Obama, while visiting China, talks to imposter-news "reporter" Major Garrett of FOX….

Obama warned the United States' climbing national debt could drag the country into a "double-dip recession," though he said he's still considering additional tax incentives for businesses to reverse the rising unemployment rate.

"There may be some tax provisions that can encourage businesses to hire sooner rather than sitting on the sidelines. So we're taking a look at those," Obama told Fox News' Major Garrett.

"I think it is important, though, to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

Digby has it right, when she says that she hopes imposter-news mischaracterized what Obama was getting at….because the national debt has very little, if anything, to do with our current economic situation.

American "news" has been spinning phony yarns for so long now that I wouldn't be the least surprised to see Village Knee Pad streetwalkers successfully convince enough Americans into believing yet another lie.

Our current recession has absoluetly NOTHING to do with the national debt doubling under the last administration. While huge national debt increases under Bush, and now Obama, are, indeed, a concern…..that debt should not be blamed in any way for our current conditions. In fact, the current near-depression conditions were created ENTIRELY by the gambling-house industries of finance, insurance and real estate. Free market greed gone wild.

If Obama actually told imposter-news "reporter" Major Garrett that a "climbing national debt could drag the country into a 'double-dip recession'"…..he's being dishonest. Obama knows better. The debt and the current recession have nothing to do with one another…..and even implying otherwise in front of imposter-news representatives is a huge political mistake.

What the country needs right now, not late next year but now, is MORE government spending to directly create jobs. Another trillion dollars is needed right now, with every dollar going to job creation instead of like the watered-down-to-mollify-dumbass-conservatives-stimulus-bill provisions passed back in February. The way to pay for that trillion is blindingly clear as well…..tax Wall Street transactions.

Wall Street is where the recession began. The recession didn't begin because the dollar crashed or China quit buying our debt. The recession began because unscrupulous money scheme connivers lost their reckless and unregulated bets to such an extent……that they all ran out of money and came to tax payers for bailouts.

As a result of banksters running out of money because they lost their reckless and unregulated bets…..money, almost overnight, became unavailable for lending to Americans in order to buy stuff…like cars, houses, etc. Massive layoffs followed. The downward cycle began. To add insult to injury…now the recession-causers are punishing consumers through reduced credit and higher interest rates and fees.

If President Obama is so foolish or "centrist" to believe that he can co-opt the TeaBagger insanity over government spending, even giving one inch by agreeing that government spending is the problem right now….then he is only setting himself up for political defeat and setting Americans up for a TeaBagger-led government in the future. I shutter at the thought.

Palin, FOX, and the TeaBaggers don't have a point when it comes to government spending……and they don't even care that they don't. The year-long wingnut nonsense about government spending, socialism, 'I want my country back', yada, yada…..is not to be taken seriously. The sole purpose of the Baggers and Co. is to return bankster-favoring Republicans back into majority government power…. the very people who helped banksters bring our country to it's knees in the first place.

Obama shouldn't attempt to triangulate with incoherent economic idiots or imposter-news "reporters"…..ever.

When the Biblical Tower of Babel was under construction, as the legendary myth goes, God intervened, (still not sure why), by confusing the languages of the workers so they couldn't continue building. Hard to construct something if the construction workers can't communicate with one another.

Out of that mythical story we learn the original meaning of the word, Babylon,….confusion.

Today's Tax Day Tea Parties, and Fox's coverage of those Parties….is truly Babylonian in nature….confusing.

I want to be fair about what's being said by Fox and "Friends" concerning today's protests, I really do….but I must say, it ain't easy.

Even though Neil Cavuto, (in Sacramento, CA reporting on, but not promoting, anything), admits this morning that 95% of American workers have just been given a payroll tax cut under Obama's program…..he also points to the protestors anticipatory-worry of higher taxes in the future for all Americans in order to pay off all the spending. So the tax part of the protest, it would seem, is not about what's happening right now regarding taxes (Obama tax cuts for workers), but what will happen years from now. Lots of talk about "the children" being burdened in the future with Obama's great debt.

Okay, the anti-tax part of the Tea Parties is a protest of future tax increases on all Americans, and the protest is not about Obama's plan to end Bush's tax cuts for the rich. The protest, then, is kind of a pre-emptive tax rate increase protest…..a protest about something that isn't a part of Obama's plan, yet will happen sometime in the future anyway.

Well…no….I'm learning that the protest is also about government spending, primarily on the bailouts and the economic stimulus but not, for example, on defense spending, where America spends 1/2 trillion dollars or more each year.

