Saturday Morning News & Notes

Big college games today. I like Alabama today but would love to see a close game. I'd also like to see Texas get waxed by Nebraska setting up a fight to see which non-big conference team gets the nod. I hate the BCS and have said a thousand times we need a damn playoff system.

Anyway, here's what's new:

-Democratic Senator Max Baucus nominated his mistress for US attorney in Montana--the state he represents. Now that's audacity. DC needs an enema in 2010; I wonder if it's covered under Obamacare.

-Our first black president brought hope for the African-American community. That hope was short-lived. Could Obama actually suffer because blacks feel betrayed and don't get out and vote in large numbers as they did in 2008? Short answer: no. Like every other Democrat in history he'll start paying attention to that particular bloc around election time telling them how much better they have it and then forget about them again after the election is over.

-A letter written by Thomas Jefferson is found at the U of Delaware.

-Proof that "ism's" that get too big and start spewing lies eventually fail.

-Playing fast and loose with TARP money. Imagine what they'll do with the money for socialized medicine that will accrue for several years before implementation.

-Over at RCP, Obama's aggregate job approval is below 50%. An epic free fall. That would be lower but CBS had him at a ridiculous 53%, which is well above everyone else.

-Update: Yes, San Francisco is actually considering public sex tents because of the growing instances of, well, public sex. I'm against them on the off chance I ever find myself there and Nancy Pelosi feels like getting down with her husband. I would probably be forced to burn my eyes out after seeing that.

New GM Head: "I Don't Know Anything About Cars"

Excellent news:

June 10 (Bloomberg) -- Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.

The 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed “Big Ed” said steering the nation’s largest automaker after bankruptcy is “a public service.” People who know him say he can meet GM’s need for the type of transformation he orchestrated at Dallas-based AT&T.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”

Nice.

Well, we now have a man who knows nothing about cars running "Government Motors" taking direction from a man who knows nothing about being president. What could go wrong?

Now Obama Thinks He's Above Supreme Court

Chutzpah for sure from The One. He may well be smacked down by the high court, however:

The Obama Administration argued Monday that no court, including the Supreme Court, has the authority to hear a challenge by Indiana benefit plans to the role the U.S. Treasury played in the Chrysler rescue, including the use of “bailout” (TARP) funds. The Indiana debt holders, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote, simply have no right to raise that issue, thus putting it out of the reach of the courts.

...All of the legal filings expected in the Chrysler case are now before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Circuit Justice, and thus she or the full Court could now act on the three applications to postpone the sale of most of the auto company’s assets to a new company representing a combination with Fiat, the Italian auto company.

Ginsburg or the full Court probably will act by mid-afternoon, since there is a 4 p.m. deadline set by the Second Circuit Court. After that, the plan can go forward, unless the Supreme Court decides otherwise. A federal bankruptcy judge and the Second Circuit have approved the deal. The Circuit Court is expected to issue one or more opinions Monday explaining its decision. The Supreme Court, however, does not have to wait for that in order to act.

I wish it was Alito instead of Ginsburg but she got the draw.

This is a power play of historical proportions and one that will test the checks and balances intended by the framers of the Constitution. A check on Obama here may well give investors some confidence that their investment will be somewhat protected but a decision to allow Obama to go forward would have the opposite effect.

The Supreme Court has the chance to put a stop on our march to socialism and Obama doesn't want anyone standing in his way, not even SCOTUS. Let's wait and see if Ginsburg has the guts to challenge him.

Tigerhawk has more.

Obama's First 100-Days: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

President Obama has been working in the Oval Office for 100 days now--well, he's been on the road for a great many of them but I digress. Let's grade him on his abilities thus far.

First, the good:

-He decided to keep Defense Secretary Robert Gates on to ensure that we have someone with a military background, intelligence and maturity running the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan. I guess he could have made Leon Panetta the SecDef since he knows as much about defense as he does about the CIA--not a damn thing on both counts.

-He released the "torture" memos. This would count as bad or even ugly since it will set back our intel-gathering efforts decades but it did light a fire under Cheney and has forced Obama to make a decision on whether he would release the rest that show that water boarding worked and saved hundreds of lives. Cheney requested them released, now the ball is in Obamas court.

-He hasn't closed Gitmo, we still have enough of a presence in Iraq to sustain our gains and he has beefed up the operations in Afghanistan where the current battle against al-Qaeda is taking place after forcing them out of Iraq.

-He has continued to decapitate the leadership of al-Qaeda in Pakistan using Predator drones. It's an effective strategy developed under Bush and has kept us safe.

The Bad:

-The TARP fiasco. It's a jumbled mess whereby we threw money out, have no idea how it's being spent, it hasn't helped and now the government won't take it back because they like the idea of nationalizing industry.

-The porkulus bill. It was nothing but a sop to Democratic senators and congressmen who could rain down money on their constituencies and hold on in the next election. It was written by Pelosi in concert with the most corrupt congress we've seen in decades. It was woefully short on actually providing any stimulus and is ripe for corruption on a scale that was unfathomable just a half-year ago.

-Cabinet selection madness. He vowed to not have lobbyists working for him and has more than Bush ever dreamed of. He nominated a tax cheat to head Treasury and has had numerous others bail because they had tax problems. If this isn't the epitome of amateurism, i don't know what is.

