Some Updates on the Stimulus Bailout…..It is at mid-stride!

Quietly something is going on in the Bailout program America adopted a year ago…..

I often reminf=d my fellow Dog pound members that the media…and thefore the public have short memories…..

I found this piece in MyDD by Jerome Armstrong to remind me about the status of the Stimulus program that Obama signed into law…

While people like TPL here laments the program…..

The fact is…… the program is JUST beginning to reach it’s highpoint...

I have mentioned in posts months ago that the program is set up to infuse the maximum amount of capital into the Economy from now untill the middle of NEXT YEAR…

That is no coincidence since the Democrats will be starting their run for the 2012 Presidential election at about that time….

So the program is quietly running and making sure that the DEmocrats have a ACe to play before the next big election cycle….

The US Economy is quietly being funded for the next year by the government….

Which is ….‘too big to fail’….

Sarah Palin……on Carly Fiorina……

From MyDD……

Palin writes this on Facebook……

The title of her comment was….”Lets shake up California…..”

I’d like to tell you about a Commonsense Conservative running for office in California this year. She grew up in a modest home with a school teacher dad, worked her way through several colleges, and then entered an arena where few women had tread. Through a combination of hard work, perseverance, and common sense, she proved the naysayers wrong to reach the top of her field, where she led with distinction – facing hard truths, making tough decisions, and showing real leadership through a rocky transition period. Where others had failed, her company had weathered the storm and settled on a stronger new foundation.

Her name is Carly Fiorina, and I’m proud to endorse her for U.S. Senate.

Carly is the Commonsense Conservative that California needs and our country could sure use in these trying times. Most importantly, she’s running for the right reasons. She has an understanding that is sorely lacking in D.C. She’s not a career politician. She’s a businesswoman who has run a major corporation. She knows how to really incentivize (sic) job creation. Her fiscal conservatism is rooted in real life experience. She knows that when government grows, the private sector shrinks under the burden of debt and deficits. We can trust Carly to do the right thing for America’s economy and to make the principled decisions she has throughout her professional career……

More……..

Wall Sreet and Talking out of both sides of your mouth……

I wrote about Obama and bashing Wall Street while having his fundraising hand out…..

This from Jerome Armstrong over @ MyDD.Com

Daniel this one’s for you and TPL……

How much money has Obama taken from Goldman Sachs? Should he return it?

Bonus current thematic follow-up: What level of the dimensional chess is the move by Goldman Sachs to hire Obama‘s former personal White House counsel during the first year of his presidency?

My my, what the revolving doors lead to nowadays.

More……..…..and Comments (the real interesting part! )

Romney and Obama…..already?

This from Jerome Armstrong over @ MyDD.Com

The CNN poll shows Romney as being the slight frontrunner among the GOP 2012:

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney 22%
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin 18%
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee 17%
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich 8%
Texas Congressman Ron Paul 8%
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty 5%
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum 5%
Indiana Congressman Mike Pence 4%
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour 1%

This morning at the AAPC pollies conference, I listed to Stan Greenberg describe the recently passed HCR as a bill based on Republican ideas (individual mandate, market-driven), and a number of writers have pointed this out lately.

For More of this piece…..

A view on the vote on the Healthcare Bill from MyDD……

A little bit of a historical view  (and commentary ) on the upcoming Bill from Nathan Empsall @ MyDD.Com…..

How’s this for history? The first black President and the first female Speaker of the House just brought America’s health insurance system from the 19^th century to the 21^st century, doing what no politician before them was able to achieve.

The new law, while insuring 30 million and lowering the deficit, is not perfect. It does little to address cost containment. It contains a mandate without strong enough subsidies. The Medicare reimbursement issue persists. You might blame Barack Obama for these imperfections. You might say that had he shown more forceful leadership, he would have had a stronger bill. And you might be right. But consider this:

In 1993, President Clinton tried to pass health care reform, and didn’t even get a floor vote.

In 1974, President Nixon tried to pass health care reform, but couldn’t quite close the deal with the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson opted to pass Medicare rather than universal coverage, believing it more politically doable.

In 1945, President Truman, like Clinton, proposed universal health care but was unable to get a vote.

In 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to pass universal health care, but thought it too politically unpopular and didn’t even try.

In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt campaigned on the promise of universal health care and couldn’t even recapture the White House.

