Mr. Geithner, please check your crystal ball because it appears to have a major malfunction!  Either something’s wrong with the ball or you’ve got a classic case of “operator error” going on.  You might look into borrowing your good buddy Barack Obama’s.  His crystal ball seems to be shooting fairly straight these days.  “Electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket,” anyone remember this gem?  He could start a 1-800-psychic line with that one!  Hey it might not be pretty, but at least it was truthful.

In an interview with Fox News on April 19, 2011, a little over three months ago, when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was asked if the U.S. was at risk of losing its AAA rating, he replied:

“No risk of that, no risk…you see the leadership of the United States of America, the President…the Republican leadership…the Democrats…recognizing now that this is the right thing to do for the economy.”

For some time now, the United States debt has been creeping up to the 100 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) mark.  That’s a disaster just waiting in the wind. It’s reminiscent of 2001 when the Bush Administration warned of potential problems and warned that financial giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could “cause strong repercussions in financial markets.”  In 2003, the White House upgraded the concerns to a “systemic risk” that could spread beyond the housing sector.  But U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D) told the House Financial Services Committee that the housing market was fine, stating, “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack are not in a crisis.”

In 2008, the housing market crashed, sending the economy in a downward spiral, from which we have not recovered.  You would think that our “leaders” would have learned their lessons from the past, especially from such a debacle just a few short years ago.  But with the passing of the recent budget hijacking, debt ceiling busting deal that our lawmakers recently compromised on, ignoring the warnings of the TEA Party, it is apparent that the lessons of history were short-lived.  Shortly after the deal was done, the unthinkable happened.  The US debt hit the 100 percent mark of GDP, the market tanked, and the US credit rating was downgraded from its AAA rating, with the real possibility of being downgraded again.

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There he goes again. Out on the campaign trail, President Obama is proposing more federal spending as his answer to sluggish growth and jobs. That won’t do it, Mr. President.

He wants more infrastructure spending, undoubtedly in the form of an infrastructure bank. That’s a terrible idea. It’s borrowed from Latin America, where bloated and corrupt bureaucratic construction agencies have helped bankrupt any number of countries in the past.

He wants to lengthen 99-week unemployment insurance, although numerous studies have shown that continuous unemployment benefits are associated with higher unemployment.

And he wants to extend the temporary payroll tax credit, which is not a permanent reduction in marginal tax rates, has no incentive effect, has not worked so far, and is really a form of federal spending — not real tax relief.

Earlier this week, when he signed the debt-ceiling bill, the president ranted on about the need to raise tax rates on successful earners, investors, and small businesses. He’s trying to bring back tax hikes as part of the phase-two special committee seeking additional deficit reduction, even though his own party rebuffed him on this in the late stages of the debt talks. All this is a prescription to grow government, not the economy.

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If you are the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company that has received $50 billion in federal bailout coin, there are certain things that you realistically shouldn’t say or do.

Both from a substantive policy and an optics perspective, you should walk a pretty straight line until We the People are made whole.

Behold General Motors (GM) CEO Dan Akerson – a man who obviously doesn’t adhere to this philosophy.

As we said back in March, Akerson is a foundational part of the Washington, D.C.-Wall Street crony capitalism nexus.

Akerson is not – and never has been – a car guy.  He himself said so.  What is he?  He is a DC-connected, Wall Street hedge fund big coin guy.

Akerson’s immediately preceding gig was Managing Director and head of Global Buyout for the incredibly inside-the-Beltway-connected Carlyle Group.

This hip-joined relationship with the federal Leviathan means Akerson’s a cardboard cutout for the real CEO of Government Motors – U.S. Treasury Secretary (and yet another fellow DC-Wall Streeter) Tim Geithner.

And from all we have since seen, Akerson is one giant toe on the Huge Government, Obama Administration line.

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From AFP:

US debt shot up $238 billion to reach 100 percent of gross domestic project after the government’s debt ceiling was lifted, Treasury figures showed Wednesday.

Treasury borrowing jumped Tuesday, the data showed, immediately after President Barack Obama signed into law an increase in the debt ceiling as the country’s spending commitments reached a breaking point and it threatened to default on its debt.

The new borrowing took total public debt to $14.58 trillion, over end-2010 GDP of $14.53 trillion, and putting it in a league with highly indebted countries like Italy and Belgium.

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Well, apparently I’m a terrorist.  At least according to the definition of a wide number of Congressmen, reporters, television personalities, and even – so it’s reported – the Vice President of the United States himself.

