President Obama says up they say "Down", the President says in they say"OUT" They just want to be on the opposite side of where President Obama is on everything. But what if the President just stays in the middle? Will they then move so far right til we Americans will need binoculars to see them? Bye Bye "Ferrel Cat caucus, we hardly knew ye!

It's like the deification of all things business stops when the corporation-as-person-business fails to goose-step with the GOP authoritarian party line.

You are a hallowed job-creator unless the jobs you create vote the wrong way, and, heaven forbid, donate money the wrong way.

That's worse than holding false beliefs, having a false consciousness. Because business loyalties are supposed to be absolute, like a litmus test, hold a business, vote with us. WHAT? Are you out of your mind? How dare you use your business assets and influence to go against what we determine to be your best interest?

Adam Smith's strangely magickal invisible hand has only one interpretation, in their world. If other invisible hands are leading capital in the wrong directions, well then, that must not be a REAL invisible hand!

Actually, Halliburton's cost-plus contract in Iraq was the perfect example of Cronyism.

Solyndra was orders of magnitude smaller and didn't even involve a cost-plus contract. No comparison.

You mean Haliburton from the Bush Administration? Newsflash: Bush is not only no longer in office but hasn't been for over a complete term.

At that rate we could spend hours talking about the Clinton illegal Scandals like Whitewater.

Haliburton was a tremendous Scandal that raped Americans of hard earned tax dollars in the most criminal of ways. No doubt. But your facts are backwards as in a 8 billion dollar scandal no way comes close to the hundreds of billions of Stimulus that went to Obamas hearty contributors, slush funds, phony corporations, ect. ect. Solyndra was just one of many known examples.

I despise Crony Capitalism, but to try and say that it is only the right that engages in it, is not only niave but down right dangerous.

Johnny, are you remotely familiar how cost-plus contracts work, and how they are known to essentially guarantee graft? That is why they fell out of favor decades ago, until brought back by your beloved GOP to benefit their evil master, Dick Cheney.

You stated that Solyndra was a perfect example of Cronyism. It was not.

Now you complain about the Stimulus bill, which prevented a slide into depression and the largest components of which were tax cuts, tax credits, and safety net expansion to the poor and middle class. So, now a tax cut to the general populace is graft?

Seriously, you have gotta take Bill O'Reilly's blather with a grain of salt.

I never said that ALL of the stimulus was graft. But none the less, a great part of it was. And honestly did it work? Or do we know have that much more debt, half of which is owned by China, with not much to show for it.

I know exactly what cost plus contracts are, I'm a Contractor. I do not agree with them, but they don't guarantee graft. NO-BID cost plus contracts guarantee graft.

Yes i am a conservative but that doesn't mean i favoured Bush and i despise Cheney. I just had to vote for the party that i most ideologically aligned. Those two inflicted plenty of atrocities to the American people. But my point is, to think that there is not such things being committed by both sides equally is not wise.

Btw, don't listen to Oreille, Hannity is my guy;) Yeah i know, he can get too far out there, but then again so can Maddow and company.

Solyndra was too an example of crony capitalism. FAUX Noiese said it was! And so did Romney in his campaign!

They did say that! They say that. It must be true! It must be...

@jonnymoses0 china only holds 13% of all the debt of the US 45% of the debt is held by Social security and another 25 is held by privet US securities chine is the least of are worry's. besides what are they going to do if we default foreclose? that's ridicules. see there really is no tangible risk for the united stats in the fact that China or any other foreign country holds part of our debt. man you watch to much Fox news if you live in a bubble then you are a bubble head. spewing erroneous facts only makes you look irrelevant and i for one would really like to have an intelligent and rational conversation with you. but until you actually go out and read something then i think that's not really a possibility

Jonny,

Actually, what you first said on this thread was that Solyndra was a perfect example of Cronyism -- which I then pointed out pales in any comparison with the no-bid cost-plus contract awarded to Halliburton for services in Iraq. You are just going to have to find another adjective to describe Solyndra.

As I believe you have finally admitted, the Halliburton contract is a far better representation of Cronyism than Solyndra, and since 'perfecter' is not a word, then your original statement was false. (Halliburton can not be more perfect and Solyndra less perfect but still perfect.)

And, by bringing up the stimulus by name with no other qualifiers, you did say that the entire stimulus was corrupt. What we got out of the stimulus was not repeating the experience of the Hoover administration, where a major financial crisis was turned into an economic death spiral by government austerity.

just a note. the bulk of the government money for solyndra was provided in 2005. correct me if i'm wrong but i think President Obama didn't assume office until 2009.

Oh and Johnny, I just can't let this go: If the Clinton White House was so rife with scandals "Like Whitewater", then the republicans during his administration must have been the most inept, incompetent people on the planet because they spent $70 million and basically produced nothing but a (bad) soft-core porn novella.

Last year, Defense Tech had an article about a report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments which showed that in the last decade, American taxpayers spent 46 billion dollars on DoD programs that were cancelled.

Where was the hue and cry over this from those screaming about Solyndra?

Just look at the ill-fated F-22 program. Originally the Air Force intended to purchase 750 copies of the plane at a total cost of $26 billion. We ended up spending $62 billion and got just 187 planes before the Administration canceled the program in 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor

One little detail is especially telling. To insure Congressional support for the program, Lockheed-Martin made sure there were some 1,000 subcontractors spread liberally across 46 states. We'll never know how managing this politically-motivated decentralized system of production added to the total cost of the plane or delayed its deployment.

