Some body call a messbulance.

What is the matter with this guy? Why is he flapping his tongue at all? Is this all being orchestrated by someone to some end? If so, who and what?

this is totally irresponsible and immature.

Why can’t he be both?
FunnyDiva

I have the same concerns. Who is the saboteur/saboteurs? Harry Reid? Emanuel? Blue Dogs? Rethugs?
White House?

I’m no expert on politics, so I can’t begin to guess. I’m just enough of an amateur to be suspicious, though.

How much DCCC money did Rahmbo shovel out the door to this guy?

I work at an engineering consulting firm, and one of the head honchos just forward us an email from the American Council of Engineering Companies urging us to contact our senators “to lend our support to the rapid passage of a robust stimulus package.”

Fancy that. Had no idea these guys were a bunch of DFHs. ;)

Guess it depends what they consider to be robustly stimulating, don’t it?

FunnyDiva

Now, was Cooper lying his face off yesterday, or is he really working with someone inside the White House who is trying to derail Pelosi?

You mean like Rahm, who wants to be speaker?

Go Geoghegan!

For some reason I think of this song when reading about this congressman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNHCjN5eFLo

It do, it do!

Jane —

Jim Cooper’s with us on everything but the Democratic Party.

We’ve had the economists, the governors (including Republican ones), the mayors and now the engineers come out to ask Congress to pass this bugger. Keep it up, people!

Beware the blob of idiocy.

How do these clowns get electimacated?

can’t he be both?

i can’t stand blue dogs.

Dopes like this simply convey a sense of incompetence. And not just his own but one that sticks to the Obama Administration because he highlights the disarray within Congress and between Congress and the White House.

They don’t have the balls to run openly as Republicans!
FunnyDiva

Josh had a nice analysis of how the Rs are derailing it, and an email he received on how Obama is letting them get away with it.

I really think Rahmbo should spend some more time with his family.
I know it’s a bit soon, but I see his slimy tracks on this item, and hope it will not be tolerated too long.

Is Blue Dog Jim Cooper a Liar or a Tool?

Aren’t all republics both?

Dodd asked Volcker a really stupid Q: how come no one warned us that the economic debacle was coming. Geez. Just like Iraq’s WMDs. Willfully blind to the obvious.

this dope?

Representing Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District, Jim Cooper was born June 19, 1954, in Nashville, Tennessee. He earned a B.A. in history and economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975 as a Morehead Scholar and serving as coeditor of the Daily Tar Heel; a B.A./M.A. in politics and economics as a Rhodes Scholar from Oxford University in 1977; and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1980.

Now I am truly confused.

Dodd is serving up the “No one could have predicted” asking why Fed analysts didn’t see this mess coming. Volcker says well when everything is going well no one wants to stand up and say anything about it.

First, many including many here pointed out the housing bubble and the dangers it posed to an increasingly fictionalized financial sector.

Second, Volcker is saying that we will never head off a bubble since on the up side of it, when everything is going well, no one will do anything to stop it.

I’m really unimpressed so far by this hearing. (CSPAN radio)

ROFLMAO

Looks like Harvard Law should drop its southern strategy. Cooper, Gonzales.

You owe me a drink, but I agree with your conclusion. Very uninformative hearing. Level of knowledge & discussion is very low.

Hate to say it- but Bush did a much better job of getting his will through a narrowly controlled congress than Obama is doing with a bigger majority.

Owe you a drink. I would like to hear some specifics “struggling with questions” is just a trifle vague for me.

Last night I had sort of a waking dream in which Obama assumes the bully pulpit, looks the nation squarely in the eye, and rather disappointedly begins…

“I have gone out of my way to explain to my critics why this bill is crucial. I have invited them to multiple meetings, I have put Republicans in my cabinet, I have compromised on the bill’s provisions, I have every step of the way and in good faith attempted to entreat them to see why this is necessary to restore our country’s economic system. And they have balked.”

As well he could then cite the governors, the mayors, and now the engineers, all in virtual agreement with the goals of the stimulus, and clobber those Blue Dog and rethug idiots with it. I think it would be a no-brainer. ;)

Now, was Cooper lying his face off yesterday, or is he really working with someone inside the White House who is trying to derail Pelosi?

Or – - is Obama’s crew so busy making nicey nice with Republicans and blue dogs that they can’t manage to send out the right signals?

Read the links at 19 and then reassess your waking dream.

Here’s the problem:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I must be having one of those days where I don’t know what to say.

Saw a link to details of Monica Goodling’s engagement on yesterday’s threads:

Monica Goodling, 34, the former Alberto Gonzales adviser, to Michael Krempasky, 33, a top PR guy at Edelman and founding blogger with RedState.com.

The betrothal of the Pennsylvania natives (first reported by the legal blog AboveTheLaw.com) proves that even a congressional subpoena can have a happy ending: The two dated just after college, then lost touch for a decade — until he saw her name last spring in the front-page stories about the controversial firings of several U.S. attorneys, and called to wish her well. He surprised her with a Valentine’s Day proposal at the same restaurant where they spent V-Day 12 years ago; no date set.

It’s a quintessential D.C. romance: congressional testimony leading to a love connection!

I feel stupified like I’m going to start drooling any minute.

I’m extremely disappointed and disillusioned with Dodd these days.

Thank you for adding that little ray of sunshine to my day. *g*

Yet another idol with feet of clay.

