Borrowed From Eugene Robinson and The Washington Post

This is a presidency on steroids. Barack Obama's executive actions alone would be enough for any new administration's first month: decreeing an end to torture and the Guantanamo prison, extending health insurance to more children, reversing Bush-era policies on family planning. That the White House also managed to push through Congress a spending bill of unprecedented size and scope -- designed both to provide an economic stimulus and reorder the nation's priorities -- is little short of astonishing.

And yet I read liberal bloggers criticizing him for not doing it a certain way. His been mocked in the blogosphere here for making nice with the Republicans only to have them stab him in the back and vote unanimously against the Stimulus package.

This week, executives from General Motors and Chrysler are reporting on their progress in transforming themselves into lean, mean carmaking machines, capable of leading American industry into a new golden age. They will also explain that they need some more money, and fast, if they are not to crash and burn. GM, which got a $9.4 billion cash infusion from the government just two months ago, wants the remaining $4 billion that the Bush administration approved; Chrysler, which got $4 billion in December, urgently needs $3billion more.

I have mixed feelings about the American auto industry. Why have they been so slow to adjust to changes in the market for smaller, more efficient, better made cars and trucks? It is not the problem created by union workers making too much money for working on the assembly line. It's the fault of the executives who have been unwilling to lead the industry with hybrids and other alternatives to the big bloated gas guzzlers of the past. It's the salaries of the men at the top and the poor decisions they've made that have made the U.S. auto industry a failure. Off with their heads. Keep the workers, fire the CEO's and designers. Start over.

Thanks to an amendment that Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) inserted into the stimulus bill, Washington now has control over bonuses and severance packages at financial companies that have taken funds from the Bush administration's $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): No more eight-figure bonuses for Wall Street "geniuses" whose cleverness helped drive their companies, and a good deal of the economy, into the ground.

Dodd added a measure that makes it easier for firms that chafe at Washington-imposed restrictions -- on executive compensation, for example -- to pull out of TARP. The details are complicated, but what's important is that banks and other financial institutions that are relatively healthy may well begin to leave the program. The impression would be that the firms remaining in the program are relatively sick -- and people tend to be uncomfortable keeping their money in banks that can be described as relatively sick.

I'm in favor of nationalizing failing banks. I want no more gobbling up of smaller banks by the likes of Citibank. The only healthy banks I know about are the small local banks. I've heard of no problems with the credit unions, like the one I am a member of. It's the big bloated financial institutions that are causing the problems. So nationalize them or let them fail.

Then there's the housing problem, which may be the most difficult of all. Foreclosures and plummeting home values are at the heart of the economic crisis. Either millions of Americans are going to lose their homes or millions of mortgage contracts are somehow going to be modified. That's not an attractive choice.

All Barack Obama wanted was to be president. He may have to become an auto executive, a banker, a mortgage broker and who knows what else before this crisis is done.

So what do we expect of our new President who has yet to be in office one month? Miracles it seems to me. I'm happy with his work so far. My complaint is with the Congressional Leadership. I say if the Republicans do not want to be part of the solution, do not offer them plums to sweeten the deal for them. They will take credit for the weakening of your legislation and then stab you in the back. Let the bastards filibuster. I don't really believe that's a spectacle even their deep south and Utah constituents will find helpful in keeping a job or keeping a home or a car in a rapidly shrinking economy. The South is relatively poor compared to other parts of the country. I doubt the filibuster will play well no matter how conservative you think you are when faced with the possibility of moving your family into you mothers home or living in a shelter.

In Utah we have the second richest church in America to run our government. Too bad they won't pony up--they could bail us all out if they wanted to. $500 million to pour into passing Prop 8 in California was just one tiny drop in the bucket for them.

The Grand Old Party is a Fraud

After eight years of the Bush administration, the Republican Party -- to put it bluntly -- is a mess and a fraud.

There is an intellectual case to be made for the economic philosophy that the party purports to represent. I disagree with it strongly, but I respect its integrity -- in a way that this administration and the Republican leadership in Congress clearly did not.

The Republican Party said it believed in free and unfettered competition, but it picked winners and losers through a system of crony capitalism. All it takes to make my point is a name: Jack Abramoff.

The Bush tax cuts, which heavily favored the wealthy, showed that the president and his allies in Congress didn't believe in progressive taxation. I think that's outrageous, but the administration goes further and actually seems to prefer a regressive tax scheme. That's the only explanation I can think of for why hedge fund managers making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay taxes at a lower rate than their chauffeurs.

This is a small excerpt from Eugene Robinson's column in the Washington Post today. Here's another:

Can any Republican candidate claim with a straight face to represent the party of small government? For that matter, can any Republican candidate plausibly explain what the party is supposed to stand for these days?

It's pathetic to hear right-wing talk radio blowhards try to associate Barack Obama with "radical" or "socialist" views when a Republican administration is tossing aside "Atlas Shrugged" and speed-reading "Das Kapital.

Thanks Eugene, I needed that.