Exactly John . . . when the Right-Wingers in Congress start talking about cutting the following . . . maybe people will believe that they actually have the best interests of the American people at heart ( yeah right ) :

Banking and Mortgage fraud and graft.

Military spending fraud and graft.

Funding Foreign Dictators fraud and graft.

Wall Street fraud and graft.

Corporate Welfare / Subsidies fraud and graft.

Slush funds and political pacs fraud and graft.

And on and on.

Republicans NEVER talk about these things . . . why ?

Oh . . . it is because this is where their ' campaign funding ' comes from.

NEWS FLASH FOR RADICAL RIGHT WINGERS AND VULTURE CAPITALISTS :

We, the American People, are not stupid . . . we are just BUSY surviving.

We do take time to vote!

it would also be fun to drop rocks on them. from a great height.

This is the twenty-first century, my friend. Rocks are passe'.

On the other hand, anvils (or depleted uranium rods ...) from orbit? :-)

They have been on the merry go round for so long that they don't know what's up!

Cheryl,

A big "Hello" to you. DEMS control the White House and the Senate, which they have controlled now for several years. Who is responsible here? Can you, with a straight face, continue to pin all ills on the REPS, who have merely held the House for 2 scant years? Wake up DEMS and take responsibility for the horrible U.S. economy! It absolutely sucks, no matter how you dice it. The American people have endured the worst period, economically, since the Great Depression. Everyone I talk to is tired, very tired, and looking for real leadership. Our next generation, 18 to 30 year-olds, have a legitimate gripe....."Where are the jobs?"

With the current filibuster rule the Dems do not control the Senate. It take one Repub to stop any legislation and 60 to over ride.

Mike, I mentioned the word F-I-L-I-B-U-S-T-E-R In an earlier lesson, but you seemed to have been absent.

In the first 11 months of the 111th Congress, the U.S. Senate broke the "fillibuster record" with over one hundred in the first eleven months alone. The Democrats had a "super majority" for a very brief time, from the seating of Al Franken until the death of Senator Kenney with an additional short period until Scott Brown was elected in the special election.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/did-the-democrats-ever-really-have-60-votes-in-the-senate-and-for-how-long/

So, to the extent there was a filibuster proof majority in the Senate it lasted during two brief periods which lasted for a total of just over five months when counted altogether (and Congress was in its traditional summer recess for most of the July-August 2009 time frame).

I'd tell you who to ask where the jobs have gone, but Mitt Romney isn't talking, and neither are the Koch Brothers or Adelson...

Take two Pinocchios and call headquarters in the morning for some new Talking Oinks®.

Our next generation, 18 to 30 year-olds, have a legitimate gripe....."Where are the jobs?"

Confederate in Ga , that is why they all voted for obama , and where are all the jobs from the 2003 con tax cuts? still waiting

I can give you the job numbers from the obama stimulus , while you have zero

Auctions work that way, Mike. The Republicans are just sore they were outbid...

Well, of course they're cuckoo clocks, too...

Now maybe the Republicans could go first on helping the poor...

So, Mike, surely you and your fellow Republicans must then favor public financing of political campaigns, right? How about overturning Citizens United? Are you on board with that, too?

ok, i'll see your list and raise you. first a few give-backs.

Afghanistan - shrub's war. you keep it. he ran it "off the books" anyways because it's better to fight a war on the credit card. Pakistan - we'll take half and no more. both sides at fault.

Egypt - they threw out a dictator. President Obama has stated that Egypt is an unknown quantity and bears watching to see if democracy takes root and if indeed they are our friends. so you don't get to pin this on the President, besides i seem to remember loud criticism from the right when the President said that he wasn't sure if the "new" Egypt was our friend.

corporate welfare etc. - the money loaned to general motors and chrysler is being paid back. and incidentally the loans saved, directly or indirectly, about a million jobs. and shut up about solyndra - the most of the money for that was appropriated in 2005.

now the raise.

Iraq - thousands of American dead and many more wounded. all because shrub and the neocons lied about WMD's. also a few trillion dollars not on the books. 'cause why pay for a war if you can put it on the old credit card (aka the debt)?

the shrub tax cuts - billions (if not trillions) of dollars given to top tax bracket people (the 2%) who don't need it and won't spend any of it to create jobs. of course, they will take a tax break to move a company to china. the reduction of the estate tax so the waltons and others can keep ALL daddy's stuff.

the unfunded (that credit card again) - medicare drug benefit. more billions.

corporate welfare (again, but this time, my turn) - subsidies to one of the most profitable businesses in the world - oil companies. subsidies to agri-biz that help mega-farms but not the "small farmers" that the right cries about all the time. haliburton (there are no words to describe this blatant overspend on no-bid, cost-plus work that electrocutes American soldiers) - just file it under "graft" - except the parts that are outright theft. the republican provisions in the medicare laws that prohibit the program from bargaining for the best drug prices, a nice gift for big pharma.

so clean your own Augean Stables before you bitch about anybody else's.

now, can i sell you one of these nice glass navels?

Bravo bravo Temp!

You can also thank Marshall Fields, who having made it scarcely through the depression, started buying up all the smaller shops in town, and then folded and sold their store and their assets to Macys'. They sure learned fast how to play monopoly. He was one of those boisterous businessman who wanted you to wash his feet and everything else. He treated his employees like slaves. When will that type of manager get the boot? I guess the lesson is that the top cats are making all the money, and they're playing with it, instead of passing the savings along to their customers and their employees. Scrooges' the whole lot of them.

OOHH,Exploding conservative heads I just love that mental image.Good job.CynicalCitizen.