More…….

Senator’s Schumer and Graham approach the White House on Immigration Reform…..

As a follow-up on the piece the Dog did a day or two ago….we now find that two Senator’s mentioned above have already spoken to the White House about attaching some form of Immigration reform to the Healthcare Bill…..

[ Schumer and Graham ]

To the Dog…. this a back channel admittance by Graham that 1) Immigration will be nearly impossible to go it alone…..and 2) That he expects the Healthcare Bill to pass…….

One other thought…though Graham is in trouble with hard righter’s in South Carolina…..he is well aware that the Latino/Hispanic voter numbers are increasing in his state…..

Oh, yea….You all know Schumer is a Democrat and Graham is a Republican….right?

Here’s the MyDD piece by Charles Lemos…….

An Inkling of Bipartisanship on Immigration Reform

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, travelled to the White House to present the President with a three-page blueprint for a bipartisan agreement to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. Details of the proposal were not released but Senator Graham noted that some of the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs.

Some more background from the Los Angeles Times:

Graham also said the proposal included “a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States.” He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic.

“We’re not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we,” Graham said. “But we need a system so they don’t get an advantage over others for citizenship.”

So far, so good, but Senator Graham also linked progress on immigration to the healthcare bill now winding its tortuous path through the Congress.

In a statement after the Obama meeting, Graham predicted that their effort would collapse if Senate Democrats proceeded with a strategy to pass a healthcare bill through a simple majority vote — a process known as “reconciliation.” Senate leaders say they are committed to doing just that.

“I expressed, in no uncertain terms, my belief that immigration reform could come to a halt for the year if healthcare reconciliation goes forward,” said Graham, who portrayed the document handed to Obama as “a work in progress.”

Graham added: “For more than a year, healthcare has sucked most of the energy out of the room. Using reconciliation to push healthcare through will make it much harder for Congress to come together on a topic as important as immigration.”

The President had earlier met with a group of 14 immigration advocates that stressed to the President the urgency of moving forward with a plan that rationalizes the nation’s dysfunctional immigration policies. There are an estimated 12 million people believed to have entered the US illegally. In the fiscal year that ended in September 2009, the U.S. deported 388,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security — up from 369,000 the year before.

After meeting for more than an hour with Obama, immigration advocates that included leaders from the National Immigration Forum, La Raza and the SEIU told reporters they want Schumer-Graham blueprint released before a planned March 21 demonstration at the Capitol, with a bill introduced in the Senate soon thereafter.

Immigration advocates seemed most pleased. Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the President agreed to help get a legislative framework out before the public in advance of the rally.

Hispanics supported President Obama in the general election by a two to one margin. The most recent polling shows that while the President’s approval rating among has slipped since its peak at 73 percent last Spring, it still remains above 60 percent.

Senator's Schumer and Graham approach the White House on Immigration Reform…..

As a follow-up on the piece the Dog did a day or two ago….we now find that two Senator’s mentioned above have already spoken to the White House about attaching some form of Immigration reform to the Healthcare Bill…..

[ Schumer and Graham ]

To the Dog…. this a back channel admittance by Graham that 1) Immigration will be nearly impossible to go it alone…..and 2) That he expects the Healthcare Bill to pass…….

One other thought…though Graham is in trouble with hard righter’s in South Carolina…..he is well aware that the Latino/Hispanic voter numbers are increasing in his state…..

Oh, yea….You all know Schumer is a Democrat and Graham is a Republican….right?

Here’s the MyDD piece by Charles Lemos…….

An Inkling of Bipartisanship on Immigration Reform

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, travelled to the White House to present the President with a three-page blueprint for a bipartisan agreement to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. Details of the proposal were not released but Senator Graham noted that some of the elements included tougher border security, a program to admit temporary immigrant workers and a biometric Social Security card that would prevent people here illegally from getting jobs.

Some more background from the Los Angeles Times:

Graham also said the proposal included “a rational plan to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the United States.” He did not elaborate on what the plan would be. But in a recent interview, he suggested that onerous measures were unrealistic.

“We’re not going to mass-deport people and put them in jail, nor should we,” Graham said. “But we need a system so they don’t get an advantage over others for citizenship.”

So far, so good, but Senator Graham also linked progress on immigration to the healthcare bill now winding its tortuous path through the Congress.