When it is pointed out that the bailouts started under a Republican president, the responses have been that the Tea Party attendees are bi-partisan, not just Republicans. Cavuto is telling me right now that he's talked to Democrats and Independents today and they're fed up, just like Republicans. Honestly? That's kind of confusing to me. Am I supposed to believe that Democrats and Republicans are equally represented at protests today? Am I supposed to believe that Democrats, who support Obama by 90%, are turning out to these Parties in similar numbers as, say, Republicans? Is that believable?

Similarly, when it has been pointed out that our national debt, which those same children of ours will have to pay, DOUBLED, in the eight years of Republican-controlled government, the same answer is given. Protestors, we "learn" from Fox, are not partisan in nature, you know, only protesting Obama. The Tea Party protests are directed at both Republicans and Democrats.

Why, then, didn't we have any of these Tea Parties during the last eight years? Bush's expansion of the national debt from $5 trillion to over $10 trillion didn't happen, like, all at once in the last month of his presidency. Instead, Bush ran repeated deficits virtually every year after his inauguration. But I don't remember any protests about spending, or deficits, during that time….in fact, I don't remember many, if any, Fox "reporters" or Republicans, ever even mentioning Bush's spending and deficits in a negative way. Why would that be the case?

Am I to believe that the Tea Party protests are really all about government spending, when right-leaning folks never held, you know, grassroots protests about Bush's borrowing and spending? Spending which resulted in the doubling of the debt? Really?

Five trillion dollars were added to the debt during the last 8 years, debt that our children will have to pay, and yet, it's the $787 billion Obama stimulus spending which has sent all the Taxed Enough Already protestors into a hyper-frenzy over spending and deficits? Is that credible?

If it's the bailouts that are being protested, then it would seem to follow that the protestors did not believe Bush last fall, or Obama since, when both men said if the banks and AIG weren't bailed out, our national economy, as well as the international economy, would collapse, thus creating an even worse situation. Are both presidents simply wrong in their evaluations? Should our leaders have just allowed our biggest financial corporations to go belly up? Really?

The only thing that has changed since the bailouts began is the presidency. Is that why we have protests now, instead of last fall, or anytime during the last 8 years?

None of these answers explain why I'm seeing so many signs today with the word "socialism" or "communism" on them. Cavuto and Fox's "reporting" (but not promoting) have not explained these signs, nor the signs which tie the name Obama with those two other words. Why is that?

Shep Smith is now telling me that the Tea Parties are about government largesse and high tax rates……so, you know, I'm still in Babylon here.

Jeebus, now Cavuto is telling me the Sacramento protestors are protesting a state tax increase. "The rage is palpable and the rage is everywhere." Now it's rage.

"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief." Jimi Hendrix.

Is this Rosemary's Baby all grown up?

I have always thought that Newt Gingrich was a bit odd. I thought his Contract With America plan in the 90's was pure corporate-friendly puffball showboating. The Gingrich-led 1994 takeover of Congress quickly went to Newt's head like a good bong hit….leading his self-pumped ego to threaten Bill Clinton, a popular president, with a shutdown of the federal government. The Newton, properly spanked by a much smarter, and more popular president, lost credibility….and power…and his Speaker position….and he hasn't, really, ever recovered.

Despite this relatively recent Gingrich crash and burn fun…..conservatives, when asked about who in the GOP has any, you know, good ideas…..ideas for a modern America, post-Junior….point to Newt Gingrich. He's the Republican Party's "intellectual", he's the one conservative with well-thought out ideas, ideas that, somehow, will capture the imagination of a modern nation.

At Americansolutions.com, Gingrich lists his newly released, "12 American Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity", plan, presumably, to counter the recently-passed Reinvestment and Recovery Act championed by Barack Obama. Notice that even in Newt's title here, he can't help being the ideological prick that he really has always been. Notice that Gingrich's list is not entitled, "12 Solutions for Jobs and Prosperity",….it's 12 AMERICAN Solutions. You know, rather than Obama's "European" solutions, because as Sarah Palin has told the country numerous times, Obama is a socialist at heart, his thinking seen in those dangerous socialist nations of western Europe and (gasp) Canada, who have risked their entire existence by providing health care for all their citizens.

Here's Newt Gingrich's 12 Solutions….