What did I do to earn this appellation?  Insist that the government live within its means and support politicians who believe likewise.  That’s it.

And for this, I am labeled – by officials of the United States government, no less – a terrorist.

Every dictionary I have consulted within the past 24 hours has defined terrorism as the use of “force” or “violence” to achieve political ends.  Nowhere have I seen terrorism defined as “the peaceful negotiation of budgetary issues through lawfully elected representatives.”  But there you go.  Liberals have never met a definition they wouldn’t defile; never met a word they wouldn’t distort to suit their own twisted ends.

Actual terrorism?  Understandable reactions to the racist imperialism of the warmongering West.   Insisting that the government not spend more than it takes in?  Unforgivable criminality.  Welcome to Liberal Land; watch your step coming through that looking glass.

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From The Associated Press:

President Barack Obama has signed legislation to increase the nation’s borrowing authority and avert a potentially catastrophic government default.

Obama signed the bill privately in the Oval Office little more than an hour after the Senate voted final passage. It capped months of contentious and partisan debate. The compromise bill paired an increase in the debt ceiling with promises of more than $2 trillion of budget cuts over the next decade.

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With more than 90 votes from Democrats, the House has passed the recently announced deal to hike the debt ceiling. From The Associated Press:

With barely a day to act, the polarized US House of Representatives have approved a massive austerity plan to avert a debt default that would have wreaked havoc through the global economy.

After eight months of often angry negotiations, the Republican-led House voted 269-161 on a package backed by President Barack Obama to raise the limit on US borrowing and enact at least $2.1 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.

The Democratic-led Senate was expected to approve the emergency measure in a noon (1600 GMT) vote Tuesday — scarcely 12 hours before a midnight deadline by which the world’s richest nation would run out of cash to pay its bills.

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From The Associated Press:

Ending a perilous stalemate, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders announced historic agreement Sunday night on emergency legislation to avert the nation’s first-ever financial default.

The dramatic resolution lifted a cloud that had threatened the still-fragile economic recovery at home—and it instantly powered a rise in financial markets overseas.

The agreement would slice at least $2.4 trillion from federal spending over a decade, a steep price for many Democrats, too little for many Republicans. The Treasury’s authority to borrow would be extended beyond the 2012 elections, a key objective for Obama, though the president had to give up his insistence on raising taxes on wealthy Americans to reduce deficits.

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From The Associated Press:

Riven by partisanship, the Republican-controlled House approved emergency legislation Friday night to prevent a threatened government default and bundled it off to swift and certain defeat in the Senate.

“We are almost out of time” for a compromise, warned President Barack Obama as U.S. financial markets trembled at the prospect of economic chaos next week.

The final outcome—with the White House and Senate Democrats calling anew for compromise while criticizing Republicans as Tuesday’s deadline drew near—was anything but certain.

The House vote was 218-210, almost entirely along party lines.

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I was shocked (er, sort of) to learn that each month the Treasury Department sends out 80 million checks to various recipients. That’s a little over 25% of the population. I guess it’s no surprise, however, when you consider only half the households in our country pay any income taxes.

Lately, President Obama has been beating the scare drum, suggesting those most vulnerable will not receive their monthly checks unless we increase the debt ceiling.  But there’s a dirty little secret that no one in the mainstream media is willing to tell you: the Government, through Barack Obama, decides who gets paid and who doesn’t. And if you don’t get your check, then it means he decided you were not important. Blame him.

It’s all about priorities, and as the chief executive, Barack Obama takes the pot of money the Congress confiscates for him via taxes and divvies it up. He decides which of the 80 million checks get paid based upon the revenue he has at his disposal. There is money coming into the treasury all the time, and there will be money to pay some (but not necessary all) checks if/when we reach the debt ceiling.

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With Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nv.) leading the charge that killed the Cut, Cap and Balance Act (it apparently was the “worst piece of legislation” he’d ever seen),  and a new deal to break the impasse over raising the debt ceiling looming, it’s appropriate to ask why Democrats hate the idea of a balanced budget amendment.

Americans are forced each day to live with a balanced budget – families can only spend more than their income for a short time without ultimately going into default.  Firms in a private market must live with a balanced budget or they’ll quickly exit industry.

So, why do Democrats hate the idea of a balanced budget amendment?  Such an amendment would force Congress to spend within its means.  What’s the problem with forcing expenses and revenue to equal each other?  It seems to make sense in the absence of some mechanism (like profits and losses in the private market) to incentivize a prudent use of resources, that politicians should be bound to spend within their means.

