Inauguration Perks Go To the Rich
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/MoneyTrail/story?id=6680531&page=1
Despite Crisis, Wall Street Gets Red Carpet from Obama
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Inauguration/story?id=6681555&page=1
Wall Street billionaires pump millions into Obama's inauguration bash
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/a-wounded-wall-street-helps-fund-inauguration-bash/
Barack Obama's billionaire backers
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28695378/
Informant: Duane Roberts
--------
On false unity
Delaware Libertarian
by Brian Miller
01/20/09
One of the big themes of the upcoming inauguration, and indeed Obama’s administration (if media reports about his agenda are to be believed) is a concept of ‘unity.’ All Americans, we learn, are to unite around a ‘common purpose.’ There’s just one problem — it’s not so much ‘unity’ as ‘collectivism.’ And sorry, Obama, but I’m not interested. And fortunately, neither are millions of other Americans. First, there’s the little problem that ‘unity’ isn’t really what these guys are interested in. Oh, sure, they’ll invite Rick Warren (but not David Duke) to show that even people who dislike other groups and use laws to attack their fellow citizens are part of the Great Patriotic Union. But if you’re in an unfavored group, you’re still lacking basic access to various legal statuses. ‘Unity’ for you means, ’sit down and shut up’...
http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-false-unity.html
What’s new is old again
Slate
by John Dickerson
01/20/09
It was a good speech but not a soaring one. This may have been because Obama has given so many strong speeches, he’s graded on his own special curve — or because he wanted the speech to be thoroughly conventional. His call to responsibility and sacrifice was rooted in American history — from the first settlers through the colonists to America’s soldiers. This is a familiar theme in a political speech. In fact, Obama gave his own speech using these themes last June, in which he made a similar call to a new patriotism founded on sacrifice. The use of ‘I say to you’ and ‘on this day’ constructions added to the feeling that this was a speech of the usual order. Appealing to America’s rich heritage makes Obama everyone’s president, knitting him into the lineup of the 42 men who have come before him. (Obama is the 43rd man, not the 44th, because Grover Cleveland served as president No. 22 and president No. 24.) But it goes only so far in helping him with his speech’s larger aim. His goal was to try to inspire us to give something up and reverse ‘our collective failure to make hard choices,’ which he says marked the responsibility-free era that created our current economic mess...
http://www.slate.com/id/2209252/
A new era?
The Weekly Standard
by Fred Barnes
01/20/09
In his campaign and during the transition, Obama didn’t have many kind words for the free market economy. In his speech, however, he did. ‘Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched,’ he declared. He praised ‘the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things.’ Okay, Obama didn’t get carried away about the joys of capitalism. He said the economy needs ‘the watchful eye’ of government to keep it from spinning ‘out of control.’ Still, as one who wondered if Obama understands why free markets are so important, I was mildly, though perhaps only momentarily, relieved. I suspect some Republicans were as well...
http://tinyurl.com/7qvnr6
False dawn
AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo
01/21/09
As a new administration takes power in Washington and the promise of ‘change’ is in the air, we have to ask ourselves: when-oh-when is it coming? When will the dam break on the sclerotic foreign policy thinking of the past eight — heck, the past 50 — years? The first place to begin is, of course, the Middle East, scene of our latest — and worst — transgressions, starting with but hardly limited to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. What is the likelihood of change in this area?
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14103
Oh, joyful, joyful coronation day
Liberty & Power
by Robert Higgs
01/20/09
I do not follow the news closely. Years ago, I discovered that no matter what the news media reported, I could recall their having reported the same thing ten or twenty or thirty or forty years earlier, so it seemed pointless to waste time absorbing information about events that differ only in the specific names and dates that fill in the blanks today. Nevertheless, I am aware, as todo el mundo are, that today in the imperial capital, a new emperor is being crowned. The media report that he will be acknowledged as a new Sun King, only more splendid by far than the original Roi Soleil. Louis XIV, they say, looks like small potatoes in comparison with the new emperor. Obviously, something has changed...
