President Barack Obama to Deliver Spring 2009 Commencement Addresses
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today at the White House daily press briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced that President Obama will serve as commencement speaker at Arizona State University, the University of Notre Dame, and the United States Naval Academy this year. President Obama will address graduates, family members, and faculty at Arizona State University on Wednesday, May 13, 2009, the University of Notre Dame on Sunday, May 17, 2009, and the United States Naval Academy on Friday, May 22, 2009.
More details will be announced at a later date.
Rather perfunctory, no?
Ahhh, except that it carries the name of that heralded bastion of education (and football), the University of Notre Dame.
The Fighting Irish.
And there be some a'fightin', alright.
A cacophony of voices have their Catholic School knickers all bunched up over, not just Obama speaking, but also receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame.
What's the beef?
One of the main perches of the Flying Monkeys, the National Review sees " his extreme stance on abortion, and his anti-choice actions in office so far — insofar as there is nothing pro-choice about forcing taxpayers to fund abortions abroad, or in compelling medical professionals to participate in them under pain of losing their jobs."
Another Flying Monkey biggie, Red State, is flinging their feces, advocating "Notre Dame Alumni and Supporters Should Stop Payment", for they cite "Well known are his recent decisions to force American taxpayers to subsidize both the destruction of embryos for stem cell research and the destruction of babies via abortion throughout the world ..."
The Roman Catholic bishop whose diocese includes the University of Notre Dame will boycott President Obama's May 17 commencement speech there because Obama's policies on stem cell research and abortion run counter to church teaching on the sanctity of human life.
Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins said Monday the university does not support all of Obama's policies. A school spokesman, Dennis Brown, said he saw no circumstances under which it would rescind the invitation.
The White House issued a statement Tuesday saying Obama welcomes the "spirit of debate and healthy disagreement on important issues."
Here's a big hint, dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds.
And, since you're bringing this up, where's that "Love Thy Neighbor" business, and, hows about addressing Blue Texan, over on Firedoglake;
But where were they when faculty members of the theology department at Boston College protested the announcement that BC was awarding Condoleeza Rice an honorary degree?
[Snip]
So, to review: a Catholic university awarding an honorary degree to a pro-choice, pro-death penalty, pro-torture warmonger = totally fine.
A Catholic university inviting a sitting Democratic President to deliver a speech = total disgrace.
And, let's not forgot, what is behind all the dogma, how you really don't have a voice at the morals table.
That screening room in his head, going on 24/7, playing all those black-and-white, or sepia-colored, reels, of shack towns, breadlines and soup kitchens, people walking miles-and-miles, carrying sacks and boxes of their possessions, must send him staggering, when he looks around, and sees, in technicolor, well, life, pretty much, as normal.
I don't think, if you look up in a dictionary the word "obtuse", you will find a picture of Todd, but after last night's Presidential Press Conference, I don't know, all bets may be off on that.
Jesus, what the hell was Todd thinking?
Was he trying to chide President Obama?
Or just get himself to stand out, as a primo fucking dunce?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Some have compared this financial crisis to a war, and in times of war, past presidents have called for some form of sacrifice. Some of your programs, whether for Main Street or Wall Street, have actually cushioned the blow for those that were irresponsible during this -- during this economic period of prosperity or supposed prosperity that you were talking about.
Why, given this new era of responsibility that you’re asking for, why haven’t you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?
" ...why haven’t you asked for something specific that the public should be sacrificing to participate in this economic recovery?"
Oh, my Good Lord!
Chucky Todd, apparently, doesn't watch much television, including the channels he works and reports for.
Second, while I hate to pick on Chuck Todd, his question was really dumb. We're in the middle of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of people are losing their jobs, losing their homes, losing their health care, every day. And he asks why the President isn't asking the American people to sacrifice? Huh? What exactly did Todd have in mind? Should we be offering human sacrifices to appease the Gods?
Chuck Todd, NBC News. For being weirdly sadistic toward struggling Americans, AGAIN.
He asked if "some form of sacrifice" should be made to the Wall Street gods, like maybe a homeless person? He kept asking about sacrifice among "the public" and "the American."
Yes, because economic collapse, sharply higher unemployment and looming depression are not enough. We should be starving in the street and setting ourselves on fire. "The American people are making a host of sacrifices in their individual lives" was how the president put it. Duh, Todd.
