Tired of hearing the grim truth about their economic future, Americans demanded that the bald-faced lies resume immediately, particularly whenever politicians feel the need to divulge another terrifying problem with Wall Street, the housing market, or any one of a hundred other ticking time bombs everyone was better off not knowing about.

In addition, citizens are requesting that the phrase, “It will only get worse before it gets better,” be permanently replaced with, “Things are going great. Enjoy yourselves.”

“I thought I wanted a new era of transparency and accountability, but honestly, I just can’t handle it,” Ohio resident Nathan Pletcher said. “All I ever hear about now is how my retirement has been pushed back 15 years and how I won’t be able to afford my daughter’s tuition when she grows up.”
…
“I know when he’s telling the truth, and it bothers me,” recently laid-off schoolteacher Mary Hanover said of Obama. “He gets this serious expression on his face and says things like, ‘This is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.’ Who needs to hear that? For Christ’s sake, smile a bit and say we just found a diamond mine under Montana that’s going to pay for everything. I’ll believe you.”

Discuss

1) Thank God Barack Obama is the President and not some idiot Republican.

2) As the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) takes steps to deal with this crisis, the DHHS cabinet secretary confirmation is being held up by Republican abortion ideologues.

Thanks Republicans!

Q: What do Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and President Obama have in common?

Click here to find out. Continue reading →

I’ve been trying to think of what to say about Barack Obama’s economic speech today and have decided not to say anything except to tell you all to read it. The whole thing. Even though it’s long. It is not inspiring, except for the fact that the President of the United States is speaking to us all as adults. It is not a persuasive speech, but rather a explanation. The President is telling us the reasoning behind what his administration will be doing in his first term and why they will be doing it. He explains why they do not want to nationalize the bailed out banks, and why deficit spending is necessary in their view. He narrates the chain of events that led to this crisis and explains why “health care reform is entitlement reform.”

Here is the speech below the fold.
Continue reading →

One more day until the big event — and one more day to ponder the sheer hypocrisy of these tea party events.  One of the things I notice over the past week or ten days is how fast the folks trying to put this on are trying to re-spin the purpose of this thing.  They are trying really hard to downplay the crazy, make this look like a bi-partisan thing, restate the purpose to protest spending rather than taxes and of course, to plump up their more-patriotic-than-thou cred.  And very much like the guy who wrote the article below, I really want these people to explain where the hell they were when BushCo and the Republican Congress were busily burning down the house.  But now that someone is trying to put out the fire and rebuild, they want to stop all of that in favor of — what, exactly?  Even they don’t know.  More news of the crazy, but first DV wants to know what you would ask the teabaggers if you could.  News:

• Where were these Teabaggers during the Bush years?

Which leads to me wonder: where in the f*ck were these protesters during the administration of George W. Bush?

Bush, as you’ll recall, inherited a $128 billion budget surplus from Bill Clinton when he took office in 2001. Bush quickly squandered that and then proceeded to rack up gigantic budget deficits every year of his two terms in office.

Under Bush, the national debt grew by more than $4 trillion: the biggest debt increase of any president in U.S. history.

When Bush took office in 2001, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. At the end of Bush’s two terms, the debt had skyrocketed to more than $9.849 trillion. And remember: Bush enjoyed a Republican Senate and House of Representatives during most of his time in office.

Things weren’t helped along any by Bush’s illegal and totally unnecessary Iraq War. That disaster will probably wind up costing the U.S. $3 trillion. It would be nice if some of these Tea Party protesters asked for an immediate halt to the $10 billion a month that America continues to squander in Iraq every month to this day. But I suspect there won’t be too many “Stop the Iraq War” signs at these Tea Party events.

Like I said, where were these “tea party” protesters during the Bush years? Where were they when Bush was handing out billions of our tax dollars to his wealthy friends? Where were they when Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, was pocketing billions of dollars in closed, no-bid contracts? Where were they when $12 billion in cash disappeared without a trace after it was shipped to Iraq?

Obama has only been in office a few months. He inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Read the Whole Thing.

• Via Teablogging — Cryin’ Glenn Beck is backing out of being the keynote speaker at the San Antonio Teabagging.  (And Teablogging is also one of the homebases of the Teabag Infiltration Teams [TITs] reporting incognito from the teabaggings…)
• Historical Resonance FAIL — Lawyers, Guns and Money reports on a bit of weirdness from a Nebraska teaparty as celebrated by the Instapundit:
  

  Hundreds of Nebraskans chanted no taxation without representation in protest of increased government spending spawned by the stimulus bill at the state capitol Saturday.

  As they go on to note, Nebraskans certainly do have plenty of representation and most of these chanters got tax cuts. Matt Yglesias reads this and points out that every citizen of DC pays plenty of taxes and they really do have no representation. Do you think that we can get Nebraska ACORN to circulate petitions among the Nebraska teabaggers to support the DC folks getting some representation in Congress? While you’re at it, don’t miss Instaputz’ flashback to Why Dems Will Lose in 2006.