would have banned teacher tenure and forced all teachers to take 50% of their compensation in merit pay tied to test scores and then didn't even have the guts to say they were FOR IT on the record.

Not this time.

Who wants to break the news to President Accountability that we want NOTHING to do with his agenda?

The number at President Accountability's temporary house is 202-456-1111.

Emails can be sent here.

Normally I say be polite when you call, but this time I say DO NOT be polite.

Be as mad as you ought to be by his pro-privatization/anti-teachers union policies and statements.

Let 'em know EXACTLY why you're not voting for Dems or sending them money or canvassing for them.

Call your senators and congressmen and let them know too.

With Obama at the lowest level of approval in his presidency (see here and here for the latest) and with health care "reform" very unpopular, Dems are going to be VERY open to teachers and union members telling them EXACTLY why we're NOT voting for them.

They might even stop taking teachers unions for granted if we make them pay a political price for Obama's policies.

So start calling.

Tell President Accountability it is time for his own "accountability moment."

Clueless in D.C.

Wow - President Obama is even dumber than I thought.

First, a story from Bloomberg News:

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

Now Paul Krugman's reaction to Obama's comments:

Oh. My. God.

First of all, to my knowledge, irresponsible behavior by baseball players hasn’t brought the world economy to the brink of collapse and cost millions of innocent Americans their jobs and/or houses.

And more specifically, not only has the financial industry has been bailed out with taxpayer commitments; it continues to rely on a taxpayer backstop for its stability. Don’t take it from me, take it from the rating agencies:

The planned overhaul of US financial rules prompted Standard & Poor’s to warn on Tuesday it might downgrade the credit ratings of Citigroup and Bank of America on concerns that the shake-up would make it less likely that the banks would be bailed out by US taxpayers if they ran into trouble again.

The point is that these bank executives are not free agents who are earning big bucks in fair competition; they run companies that are essentially wards of the state. There’s good reason to feel outraged at the growing appearance that we’re running a system of lemon socialism, in which losses are public but gains are private. And at the very least, you would think that Obama would understand the importance of acknowledging public anger over what’s happening.

But no. If the Bloomberg story is to be believed, Obama thinks his key to electoral success is to trumpet “the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.”

We’re doomed.

We are doomed.

Not only does Obama seem to believe the "free market capitalism" jive that allows these crony capitalists on Wall Street to rig the system, steal from the taxpayer and run the economy like a Reno casino while privatizing profits and shunting losses onto the public, but he wants to take these same values and ideas and apply them to public education.

Meaning crony capitalists will have a new punch bowl to slurp from and more new yummy profits to gobble up while shunting the losses onto the public.

But education, like the economy, will fail to get any better under Obama's stewardship.

Ruh, Roh

The corporate whores running the Obama administration would like you to think the economy is stabilizing and all will be well in no time at all.

You just have to close your eyes and trust.

Except they're full of shit.

Check out the headlines from the business pages today:

U.S. stocks reel as global economic worries return
Dow average sinks below 10,000 as session winds down; oil, gold dive

...

Investors sold off stocks in Portugal, Spain and Greece and the euro plunged on Thursday as market fears over the fiscal problems of debt-laden southern members of the euro zone widened.

...

The median forecast for nonfarm payrolls is for an increase of 5,000 after an unexpected 85,000 drop in December. The unemployment rate is seen rising to 10.1 percent from 10 percent in December. January's report will include the annual benchmark revision to payrolls data back to March 2008. The Department of Labor has estimated that the level of employment for the 12 months to March 2009 will be revised down by about 824,000, meaning the economy shed far more jobs than previously thought. Monthly payrolls from March 2008 to March 2009 will likely be revised.

...

In the week ending Jan. 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 480,000, an increase of 8,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 472,000. The 4-week moving average was 468,750, an increase of 11,750 from the previous week's revised average of 457,000.

And of course the option ARM resets about to occur in the housing market ought to keep foreclosures coming fast and furious and the commercial real estate market is pretty dismal too.

Fun stuff!

Heckuva job, free marketers!!!

Too bad President Obushma thinks these are the guys who ought to be running education policy into the ground just the way they've run the economy there...

UPDATE: On the plus, Attorney General Cuomo wants to hold Ken Lewis and the other Masters of the Universe at Bank of America accountable for fraud.

At least somebody is trying to hold these crooks accountable.

In Washington, the only people they seem to want to hold accountable is public school teachers.