It’s not that Democrats don’t believe in fiscal discretion or think there are no consequences to amassing a massive debt for future generations to pay.  President Obama has repeatedly stated that deficit reduction is a priority, and he favors a “big deal” to both raise the debt limit and reduce spending by billions.  Democrats in Congress have supported these goals of working hard to reduce the deficit over the next decade.  Listening to lawmakers speak about their desire to cut spending, one would expect wide-spread bipartisan support for a balanced budget amendment.

Not so fast.

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In this, the third Age of Bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)’s $50 billion General Motors (GM) bailout (upped from $20 billion by President Barack Obama) is yet another unmitigated disaster.

But a few of the many failures:

• GM had to file for bankruptcy anyway.

• President Obama originally claimed we’d make money on our $50 billion.  Seven months later, the Administration admitted we’d lose more than $16 billion – and dishonestly claimed the loss they had said would be a profit was “less than the(y) originally expected.”

• GM last year claimed in a television ad campaign to have “repaid (their) government loan in full, with interest, five years ahead of the original schedule.”  Which was another total lie.  They had in fact paid back only a tiny fraction thereof – and had done so so with other government TARP money.

• So fraudulent was GM’s media-buy proclamation that there has been a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint filed against them.

• As of November 16, 2010 – more than half a year after the “paid in full with interest” ad – GM had only paid back $361 million.

• GM and Chrysler has been dominating the Forbes Worst Cars of the Year list.

• With the exception of the 2011 Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the 2011 Smart For Two and the 2011 Nissan Titan, the cars on the list are all American-made. Worse than that, they all come from two manufacturers: General Motors and Chrysler. Ford managed to avoid the list completely…. (GM) offerings from Chevrolet and Cadillac crowded the picture…

• GM has some work to do before it can regain a good reputation fleet-wide. Four GM-made vehicles–the Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, Chevrolet Colorado, and Chevrolet Aveo/Aveo 5–are ranked as among the worst on the market today. All but the Tahoe Hybrid qualified for the Worst Cars list last year as well.

• Probably also due at least in part to these distractions, GM has had to recall their cars – again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and….

As horrendous as all of this is, it can at least perhaps be written-off as the utterly predictable, yet unintentional, ruinous outcome of government involvement in the private sector.

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From The Associated Press:

Decrying a “partisan three-ring circus” in the nation’s capital, President Barack Obama criticized a newly minted Republican plan to avert an unprecedented government default Monday night and said congressional leaders must produce a compromise that can reach his desk before the Aug. 2 deadline.

“The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government,” the president said in a hastily arranged prime-time speech. He appealed to the public to contact lawmakers and demand “a balanced approach” to reducing federal deficits.

Obama stepped to the microphones a few hours after first Republicans, then Democrats drafted rival fallback legislation Monday to avert a potentially devastating government default in little more than a week.

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Regardless of where you stand on the budget debate the most fascinating result has been the undeniable realization that President Obama has been marginalized and is now fighting for a seat at the table. I believe it is a first in my lifetime that a sitting President has been removed from any political debate not to mention one as serious as our budget. It was made clear when Boehner left the White House over the weekend and said he would work with the Congress to fashion a solution. There can be no question that Boehner’s political skills and Obama’s lack of them created this vacuum. The son of a bar tender has outperformed the Professor; it renews my confidence in our system of Government.

Cowboys know a lot about life. For instance they know that as soon as you think you know everything about horses and you can control them, you get hurt. The same is true of power and President Obama has been intoxicated with ego and power from the time he entered the White House, dictating his demands to a Democratic Party that was stunned into subservience by a victory that could not be explained. Most important is that the President believed in his own invulnerability. Only recently have the facts emerged. David Border writing for the Post in an August 9, 2010 article entitled “Senate as Civil as Ever, We’re Told” that Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc Connell was first invited for a one on one with the President one year and seven months after Obama took office.

In recent weeks Time Magazine stated that the White House didn’t have Boehner’s phone number which was later confirmed by Stephanopoulos on ABC News that a top aid to the President didn’t know Boehner the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives. These are truly amazing revelations when you think back on the relationships that Presidents have had with members of their opposing parties. Reagan with Tip O’ Neil and Rostenkowski. Clinton with Newt Gingrich. While these Presidents fought with leaders of the opposite party, sometimes publically, they respected and knew one another well.

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Lost in the blow-up between Representatives West and Wasserman Schultz is that only two days earlier, Allen West said something much more significant and more massively belligerent — about Barack Obama — something the left would prefer drowned out.

