Wooly Bully: Bam the Sham

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" just played Carole King's "It's Too Late" to a spot break before Carole Herself makes an appearance (why, I don't know). One could interpret that a couple of ways. Bag the anti-stimulus fight. That new Gallup poll has 67 percent of Americans approving of Obama's handling of the economy and stimulus package. Or America is beyond economic salvage. Pick one.

Obama does a George Bush interpreted by me as a visual illustration of the education of Barack Obama on How Washington Works. For a guy vowing to not repeat George Bush's mistakes he's off to a great start. Whacks his head before a trip to sell stimulus to the double-digit unemployed in Elkhart, Indiana. Today the Salesman-in-Chief is off to job-bereft Fort Myers, Florida.

Obama WH press czar Robert Gibbs hits all six morning TV shows to spin stimulus. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Gibbs goes after Joe Scarborough right out of the chute:

Gibbs to Joe: "Are you running for Senate in Florida? 'Morning Mika' has a nice ring to it."

Joe: "Not in a party compared to the Taliban." Or words to that effect. Joe has been thumping the socialism theme for days and the WH is not amused.

The AP ran Obama's news conference through a truth detector and found: "There are no 'earmarks,' as they are usually defined, inserted by lawmakers in the bill. Still, some of the projects bear the prime characteristics of pork - tailored to benefit specific interests or to have thinly disguised links to local projects."

On jobs: OBAMA: "The plan that we've put forward will save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next two years." THE FACTS: Job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers. Beyond that, it's unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it's clear when jobs are abolished, there's no economic gauge that tracks job preservation.

Bloomberg.com found a disturbing Big Brother - the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology buried in the stimulus bill. [Read the House & Senate versions here including amendments] "The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors. But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”

I've never liked obsequious Wash Post columnist and TV talking head media whore/comedian Dana Milbank. But Milbank's got it right in reaming Obama for doom and gloom scare tactics. "Obama, aided by the likes of ABC's Jake Tapper, who pronounced the economy in a "free fall," spent most of an hour talking about grim things. "The party is now over. . . . Stop the downward spiral. . . . Make sure that the economy doesn't continue to tank. . . . This is an unprecedented crisis."

Taxpayers should be alarmed over Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's bailout of toxic bank assets that could cost a trillion and a half. The WH is already already setting up Geithner as the fall guy when the shit hits the fan over this: "Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid. He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid."

Geithner's pimping this all over TV today: CNBC, Bloomberg, NBC's Brian Williams et al. You'll get sick hearing bank stress test politicalspeak: "We’re going to require banking institutions to go through a carefully designed comprehensive stress test."

Related: "Obama Unveils Broader Bank Plan" Mike Allen Politico