News Today

A fallacy, a farce, undemocratic and suicidal — These were the words that Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez used to describe the 2009 Copenhagen meetings.

Rodriguez threw out multiple accusations, most directed at President Obama, for the better part of an hour and a half in a Monday news conference.

“At this summit, there was only imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes his positions and even threatens developing countries,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez was angry because the agreement that was reached was negotiated behind closed doors and doesn’t require emission cuts from major polluters. Last weekend former Cuban President Fidel Castro blasted Obama’s speech in Copenhagen, calling it “deceitful, demagogic and full of ambiguities.”

The angry rhetoric aimed at the United States shows how quickly tensions between the U.S. and Cuba have risen during Obama’s administration. Shortly after taking office Obama eased travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans, and Obama spoke of a possible ‘new beginning’ with the island neighbor.

Fidel Castro had seemed to be a fan of Obama, but that honeymoon appears to be over. The elder Castro wrote last week that Obama’s “friendly smile and African-American face” hides the true intentions of the United States.

Additionally, there is currently an American citizen being detained in Cuba. His name has not been released but he was arrested on Dec. 5 while working as a U.S. government contractor.

Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother who took power in 2008, told the Cuban parliament that the man was arrested for “distributing illegal satellite communications equipment.”

“The United States won’t quit trying to destroy the revolution,” Castro said. “In the past few weeks we have witnessed the stepping up of the new administration’s efforts in this area.”

Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091221/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_us_obama
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iAmsicW8N2RLyDMGseghZNrEpiNgD9CNDPIO0

Michael makes some great points here (along with some very unfactual claims), but enough of my commentary, I’ll let you guys read the letter…

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.” Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan! A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?

Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor. You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan. Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.”

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son.

We’re counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. There’s still time to have your voice heard. Call the White House at 202-456-1111 or email the President.

Source:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikes-letter/open-letter-president-obama-michael-moore

…Thank you, Mr. President.

Some of us were beginning to think you had forgotten about the issue completely….

Somewhat appropriately, Obama’s harshest warning about the U.S. budget deficit came during his recent nine-day trip to Asia. In an interview with Fox News, Obama said his administration was facing a “delicate balance of trying to boost the economy and spur job creation while putting the economy on a path toward long-term deficit reduction.”

“It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession,” said Obama.

Obama also said he plans to hold a jobs forum with business leaders and financial experts in December to discuss ways to turn around the 10.2% unemployment. After taking office, Obama said, the focus of the administration was avoiding the Great Depression.

“Our first job was to get the economy to recover. And we’re now seeing that,” said Obama. “We’ve seen economic growth (in the third quarter). We anticipate economic growth next quarter as well. I always said the job growth would lag behind economic growth. The question now is how can we accelerate it.”

In an interview with NBC Obama said there was a whole “range of ideas” to give companies an incentive to start hiring again. Two ideas he did note were searching for more export opportunities and possible tax provisions that would encourage businesses to hire “sooner rather than sitting on the sidelines.”

I, like a lot of Americans, have been pretty discouraged by the amount of spending in the Obama administration so far. I don’t even blame Obama completely since it really does take over a thousand pages of legislation to get the Democrats in Congress to reach a consensus on big issues.

Plus, this guy went to Harvard. He’s a smart man. He knows that we can’t keep spending at these levels… right? Right???

Because we really can’t. For the United States to continue to keep borrowing more money at this point is downright irresponsible.

Put it like this, courtesy of China, Japan and a host of other countries, the United States was given an international credit card. A credit card with no spending limit. Then, with all of the excitement of a fifteen year old girl at the Mall of America, we went crazy with it. We racked up a lot of charges and… now we owe almost $12 trillon.

$12,000,000,000,000.

The forecast doesn’t get all that greater over the next few years either. According to the CBO, over half of the $9 trillion in debt that the U.S. is expected to build up over the next decade will be in interest rates alone (see chart).

States across the country are going bankrupt, California is looking at a $21 billion budget gap over the next year and a half. For a more comprehensive look at California’s situation visit NWunderlich, who has been documenting the state’s budget woes for a while now.