Obama needs to decide whether he wants to actually DRAFT plans- or just outline his expectations and let congress do the drafting. I would opt for the latter- it gives congress the opportunity to engage in give and take and round off the sharp edges without harming the president’s credibility. It seems like a mistake to set up every modification as a presidential defeat.

cheney comes out with a warning of possible mass destruction to be dealt with soon and the dems quit functioning.

I thought the Bushies were against chimeras.

I know, I know. Was just trying to see a point to Obama’s apparent fiddling while Rome burns. ;) Still, the engineers really surprised me, as I know most of them are solidly rethug.

What does Volcker mean they would not take on a lot of regulation? If they can’t function in regulation they probably shouldn’t exist.

What kind of engineering & how’s business?

Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff?

my question is why are the dems letting them?

Dodd, yes that reminds me. He can be a ditto head at times. Bugliosi wrote something like: (paraphrase) various dem congress critters (Dodd?) argued whether or not to go to war on the premise that Hussein was a threat, instead of challenging that premise, (which is more than a trial lawyer like Bugliosi could bear.)
The same screwed up arguments all overagain.

He was talking about the presumed small number of small firms that would do the “financial innovation” after all the other, bigger regulated financial firms are prohibited from doing it. So far, that seems OK.

However, it’s my observation that as soon as an unregulated financial firm discovers a new way of making money, everyone copies it at lightening speed. So those small innovators ideas soon make their way into the regulated part of the system.

Sometimes it seems like the Ds are behind the wheel.

Pretty much everything: transportation, commercial building, energy, environmental, you name it. Bidness ain’t too bad, although we have had some layoffs.

Geez, who’s the jerk who just said the best & the brightest lost their way when evaluating risk? There was no risk. Heads they win, tails the taxpayer loses.

Sometimes it seems like the Ds are behind the wheel.

oh, i don’t know about that…. i mean, they only control the presidency, the senate and the house.

Glad to hear your business is hanging in so far. Maybe because you’re so diversified?

Or he can force Republicans to filibuster a job stimulus bill the old-fashioned way: the laughingstock party of Palin and Joe the Plumber could parade its freak show of Senators — Blanches and Bricks and Big Daddys — before the nation’s eyes and ears to utter their soliliquies at length, and without filter, in the service of obstructing the nation’s rescue.

But they won’t do that and, along with a lot of other people here, will be wailing and gnashing my teeth in bafflement and betrayal.

Obama’s on fifty different magazine covers and he can’t even get to 60 from 58.

It’s the big money they are after…period.

Wonder how many times the goopers will have to kick Obama in the teeth before they surrender due to sore toes?

I prefer the metaphor of a tailspin. And Democrats have joined Republicans in complaining about the fuel economy of the plane.

Yup, I think diversity is key.

Well, yes. But if it means not allowing stupid rethug policies to cause a depression, it’s not entirely evil. ;)

How about someone sympathizing with my concerns? With our concerns, we who are not highly paid bankers? We who want health care?

My brother and I run a small business that has been a great predictor of how the economy is going…It was in the toilet 4th quarter 08. It appears that January, while still shitty, is improving just a bit….if the pace picks up in Feb. I’ll consider that a good omen for the economy in general

from your second link:

Obama is, sadly, much to blame for giving the Republicans so much leverage. He defined the challenge as biparitsanship not saving the U.S. economy. Right now, he has only one chance to re-set this deteriorating debate: He needs to give a major speech on the economy, explain to Americans what is happening and what must be done. People will, as of now, still listen to him — and what else is his political capital for?

my bold.

there have been so many chances to explain what was happening and what we need to do about it with more than opaque happy language. i don’t think it’s too late – but i don’t see anyone in government doing it. it’s all about propping up perceptions instead of dealing with reality.

New post

Was imagining the laughing stock option (heh) myself as well. I’m very skeptical, but am trying to imagine the endgame from Obama’s POV.

Obama seems happy speechifying about executive compensation.

How true. CDSs were invented at some small firm called JPMorgan.

good reasons for dealing with it imo – but it’s still a shiny object.

i can’t take any more of dodd and volcker. we are so fucked. going for a walk….

Seems like we are hearing more from Cheney now than when he was in his hidey-hole. Would incarceration shut him up?

I don’t remember any other former exec (p or vp) shooting off like this less than a month afterwards.

I have no stomach for this.

Or under the wheels, where they happily dove.

my money is on Rahm

Excuse me re UNC-Chapel Hill….and I’m a Duke fan.

My guess is the problem his TN heritage. Do you remember Harold Ford Jr?

We have a winner! Why can’t he be both? He certainly looks like both!

speaking as a constituent, he’s a tool dog.

which has nothing to do with TN heritage (if he has any).

itunkala, Obama carried DAVIDSON County so Cooper ain’t speaking for Nashvillians when he opens his mouth. (Ford’s from Memphis … lol)

Yes Monica and her hubbie-to-be look like they were hatched from the same test tube.

Ouch.

Sad but true. Bush, a man who lost the popular vote in 2000 (and “won” the electoral vote in a still controversial Supreme Court decision), and barely won in 2004 (with uninvestigated counts of voter fraud in Ohio), managed to get a lot of his crummy, disasterous agenda through a Congress with a lot of Dems supporting him.

You’d think Dems would act like they won, but despite their super majorities, they’re still in “make Republicans happy” mode. WTF?

If Rahm told Cooper to undermine Pelosi, Obama should fire his ass now.

Rahm wants to be Speaker. Rahm figured a few Democratic defections wouldn’t hurt the overall bill (it didn’t; it still passed), and it would make Pelosi look weak. It didn’t. It made the President look weak. All Obama’s reaching out did absolutely nothing, as not one Republican voted for the bill.