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What are they going to do to their pay? Specifically? Are these companies receiving government money (any government money, not just bailout money)?

Are you saying that justifies them having patently unconstitutional policies? Ignoring the Constitution is the price we need to pay to prevent 19 terrorist "attacks"? Are you saying it would've been impossible to prevent these "attacks" without unconstitutional policies? If you aren't arguing any of these things, bringing this up is just a red herring. Too late Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Yeah actually 71% of Americans want Bush investigated, not just Keith Olbermann (I see you responded similarly on that thread too... kind of a one trick pony, aren't you?) Well, keep your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears and keep telling yourself it's all a big conspiracy made up by Keith Olbermann... I'll continue to follow the reality of the situation, thanks.

I don't know specifically what the Obama administration intends to do based on that sentence.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-bush-memos4-2009mar04,0,643986.story Here's some background: The recently released memos and their dense legalese are still being deciphered by lawyers. They appear to lay out a rationale for massively expanding executive power, which is, well, what we saw with the Bush administration. They don't exactly appear to be in line with the Constitution. I certainly hope these serve to aid whatever legal action is going on against Bush. The memos are available online, although they're unreadable by humans, only lawyers can understand them: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/02/secret-bush-memos-release_n_171221.html

If your argument isn't a straw man, perhaps you'd care to point out where they're actually talking about doing that.

We're actually at $11 trillion and counting, or more precisely $11,033,157,578,669.78 as of last tuesday. As a percentage of GDP that's roughly 76%, going by an estimated 2008 GDP of $14.58 trillion. Here's a fun graph:

Holy smokes, another claim of cold fusion! http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j2QobOQnlULUZ7oalSRUVjnlHjng How's about I just skip straight to the peer review? This kind of sounds like the reporter interviewed a scientist and a nutter. The scientist's outlook on this... not so positive. But the nutter is all about it! "New field of science that's a hybrid between chemistry and physics?" WTF as if there isn't huge overlap between those fields already. Here's the guy's web site: http://www.newenergytimes.com/ Sure looks like a nutter to me... Here's a much better NewScientist article on the subject: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-neutron-tracks-revive-hopes-for-cold-fusion.html And here's their paper: http://www.springerlink.com/content/022501181p3h764l/ Apparently this announcement was made at the same conference where Fleischmann and Pons announced their cold fusion "results", 20 years ago to the day.

I believe that global warming will be brought to a halt by the recent resurgence of piracy. Thank you Somali pirates!

Wow, that's some AWESOME elimination of context there... Okay, so who's more at fault here, the Bush administration, who went out of their way to actively eliminate the bonus protections in the original bailout bill, or Geithner, who pulled together the AIG bailout in less than a day and is guilty of not bringing up the bonuses then?

I'm glad you're able to find one sentence summaries of Geithner's involvement while claiming he "put together" the "AIG plan under Bush" I linked you an article detailing in depth the specifics of how the AIG plan was put together. It's more than a sentence. You should try reading it: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin They met at Geithner's bank. I'm sure he was at the meeting and participated. But does it sound like he was the one who put the plan together? No, it was Paulson.

He wasn't involved in it from the beginning. Paulson decided AIG needed to be bailed out and appropriated $85 billion. The only reason Geithner is involved at all is because that $85 billion came from his bank. He was completely uninvolved in the process until the $85 billion had already been secured. Furthermore, the $85 billion represents about half of the bailout money that AIG received. I'm not splitting hairs... "The AIG plan under Bush was put together by Timothy Geithner" is an outright lie

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/23/carbon-dioxide-fuel.html Pretty nifty... with the application of titanium oxide these nanotubes can convert CO2 into methane using sunlight as a power source. Of course, algae do a pretty good job of turning sunlight into fuel too, and they're a lot easier to make than carbon nanotubes The process is obviously carbon neutral, although methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. Hopefully it will get burned cleanly and completely.

Okay, let's work with that quote... can you tell me definitively from that whether the government would seize troubled companies that don't want to be seized, or would it work more like AIG? It's an important point the article doesn't cover. From what I've been reading elsewhere this is primarily intended to target recipients of corporate welfare. How do you feel about that? You're right, it's more of a strawman than a slippery slope.

I challenge you to go back to previous posts and find the words "central to the plan" you're quoting there (Hint: not there) He oversaw the organization which handled dispensation of the $85 billion to AIG after Paulson had secured the money. If you read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin ...which covers the history of the plan to bailout AIG, you will not find Geithner's name mentioned.

Can you cite something specific you're objecting to, or possibly find a related article with more detail? That's quite a bit of grandstanding there with not a lot of substance. That sounds an awful lot like a slippery slope argument

Yes, do you see how that's different from what you said? The AIG plan under Bush was put together by Paulson, not Geithner: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin Yes, Geithner's organization was tasked with actually giving them the money, but he certainly wasn't the mastermind behind it. The $85 billion to bailout AIG had already been allocated by the time he was involved.

I think that's a gross misstatement about the reality of the situation: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123777083390610069.html Geithner did not "put together" the AIG plan, although his aides were certainly involved. What involvement he did or did not have would be irrelevant if the Bush Administration had not specifically requested the bailout bill be altered to remove language which wouldv'e blocked the bonus payments in the first place.

I think more details are needed before it can be determined that this is a "commie plan"

Yes, and of course a certain amount of culpability lies in all the people who voted for the bill with altered language. But the majority of the blame lies in the instigators: namely the Bush Administration. This is Bush's last "f*ck you" to America.

What are you referring to specifically? Yesterday we had a specific event where policy was announced and, according to the reporter, investors reacted positively to that policy. Subsequently, the Dow went up 500 points. Are you willing to give Obama's administration any kudos here, or do you just want to chide them when when things don't go well?

I bring this up because this is precisely the sort of case given in the last thread to falsify their premise. I would say that premise has now been falsified. Of course the entire argument was fallacious to begin with... I don't know, and given there were two news items that were principally attributed to this jump it's difficult to say which one had what impact. Perhaps the market is merely reacting to better than expected home sales. That said: Provided there were actually investors who made the decision to invest today on the news of the Administration's bad asset cleanup plan (i.e. provided the reporter isn't just making this up) this is certainly more than a correlation.

Obama is against the bonus tax? Wrong: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE52I81820090319 Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged The current administrations actions are honoring the law as passed. Do you want them to break the law? Yes, this is largely the previous administration's fault. Language to prevent exactly this sort of situation was present in the original version of the bill, then removed at the request of the Bush administration. Now the Obama administration is stuck with it. They clearly aren't happy about it and are working to correct the situation, but they can't do that by breaking the law.

That actually happened way back here No, I'm implying the limits were in place in the stimulus bill until the Bush administration insisted they be removed.

While I agree with the overall sentiment of the article and think that letting AIG collapse may be one of our best options at this point, I do have to take issue with this: I'm not sure exactly what he's trying to say about Lawrence Summers, but he's certainly not an apologist for the AIG bonuses: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/15/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4866598.shtml He's simply stating the reality of a bad situation, one largely precipitated by the previous administration's insistence that bonuses like this be honored.

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