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/60240.html
Obama’s promises
Intellectual Conservative
by Phillip Ellis Jackson
01/20/09
[F]or those of you expecting a rant and rave against the new Leader of the Free World and Commander-in-Chief of the World’s Most Powerful Military, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I suspect that I have as much of a concrete idea about what Obama will actually do with the power he’s gained as, well, Obama has. Your guess as to what our detailed policies will be a year from now are as good as mine, so I’ll avoid making any predictions here. What I will do is look at what Obama himself said he was going to do as President while running for office, and measure reality against that...
http://tinyurl.com/9j2gjn
Yet another coronation
No Force, No Fraud
by Bob Smith
01/20/09
I don’t know what Obama will do in office, but I do understand what it took for him to get where he is now, and that in itself is extremely discouraging. Much of the path to higher office lies in doing exactly what is expected by your party and supporters. You don’t get there by rocking the boat, and you don’t get there by implementing CHANGE, unless change means ‘even more of the same.’ That’s what I expect from President Obama … even more of the same policies that have driven this nation into dire economic straits and made us an enemy of most of the world. As with all newly-elected politicians, Obama and his party will bombard us with incessant propaganda that the media will parrot with glee, with the result that, irregardless of what he does as President, those who supported him will be able to find a way to excuse the results. Others will be blamed … Bush, the Congress, trouble-makers from around the world, greedy corporations, etc. ...
http://libertyed.org/noforce/2009/01/yet-another-coronation.html
Presidents and the Constitution
TCS Daily
by Jerry Bowyer
01/20/09
John McIntyre of RealClearPolitics and I were both on Larry Kudlow’s radio program on Saturday afternoon. Larry asked us both the same question: ‘Is there anything that Obama could say on Tuesday that will make you feel good about where he is taking the country?’ I answered that it’s not what he might say; it’s about what he definitely will say. Obama will swear an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, so help me God.’ The question isn’t whether he’ll say it; the question is whether he’ll mean it. You see, Barack Obama is, to my knowledge, the first American president to take this oath having in recent memory openly and publicly criticized the Constitution...
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=012009A
If Obama’s plan doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s because it doesn’t
Liberty For All
by LP staff
01/20/09
America’s largest third party says that President-elect Barack Obama’s spending plans are based on flawed economics. ‘If you think Obama’s economic plans don’t make sense, it’s because they don’t,’ says Libertarian Party National Chairman William Redpath. ‘Americans are taking a look at Obama’s economic plans and scratching their heads,’ says Redpath...
http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=1940
An economy on life support is not recovering
Nolan Chart
by Darren Wolfe
01/20/09
With the government going into overdrive with all manor of so-called stimulus to revive the sick economy many statists are trying desperately to salvage the claim that President Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal saved the economy from the Great Depression to justify similar policies today. Despite the obvious fact that the Depression was the longest in US history, people such as David Sirota persist with articles like ‘Fox News: ‘Historians Pretty Much Agree’ That FDR Prolonged the Great Depression.’ Well, Mr. Sirota, it was pretty long...
http://www.nolanchart.com/article5841.html
Absolute power gets blamed absolutely
Asia Times
by Spengler
01/21/09
Inauguration day brings to mind the reason I don’t read science fiction. It’s never weird enough. Today, America will place more power than any peacetime president ever has wielded into the hands of a man nobody knows. He has convinced more incompatible constituencies that he takes their side than any politician in American history. And through no fault or merit of his own, he has stumbled into more power than the White House has had since World War II. From the day Obama was elected to 9:30am Tokyo time on Monday morning, the S&P 500 index has lost 17% of its value, after absorbing Obama’s proposed cabinet and hearing the gist of his economic stimulus plan. That can’t be blamed on Bush. It counts as the ‘Obama crash’...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KA21Dj08.html
President Oxybarama
Asia Times
by Spengler
01/21/09
The inaugural address of President Barack Obama contained so many nods in so many directions that the compass needle was sent spinning. Oxymorons abounded because, in Obama’s struggle to hold together so many disparate elements, incompatibility popped to the surface. Now we fear at every moment that the new president may be pulled apart...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KA22Aa01.html
Inauguration Ad Nauseum
CounterPunch
by Christopher Ketchum
01/20/09
Oh happy day! Thus doth Change descend among us in the same old purple raiment and with the smiling largesse that the peons pay for. January 20 is a historic wasted opportunity. Obama might have signaled real change from the outset by canceling the whole rotten affair as the waste and silliness and ostentation that it is. Instead, a simple address, televised or better yet on radio, would have sufficed. Something like the following: ‘My fellow Americans, this is no time for frivolity. The country is falling down around our ears! The reason is mostly because we have blown our money in bad investments, whether it be in war or on Wall Street or on Main Street. Let’s not flush millions of dollars more down the toilet in self-congratulation and the flatus of long speeches. Nuff said. See you tomorrow when the work begins’...