1) Payroll Tax Stimulus. With a temporary new tax credit to offset 50% of the payroll tax, every small business would have more money, and all Americans would take home more of what they earn.
2) Real Middle-Income Tax Relief. Reduce the marginal tax rate of 25% down to 15%, in effect establishing a flat-rate tax of 15% for close to 9 out of 10 American workers.
3) Reduce the Business Tax Rate. Match Ireland’s rate of 12.5% to keep more jobs in America.
4) Homeowner’s Assistance. Provide tax credit incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes.
5) Control Spending So We Can Move to a Balanced Budget. This begins with eliminating Congressional earmarks and wasteful pork-barrel spending.
6) No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud. Require state governments to adopt anti-fraud and anti-theft policies before giving them more money.
7) More American Energy Now. Explore for more American oil and gas and invest in affordable energy for the future, including clean coal, ethanol, nuclear power and renewable fuels.
Abolish Taxes on Capital Gains. Match China, Singapore and many other competitors. More investment in America means more jobs in America.
9) Protect the Rights of American Workers. We must protect a worker’s right to decide by secret ballot whether to join a union, and the worker’s right to freely negotiate. Forced unionism will kill jobs in America at a time when we can’t afford to lose them.
10) Replace Sarbanes-Oxley. This failed law is crippling entrepreneurial startups. Replace it with affordable rules that help create jobs, not destroy them.
11) Abolish the Death Tax. Americans should work for their families, not for Washington.
12) Invest in Energy and Transportation Infrastructure. This includes a new, expanded electric power grid and a 21st century air traffic control system that will reduce delays in air travel and save passengers, employees and airlines billions of dollars per year.

Translation: 6 of 12 (1-4,8,11) "solutions" are tax cuts. 50% of Newt's plan, and he's the "intellectual" of the GOP, consists of the same "solutions" that George W. Bush and his former-majority Republicans, not to be confused with intellectuals, implemented with his radical cutting of taxes, mainly advantaging the wealthiest. How did those Bush tax cuts, historic in nature, restore "jobs and prosperity" to America? They didn't.

2 of Newtie's 12 (7&12) "solutions", power grid expansion and investing in affordable energy, Obama has included in his Recovery Act and his budget proposal. Copying off of smarter kids' work can make you seem "intelligent" at the time….but we know what usually happens in the long term.

#9 is anti-union worker…..and a boldface lie. Newt, and all those who kneel before Big Money, know that Card Check (EFCA) doesn't eliminate secret ballots. It just doesn't. So they lie and deceive.

#5, controlling spending and earmarks, is a bit hypocritical in light of all the Republican presidents in my lifetime and their problem with deficits, and trivial in light of earmarks making up less than 1% of Obama's budget. Obama has proposed halving the Bush deficit in 4 years through…wait for it….controlling spending.

#6, "No State Aid Without Protection From Fraud", seems like an attempt to slow down any economic improvement that may result from Obama's stimulus program. Muck up the state machinery with new red tape in the hopes that the federal stimulus will not succeed. All in the name of "fraud protection."

Finally, number 10. Extensive deregulation of the financial industry produced the depression we're in right now. So, naturally, the "intellectual idea man", Newt Gingrich, wants to deregulate even more. Remember Enron? Arthur Andersen? Sarbanes-Oxley was in response to all that brilliant and succesful "creative accounting" and "off balance sheet" intellectualism that came out of Enron….smartest guys in the room and all. Gingrich, full of new ideas, wants Sarbanes-Oxley revoked.

I'm just sayin'….if these are the Republicans' "solutions for jobs and prosperity", and I don't see any others, then the Jews 40 years of wandering in the wilderness will seem like a walk around the block in comparison to the GOP's self-exile to the fringes of irrelevance.

I see all the usual suspects, Republicans named Boehner and Cantor, Blue Dog Democrats who are actually Republicans in drag, and my favorite Knee Pad Media Pod People, are all clutching pearls and wringing hands over President Obama's plan to prop up the American economy with over $800 billion in spending.

As I see the situation, there are really only two choices.

Yesterday General Electric reported earnings down 34% from a year ago. For months we have been hearing about sales of car maufacturers, from Toyota to General Motors, down 25% to 50% over a year ago. Virtually all of the financial industry would not exist right now if it had not been for the big TARP bailout package.

The U.S. is now averaging 600,000 new unemployed workers per month….an incredible number, really. Bankruptcy and foreclosure numbers are astronomical. 55% of the houses actually selling are from sheriff and foreclosure sales. Predictions moving forward are not encouraging….

"…expect gross domestic product to decline at an annualized rate of at least 5% in the fourth quarter, the biggest drop in a quarter-century." Link

We know what has caused all this to happen. Recklessness mixed with criminality in the mortgage market during the 00's, leaving us with too many houses for too few buyers. A national economy addicted to instant gratification and enabled by an endless array of easy credit fixes. A government-gone-wild approach to taxes which insisted on cutting taxes even if it meant borrowing the money to do so!

Two choices now. Our leaders can choose to do nothing. They can. Government can follow the dictates of Blue Dog and Republican dogma and not inject any new spending into the economy. Let that great, marvelous and infallible 'free market' hand work it's god-ordained magic. Let the credit crunch, foreclosure, and unemployment chips fall where they may, and when the smoke clears, we'll start over. 20% plus unemployment, a rolling back of home ownership to Depression era numbers, a permanent reduction in wages…..may all come to pass, but hey, the market will have solved the problem. Just as both sides stood still and let the collapse happen, so too now, both sides can stand still and let the problem correct itself.

