Dow below 6800

I'll say it again:

I'd imagine more wealth has been lost in 401K's and Keogh's and IRA's and SEP accounts and medical savings accounts than in upside down home mortgages. There will be no economic turnaround or uptick in consumer confidence until the administration addresses this issue of lost wealth, lost savings and lost financial security. Because, at the end of every quarter, every one gets mailed a reminder from their plan administrators.

So far, nothing has been done to help out the people who played by the rules, put 5 or more percent of their income into their 4o1K's, and have lost half their retirement savings. There's another name for those people: the working class.

Who is in charge of vetting the nominees? Fire them.

"Another Obama administration nominee has tax troubles. This time, it's Ron Kirk, the president's choice to be U.S. trade representative. Kirk owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to pay them, the Senate Finance Committee said Monday. The committee said the taxes arise from Kirk's handling of speaking fees he donated to a scholarship fund that he set up at his alma mater, and for his deduction of the full cost of season tickets to the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/929563.html

These weren't "mistakes". These were tax scams. Kirk set up a "scholarship fund" to avoid taxes on speaking fees. Kirk overstated the value of items donated to charity. Kirk failed to report "gifts" (tickets to basketball games) received when he was mayor of Dallas.

Another fine representative.

Earmarks

I thought we weren't doing them anymore, whatever the motive and however "good" or "needed" they might be.

http://www.miamiherald.com/516/story/929572.html

Didn't all these congresspeople applaud when their candidates (both Obama and McCain) promised to eliminate earmarks?

Afghanistan

“Afghan President Hamid Karzai stepped up a confrontation with his opposition Saturday, ordering this year's presidential election to be moved up by at least three months despite the top election official's concerns that insufficient preparation time, funds and international forces could render the results illegitimate. Karzai's decree may also intensify tensions with the United States, which backed an Independent Election Commission decision scheduling the vote for Aug. 20 so that an additional 17,000 U.S. troops could be deployed to bolster security. Some 60,000 troops from the United States and 40 other countries are currently helping Afghan security forces battle the al Qaeda-backed Taliban insurgency, and getting reinforcements in place within the next three months presents Washington and its NATO allies a huge challenge. A vote that is not seen as free and fair could deal a serious blow to the Obama administration's emerging strategy for blunting the insurgency, which relies in part upon rebuilding popular trust in the political system. ''There are concerns about the legitimacy of this vote,'' said a Western official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/story/926942.html

How many thousands more Americans will we put in harm’s way to protect a government that never was, is not and never will be (in our lifetimes) a functioning democracy? It would be wiser to simply quarantine Afghanistan.

Iran

"The top U.S. military official said Sunday that Iran has sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon, declaring it would be a "very, very bad outcome" should Tehran move forward with a bomb."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/927423.html

Do you think the fact that we're keeping at least 35,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, that we will be moving an additional 30,000+ troops to Afghanistan, and that we are running trillion dollar deficits may be emboldening them?

"Confusion over details could snag healthcare safety net"?

"Cassandra J. Kelsey has tried to cut back on all her expenses since losing her job in January. But suffering from degenerative arthritis, she can't do without health care. That's why the 55-year-old District of Columbia resident was excited when President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill included a provision to slash costs for laid-off workers' health insurance. And that's why she was distressed to learn that, because the Obama administration has yet to tell employers exactly how to make the benefit work, it'll be weeks or months before she can claim it. . . . A $25 billion provision in the stimulus bill aims to cut COBRA's price tag, reducing its cost by 65 percent for workers laid off as far back as Sept. 1. The bill gives eligible workers 60 days to apply. Then they get the reduced-cost premium for nine months. But it's not going to happen right away. Employers are waiting for instructions from the Labor Department and the Internal Revenue Service on how to put the program into place. Both agencies posted some information online Thursday. Until employers get the guidance they need and notify potentially eligible ex-employees, most workers will not be able to apply for the new benefit. Many probably will not know it exists."

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/STIMULUS_HEALTH_INSURANCE?SITE=CAVIC&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/stimulus_health_insurance

"The Obama administration rushed to include a health-care safety net for laid-off workers in the recently signed stimulus bill but has not told employers exactly how to make it work. As a result, tens of thousands of jobless people could wait months before getting help paying for health insurance that their employers previously had covered. “Too many people are still trying to figure this out,” said Heath Weems, director of human resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “There is a lot of confusion.”"

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/6288421.html

A $25 billion provision in an $800+ billion stimulus package was drafted in secret, behind closed doors, without input from the public or the bureaucracy. Then, the stimulus bill was voted on without benefit of committee hearings or public debate, with provisions inserted and deleted by hand at the last minute. Why is anyone surprised that neither the public nor the bureaucracy is ready to implement? And, isn't this what critics of the rush to pass a stimulus bill, any stimulus bill, predicted?

What happened to the "anti war" Democrats?

There seems to be so very few left, now that Obama owns all our wars.

Fortunately, Joseph Galloway remains opposed to any waste of U.S. lives and treasure (regardless of who's doing the wasting):

"If the new American team has some new ideas about how to succeed in Afghanistan, now would be the time to lay them out. Nothing that Alexander the Great, Queen Victoria or Leonid Brezhnev tried in their attempts to subdue the quarrelsome Afghan tribes worked -- and nothing we've tried in the last eight years has, either."

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/925263.html