http://counterpunch.org/ketcham01202009.html
Meet the new boss
Liberty For All
by Larken Rose
01/21/09
I just finished subjecting myself to the nauseating experience of listening to a bunch tyrant propaganda, also known as the ‘inaugural ceremonies,’ celebrating the coronation of Barrack Obama as the new King of America. (To call him a ‘President’ would imply that this is still a constitutional republic, and that there are limits on what ‘government’ can do to us. It’s not, and there aren’t, so I’ll call him what he is: a king.) In short, as in every such ridiculous exhibitions of authority-worship, there was a long stream of lies, and not a speck of truth to be found...
http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=1946
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=inaugur
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=capitalism
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreign+policy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=imperial
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Constitution
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Great+Depression
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Andrew+Ross+Sorkin
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Brian+Miller
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=John+Dickerson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Fred+Barnes
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Raimondo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Higgs
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Phillip+Ellis+Jackson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bob+Smith
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jerry+Bowyer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Darren+Wolfe
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Spengler
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Christopher+Ketcham
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Larken+Rose
Despite Crisis, Wall Street Gets Red Carpet from Obama
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Inauguration/story?id=6681555&page=1
Wall Street billionaires pump millions into Obama's inauguration bash
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/a-wounded-wall-street-helps-fund-inauguration-bash/
Barack Obama's billionaire backers
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28695378/
Informant: Duane Roberts
--------
On false unity
Delaware Libertarian
by Brian Miller
01/20/09
One of the big themes of the upcoming inauguration, and indeed Obama’s administration (if media reports about his agenda are to be believed) is a concept of ‘unity.’ All Americans, we learn, are to unite around a ‘common purpose.’ There’s just one problem — it’s not so much ‘unity’ as ‘collectivism.’ And sorry, Obama, but I’m not interested. And fortunately, neither are millions of other Americans. First, there’s the little problem that ‘unity’ isn’t really what these guys are interested in. Oh, sure, they’ll invite Rick Warren (but not David Duke) to show that even people who dislike other groups and use laws to attack their fellow citizens are part of the Great Patriotic Union. But if you’re in an unfavored group, you’re still lacking basic access to various legal statuses. ‘Unity’ for you means, ’sit down and shut up’...
http://delawarelibertarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/on-false-unity.html
What’s new is old again
Slate
by John Dickerson
01/20/09
It was a good speech but not a soaring one. This may have been because Obama has given so many strong speeches, he’s graded on his own special curve — or because he wanted the speech to be thoroughly conventional. His call to responsibility and sacrifice was rooted in American history — from the first settlers through the colonists to America’s soldiers. This is a familiar theme in a political speech. In fact, Obama gave his own speech using these themes last June, in which he made a similar call to a new patriotism founded on sacrifice. The use of ‘I say to you’ and ‘on this day’ constructions added to the feeling that this was a speech of the usual order. Appealing to America’s rich heritage makes Obama everyone’s president, knitting him into the lineup of the 42 men who have come before him. (Obama is the 43rd man, not the 44th, because Grover Cleveland served as president No. 22 and president No. 24.) But it goes only so far in helping him with his speech’s larger aim. His goal was to try to inspire us to give something up and reverse ‘our collective failure to make hard choices,’ which he says marked the responsibility-free era that created our current economic mess...
http://www.slate.com/id/2209252/
A new era?
