New Hampshire: Obama Administration

According to our Senior Senator, if the Obama Administration uses the budget, and the reconciliation process that follows it, as a vehicle to enact what the people voted for on climate change and health care, it'll be "an act of violence against the system here in the Senate."

Wow.  Those are strong words to describe Sen. Gregg's own modus operandi:

..."There's no point of stepping into the exercise if we're going to be shut down in our ability to influence it."

Gregg has familiarity with the matter. In 2005, when Gregg chaired the Budget Committee in the GOP-led Congress, Republicans sought to use budget reconciliation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

Guest Perspective/Ralph Nader

Does anybody in the federal government know or could know “who, what, where and when” of the massive, complex, vertical, horizontal, global collapse of Wall Street and its planetary tentacles in over 100 countries abroad? Step forward if you exist! Uncle Sam needs you!

Is the multi-million dollar bailout of this financial mess and house of cards, this phantom wealth mummy hitting air beyond the federal governments’ salvage capability?

It is relatively easy to announce hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate rescue programs here and hundreds of billions of dollars of guarantees of corporate recklessness there and trillions of dollars of assorted stimulus, loan availabilities and foreclosure prevention initiatives in all directions.

Yesterday:

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration plan to open parts of the Mountain West for oil-shale development, announcing that it would first study the water, power and land-use issues that complicate one of the nation's most abundant but controversial untapped sources of power.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar coupled the decision to cancel some shale development leases and launch a second round of leases limited to research purposes with a rebuke of what he called former President George W. Bush's "headlong rush" to begin development.

"Those who have fantasized that oil shale is a panacea for America's energy needs have been living in a fantasy land," he said.

I think that this is going to be the theme of the Obama administration: say one thing, do another.  Say what he has to to mollify and comfort the Center and Right but act like the card carrying ultra-Progressive / Liberal / Socialist that he really is.  Remember, he did say as much in his autobiography - Audacity of Hope - which spawned a lot of Audacity of Stupidity on the part of voters.

On the Stump:

Remember back in February 2008 when President Obama came to Boise and spoke at a big rally? He made a big point of saying, "I won't take away your guns," because those nasty, dishonest Republicans were saying that Obama was going to do that.