At some point our lawmakers need to come together and address this issue. It will take making some tough choices, unpopular choices like spending cuts and tax raises. Measures do need to be taken though.

If not, then President Obama is correct, we will experience a great deal of economic turmoil. The decades of borrowing are adding up, and if we don’t work to correct this soon it may be too late. It’s essential that we move forward with a streamlined and efficient government, one that is in control of its spending.

Sources:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/government/update–obama-debt-fuel-double-dip-recession/?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a16:g4:r4:c0.000000:b28934020:z10
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091118/ap_on_bi_ge/us_california_budget;_ylt=AjVjPu2jpQ9f4C16RAxoY239xg8F;_ylu=X3oDMTJuZ3QzZjFjBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMTE4L3VzX2NhbGlmb3JuaWFfYnVkZ2V0BGNwb3MDMwRwb3MDMwRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA2ZvcmVjYXN0Y2FsaQ–
http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/19/news/economy/debt_interest/

As Scotty says, Halloween is over, and it’s time to get back to work.

It was a pretty active weekend too, which I would say calls for a quick round of this and that…

The FBI released the 2004 interview summary of Dick Cheney’s answers in the Valerie Plame criminal investigation. Apparently the interview contained 72 instances where Cheney “could not recall” the answer and one instance where he refused to answer altogether.

The G.O.P. is getting ready to release a health care bill, which will focus on lowering costs rather than expanding coverage. “If you drive down costs, you can expand access,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner on Monday. No word yet on cost.

One of my favorite stories got that much more interesting on Saturday when Dede Scozzafava decided to drop out of New York’s 23rd district special congressional election. What will the long-term implications of this race be?

It will be interesting to see how all of tomorrow’s elections play out.

President Barack Obama gave Afghan President Hamid Karzai a cold congratulations on Saturday, warning Karzai that America needs to see an improvement on corruption in the Afghan government. “The proof is not going to be in words,” said Obama. “It’s going to be in deeds.”

And Dylan Ratigan of the Huffington Post poses a very intriguing question: Why keep Timothy Geithner?

After a nine month hiatus of, well, pretty much anything public, George W. Bush may have found himself a new role - Motivational Speaker.

…I know right?

Over 11,000 people (some reports say upwards of 15,000) attended a “Get Motivated!” seminar in Fort Worth, Texas on Monday that featured our 43rd president, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Rev. Robert H. Schuller, retired football great Terry Bradshaw and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar.

Looking more relaxed than he ever did during his presidency Bush strung together anecdotes and jokes while musing about his eight years in the Oval Office.

“Every single day, I was honored to be your president by bringing honor and dignity to the office,” said Bush.

-spits coffee out of mouth-

“It’s so simple in life to chase popularity, but popularity is fleeting,” said Bush, adding, “it’s not real.”

I’ll refrain from commenting out of respect for the presidency.

In all seriousness though, I think George may have found himself a suitable role (or at least a better one than POTUS). The reaction from the crowd consisted of standing ovations and, for the most part, good reviews. Last week 43 gave three speeches in Canada, and he also recently joined the Washington Speakers Bureau. His next scheduled motivational speech will take place next month in San Antonio.

Chris Clarke, a 25-year old salesman from Dallas who attended the event, summed it up pretty perfectly. He said when Bush misspeaks, it sounds “incompetent if you are president. But here it can be inspiring. It makes him seem like a regular guy, no better than me.”

Sources:
http://www.star-telegram.com/local/story/1710670.html
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/10/27/George-W-Bushs-gig-Motivational-speaker/UPI-16531256655386/
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush28-2009oct28,0,3497678.story?track=rss

While Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made it through the Senate relatively easily (68-31 with 9 Republicans joining a unified Democratic Senate in approving the justice), the rest of President Barack Obama’s lower court nominees are moving at a much slower pace.

Slower than molasses, even.