In a statement after the Obama meeting, Graham predicted that their effort would collapse if Senate Democrats proceeded with a strategy to pass a healthcare bill through a simple majority vote — a process known as “reconciliation.” Senate leaders say they are committed to doing just that.

“I expressed, in no uncertain terms, my belief that immigration reform could come to a halt for the year if healthcare reconciliation goes forward,” said Graham, who portrayed the document handed to Obama as “a work in progress.”

Graham added: “For more than a year, healthcare has sucked most of the energy out of the room. Using reconciliation to push healthcare through will make it much harder for Congress to come together on a topic as important as immigration.”

The President had earlier met with a group of 14 immigration advocates that stressed to the President the urgency of moving forward with a plan that rationalizes the nation’s dysfunctional immigration policies. There are an estimated 12 million people believed to have entered the US illegally. In the fiscal year that ended in September 2009, the U.S. deported 388,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Department of Homeland Security — up from 369,000 the year before.

After meeting for more than an hour with Obama, immigration advocates that included leaders from the National Immigration Forum, La Raza and the SEIU told reporters they want Schumer-Graham blueprint released before a planned March 21 demonstration at the Capitol, with a bill introduced in the Senate soon thereafter.

Immigration advocates seemed most pleased. Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said the President agreed to help get a legislative framework out before the public in advance of the rally.

Hispanics supported President Obama in the general election by a two to one margin. The most recent polling shows that while the President’s approval rating among has slipped since its peak at 73 percent last Spring, it still remains above 60 percent.

Have Democrats turned the corner?

I hope so….

For the last few weeks I have seen evidence that the Democrats…as a party have begun to re-bound from the dark days of the end of last year……

Generic polls really don’t mean anything since each House and Senate race stands on its own…..but the results of several of the polling services are good to see nevertheless…

Here’s the Piece……from Nathan Empsall over @MyDD.Com……

From Florida to Colorado, Dems Clawing Back Up

by Nathan Empsall, Wed Mar 10, 2010

Kos had a headline last week that said, “The tide is turning.” I wouldn’t go quite that far – the generic ballot isn’t Charlie Cook bad, but it’s still not good – but it is true that Democrats have seen a spate of good news lately, both in terms of polls and policy, and I think more is on the way.

Part of the good news is that the DCCC is going on offense, as Jonathan highlighted this morning. We will lose House seats, but the best way to blunt those losses is to flip some red seats, and the GOP has targeted nine incumbents and four open seats.

They do so with certain polls at their back. Two of the last three generic ballot polls give Democrats a lead, and the third is from Rasmussen. Ipsos/McClatchy’s ten point lead is probably an outlier as well, but even ignoring both Rasmussen and Ipsos, we still have a 47-44 Gallup lead. It’s a smaller lead than Dems usually need to do well, but I’ll take it.

In Senate politics, Rep. Kendrick Meek is running surprisingly strong in Florida. According to PPP, likely Repub nominee Marco Rubio is ahead of Meek by just 44-39, “and because there are a lot more undecided Democrats (20%) than Republicans (12%) the race is realistically probably even closer than 5 points.” Perhaps even more importantly, “Meek leads 41-34 with independents, a very rare outcome in this political climate when independents are usually leaning strongly toward the GOP.” In New York, Kirstin Gillibrand’s favorable keep on climbing. Per Rasmussen, that somewhat conservative firm, her approval spread is now 50-37. In November, it was 40-37, and in September, it was a net negative of 39-42.

Certain Governors’ races are looking good, too, including three pick-up opportunities. First, in Nevada, a poll out Sunday is the sixth in a row to show Democrat Rory Reid leading Jim Gibbons – Rasmussen has him up 44-36 despite his father’s down-ticket drag. In Georgia, a state that has voted Democrat for President just three times in 48 years, the likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate is leading all potential opponents. Another PPP poll shows former Gov. Roy Barnes beating Republicans 40-39, 41-36, and 43-38. Another red state where I look forward to the Governor’s race is my native Texas, where our best candidate since Ann Richards goes against an incumbent with a 32% approval rating. And though it would be a hold rather than a pick-up, it looks like Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper has regained the lead inColorado.