This is the same guy who asked, last time, if consumers were poised to spend way, way too much money, as they were being laid off and evicted from their homes. Strike two for NBC News' new man at the White House.
I mean, Jesus, you could have come up with a better question using a Magic 8-Ball.
Keep this up Chucky, and you'll be finding yourself getting tosses from Lester Holt, on those back-road-filler stories for the weekend news, or worse, you'll be banished to Doc-Bloc land.
In case their satellites went out, or they don't watch CNN International any longer (maybe in protest, after Zain Verjee couldn't stop from spouting "penis" during a broadcast), Obama wanted to be sure that they all knew our economy was in the tank, and Obama wanted to play "Tag", that they all have to pitch in as well
About the only difference between the plan today, and the one Heistin' Hank Paulson was looking to run with last fall, is that Geithner has more hair on his head.
Geithner isn't Michael Brown. He's Hurricane Katrina.
Reaction today (exempting the Stock Market, of course) was mixed, many still holding on to the point-of-view that this is garbage, and will do nothing, with nationalization of the diseased banks and companies inevitable, others in the middle, saying, ehh, we gotta do something, and maybe, just maybe (perhaps this is a hint, that we should be buying stock in the companies that manufacture "Lucky Rabbit Foot" charms) it will work, and a much smaller crowd openly heralding the Obama-Geithner plans as opening the skies, so the sun can shine, and the money rain down.
And, finally, Henry Blodget, was about the only one out there, proverbially, doing the "lipstick-on-a-pig" thing, calling it like he sees it;
In short, because the plan is yet another massive, ineffective gift to banks and Wall Street. Taxpayers, of course, will take the hit.
Why does Tim Geithner keep repackaging the same trash-asset-removal plan that he has been trying to get approved since last fall?
In our opinion, because Tim Geithner formed his view of this crisis last fall, while sitting across the table from his constituents at the New York Fed: The CEOs of the big Wall Street firms. He views the crisis the same way Wall Street does--as a temporary liquidity problem--and his plans to fix it are designed with the best interests of Wall Street in mind.
If Geithner's plan to fix the banks would also fix the economy, this would be tolerable. But no smart economist we know of thinks that it will.
They should have a big, confetti-falling, band-playing, ribbon-cutting ceremony at 30 Rockefeller Center in the coming days.
Perhaps to distance themselves from their own folly, their front-row cheering of the Wall Street Meltdown, General Electric will be changing the name of its' flagship business channel, giving it a dose of "truth in advertising".
In fact, they can keep the same call letters, CNBC.
Just now, they translate to Can Not Be Credible.
For CNBC's Mark Haines to say to someone (and elected member of Congress, to boot), criticizing the Wall Street Meltdown, the naked, obscene raping of the financial system, to the point of complete ruin, that the steps to correct it are "Witch Huntery", says, in the nutshell, how in-the-tank Can Not Be Credible is, and how screwed the "media" really is (or, how screwed we really are).
"What do people on Main Street know about running a financial system?"
Well, Mister Mark Haines, we don't have to look back to sepia-colored history, to turn that question around on you, and ask "What do people on Wall Street know about running a financial system?"
A couple of years ago, it would have been hyperbole to suggest that we would all be better off if the senior executives at all our major financial firms were people picked entirely at random out of the phone book. Now, it's arguably true. People picked at random would, admittedly, be likely not to have been to business school. They might not know a lot about futures or derivatives or put options. But so what? At least they might have been more likely to know that they were clueless, and a few of them might have had the common sense to ask questions like: will housing prices really go up indefinitely?
In any case, what's the worst they could have done? Bankrupted their companies with ludicrously risky gambles that fell apart once markets went south? Destroyed trillions of dollars in value? Brought the world financial system to the brink of collapse? Left taxpayers across the globe on the hook for trillions of dollars? Bankrupted entire countries?
Oh, right.
And Now, We Come To The Sanity Clause
It may, or may not, be accidental, that news of the long-awaited Geithner-created, Obama Administration plans for the failed banks, stocked to the brim with those "toxic assets", was leaked out, just as March Madness was getting underway.