The Ugly:

-Bowing to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The press went nuts when Bush held his hand but Bush never showed subservience that would signal to the Arab world that we are truly weakened. Obama did just that.

-The Gordon Brown gift kerfuffle. How pathetic that our greatest ally gives us a pen carved from a anti-slaving ship and Obama gives him DVD's that don't even work in Britain? For crying out loud, he gave the Queen a friggin' I-Pod. Plus, he tossed a bust of the greatest and most-pro-American statesman to ever live out the Oval Office door the day he arrived.

-Glad-handing with despots and thugs. Obama went to a summit featuring such America haters as Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega and sat through diatribes about the evil of America without saying anything. He accepted a book from Chavez that blames the US for all of South America's ills and blamed America for guns in Mexico. Next he'll blame us for AIDS and excessive gas from eating broccoli.

-His European America Suck tour. He wowed the leftist populations and pissed off the leaders. Effective strategy indeed. He made us more of a pariah than Bush ever did.

So all in all, it's been a nightmare 100-days. The honeymoon has been waning and now people will not be so apt to give him the benefit of the doubt. The media has been compliant but we are seeing some break out and point out that the emperor has no clothes on occasion. Let's hope the nation is still standing a hundred days from now.

Geithner Keeping a Close Eye on Bailout $...or Not

Tim Geithner was the only man who could save the economy according to Obama. Despite the fact that he failed to pay taxes and would oversee the Treasury Dept...nothing to see there.

No, Geithner was going to be our watchdog and ensure that the money we doled out was used for its intended purpose like getting credit freed up and propping up banks. It appears he was incredibly wrong on the former and is looking like a complete buffoon on the latter:

In the first major disclosure of corruption in the $750-billion financial bailout program, federal investigators said Monday they have opened 20 criminal probes into possible securities fraud, tax violations, insider trading and other crimes.

The cases represent only the first wave of investigations, and the total fraud could ultimately reach into the tens of billions of dollars, according to Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the bailout program.

The disclosures reinforce fears that the hastily designed and rapidly changing bailout program run by the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve is going to carry a heavy price of fraud against taxpayers -- even as questions grow about its ability to stabilize the nation's financial system.

You're doing a heckuva job, Timmy.

And what of the plan to buy up toxic assets? It seems just as well thought out as the bailout plan was:

Indeed, much of the 247-page report released in Washington today by Barofsky's office focuses on a segment of the bailout that is only now being put into motion -- an effort to buy toxic securities from banks and other investment groups in which the federal government would provide up to 92.5% of the money. That effort could be the most vulnerable to fraud, Barofsky said, because investors would have so little at risk.

Now that's what I'm talking about, baby. Allow the ones who raped clients when they were privatized pilfer the taxpayer now that they're nationalized. They put the progress in "progressive" do they not?

Yeah, I for one feel just groovy about the state of the Treasury Dept. and the amazing work they've done there. They've destroyed 200+ years of hard work in three-months. They should be so proud of that accomplishment. Sure, they'll have a couple of trials and make a big deal about putting a few guilty guys away but the 99% who don't get caught will have a blast with our money personally handed them by Obama.

Maybe it's just me but after 100-days of hope and change, I'm a bit hope and changed out.

Pretzel Logic: Bailed Out Banks to Buy Toxic Assets

It makes sense in the the brave new world of Obamanation I guess:

US banks that have received government aid, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, are considering buying toxic assets to be sold by rivals under the Treasury’s $1,000bn (£680bn) plan to revive the financial system.

The plans proved controversial, with critics charging that the government’s public-private partnership - which provide generous loans to investors - are intended to help banks sell, rather than acquire, troubled securities and loans.

I get it, the banks who had to be bailed out because they possessed toxic assets are now going to but more toxic assets that got us to the point we are now at where we keep pumping money into their coffers. This is approved by the government that forced banks to give loans that resulted in the toxic assets in the first place. Makes sense.

Rep. Spencer Bachus sums it up thusly:

Mr Bachus added it would mark ”a new level of absurdity” if financial institutions were ”colluding to swap assets at inflated prices using taxpayers’ dollars.”

It's a shell game all right. The toxic assets are still, in fact, toxic and no amount of selling, buying or trading will change that fact.

So how does the esteemed Obama economic team expect this to work?

Officials want banks to sell risky assets in order to cleanse their balance sheets and attract new investments from private investors, limiting the need for the further government funds.

Many experts think it is essential to take these assets from leveraged institutions such as banks that are responsible for the lion’s share of lending, into the hands of unleveraged financial institutions such as traditional asset managers, where they will have much less impact on the flow of credit to the economy.

So the "risky assets" will be sold to unleveraged firms and that's expected to fix the system how? They're still out there and still bad but just in someone elses hands now.

We should have let them all fail and whoever was left standing would be the winner. The Obama administration is rewarding firms filled with cronies by helping them weather this hurricane while banks and other firms who played by the rules and didn't dabble in toxic assets are getting screwed. Just like that percentage of the US population who bought above their heads and now can't pay for it are rewarded.

Until taxes are cut on business allowing them to hire again and employ people, this issue will never be resolved and we'll continue to throw bad policy after bad paper.

The amateur hour continues apace.

Update: More here. The taxpayer had better be ready to bend over repeatedly.