The Obamanation

[classicman]

Obama won no concessions from China on points at issue

BEIJING — President Barack Obama on Wednesday wraps up a three-day visit to China that's left him keenly aware of the limits of his administration's leverage over this economic powerhouse on issues from currency exchange rates to human rights.

Obama has little leverage over China , in part because the U.S. depends on the Chinese to finance the U.S. government's growing debt, and because of the perception in China , which for years was an economic nonentity, that the U.S. is troubled and China is ascendant.

Administration officials said that the China stop, part of a four-nation Asia tour that will conclude Thursday in South Korea , was a success because it laid the groundwork for a more focused U.S.- China alliance to tackle everything from global warming to nuclear weapons containment.

China gave no evident ground on the points at issue, however.
n two areas in which the United States wants to shift China's positions — valuation of the Chinese currency and the Chinese government's censorship practices and human rights abuses — no advances were announced, however.

The U.S. is the world's largest economy; China's the world's most populous nation, with the third largest gross domestic product. China has helped keep the American economy afloat through the recession. Its huge trade surplus with the United States — and the $800 billion worth of American government debt that it holds — is economically unsustainable and leaves the U.S. dependent on Beijing's financial favor, however.

Obama has called for China to stop undervaluing its currency and adopt a more market-based standard as one way to begin reducing the trade imbalance.

Other aspects of Obama's visit also were sobering. Even as he arrived Sunday night, human rights organizations reported that the Chinese government was rounding up and arresting dissidents to ensure that they couldn't reach out to the U.S.

The following day, Hu allowed Obama's town-hall meeting, the first such event for a Western leader in China , to air on local television in Shanghai — but not nationally.

Hu didn't agree to any news conferences at which reporters could ask questions.

There were no chants of "O-ba-ma!" at the town hall meeting. Instead, 400 students selected by authorities at their universities awaited his arrival in silence, sitting rigidly and displaying little emotion.

Link

Good luck with that plan. You've got as good a chance of that happening as asking the opposing team not to play their star players. Why would China do that when it is clearly NOT in their best interest?

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by classicman

Obama won no concessions from China on points at issue



Link

Good luck with that plan. You've got as good a chance of that happening as asking the opposing team not to play their star players. Why would China do that when it is clearly NOT in their best interest?

Wasn't that just about what Bush did? Did you expect different results? Did he get different results?

[TheMercenary]

AKA Cover Your Ass...

(CNN) -- The government Web site Recovery.gov is fixing errors that appeared to show hundreds of millions of stimulus dollars were spent in nonexistent congressional districts, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board said Wednesday.

The errors {lies}, first reported by ABC News, were seen on Recovery.gov summary pages breaking down how many stimulus dollars were received in each state's congressional districts.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/...strict.errors/

[TheMercenary]

First they kill some poor sod now they hit someone else....

http://www.abqjournal.com/abqnews/ab...-in-wreck.html

Watch out for Biden's Motorcade. It is deadly.

Or you could go hunting with Cheney, your choice.

WTF is up with these incompetent VP's?

[Griff]

I didn't realize Joe was driving... oh wait he wasn't. Maybe someone else was shooting for Cheney as well... that is how he handled Vietnam.

[lookout123]

If he cared TW might insert some witty new statements about problems being traceable to the top and how the 70HP engine... oh nevermind.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Wasn't that just about what Bush did? Did you expect different results? Did he get different results?

You tell me. Did he act as though China was our new buddy and kiss their ass? I'm not sure I remember that part.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by classicman

You tell me. Did he act as though China was our new buddy and kiss their ass? I'm not sure I remember that part.

Yes. And got no results re dollar vs yuan valuation.

[classicman]

Bzzzzzz. Wrong.

[ZenGum]

Maybe Obama could ty vomiting on Hu. Worked for Bush I.


Griff ... bwahahahaha ... zing!!

Its their party and they can cry if they want to....but it makes me smile

Tea Partiers turn on each other

After emerging out of nowhere over the summer as a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become so rife with internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money that some supporters fear it will disintegrate before realizing its full potential....

...“These groups don’t play as well together as they should,” said Kevin Jackson, a St. Louis-based conservative author and activist who has spoken at dozens of tea party-type rallies and is traveling across the South with a convoy sponsored by the national Tea Party Patriots group.

“They’re fractured at the organization level, I think mainly because there are a lot of people who have not had managerial experience who all of a sudden are thrust into the limelight and become intoxicated with it. And when a potential rift comes up, instead of handling it and maybe agreeing to disagree, they splinter and go off on their own....

...Many of their members also belong to national conservative groups, including FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity and Grassfire, while the local groups often affiliate formally or informally with loose-knit umbrella organizations, including the Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Nation.

The organizational chaos — combined with a widening apathy at the edges of the movement — has produced a growing consensus among local, state and national tea party leaders that in order for the movement to evolve from the loose conglomeration of fired-up activists who mobilized this summer to register their dissatisfaction with Obama and Congress at town hall protests and marches across the country into a sustainable block with the power to shape the GOP and swing elections, it will require the emergence of a national leader, group or structure.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29744.html

hmmmm....require a national leader or group or structure? What a surprise.

IMO, the tea bags are turning into

Sweet and providing instant gratification....but artificial to the core and no staying power.

[Shawnee123]

Dissonance amongst the Tea Punks!

[TheMercenary]

California Was Among States With Record Unemployment

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) -- California, Delaware, South Carolina and Florida registered record rates of unemployment in October as weakness in the labor market stretches from coast to coast and limits the economic recovery.

Joblessness rose in 29 U.S. states last month compared with 22 in September, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Michigan had the highest jobless rate at 15.1 percent, followed by Nevada at 13 percent and Rhode Island at 12.9 percent.

The national rate last month reached a 26-year high of 10.2 percent, weighing on consumer spending that accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Nov. 17 that joblessness “likely will decline only slowly,” a reason policy makers will keep interest rates near zero to ensure growth is sustained.

“We’ve had a surprisingly sharp jump in the jobless rate,” said Richard DeKaser, president of Woodley Park Research in Washington. “Businesses have truly been doing an extraordinary job of wringing out productivity from the labor force.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aQsHAD0w1egE

[ZenGum]

The danger of prolonged low interest rates is that many people/firms will take loans, then when interest rates eventually rise, some will be unable to repay those loans, triggering a new wave of bankruptcies, which was how we got into this mess in the first place. It is a very tricky balancing act. Wearing a blindfold.

[TheMercenary]

I am really beginning to think that all this talk of recovery is false and when the money runs out and the Congress stops throwing cash at all these programs we may be worse off than before. Jobless rate sure reflects it.