My 12-year-old daughter came home yesterday and shared an interesting talk she and some classmates had after they had finished their classroom work. One student asked, “Is anyone willing to share their political party leanings or that of your parents?” All the kids agreed. Two leaned Republican, two leaned Democratic and two leaned Independent. The next question asked by another student was, “What did you think of George Bush?”

“I did not like him.”

“He made a mess of our country.”

“He was a bad President.”

“He wasn’t so much a bad President but a very stupid leader.”

“He is responsible for where our country is today. He failed at protecting the Constitution.”

The next question was, “What do you think of Obama?”

“He was handed a pile of crap.”

“He’s smart but he would be smarter to arrest Dick Cheney.”

“He needs to bring the troops home.”

“He needs to create a jobs program and work towards more green technology.”

“He needs to regulate the finance industry.”

“He needs to address the issue of torture.”

"My Mom’s business could benefit from a Public Option."

The next question was, “What do you think we need to do about Afghanistan?”

“Bring the troops home.”

Now Goldman Sachs head, Lloyd Blankfein, who recently said he was, "Doing God’s work…" is stating, “It was a joke!”

BS. Just plain BS.

But the Guardian thinks Matt Taibbi got it right.

“The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” wrote Matt Taibbi.

Remember the bully at school? The one who would verbally bully and then when his intentional actions were caught by kids and school authorities, would reduce his bullying to, “It was suppose to be a joke.”

Bullies are whimps. They have an excuse for everything and only make apologies that suit their own cause.

Okay then. Senator Dodd answered my curious questions about the reality of the Homeland Security Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank via Reuters UK:

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) – The United States Senate could pass a bill to found a national infrastructure bank in the next 12 months, said Democrat Chris Dodd, who chairs the Banking Committee, on Monday.

"President Obama co-sponsored our infrastructure bank legislation as a senator and endorsed the idea during his campaign. So, I’m hopeful to see action on the bill this year," Dodd said.

For more than a year bills to create a bank that would fund roads and capital works projects with a combination of seed money from the federal government and bond financing have sat in both houses of the U.S. Congress.

The idea has recently fallen to the shadows as Americans turn their attention to boosting infrastructure in the economic recovery bill the Senate will likely vote on Tuesday. But the Connecticut Senator said the bank, which would have an independent board to decide which projects receive backing, was still a viable idea.”

Even the investors are buzzing about it and starting to buy up related stocks. An investment consulting firm here in the US, CG/LA, had words of

Here is some more information on the idea of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment bank that I wrote about here.

From the White House Agenda on Homeland Security:

"Build-in Security: Ensure that security is considered and built into the design of new infrastructure, so that our critical assets are protected from the start and more resilient to naturally-occurring and deliberate threats throughout their life-cycle.Create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank: Address the infrastructure challenge by creating a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank of $60 billion over 10 years, to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation’s most challenging transportation infrastructure needs, without the influence of special interests. Invest in Critical Infrastructure Projects: Invest in our nation’s most pressing short and long-term infrastructure needs, including modernizing our electrical grid and upgrading our highway, rail, ports, water, and aviation infrastructure. Establish a Grid Modernization Commission to facilitate adoption of Smart Grid practices to improve efficiency and security of our electricity grid."

(My bold)

And more here at Homeland Security Digital Library Blog dated February 6, 2009.

And here is one of the best posts on

This diary could be a “drama” spoiler… I will need your help. Stay with me here. The spoiler possibility: that the formation of a National Infrastructure Bank might be tucked into the Stimulus bill. This concept has received support across the political and development spectrum and was actually announced as part of President Obama’s policies during his campaign a year ago, on February 13, 2008.

“

“Here are Obama’s words on the subject delivered in Janesville, Wisconsin at a GM assembly plant:

For our economy, our safety, and our workers, we have to rebuild America. I’m proposing a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years. This investment will multiply into almost half a trillion dollars of additional infrastructure spending and generate nearly two million new jobs — many of them in the construction industry that’s been hard hit by this housing crisis. The repairs will be determined not by politics, but by what will maximize our safety and homeland security; what will keep our environment clean and our economy strong. And we’ll fund this bank by ending

Building National Capacity. What. Does. That. Mean? Boiled down, it is the power to do in order to sustain and protect.

We are in a crisis of needing to build our national capacity through economic stimulus. It is time to build our “power to do” to protect our democracy. Frank Luntz, a pollster, recently had an interesting opinion piece in the LA Times which addressed the stimulus bill, or more importantly, the most important part of the stimulus bill, infrastructure spending.

Building America’s Future, a bipartisan coalition of elected officials which is chaired by Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, formed to support infrastructure investment, hired Luntz to do some opinion polls on the economy. Luntz, a Republican pollster, found something out and is supporting the need of passage of President Obama’s stimulus package because:

“A near unanimous 94% of Americans are concerned about our nation’s infrastructure. And this concern cuts across all regions of the country and across urban, suburban and rural communities.
Fully 84% of the public wants more money spent by the federal government — and 83% wants more spent by state governments — to improve America’s infrastructure. And here’s

On November 17th 2008, Catherine Rampell posted a piece online that was essentially an effort to “clarify” the CAR study (2003 Center for Automotive Research study) statistics as well as its’ recent follow-up report which was released on Election Day. The CAR study and it’s recent update, address the contributions of the automotive industry to the U.S. economy. The article attempted to help the reader understand that the real number of employees possibly affected nationally by the big three folding, are not “that bad” but are still of some concern.

Rampell, unfortunately, does not think about “who” might be reading her article and in a tongue–and-cheek manner, peppers her article with illustrations such as:

“The failure of General Motors, for example, wouldn’t eliminate the entire car-wash industry.”

And then adds:

“Car-washing jobs are primarily dependent on Americans’ continued demand for automobiles — whether they’re from Detroit or Nagoya — and not the operations of any one automobile company. If a foreign company could swoop in to fill that demand with minimal disruption, then, theoretically, car-wash employees would keep their jobs.”

(my bold)

Luckily, the economic depth and “issue related” strategies regarding one or all three auto manufacturers folding, was cogently addressed ,not by Rampell,