These encouraging numbers come in the midst of a bad political environment for Democrats, and it’s an environment that’s only likely to get better. Democratic candidates fare poorly when their party fares poorly, and the party may be about to run into some welcome successes: The Census Bureau’s coming hiring blitz will knock half a point off the unemployment rate, yesterday’s bipartisan White House meeting suggests the Kerry-Graham clean energy bill is inching towards passage, and health care reform is in the endgame. February groundhogs are not October pumpkins, so it makes sense that February’s political messes won’t be October’s messes.

MyDD and Charlie Cook discuss his call on the Democrats chances in 2010…..

MyDD’s Jonathan Singer exchanged thoughts with Charlie Cook on his call that Democrats could lose up to 30 seats in the House in November’s mid-term elections……

From Singer……

The past few weeks and months I have been writing quite a bit about my view, contrary to those held by many inside the Beltway and Charlie Cook specifically, that the Democrats’ control of the United States House of Representatives is all but lost at present. Don’t get me wrong, I am not so obtuse to believe that the political environment favors the Democrats. But I just don’t buy the notion that the Republicans are on the verge of retaking the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

Yesterday I wrote a post noting internal Democratic polling showing one of the red state Democratic incumbents the Cook Political Report currently rates in the “tossup” category leading by margins well in excess of 20 points against named challengers. “If the Republicans can’t even be competitive in an R+16 district featuring a freshman Democrat in a race Cook now labels as ‘a tossup,'” I asked, “how, exactly, are they supposed to win back the 40 seats they need to regain a majority in the chamber?”

Charlie has been kind enough to respond with four comments on my post. I have included the full text of each comment below the fold, for those interested. Here are a few grafs culled from these comments that seem to be representative.

Jonathan, I think what this poll suggests is that Democrats in tough districts who have opposed the Democratic Congressional leadership and the President on just about every important matter, have a decent chance of surviving.

My job, having started the Cook Political Report in 1984, is to call them as I see them. We saw a big wave coming in 1994 but underestimated it then. In 2006 we saw one and nailed it. We saw signs of problems and began writing and talking about it last summer and see little sign that we are wrong. If more Democrats had the cover that Bright had, maybe we would be.

Yes, we have been writing “Dems in trouble” for about eight months now, but it isn’t much different from when we were writing that Republicans were in trouble during the 2006 and 2008 cycles. And Republicans were in fact in trouble. Our job is to watch races individually and look for trends. If the partisans for the side on the short end of the trends don’t like it, they typically attack the messenger. you can be sure that Republicans weren’t happy with what we were writing in the months leading up to the 2006 election, but we were right.

All of the points that Charlie makes are fair…….

What I would like to note, however, is that while I don’t dispute the particular points that Charlie is making, I still don’t buy his overall thesis. This isn’t the first time that the two of us haven’t seen eye-to-eye. The last time he came on the site to comment on one of my posts, back in December 2007, it was to defendthe projection made by his publication that the Democrats would pick up between two and eight seats in the House in the 2008 election — a projection I believed to be too dour towards the Democrats, about whom I wrote, “I’d be surprised if [they] didn’t net a pick up of at least 10-15 seats in the House next fall.” As it turned out, the Democrats netted a 21-seat pickup in the House that fall. In May 2006, hecommented similarly, downplaying my reading of his House race analysis as a major shift towards the Democrats (while, in fairness, also saying “one could reasonably say that the House is close to 50-50, perhaps a bit better for Democrats”). Earlier that year he stopped by MyDD to comment on a post I wrote questioning whether the Democrats would necessarily be worse off in the event that GOP Congressman Bob Ney retired instead of running for reelection. Cook wrote, “If you are a Democrat, you need to really hope that Bob Ney does NOT retire.” In the end, Ney did retire, but the Democratic nominee, Zack Space, won by a 24-point margin nonetheless.

For the entire piece.……

And the Dog also believes that Cook’s numbers are too high…...

A President’s Day Quiz from MyDD.Com…….Try it?

From Charles Lemos over @ MyDD.Com……

Happy President’s Day!

Here’s a Presidential trivia quiz, some easy, some rather obscure ones. Each President is the right answer only once.

1. Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln were each elected from Illinois but neither was born there. Name the only President born in Illinois.
2. This President had the shortest retirement of any President dying just 103 days after his term had expired. He was also the only Speaker of the House ever elected President.
3. Name the only President with a PhD. He earned his degree in History at Johns Hopkins.
4. At 5’4” he was the shortest President though he stands tall in our Constitutional history.
5. This President was described by one of his political opponents as “a man who steps out of the shower to take a piss.”
6. An accidental President, he was the last sitting President to run for the nomination of his party and not win the nomination. If it helps James Blaine would win the nod.
7. The first President not to be born in one of the 13 original states.
8. The last President to be a slaveholder.
9. Though James Madison withdrew a nomination that likely would have been rejected by the Senate, this President was the first to have a nominated cabinet member formally rejected by the US Senate. The rejected nominee was Roger Taney who would later become a member of the Supreme Court.
10. A number of Presidents never held elected office before winning the presidency but who was the first president not previously elected to any other public office? He was also the last Southerner to win the White House in the 19th Century.
11. The only President whose mother tongue was not English.
12. The only President to also serve on the Supreme Court.
13. This President was accused of fathering a child out of wedlock and taunted with the slogan: “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” When he won, the retort came back “Off to the White House, Ha Ha Ha.”
14. This President once served as ambassador to Colombia. In fact, that post was his last government office before being elected President.
15. This President coined the term “Founding Fathers” using it in his Inaugural Address.
16. The first President born in Texas though he grew up elsewhere and was elected President from yet another state.
17. At the time of this President’s death, he was serving in the House of Representatives. After suffering a cerebral hemorrhage on the floor of the House, he would die in in the Speaker’s Room inside the Capitol.
18. This President was administered the oath of office by his father. He is one of seven Presidents to have retake the oath of office.
19. At his Inauguration, this President insisted on having Barbados Rum served perhaps because that was the only country to which he had ever travelled.
20. The only president to have held the office of President Pro Tempore of the Senate.
21. The first President born west of the Mississippi. Though President Obama has claimed the title of the first Pacific President, this man arguably has a better claim having grown up in Oregon and gone to college in California. He was also the first President to be elected from California. And like Nixon, the second Californian to win the White House, a Quaker.
22. While six Presidents served as Secretary of State before being elected President and while two served as Secretary of War only one held both posts.
23. The last President to have served in the Civil War. His campaign for the Presidency is generally considered the first modern campaign even though he never left his porch to campaign.
24. The first President to live in the White House who his second night in the White House penned this pray. “Before I end my letter, I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.”
25. The first President to have a telephone installed at the White House. He was also one of four men to win the White House without winning the popular vote.
26. Washington refused to accept a salary but only one other President has refused to accept a salary as President donating it instead to charity.
27. The only President elected directly from the United States House of Representatives.
28. This President wrote in a letter to another President that he held that “a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing.”
29. The last Whig to be President of the United States.
30. Of the four US Presidents to win a Nobel Prize, the only one to win it after his term in office had expired.
31. This President while in office wrote in a letter that “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.”
32. The only President to have been a Rhodes Scholar.
33. His inauguration was the first to be televised nationally.
34. The first President to hail from Pennsylvania and the last to be born in the 18th century, he was the only bachelor President and is ranked by most historians as the worst ever.
35. Shortly after being elected President, this President told a Pastor and a leader of a poverty abatement program that he “didn’t understand how poor people think.” He later described his wealthy backers as “the have mores” and his “base.”
36. This President described being President as: “Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.”  In the end, he chose to not run for re-election.
37. At 42 years, 10 months and 20 days, he was the youngest President. Of his Presidency, he later wrote “I did not usurp power but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power.”
38. One of two Quaker Presidents, he’s the only person to be elected twice to both the Presidency and the Vice Presidency. And he’s the only President to have resigned the office.
39. One of the shorter Presidents at 5’6”, this President hailed from Indiana. He is only one of four Presidents to win the Presidency despite losing the popular vote. He was also the grandson of a former President.
40. One of eight-left handed Presidents (six since the end of World War II) and one of seven Presidents who had to retaken the oath of office but this President is the only President to win a Grammy.
41. The only President to hail from New Hampshire, he was attacked for being a “doughface” (a Northerner with Southern sympathies). He’s also the only President to affirm rather than swear the oath of office.
42. The only President born in Nebraska, he was a well-respected House Minority Leader whose goal in life was to become Speaker of the House. He never did, but instead took an unusual route to the White House.
43. This President said of conservatives: “A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.” He also reminded his antagonists that “Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” Words our current President might considering quoting.