Comment on the Belmont Club: "Covered with a tarp"

end up in a similar or even greater crisis in two, or five, or ten years’ time

My guess is that we have only six to nine months before the roof caves in. The Democrats will try to hold off the flood by throwing money at foot soldiers, as with 80,000 Census jobs, the low skill energy rehabbing of government offices, and the diversion of Tarp returns to favored "small business" programs. This time I think that strategy will fail for three reasons;

1. the light of publicity is on the exposed slush funds,
2. everyone knows the money is a one shot so no investment will follow,
3. while some Democrats facing an election in 2010 have an incentive to continue the farce, at the cost of greater damage down the road, no one else does.

Who that gave Obama rope in 2008 has a reason to do so in 2010? Not the big bankers like Goldman Sachs, not the Chinese or the Russians or the Arabs or Big Pharma. Who will risk taking a bullet for this team now if, to paraphrase John Kerry, it means being the last one standing up for him in a failed culture war? Perhaps GE will feel tied to their schemes of Cap and Trade projects and maybe the Hollywood and MSM set will cling to their dreams but it is as likely that they will drop Obama for the ultimate sin, being unfashionable.

Obama remains very smooth, his performance today in New Hampshire demonstrated that. His problem is that The Voice is a wasting asset, once people see it being rejected in the face of steady principled attachment to reality then it becomes almost impossible to repeat the magic spell that his performance had created. Obama is now the magician behind the torn curtain. His audience applauds but they are saying to each other "See, look at where he hides the coin on the back of his hand?" According to Rasmussen he has achieved a 10% bounce from the SOTU. Unfortunately for him that still leaves him at -7% and more important almost all of the gain is from Democrats. Independents now agree with Republicans that they have seen this act and don't like it, and most telling is that they don't trust him.

This is the end point in a movie where the old Homicide Dick shows the body to the shocked girlfriend/widow and then throws the tarp back over it.

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To Big To Fail means To Big To Be

TBTF=TBTB

Billboard ready. Why can't I get paid to think of these?

buddy larsen,
Did Bush's acquiesce to TARP at the urging of Paulson and the Dems out of a misplaced sense of healing? Was he told that by giving the new team what they wanted he would reduce the rancor and stop any partisan attacks on his domestic record? Did they flat out lie to him and did he know how many of his people were already working for the other side?