The Weekly Standard
by Fred Barnes
01/20/09
In his campaign and during the transition, Obama didn’t have many kind words for the free market economy. In his speech, however, he did. ‘Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched,’ he declared. He praised ‘the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things.’ Okay, Obama didn’t get carried away about the joys of capitalism. He said the economy needs ‘the watchful eye’ of government to keep it from spinning ‘out of control.’ Still, as one who wondered if Obama understands why free markets are so important, I was mildly, though perhaps only momentarily, relieved. I suspect some Republicans were as well...
http://tinyurl.com/7qvnr6
False dawn
AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo
01/21/09
As a new administration takes power in Washington and the promise of ‘change’ is in the air, we have to ask ourselves: when-oh-when is it coming? When will the dam break on the sclerotic foreign policy thinking of the past eight — heck, the past 50 — years? The first place to begin is, of course, the Middle East, scene of our latest — and worst — transgressions, starting with but hardly limited to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. What is the likelihood of change in this area?
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14103
Oh, joyful, joyful coronation day
Liberty & Power
by Robert Higgs
01/20/09
I do not follow the news closely. Years ago, I discovered that no matter what the news media reported, I could recall their having reported the same thing ten or twenty or thirty or forty years earlier, so it seemed pointless to waste time absorbing information about events that differ only in the specific names and dates that fill in the blanks today. Nevertheless, I am aware, as todo el mundo are, that today in the imperial capital, a new emperor is being crowned. The media report that he will be acknowledged as a new Sun King, only more splendid by far than the original Roi Soleil. Louis XIV, they say, looks like small potatoes in comparison with the new emperor. Obviously, something has changed...
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/60240.html
Obama’s promises
Intellectual Conservative
by Phillip Ellis Jackson
01/20/09
[F]or those of you expecting a rant and rave against the new Leader of the Free World and Commander-in-Chief of the World’s Most Powerful Military, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I suspect that I have as much of a concrete idea about what Obama will actually do with the power he’s gained as, well, Obama has. Your guess as to what our detailed policies will be a year from now are as good as mine, so I’ll avoid making any predictions here. What I will do is look at what Obama himself said he was going to do as President while running for office, and measure reality against that...
http://tinyurl.com/9j2gjn
Yet another coronation
No Force, No Fraud
by Bob Smith
01/20/09
I don’t know what Obama will do in office, but I do understand what it took for him to get where he is now, and that in itself is extremely discouraging. Much of the path to higher office lies in doing exactly what is expected by your party and supporters. You don’t get there by rocking the boat, and you don’t get there by implementing CHANGE, unless change means ‘even more of the same.’ That’s what I expect from President Obama … even more of the same policies that have driven this nation into dire economic straits and made us an enemy of most of the world. As with all newly-elected politicians, Obama and his party will bombard us with incessant propaganda that the media will parrot with glee, with the result that, irregardless of what he does as President, those who supported him will be able to find a way to excuse the results. Others will be blamed … Bush, the Congress, trouble-makers from around the world, greedy corporations, etc. ...
http://libertyed.org/noforce/2009/01/yet-another-coronation.html
Presidents and the Constitution
TCS Daily
by Jerry Bowyer
01/20/09
John McIntyre of RealClearPolitics and I were both on Larry Kudlow’s radio program on Saturday afternoon. Larry asked us both the same question: ‘Is there anything that Obama could say on Tuesday that will make you feel good about where he is taking the country?’ I answered that it’s not what he might say; it’s about what he definitely will say. Obama will swear an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, so help me God.’ The question isn’t whether he’ll say it; the question is whether he’ll mean it. You see, Barack Obama is, to my knowledge, the first American president to take this oath having in recent memory openly and publicly criticized the Constitution...
