Via AP News: Concerned about the faltering war in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama plans to dispatch thousands more military and civilian trainers on top of the 17,000 fresh combat troops he’s already ordered, people familiar with the forthcoming plan said Thursday. President Obama will to lay out his “revamped strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday” and will “call for increasing aid to neighboring Pakistan as long as its leaders confront militants in the border region.” Marc Ambinder notes...
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Consumer Groups Up in Arms Over Massive Penalty Fees
Have you ever used your bank debit card to buy something thinking you have enough money in the account and then found you got hit with a whopping fee because you didn’t have enough money but the bank passed through the transaction anyway? I just recently had this happen to me and it wasn’t pretty. As Herb Weisbaum reports on MSNBC, most banks are now “automatically” enrolling their customers “in an overdraft protection program” and some consumers are finding the banks...
Yesterday is Tomorrow
Democratic presidents have been in office for twelve years out of the past forty. Of those twelve years, SIX were squandered by Democratic congresses refusing, mulishly, to cooperate in the elephantine task of national governance. (And six were stymied by Republican congresses.)
Citi and BofA Buy Back Laundered Loans with TARP Money
The NY Post reports today that Citi and BofA have been “scooping up” the “toxic mortgage assets” that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner made available with his “plan to help the nation’s largest banks purge” the toxic assets. Citi and BofA each “received $45 billion in federal rescue cash meant to help prop up the economy and jumpstart the housing market,” but instead of using the money to do just that, they are buying up toxic assets. It’s never ending isn’t...
EPA Halts Mountaintop Mining Projects
The EPA announced on Tuesday that they were putting a hold on dozens of mountantop mining projects until the “projects’ impacts on streams and wetlands can be reviewed.” Announced by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the move targets a controversial practice by coal mining companies that blasts away whole peaks and sends mining waste into streams and wetlands. It does not apply to existing mines, but to requests for new permits, a number estimated to be as high as 200....
Obama’s Press Conference
I watched Obama’s press conference tonight, as I am sure most of our readers did as well. I felt overall he handled everything that was thrown at him with great confidence and aplomb. Obama used the press conference to stress the concept that “his budget and policy prescriptions are exactly what’s needed to get nation’s economy back on track, despite criticism from both parties in Congress.” “This budget is inseparable from this recovery,” Obama insisted. “It is what lays...
Harness The Wind
A couple of weeks ago I was down in Newburyport, MA (my hometown) and saw that someone had erected a wind turbine. Not everyone there is happy with the wind turbine, however some get the value and understand that we must utilize alternative energy sources before it’s too late. One of the claims about wind turbines is they make too much noise. A Newburyport resident who drives by every day says not so. After seeing the wind turbine in Newburyport...
Gossip not News
Ben Smith of Politico has turned gossip columnist. Taylor Marsh has more…
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