Obama and Brown Discuss DVDs

Liar, Liar...

At the beginning of the week, Chris Dodd (D- Conn) claimed he didn't know anything about the provisions in the bailout that would allow the AIG Executives their bonuses. Yesterday, Dodd admitted that he not only knew about the provisions, but that he was also the one that put them in the bailout--hence the name "Dodd Amendment." News is now coming out that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner may have also known of the bonuses as far back as Feb 28!

Now, Congress is considering a 90% tax on those bonuses in an attempt to make things right. What hogwash! I'm just as mad as the next guy that AIG received BILLIONS of dollars in bailout money, and then turned around and payed bonuses with it, but a retroactive tax isn't the way to go about fixing this mess. If Congress can do that (and it's questionable just how they could)...they can DANG SURE DO TO YOU TOO, BOYS AND GIRLS!

Oh and just to throw a little more fuel on the fire...care to guess who the two largest campaingn recipients of AIG's generosity were? CHRIS DODD and BARACK OBAMA! Nothing about this whole mess sounds shady to me...(***eyes rolling***)

Abraham Lincoln

 
So I said to him, "Barack, I know Abe Lincoln, and you ain't him."

Painting of "The Grand Ol' Gang" by Andy Thomas

Growing Up Too Fast

WARNING : I've been thinking about this post for a while. Recent conversations/events have prompted me to "put my thoughts on paper." If I upset you --which I've been known to do-- just add this to the growing list.

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Is it just me or does our society have some kind of fixation with wanting kids to grow up...as fast as possible? When I was a kid, many moons ago, we looked forward to certain milestones: the Junior/Senior Prom and Senior Graduation for instance. Today, there's Kindergarten Graduation, Fifth Grade Graduation, Eighth Grade Graduation, and finally, Senior Graduation. I only graduated once. I'm pretty sure it "took" that one time.

We also have the Sixth Grade Dance, the...oh, heck--just Slap-A-Grade-In-Front-Of-It Dance or Formal and that should cover it. I even heard about some kids that arrived at their Eighth Grade Dance in a LIMO! Getting to go to the Junior/Senior Prom was a big deal at our school. And you had to be a Junior or Senior to attend. I went both years...had a blast.

Then you've got stuff like beauty pagaents for little kids. Parents dress them up in adult looking clothes, complete with adult looking makeup. Since when was a three or four-year-old dressed up/made up like a two dollar hooker or a 30-year-old model considered CUTE?! Actually, I've seen some teens that look like that, too. And while I'm at it, I'm really wondering what parents are thinking when they let their daughters leave the house with their bra straps hanging out, their cleavage pushed out, and their low-rise jeans emblazoned with some catchy phrase or logo across their backside? (NOTE: Our pastor said recently, "If it's not for sale, rent or lease...dont' be advertising it." Makes sense to me.)

What's wrong with kids just being kids? They grow up fast enough as it is. And, frankly, they don't need to "graduate" from every stinkin' grade they pass. What's wrong with having just one or two special formal/type events IN YOUR ENTIRE schooling, i.e grades K-12. What in the world is there to look forward to if it's a yearly event? And I'm not advocating everyone dress like June or Ward Cleaver, but for crying out loud---PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! I'm tired of seeing your underwear.

Funny thing is, we have our kids growing up, looking like grownups, dressing like grownups, attending all of these "grownup" type events...then we get upset when they do something "grownup" like [fill in adult behavior here]. I think we're sending some mixed signals here.

"I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!"

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the first European leader to visit Obama since the Jan 20 inauguration. In honor of his visit, Brown presented Prez BO with the following gifts:

• A pen holder fashioned from the oak timber of HMS Gannet, a Navy vessel that served on anti-slavery missions off Africa.
• A framed commissioning paper for the HMS Resolute, a Royal Navy ship that came to symbolize British-American goodwill when it was rescued by the U.S. from icebergs and given to Queen Victoria. It is the sister ship of the HMS Gannet.
• A first edition of Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill, whose World War II partnership with President Franklin Roosevelt symbolized the U.S.-Anglo alliance.

BO gave the Prime Minister a set of 25 classic American movies to mark his historic visit to the White House. Brown reportedly tried to keep the present a secret, declining to say what movies were included in the set. ""One reason for the secrecy might be that the gift seems markedly less generous and thoughtful than the presents taken to Washington by the Prime Minister," London's Evening Standard newspaper reported.

According to another source, the movie set included ET, Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz. Now THAT is an historically significant gift.

Does anyone else get the feeling we've got a bunch of High School sophomores in Washington PLAYING GOVERNMENT??!! Where was the "Diplomacy Czar" on this one?! "Er, uh, Mr. President, with all do respect, I think a box set of DVDs from Blockbuster may be just a little bit...CHEAP!!!

Oh, and don't think for a minute that if George Bush had done the same thing, the media would have been ALL OVER this, talking about what a dope GW was. And by the way, Brown is NOT known to be a movie buff.

Source

Last Year's Business

Associated Press (01.06.09) :: "President-elect Barack Obama vowed Tuesday to bar lawmakers' pet projects from his massive economic stimulus plan and to bring unprecedented accountability to federal spending." Source

TIME/CNN (02.26.09) :: "On Tuesday evening, when President Barack Obama declared before a joint session of Congress that "we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks," House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, popped out of their seats like jackrabbits for a standing ovation. On Wednesday, those same House Democrats, led by Pelosi, passed a budget with, by some counts, nearly 9,000 earmarks, worth an estimated $7.7 billion." Source

Associated Press (03.02.09) reported today ::

President Barack Obama will break a campaign pledge and sign a budget bill laden with millions in lawmakers' pet projects, administration officials said.

Administration budget chief Peter Orszag and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel both downplayed the $410 billion spending bill and signaled Obama would hold his nose and sign it. Orszag said: "We want to just move on. Let's get this bill done, get it into law and move forward.

Said Emanuel: "That's last year's business."

Source

Translation: We lied. We know we lied; you know we lied. Now that that's out...let's move on. YOU need to get over it."