ThinkFast: March 2, 2009
Last night the federal government agreed to provide an additional $30 billion in taxpayer money to the American International Group. AIG is expected to report a $62 billion loss today, the biggest quarterly loss of any company in history. The U.S. government already owns 80 percent of AIG’s holding company as the result of four […]
Last night the federal government agreed to provide an additional
$30 billion in taxpayer money to the American International Group. AIG is expected to report a $62 billion loss today, the biggest quarterly loss of any company in history. The U.S. government already owns 80 percent of AIG’s holding company as the result of four previous financial interventions
totaling $150 billion.
President Obama is putting his effort to pass health-care-reform legislation into high gear this week. “The president will announce Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as his choice to head HHS on Monday afternoon, and he may also name a new director of the White House office on health reform.” Later in the week, the White House will host a summit to discuss overhauling the health care system.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Arabs, Israelis and the international community “to break the cycle of Mideast violence” at a conference in Egypt today and said that the U.S. will pledge $900 million to provide humanitarian assistance in the Gaza strip and to boost the Palestinian economy. Clinton added that none of the money would go to Hamas.
The Washington Times reports that the pharmaceutical industry has directed large sums of money to a charity that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) helped found. “The donations, $172,500 in all, came at the same time that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) was paying one of Mr. Hatch’s sons, Scott, to be its lobbyist in Congress.”
Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-CA) will introduce legislation today to overturn the ban against gay men and women serving openly in the military, a Tauscher aide told Politico. In January, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama was “committed to following through” on his promise to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
More ?? Less
AP Ignores Cries Of ?Socialism,? Claims That Congressional Republicans Have ?No Desire To Demonize? Obama
This morning, AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn wrote that “congressional Republicans show no desire to demonize President Barack Obama, so they’re condemning Democratic leaders instead.” As evidence, Kuhnhenn quotes Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the House Minority Whip, saying that “We want to work with this president“: Listen to the No. 2 Republican leader in the House, Rep. […]
This morning, AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn wrote that “congressional Republicans show no desire to demonize President Barack Obama, so they’re condemning Democratic leaders instead.” As evidence, Kuhnhenn quotes Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the House Minority Whip, saying that “We want to work with this president“:
Listen to the No. 2 Republican leader in the House, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. “We want to work with this president,” he said Sunday. “We want people to regain their confidence in Washington. And what people are looking for is results.”
But what of the $787 billion economic recovery legislation that not a single Republican in the House supported? That, Cantor said, was “Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi’s stimulus bill.”
But Kuhnhenn’s thesis ignores the effort by the congressional GOP to paint Obama and his policies as socialist in nature. For instance, at CPAC last week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) called Obama “the world’s best salesman of socialism“:
Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the only member of the senate to earn a perfect rating from the American Conservative Union, called President Obama “the world’s best salesman of socialism” on Friday in describing his prime time speech earlier this week.
DeMint, a fierce opponent of government expansion, told the CPAC crowd that conservatives might have to “take to the streets to stop America’s slide into socialism.”
It isn’t just the backbenchers like DeMint who are demonizing Obama as a socialist. Members of the GOP congressional leadership are pushing that line of attack as well:
– Last week, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) called Obama’s budget proposal “one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment.”
– Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has said that Obama is trying “to basically Europeanize America.”
– At CPAC, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), the third-ranking Republican, denounced Obama’s economic agenda as “European-style socialism.”
Apparently, the AP doesn’t consider attempts to cast Obama as a socialist to be efforts to demonize him.