Only three of his 22 lower court nominees have been confirmed so far and the latest, Roberto Lange (for a federal district court appointment in South Dakota), waited 3 1/2 months to be approved. Gerard Lynch from New York and Jeffrey Viken from South Dakota, the other two nominees to be confirmed, spent a similar amount of time waiting to be approved.

Two unapproved nominees, Andre Davis of Maryland and David Hamilton of Indiana, cleared the Senate judiciary committee almost 150 days ago. Both of them are still waiting for a floor vote. Another nominee, Beverly Martin, has the support of Georgia’s two conservative Republican senators and was unanimously reported out of the Senate judiciary committee almost 50 days ago. She, too, has not received a Senate floor vote.

All in all eight of Obama’s nominees are currently waiting for floor action.

In some ways this is nothing new. Senators in both parties have been guilty for a while now of using procedural tactics to block or delay confirmations. However, as Slate’s Doug Kendall points out, these heavy-handed tactics were typically reserved for controversial candidates whereas the Republicans appear to be contesting them all.

From Kendall’s article:

“To date, however, the tit-for-tat game has played out within a fairly narrow category of nominees who are deemed controversial. While there has never been an agreed-upon definition of what that means—it’s an eye-of-the-beholder type of thing—there has consistently been a large category of nominees that are not considered controversial. They have typically made it easily through the Senate confirmation process, no matter how rough the ride is for their controversial counterparts.”

Let’s compare Obama’s progress with his predecessor. During the last two years of his presidency, George W. Bush’s support was dwindling and he faced a Senate under Democratic control. Still, 26 of Bush’s 68 nominees cleared the floor within 3 months of Bush nominating them and 23 of the Bush nominees were confirmed on the Senate floor within a week of passing out of the judiciary committee.

Bush’s first two years went about the same. A Democratic majority in Congress confirmed 100 of Bush’s nominees in 17 months, even after delays due to a change in party control.

So why is it that the more popular Obama, with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, is having so much trouble?

Again let’s turn to Kendall’s article.

“The emerging Republican strategy is to hold these uncontroversial nominees hostage as pawns in the larger war over President Obama’s agenda and the direction of the federal judiciary. The Senate operates according to a set of arcane rules that allows a minority party to bring the institution to a halt if it chooses to do so. Most bills and nominations pass through the Senate with no debate and only a voice vote on the Senate floor. But this requires every senator to play along. By stonewalling on every nominee so far, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is requiring his counterpart, Sen. Reid, to negotiate, or devote precious floor time, for every judicial confirmation.”

While I can’t say I agree much with Kendall’s description of our government’s checks and balances as “a set of arcane rules,” Kendall goes on to describe why the G.O.P.’s tactics are detrimental to our whole judicial system.

“This is unprecedented and dangerous. There are already 95 vacancies on the federal bench at a time when there is bipartisan agreement that we need more judgeships. The last thing we need is for existing seats in overworked courts to go unfilled.”

“Even more important, Republican obstruction of uncontroversial nominees undermines the one part of the judicial confirmation process that was still working, until now. Well-qualified nominees who enjoy bipartisan support should be able to count on a fair and relatively smooth Senate confirmation process. This is critical because while they’re waiting, the careers of these nominees go on hold. Given the demands of the bench, and the gap between judicial salaries and what these candidates could earn in private practice, the nation is already lucky that top candidates are willing to serve. If we throw in an unpredictable and lengthy confirmation process, the quality of the federal bench—and the dispensation of justice—will unquestionably suffer.”

Sources:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_next_war_over_the_courts
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/06/sonia.sotomayor/index.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2233309/#return

Not really related at all but enough of a coincidence to make me angry. My friend, we’ll call her Amanda, has been in the hospital since last Friday. She has yet to receive H1N1 medication and her boyfriend informed me that her situation is turning worse and worse.

. . .

“Now watch this drive” — former President George W. Bush.

Hard to forget that Bush quote. Always looking to outdo his predecessor, President Barack Obama was able to accomplish in under ten months what took Bush over 34 months to do — play 24 rounds of golf.

