Well, That Didn’t Work…..

…. So let’s smear someone else. The Democrats have “moved on” from trying to use Rush Limbaugh as a handy-dandy attack target. Now they are gunning for Sarah Palin.

Multiple Democratic strategists say the party plans to increasingly elevate Palin in the same manner it has employed Rush for weeks, using her high-visibility, her social conservatism, and memories of her harsh attacks on Obama during the campaign to tar the GOP as partisan, obstructionist, and backward-looking.

James Carville, a key architect of the Limbaugh strategy, says Dems will be seeking to elevate Palin more and more, because she’s “an identifiable person who has a hook,” unlike GOP leaders like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell.

“Her name conjures up all kinds of reactions in people’s minds,” Carville told me, adding that her association with the campaign will be used to portray the GOP as hidebound and to alienate moderates. “She’s an uncomfortable figure for a lot of Republicans,” Carville says. “They want to move beyond her. We like her.”

It sounds – more than a little – like they are getting desperate. The Democrats need something – anything to divert attention from their failures. So much so that they are going after private citizens (Limbaugh) and now a politician that lost to their “mighty” juggernaut. She already lost, kicking her when she is down does not make Democrats look strong.

This does not sound like the strategy of a party that is confident. This sounds like the strategy of a party that needs to divert public opinion as rapidly as possible. The Limbaugh gambit actually increased his audience. This one may well backfire and make Palin more popular.

Gee, and I was wondering why Sarah Palin was suddenly surfacing in news reports again.

The press is quite willing to carry water for their masters.

Protection Racket

Apparently, in the Brave New Obama World™, if one is the recipient of some Federal largess (read taxpayer money) one is accountable to Obama, personally. Obama may demand the resignation of a CEO of a company that has received handfuls of cash (read taxpayer money) from Obama (personally, it seems).

However, if you are the CEO of a bank or insurance company that has received dumpsters full of money at the behest of Obama, you are immune from penalty.

Let’s get this straight. If you are a CEO of a bank that’s losing gobs of money, the government will bail you out repeatedly and let you keep your job.

But if you’re Rick Wagoner, the CEO of General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), you are forced to fall on your sword, or piston as the case may be. And that’s after you have had to spend months trying to prove that you have a viable business plan.

No doubt about it, there seems to be a strange double-standard going on.

On the one hand, financial companies seem to have no problem getting more bailout money.

All it takes is for the stocks of big banks like Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) to plunge to multi-year lows for the government to come running. Citi and BofA have each received $45 billion in assistance and hundreds of billions of dollars more in loan guarantees.

The difference? One would only point out that Obama took in more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from AIG alone. (Money he has not given back, incidentally.) One would love to see how much the various Wall Street firms gave in protection money campaign contributions versus what GM and Chrysler were able to come up with.

Welcome to the Brave New Obama World™.

Hows that Hope and Change, America? Is this what you voted for?

First Person

Victor Davis Hanson notices something in Obama’s address on GM and Chrysler. It is all about Obama:

I think our president needs to invest more in the use of the third-person “government,” since his speeches more and more center on the narcissistic “I” and “me.” Even the car-takeover speech was
“I-ed” to death. E.g.

My Auto Task Force

And so today, I am announcing that my administration will…

In this context, my administration will offer General Motors adequate working capital over the next 60 days. During this time, my team will be working closely with GM to produce a better business plan.

I am committed to doing all I can to see if a deal can be struck…

An odd corollary of this. The increasingly narcissistic Obama now owns the economy. He cannot blame it on Bush. It is his and his alone. Will he and the Democrats continue to try to blame it on Bush? Of course.

But he owns it now with his policies and his failures.

Via Memeorandum

Tanking

There is still some time left in the trading day on Wall Street, but as of this post, the Dow is down 4.23%, the NASDAQ down 3.59% and the S&P 500 down 4.29%.

I’m guessing Wall Street is less than enthralled by Obama’s promise to back GM and Chrysler warranties with our taxpayer dollars.

Dominoes

It has begun.

Asian shares slumped and were headed for their biggest daily fall in four weeks, while U.S. Treasuries gained after a U.S. task force rejected turnaround plans for automakers GM and Chrysler.

S&P stock futures dropped and European shares opened lower, with investors also spooked by news on Sunday that Spain would bail out regional savings bank Caja Castilla La Mancha, marking yet another official rescue of a firm hit by the global crisis.

Europe’s FTSEurofirst 300 fell 1.2% in early dealings on Monday and Spanish bank shares fell up to 8%.

The U.S. announcement by the White House autos panel marked a stunning reversal for GM and Chrysler and raises the prospect of bankruptcies that could further debilitate the already ailing U.S. economy.

The Obama White House is counting on investors helping with removing toxic assets from banks. But the Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration have both demonstrated that they can and will change the rules retroactively for anyone who takes any assistance from the government. Not exactly the way to gain the trust of investors.

There’s more:

The clearest losers appear to be the thousands of bondholders and lenders to both GM and Chrysler. In both cases, administration officials said that the companies were burdened by inordinate amounts of debt that would have to be scrubbed. Chrysler’s survival, the administration said, would require “extinguishing the vast majority” of the company’s secured debt and all of its unsecured debt and equity.

This is looting, pure and simple. The fact of the matter is that it is not rich plutocrats who will suffer for this. It is people with money in 401k funds. It is large pension funds. It is workers and retirees from GM.

This is a trainwreck.