Let me make myself clear: I can’t stand Obama. When I referred to the other stuff, I was being sarcastic, because the media always gives Democrats free passes on these things. The public lets those free passes happen because they understand all this as political spectacle, not as something that actually will affect them. This, however, affects them directly, and that is what makes it such a significant scandal. If it’s true, I doubt the media’s habitual statement of “nothing to see here, folks, so just move along,” will have its usual effect of causing people to “move along.’ This one, unlike the others, will stick.

In America, we’re used to the fact that the contributor who bets on the winning party gets favors.”

While your point about this particular scandal, if true, is correct, your other assertions which directly absolve Obama anger me.

First off, just because we’ve had political favors a long time does not make it right. People are used to to the fact that people get murdered, does that mean it should be so flippantly dismissed as you do the spoils system? And is it okay to give favors while breaking the rule of law at the same time as Obama did in the creditor case? When you reward your favored group and thus give them more power and goodies, how does that NOT punish your enemies at the same time? Your giving the favored group more resources and freedom to attack and weaken the opposing group(s). Favoring your contributors and punishing those who voted for the losing side is the two sides to the same coin.

And to dismiss the attack on the CIA as just a “he said/she said incident is absurd. This is a case of Pelosi’s “she said” being blatantly false as proven by her own previous statements and the bold faced facts. Pelosis attack on the CIA endangers American *lives* by empowering our enemies and hamstringing our protectors and therefore is not the non-scandal your claim.

I wonder how all the average people (many who are retirees, families and teachers and such) who stand to lose their savings because of Obamas favoritism to the unions feel about their losses being okay because it’s only the result of “abstract” union payoffs? It’s okay to hurt little people and in the name of union favoritism because other little people might benefit from the favoritism? Is that what your trying to say? Obama is eschewing fairness to all in the name of greater benefiting his cronies and that is acceptable?

SSG Dave
“The ability to observe and predict third- and fourth- order effects of decisions is not easily cultivated. However, effects beyond first-order are often the most important, beneficial, or damaging – and this is the reason why mankind is so often blindsided by its own actions.”

I don’t pay any attention to the graphs on the Financial Ninja blog, by the way, because they don’t mean anything to me. Scroll down past them for the article. (or please explain to me how to read them if you’re able to)

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1062-What-Are-Those-Chickens-Doing.html

http://benbittrolff.blogspot.com/2009/05/with-each-interest-rate-tick-higher.html

The caveat does not address the issue that there are Democrat donations on that list, specifically Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman. This is not about a Republican list.

This is totally off topic, and relates to the argument against GM, but we’ll be taking about GM soon enough.
The criticism of GM is they were making big cars, SUV’s and trucks and not enough of the “cars people wanted to buy”. Depending on who you talk to, GM’s legacy costs added about $1,500 to the cost of a vehicle. The only way you’re going to be able to compete when the base cost of your product is higher, is by concentrating in the higher margin, big ticket vehicles.
A $1,500 differential in a car selling for $15,000 is pretty significant, unless you have some value added feature that can overcome the price differential. I suspect that’s why American cars have seemed so cheap on the inside– an attempt to control costs.
We recently had an article in the local paper that the dealerships here made the cut– one of them in a town of 4,000. The dealer in our town recently built a new facility along the freeway (where dealerships are encouraged to build). Wouldn’t it have been ironic if they had moved from their lot where they had been for 40 years, invested in a million dollar building (or more) only to find out they were now a used car lot?

Back to the topic at hand– it’s hard to believe Chrysler would have made such a naked political move– but then again the governement transferred whatever value Chrysler had from investors to the union, so this would be like the cherry on top of the sundae.