Of course I suppose we should be happy, because by playing with his chief domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes, Obama became the first U.S. president to play a foursome round of golf with a woman.

Still, as my friend Amanda sits in the hospital, using all of her strength to hold on until the doctors finally give her medication, I have a hard time feeling proud of our president even though he broke such an important gender-equality barrier.

Kind of seems like the same shit on a different day to me.

Sources:
http://online.worldmag.com/2009/10/26/obama-ties-bush-in-golf/
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_WOMAN_IN_FOURSOME?SITE=NCAGW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
http://www.freakingnews.com/Freak-Show-Pictures–2327-4.asp

Oops, I better clarify that the title of this post is satirical.

Because you can’t trust everything you read on the internet. You have to verify it, take some time to find sources to back up your conclusions. That’s why I list my sources underneath every one of my articles, so you the reader can do just that. I don’t mean to sound all preachy and everything but this latest story I ran across shows why it’s important to research what you read.

Matthew Avitabile is an upstate New York grad student who writes a blog called Jumping in Pools. Often times his posts are satirical. In fact, one of the more recent blog posts that Avitabile did was actually titled “Obama to Consult Magic 8 Ball for Afghanistan Strategy.”

There’s nothing wrong with Avitabile’s postings. In fact, some of them are quite humorous. A while back Avitabile posted a blog, labeled satirical, about a fictitious seminar paper that Barack Obama wrote while at Columbia.

From JIP:

“Obama was required to write a ’senior seminar’ paper in order to graduate from Columbia. The subject of this paper, which totaled 44 pages, was American government. Entitled Aristocracy Reborn, this paper chronicled the long struggle of the working class against, as Obama put it, ‘plutocratic thugs with one hand on the money and the other on the government.’

“In the paper, in which only the first ten pages were given to the general media, Obama decries the plight of the poor: ‘I see poverty in every place I walk. In Los Angeles and New York, the poor reach to me with bleary eyes and all I can do is sigh.’

“In part, the future President blames this on the current economic system: ‘There are many who will defend the ‘free market.’ But who will defend the single mother of four working three jobs. When a system is allowed to be free at the expense of its citizens, then it is tyranny.’

“However, the President also singled out the American Constitution: ‘… the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.’

“It is yet unknown if more of this thesis will be released. It was also noted that the President received an A- for the paper, which later led to his graduation.”

Despite the satire label on the post, the blog posting began to gain credibility. So much so that Rush Limbaugh actually cited the posting’s claims a couple of days ago on his radio show.

“The Constitution is the most liberty-promoting and freedom-acknowledging document in the history of the world, and this little boy in college is writing about it with utter disdain, and he still shares those feelings,” Limbaugh said, adding, “So Joe Klein at Time magazine has known for a long time about Obama’s college thesis when he was at Columbia. Why didn’t this come out a year ago at this time? Why didn’t this come out before the election in November?”

Perhaps because it never happened? Within minutes a caller informed Rush that there wasn’t any credibility to the accusations. Sometimes men like Rush Limbaugh don’t like to let pesky things like truth or facts get in the way though.

“I’m also told that the blog containing the passage on Obama’s thesis is a satire blog…,” he said minutes later in the same show. “So I shout from the mountaintops, ‘It was satire!’ But we know [Obama] thinks it. Good comedy, to be comedy, must contain an element of truth, and we know how he feels about distribution of wealth. He’s mad at the courts for not going far enough on it. So we stand by the fabricated quote because we know Obama thinks it anyway. That’s how it works in the media today.”

Rush wasn’t the only one trying to backtrack though.

“It’s important to note that none of this nonsense would be running wild around the internet if the campaign had just released Obama’s thesis in the first place,” said Meredith Jessup of TownHall.com.

Yeah about that. A Columbia University spokesman told PolitiFact that “an undergraduate thesis requirement for those in political science did not even exist at Columbia in 1983.” There was no thesis, not for Obama or for any other Columbia political science student in that era.

