Burris In Hot Water

If you haven't heard yet, Blagovich's appointment, burris, to the senate is in hot water. It seems he lied to the Illinois congress during the impeachment hearings. Burris was asked if he had contact with Blagovich or any other member of Blago's team about the senate seat. Burris said no. It now turns out he did have contact with Blago and even raised money for him.

With their dislike in taking Burris anyway, this gives dems a chance to get rid of him. There are multiple investigations into his dishonesty and even the White House has suggested he leave. 

California Budget Passes

Finally

Second Part to Saving Economy

With the stimulus bill successfully passed, the other part to Obama's economic recovery is stemming the tide of home foreclosures. 

The Times has the best description of his plan: "The plan has three basic components. One would help homeowners who continue to make loan payments on time, but are paying high interest rates and would otherwise not be able to refinance because they do not have enough equity or their houses are worth less than they borrowed. A second would assist people who are at risk of foreclosure by providing incentives to lenders to alter the terms of loans to make them substantially more affordable to struggling homeowners. The third would try to assure there is plenty of credit available for mortgages by giving $200 billion of additional financial backing to Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac, the two government-controlled mortgage finance companies."

What is this going to cost us?  75 Billion. Not bad considering what the stimulus bill/bank recovery was. 

With the banks being propped up, this will hopefully help stave off another wave of foreclosures that are expected to happen in 2009-10.  Lets hope this happens.

Breakdown of Stimulus' Job Creation

Out is a breakdown how many jobs will be created in each congressional district. It looks like a lot of jobs will be created. (No thanks to the repubs.) I never thought repubs would be anti-job but it looks like they are. A new leaf for them. 

Also, dailykos has a good breakdown as well. It lists how many jobs would be created in the congressional district of each repub who opposed the stimulus bill.

DC Punidits Have No Clue

As I read about the stimulus bill, I hear a narrative that the repubs have a "new unity". A unity in opposing the stimulus bill. Then, able to keep the caucus together, the repubs get these "winner" labels for the week. Like "The Winners/Losers of the stimulus bill" and consistently they are described as winners.

How are they described as winners when they are trying to stop our president from saving the horrible economy? An economy that they created. The repubs are losers across the board but that is not what the washington pundits would have you believe. But over at Dailykos, they have an good little rundown of their new poll sticking a little finger in the pundit eye.

It shows the majority of people do NOT view the repubs as winners. Most people view them as losers. Repubs favorable numbers have gone down while dems have gone up. What does all this mean? Pundits need to leave DC and see the rest of the country.

Overall, pundits are like football announcers. They get paid to talk crap. They can't let the game happen and chime in from time to time informing the listener what is going on. Pundits need to fill the air with whatever they think. Then they listen to other pundits and regurgitate whatever they said as well.

There are no good pundits but if there were s/he has connections in DC but does not live there. There is an inherant problem with having cocktails with someone you are going to criticize.