Perhaps they were looking for a "Cinderella Story" run with it, however, the early reviews coming in show it getting bounced, in the first round.
The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.
[Snip]
But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.
Why am I so vehement about this? Because I’m afraid that this will be the administration’s only shot — that if the first bank plan is an abject failure, it won’t have the political capital for a second. So it’s just horrifying that Obama — and yes, the buck stops there — has decided to base his financial plan on the fantasy that a bit of financial hocus-pocus will turn the clock back to 2006.
If I'm right and the mortgages are largely trash, then the Geithner plan is a Rube Goldberg device for shifting inevitable losses from the banks to the Treasury, preserving the big banks and their incumbent management in all their dysfunctional glory. The cost will be continued vast over-capacity in banking, and a consequent weakening of the remaining, smaller, better- managed banks who didn't participate in the garbage-loan frenzy.
Publius, on Obsedian Wings, heralds that "This banking business may well be Obama’s Vietnam ...", while Frank Rich, today, slaps Obama upside the head, respectfully, but forcefully, pointing out that his "Katrina Moment" has arrived.
Digby, perhaps, got it down, on what Obama, Summers and Geithner must need, to either breath life into the plan, or themselves, with "Clap Louder".
Well, not only "Clap Louder", but yell, scream, jump up-and-down, louder, until it is a deafening roar, is, apparently what is needed.
This anti-anger consensus among our political elites is exactly wrong. The public rage we're finally seeing is long, long overdue, and appears to be the only force with both the ability and will to impose meaningful checks on continued kleptocratic pillaging and deep-seated corruption in virtually every branch of our establishment institutions. The worst possible thing that could happen now is for this collective rage to subside and for the public to return to its long-standing state of blissful ignorance over what the establishment is actually doing.
[Snip]
Atrios has been writing a version of the same key observation virtually every day for weeks -- that almost every plan to "solve" the financial crisis involves nothing more than transfers of enormous amounts of public money into the pockets of the same unchanged system and the same people who caused the collapse in the first place:
The issue is that [Geithner] and friends never distinguished between bailing out the system and bailing out the players. There was a way to do that, and they didn't do it.
[Snip]
The AIG scandal vividly reveals how corrupt and self-interested are the people who are still exerting primary control over this process, which is why our establishment class is so eager to demand that everyone look away. For months, Americans have been told that they must sacrifice and trust the Government to engage in extraordinary actions if they want to stave off another Great Depression, only to watch as hundreds of billions of dollars fly to the very people who are the prime culprits. As Jane Hamsher put it: "The 'populist rage' that the pundits find so unseemly is actually the appropriate response."
Q: This sounds very different from the headline of the Andrews, Dash, and Bowley article in the New York Times this morning: "Toxic Asset Plan Foresees Big Subsidies for Investors."
A: You are surprised, after the past decade, to see a New York Times story with a misleading headline?
Q: No.
A: The plan I have just described to you is the plan that was described to Andrews, Dash, and Bowley. They write of "coax[ing] investors to form partnerships with the government" and "taxpayers... would pay for the bulk of the purchases..."--that's the $30 billion from the private managers and the $150 billion from the TARP that makes up the equity tranche of the program. They write of "the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will set up special-purpose investment partnerships and lend about 85 percent of the money..."--that's the debt slice of the program. They write that "the government will provide the overwhelming bulk of the money — possibly more than 95 percent..."--that is true, but they don't say that the government gets 80% of the equity profits and what it is owed the FDIC on the debt tranche. That what Andrews, Dash, and Bowley say sounds different is a big problem: they did not explain the plan very well. Deborah Solomon in the Wall Street Journal does, I think, much better. David Cho in tomorrow morning's Washington Post is in the middle.
And a final point: I’m with Atrios here. If getting the prices of toxic assets “right” isn’t enough to rescue the banks, that doesn’t mean that we’re doomed; it means that we actually have to, you know, rescue the banks, Swedish style, rather than rely on fancy financial engineering to make the problem go away.
Either the economy starts its' Herculean rise, and money is flooding the streets like a summer cloudburst, or, it's Harry Lime time;
"...and don't be so gloomy. Remember what the man said: under the Borgias there was warfare, bloodshed and murder and they had Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they have brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace. And what have they produced? The cuckoo clock! ..."