Or…

Our leaders can choose to do something. Government can attempt to soften the fall of this crash by propping up spending. Propping up demand. Redistributing tax monies in order to fill the demand void left by a population with little confidence, fewer jobs and less income.

Former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich…

"In my judgment, this will require a stimulus of about 6 and a half percent of gross domestic product, or a total of some $900 billion, spread over two years. That’s my estimate for the shortfall in private demand."

Those in the government-shouldn't-spend-any-more-money camp point to the higher national debt payments such spending would produce and conclude that such a course is unsustainable and, therefore, shouldn't be followed. While this camp has an argument worth listening to…..the inevitable conclusion of such logic would be for the government to do nothing.

So which should it be? Should the government spend more money it does not have attempting to prevent a national economic collapse…or should the government not do anything at all?

Does President Obama make a convincing argument in this morning's weekly address…..

…or not?

Soon-to-be president Barack Obama, facing the worst national economic conditions in over 60 years, said two days ago that chances were high that the U.S. would face “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come.”

I'm not going to plumb the depths of Republican dominated economic policies in recent years that have left us with such dim prospects for the near future. Deregulation, lack of oversight and the cronyism and ideology that catalyzed that lack, dependence on free market economic industry leaders to do the right thing, reckless and deep tax cutting while conducting expensive wars of choice, and the great heist know as TARP 3 months before an eight year long campaign to double the national debt ends…..have all directly led to Obama's predictions of "trillion dollar deficits for years to come."

In short, we didn't simply wake up one day and discover that we're in trouble. The coming economic malaise was years in the making.

Pointing, correctly, to his mandate from American voters, Obama briefly touches on how we arrived at our current crisis situation….

“When the American people spoke last November, they were demanding change — change in policies that helped deliver the worst economic crisis that we’ve seen since the Great Depression…"

Now, even blood red economic conservatives are saying stuff like this…

“Because monetary policy is not effective, reviving the economy requires a major fiscal stimulus from tax cuts and increased government spending,” said Martin Feldstein, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan profiled in today’s Journal. “It pains me to say that because I am a fiscal conservative who dislikes budget deficits and increases in government spending.” Link

"It pains me to say that"…..is rich, isn't it? Especially considering the fact that EVERY GOP president in the last 30 years ran up big deficits. Was it painful all those times, too?

But I disagree on the tax cutting part. And, I am greatly disappointed that Obama's plan, apparently, is ratioed 40% tax cuts, 60% spending. If tax cutting provides stimulus, where is the evidence from the last eight years of…umm…historic tax cutting?

As I see it, the downward spiral we're now in was brought about by a need for liquidity. Too much borrowing and incentivizing to borrow, both personally and collectively, the psuedo-pyramid gambling program played out on Wall Street using impossible-to-appraise assets (sh*t loans), and the irresponsible period in the early 00's when Greenspan kept interest rates too low and for too long….have all combined to create a perfect-storm collapse. The storm hit, assets had to be sold, causing the markets to spiral downward, further degrading asset values and leading to our largest current problem…..UNEMPLOYMENT.

Almost 700,000 new job losses in December. We need job creation….and tax cutting won't create jobs. If tax cutting created jobs, then with the record tax cuts of the last 8 years, we should have expected an avalanche of new jobs to follow. Didn't happen.

Critics will criticize this but….so what?….We need a stimulus package of a trillion dollars, 80% of which goes directly to job creation. The balance can go to states for unemployment, food stamps, etc. While we're waiting out the hangover caused by an orgy of greed and reckless leadership at the top…..the American people need jobs.

I'm not optimistic.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce president, Thomas Donahue…

"We've got to be very, very careful that we don't make a larger government,"

Ohio Bonehead…

"The deficit estimate makes it clearer than ever that we cannot borrow and spend our way back to prosperity when we're already running an annual deficit of more than $1 trillion," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House Republican leader.

President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya MacGuineas….

"Policymakers simply must put together a plan to assure the nation's creditors, as well as taxpayers, that there is a plan to repay this tremendous amount of borrowing once the economy has stabilized." Link

But Republicans and some fiscally conservative Democrats have expressed concern that the need for a substantial economic stimulus plan could sweep away for years any serious effort to bring government spending into line with its revenues. Link

George and Dick virtually doubled our national debt in 8 years through deficit spending. Only crickets from patriotic conservatives.

Now, huge deficits created by conservatives simply can't and won't be tolerated by these same sanctimonious pricks. The immediate and obvious goal of sanctimonious conservative pricks is to stall and limit Obama's plan, wait for the depression, then blame it all on Democrats.

Gonna' be a lot of fun.