Amazingly enough, this isn’t even the first time that one of Jumping In Pool’s fictitious postings had gained credibility. Remember the claim that Obama wanted soldiers to stop taking an oath to the Constitution and instead pledge their loyalty to the president himself? That claim was started by Avitabile as well (and was also false).

I’d like to clarify again, there’s nothing wrong with what Avitabile is doing. One of the most entertaining bloggers on today.com makes his money by posting nothing but satirical news posts. Avitabile explained that he wanted to do the post in satire, but not so over-the-top that you knew it was false right away.

“If you have to explain a joke, it’s not funny,” said Avitabile. “I kind of get inspiration from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. You want people to be let in and then at the end, they realize it, and either find it funny on its own terms or find their reaction to be funny.”

The problem comes when people blindly trust what they read in an e-mail forward/blog post and don’t take the time to do even a minimal amount of research before believing something that they hear or read.

Sources:
http://jumpinginpools.blogspot.com/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/oct/26/blog-posting/obamas-columbia-thesis-all-fiction-dreamed-blogger/

Today the Senate passed a resolution authorizing the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners for trials in the United States. The measure passed by a 79-19 vote after being tacked on as part of the $44.1 billion budget bill for the Homeland Security Department.

This marks a step forward on the issue for the President, who ordered the facility closed within a year in January. Obama will now be able to sign the measure that already passed the House.

Tuesday’s plan requires the administration to develop a plan before any more transfers can occur. It also requires at least 15 days’ notice before a transfer can occur and a “certification that the prisoner does not represent a security risk.”

Navy Rear Adm. Tom Copeman, the prison camp commander, told reporters that he could clear out the detention center within ten days.

“If they say on Jan. 12, ‘Move them out,’ we can meet the deadline,” said Copeman, “given the proper amount of logistical support.”

Copeman didn’t mention how much the logistical support would cost, although he did say that he would need the use of the C-17 Globemaster aircraft to move the detainees.

Interestingly enough, this all happened on the same day that the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in the case of men who have challenged the U.S. government’s right to hold them at the Guantanamo Bay detention center after it’s been determined they pose no threat to the USA.

Sources:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091020/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_guantanamo_prisoners
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/77476.html#
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/10/as_high_court_takes_new_case_n.html

$1,420,000,000,000 — That’s a lot of money. A record amount even for our government. The 2009 budget deficit accounted for 10% of our GDP, the highest since World War II. Government spending increased to $3.52 trillion over 2009, up 18.2 percent over the same period in 2008.

Most of this spending can be attributed to the $700 billion financial bailout fund passed by President Bush and the $787 billion economic stimulus program that the Obama administration pushed through Congress in February.

Honestly, these record high defecit numbers were to be expected. When consumer spending broke down in the country the government’s solution was to prop up the essential markets (banking, housing, etc…) with its own spending. It’s useless to argue whether this was the proper way of combatting the recession or not at this point (to paraphrase the president, once you drive the bus into the ditch you have to get it back out), what’s done is done.

However, by the Obama administration’s own estimates, deficits will total $9.1 trillion over the next decade unless corrective action is taken.

“It was critical that we acted to bring the economy back from the brink earlier this year,” White House budget director Peter Orszag said in a statement. “The president recognizes that we need to put the nation back on a fiscally sustainable path.”

At least we have an admission that this type of spending is not sustainable. At some point though, and preferably soon, we need to see some commitment towards fiscal responsibility. This is a very tricky path that the government is trying to walk.

Why? Rising interest rates and inflation could take effect if the government fails to properly manage the influx of money that it injected into our markets. Our dollar could even face a virtual overnight collapse if foreign investors like China and Japan decide to quit financing our debt.

Don’t get me wrong, the number one priority for the Obama administration right now is a four-letter word, J-O-B-S. Until we fix the 10% unemployment rate that our country is sitting at we will not be able to climb out of this recession. Still, in the back of many citizens and economists minds is a growing fear of our nation’s ability to repay all its debt unless the Congress and the Obama administration begin developing some serious and credible plans to deal with our growing deficit problem.

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091016/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_deficit_danger