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=012009A
If Obama’s plan doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s because it doesn’t
Liberty For All
by LP staff
01/20/09
America’s largest third party says that President-elect Barack Obama’s spending plans are based on flawed economics. ‘If you think Obama’s economic plans don’t make sense, it’s because they don’t,’ says Libertarian Party National Chairman William Redpath. ‘Americans are taking a look at Obama’s economic plans and scratching their heads,’ says Redpath...
http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=1940
An economy on life support is not recovering
Nolan Chart
by Darren Wolfe
01/20/09
With the government going into overdrive with all manor of so-called stimulus to revive the sick economy many statists are trying desperately to salvage the claim that President Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) New Deal saved the economy from the Great Depression to justify similar policies today. Despite the obvious fact that the Depression was the longest in US history, people such as David Sirota persist with articles like ‘Fox News: ‘Historians Pretty Much Agree’ That FDR Prolonged the Great Depression.’ Well, Mr. Sirota, it was pretty long...
http://www.nolanchart.com/article5841.html
Absolute power gets blamed absolutely
Asia Times
by Spengler
01/21/09
Inauguration day brings to mind the reason I don’t read science fiction. It’s never weird enough. Today, America will place more power than any peacetime president ever has wielded into the hands of a man nobody knows. He has convinced more incompatible constituencies that he takes their side than any politician in American history. And through no fault or merit of his own, he has stumbled into more power than the White House has had since World War II. From the day Obama was elected to 9:30am Tokyo time on Monday morning, the S&P 500 index has lost 17% of its value, after absorbing Obama’s proposed cabinet and hearing the gist of his economic stimulus plan. That can’t be blamed on Bush. It counts as the ‘Obama crash’...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KA21Dj08.html
President Oxybarama
Asia Times
by Spengler
01/21/09
The inaugural address of President Barack Obama contained so many nods in so many directions that the compass needle was sent spinning. Oxymorons abounded because, in Obama’s struggle to hold together so many disparate elements, incompatibility popped to the surface. Now we fear at every moment that the new president may be pulled apart...
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KA22Aa01.html
Inauguration Ad Nauseum
CounterPunch
by Christopher Ketchum
01/20/09
Oh happy day! Thus doth Change descend among us in the same old purple raiment and with the smiling largesse that the peons pay for. January 20 is a historic wasted opportunity. Obama might have signaled real change from the outset by canceling the whole rotten affair as the waste and silliness and ostentation that it is. Instead, a simple address, televised or better yet on radio, would have sufficed. Something like the following: ‘My fellow Americans, this is no time for frivolity. The country is falling down around our ears! The reason is mostly because we have blown our money in bad investments, whether it be in war or on Wall Street or on Main Street. Let’s not flush millions of dollars more down the toilet in self-congratulation and the flatus of long speeches. Nuff said. See you tomorrow when the work begins’...
http://counterpunch.org/ketcham01202009.html
Meet the new boss
Liberty For All
by Larken Rose
01/21/09
I just finished subjecting myself to the nauseating experience of listening to a bunch tyrant propaganda, also known as the ‘inaugural ceremonies,’ celebrating the coronation of Barrack Obama as the new King of America. (To call him a ‘President’ would imply that this is still a constitutional republic, and that there are limits on what ‘government’ can do to us. It’s not, and there aren’t, so I’ll call him what he is: a king.) In short, as in every such ridiculous exhibitions of authority-worship, there was a long stream of lies, and not a speck of truth to be found...
http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=1946
Informant: Thomas L. Knapp
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=inaugur
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=capitalism
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=foreign+policy
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=imperial
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Constitution
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=stimulus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Great+Depression
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Andrew+Ross+Sorkin
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Brian+Miller
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=John+Dickerson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Fred+Barnes
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Raimondo
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Higgs
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Phillip+Ellis+Jackson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bob+Smith
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jerry+Bowyer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Darren+Wolfe
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Spengler
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Christopher+Ketcham
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Larken+Rose
rudkla - 20. Jan, 22:05
