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With polls predicting a clear win by Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election for the Senate seat vacated as a result of Senator Ted Kennedy’s death last summer, and the Democrats determined to pass Obama’s healthcare bill, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are scrambling to put together Plan B.
As noted here, there are several options under consideration.
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Despite President Obama’s quick flight to Boston on Sunday to try to rescue Martha Coakley’s faltering bid for the Senate seat vacated last summer, polls and others think his efforts just may be too late.
Speaking at Boston’s Northeastern University, Obama said: “Understand what’s at stake here, Massachusetts. Where we don’t want to go is backwards. I need leaders like Martha by my side so we can kick [passage of healthcare] into high gear, so we can finish what we’ve started.”
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From obscurity to prominence to possible victory, Massachusetts State Senator Scott Brown’s campaign for Teddy Kennedy’s seat in a special election on Tuesday, January 19, is receiving national attention. From a 30-point underdog, Brown has campaigned for the seat—which he says “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedys’ seat, it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat” — with his pledge: “I will send this [Obama healthcare] bill back.” And in so doing he has closed the gap so that several prominent pollsters are saying the race is too close to call.
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According to Newsweek, the dollar isn’t weakening, and even if it is, it isn’t Obama’s fault. On Tuesday, Daniel Gross iterated all the reasons that, according to conservatives, the American dollar should weaken. Conservatives, he said, blame the actions of the Federal Reserve with the lowering of interest rates to zero, printing money, and expanding the monetary base. They also blame the Obama administration for running up huge deficits in its efforts to restart the faltering economy.
More than $16 billion of investors’ money evaporated in Ponzi schemes in 2009, according to the Associated Press. Although the names Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford were in the headlines in 2009, many other Ponzi schemes were uncovered as the economy declined, making continued payouts to investors impossible.
As Warren Buffet said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
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Alabama Representative Parker Griffith announced on Tuesday that he is changing his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
Griffith, a member of the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, previously asked to be called just a Blue Dog, and now prefers to be called Republican, after changing party affiliations last week. He says he made the change because he can no longer align himself “with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy and drives us further into debt.”
When MSNBC headlined the report that existing home sales surged by 7.4 percent in November (according to the National Association of Realtors), it suggested that such an improvement boosted “recovery hopes.” Others jumped on the recovery bandwagon, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Alan Blinder.
According to Geithner, it’s now reasonable to expect “positive job growth” by spring and correct to assert that people should have confidence in an improving economy. “I think most people would say the economy actually is strengthening now,” he added.
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When ABC News asked if the “jobs summit” would make real progress or would just be “simply a glorified public-relations stunt,” it studiously avoided asking the real question: How can the prime movers that created the current economic “Great Recession” be expected to fix it?
For starters, where is the constitutional authority for the government to get involved in creating jobs, even if it could?
When Bob Schieffer of NBC News asked the rhetorical question: “…has going a trillion dollars in hock to one country [China] made us more secure?”, he was reminded of Everett Dirksen (Illinois Senator for nearly 20 years) and his famous comment: “…a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money!”.
The current account deficit, at the present moment, is over $12 trillion and climbing. About half of that debt is owned by foreign countries, most notably China (about $800 billion) and India (about $300 billion), with the balance owned by Japan, Germany, and others.
So what’s the big deal?
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