Must we “know the enemy” or is it enough for those elites in the know to go through their motions and machinations, while mushroom managing the Sovereign American People?  Apparently, most “conservative” members of Congress think it is just okay for us all to be kept in the dark and fed manure, at least those politicos who are not too fungous, themselves, to see.

Very exceptional is the former combat officer of Florida, who seems to think it important to give his superiors the actionable intelligence we need, in order to make our ultimate decisions — in measured doses, at least.  By last weekend, he even went as far as using a word with which most readers in Big Government are already familiar in the identification of Barack Obama: Marxist.

Gasp, choke, a milestone in Congressional honesty was reached.

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For many years, liberals have been gushing with enthusiasm over the prospect of a totally-green planet, one where CO2 emissions are a thing of the past (but wouldn’t that kill green plants?), wind turbines spin like glittering pinwheels in a parade (killing hundreds of thousands of birds each year), and electric cars line the roads (stopping every 40 miles for a recharge). To help ensure this dream becomes reality, President Obama pledged in his 2011 State of the Union address that he wanted to see one million electric cars on America’s roads by 2015.

Of course, the President’s pledge meant taxpayers will subsidize the progressive vision for a clean planet. The day after his State of the Union speech, liberal Democrats proposed creation of tax incentives to encourage people to buy electric vehicles.  What progressives consistently fail to understand is that government screws up each time its big shoes step into the private sector (can anyone say Amtrak?). When it comes to the markets, consumers and the private sector drive it forward or backward, not government. Winners and losers are determined by what people want, need, or desire, and not by what government wants for them.

This was played out recently with the announcement that Green Vehicles, a Salinas, CA electric car start-up company, was closing its doors. Barely two years into its Vision Quest to create an “electric valley” in the state, Green Vehicles ran into problems creating enough capital to survive (translation: nobody wanted to invest in or buy the sewing machine engine scooters). What makes the story most disturbing, however, is that the company’s start up was subsidized by California taxpayers, to the tune of $540K.

If electric vehicles were a winning, money-making idea, someone would have perfected the technology and sold millions of them by now. That’s how capitalism works.

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From the Associated Press:

Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened Aug. 2 government default.

The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and it stood in contrast to rising support at the White House and in the Senate for a late stab at bipartisanship to solve the nation’s looming debt crisis.

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Imagine my surprise to receive, within the span of minutes, both the following news story in Energy &Environment Daily — ” EPA: Jackson summons top aides for budget pow-wow as GOP sharpens knife: In the face of drastic funding cuts and a hostile political environment, U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has told her top deputies to rank which of their programs they deem to be essential and which could fall on the budgetary chopping block” — and the following invitation, just circulated around EPA headquarters.

Just keep this in mind when the results of this “pow-wow” — ritual demagoguery and a lot of talk about children, seniors and the poor — pop in the next few days.

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President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats face in 2012 running for reelection into the stiff headwind of a terrible economy – largely of their own making.

In just the last four years, the federal government – run by a Democrat Congress since 2007, and adding a Democrat President in 2009 – has increased spending by 29%.

2007 Federal Budget: $2.73 trillion.

Note: This was the last all Republican budget – the House, Senate and White House were at the time all run by the Rs.

2011 Federal Budget: $3.82 trillion.

Note: This is an estimated total.  Because the Democrats that were at the time running the House, Senate and White House didn’t write a budget – because they were afraid to go on the record with how much they actually wanted to spend in advance of the 2010 election.

Meaning – it could have been WORSE.

That is a $1.09 trillion increase – in just the last four years.

Behold the nation’s third Age of Bailout.

And the resulting Age of Bailout economy has been – atrocious.

Thusly, Democrats are seeking to rewrite recent history – and the present – in terms far more favorable to them than Reality to assist them in their re-electoral pursuits.

Much as our entire Left-Liberal cultural nexus -  our government (i.e. public) schools, the Leftist PlayLand colleges and universities and the Hollywood-Media Corridor – have rewritten the histories of the first two Ages of Bailout.

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From The Hill:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said Sunday the federal government can save $1 trillion though tax reform, a proposal that will put him at odds with some GOP colleagues.

Coburn plans to unveil a $9 trillion deficit-reduction package Monday that would give lawmakers a menu of policy options to reduce the deficit.

Coburn has suggested $1 trillion in savings could come from eliminating special tax breaks, such as the tax subsidy for ethanol, which he has fought to end.

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