Obama: "Sort of God"?, Obama to Business: Drop Dead, Kneecapping FedEx, NK: A Merciless Offensive

1) Newsweek Editor Evan Thomas: Obama Is "Sort Of God" CHRIS MATTHEWS (HOST):Evan Thomas is editor at large for Newsweek magazine. Evan, you remember 1984. It wasn't 100 years ago. Reagan and World War II and the sense of us as the good guys in the world, how are we doing?  EVAN THOMAS: Well, we were the good guys in 1984, it felt that way. It hasn't felt that way in recent years. So Obama's had, really, a different task We're seen too often as the bad guys. And he, he has a very different job from ... Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is - we are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something, I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above the world, he's sort of God (emphasis mine). See: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/06/05/newsweek_editor_evan_thomas_obama_is_sort_of_god.html 2) High court clears way for Chrysler's sale to Fiat NEW YORK – The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Chrysler's partnership with Italy's Fiat, rejecting an appeal by a trio of Indiana pension and contruction funds, consumer groups and others to block the automaker's sale. The sale of Chrysler LLC's assets to Fiat Group SpA had been expected to close more than a week ago, but Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Monday decision to delay the sale while studying an appeal by the Indiana state funds threatened to derail Chrysler's restructuring plans. A federal appeals court in New York had earlier approved the sale, but gave opponents until Monday afternoon to try to get the Supreme Court to intervene. The Indiana funds, which hold less than 1 percent of Chrysler's secured debt, claim the sale unfairly favors Chrysler's unsecured stakeholders such as the union ahead of secured debtholders like themselves. …"Obviously the supreme court of the land is the supreme court of the land," Mourdock said. "The United States government has, I continue to believe, acted egregiously by taking away the traditional rights held by secured creditors (emphasis mine)." See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090610/ap_on_bi_ge/us_chrysler_bankruptcy 3) Dems advance proposals to spread health coverage WASHINGTON – Democrats at both ends of the Capitol accelerated their drive to enact health care legislation on Tuesday, outlining proposals to extend coverage to uninsured millions but omitting most details on plans for raising more than $1 trillion needed to cover costs. …A first-ever tax on employer-provided health benefits also figures prominently among options under consideration in Congress, but Obama campaigned against that last year and its inclusion in the bill would require him to reverse course. Well, that hasn’t stopped him so far… See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090610/ap_on_go_co/us_health_overhaul 3a) Understanding the House Democrats’ health care bill Here are 15 things to know about the draft Kennedy-Dodd health bill and the House bill outline. 1. The Kennedy-Dodd bill would create an individual mandate requiring you to buy a “qualified” health insurance plan, as defined by the government.  2. The Kennedy-Dodd bill would also create an employer mandate. Employers would have to offer insurance to their employees. …5. Guaranteed issue and renewal combined with modified community rating would dramatically increase premiums for the overwhelming majority of those Americans who now have private health insurance.   …7. People from 150% of poverty up to 500% (!!) would get their health insurance subsidized (on a sliding scale). If this were in effect in 2009, a family of four with income of $110,000 would get a small subsidy. The bill does not indicate the source of funds to finance these subsidies. …13. The bill does not specify what spending will be cut or what taxes will be raised to pay for the increased spending. That is presumably for the Finance Committee to determine, since it’s their jurisdiction. See: http://keithhennessey.com/2009/06/09/house-health-bill/ 4) 10 big banks get OK to repay $68B in bailout money WASHINGTON – Ten of the nation's largest banks were given the green light Tuesday to repay $68 billion in government bailout money, freeing them from restrictions on executive compensation that they say are making it hard to keep their top-performing executives. …"We all know why the senior executives want to repay this money: It's a burden to manage the TARP politics," said Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University and former Fed examiner. …Banks have been chafing under limits on executive compensation and say key employees have been leaving for small private firms and foreign banks. JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has railed against government restrictions on hiring foreign employees. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090609/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tarp_winners_and_losers 5) SPIN METER: Obama's new 'accelerated' recovery plan is neither new nor accelerated Obama faces souring public opinion over his handling of the economy, which has shed 1.6 million jobs since the stimulus was signed in February. That total has far overshadowed White House announcements estimating the effort has saved 150,000 jobs, a figure that is so murky it can never be verified. See: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-ap-us-obama-stimulus,0,2704688.story 5a) Analysis: Obama recovery plans sowing some unease WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama offered his domestic-policy proposals as a "break from a troubled past." But the economic outlook now is more troubled than it was even in January, despite Obama's bold rhetoric and commitment of more trillions of dollars.  And while his personal popularity remains high, some economists and lawmakers are beginning to question whether Obama's agenda of increased government activism is helping, or hurting, by sowing uncertainty among businesses, investors and consumers that could prolong the recession.  Although the administration likes to say it "inherited" the recession and trillion-dollar deficits, the economic wreckage has worsened on Obama's still-young watch.  Every day, the economy is becoming more and more an Obama economy.  More than 4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007—roughly half in the past three months.  Stocks have tumbled to levels not seen since 1997. They are down more than 50 percent from their 2007 highs and 20 percent since Obama's inauguration. See: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96P7RC80&show_article=1 5b) Obama Tells American Businesses to Drop Dead: Kevin Hassett June 8 (Bloomberg) -- I’ve finally figured out the Obama economic strategy. President Barack Obama and his team have been having so much fun wielding dictatorial power while rescuing “failed” firms, that they have developed a scheme to gain the same power over every business. The plan is to enact policies that are so anticompetitive that every firm needs a bailout.  Once that happens, their new pay czar Kenneth Feinberg can set the wage for everybody and Rahm Emanuel can stack the boards of all of our companies with his political cronies. I know, it sounds like an exaggeration. But look at it this way. If there were a power ranking of U.S. companies, like the ones compiled by football writers for National Football League teams, Microsoft would surely be first or second to Google. But last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama’s multinational tax policy is enacted.  “It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S.” If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay? See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aaaBdVMkjPnU 6) EDITORIAL: Kneecapping FedEx FedEx Express is learning what could be the Democrats' economic motto -- "Never Let Success Go Unpunished."  Led by Rep. James L. Oberstar, Minnesota Democrat, the House on May 21 passed legislation that contains an almost hidden provision -- a mere 230 words -- that would hobble FedEx Express. It would do so by completely changing the labor laws under which the company operates. Unless the Senate removes the language from the underlying bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, a mere dozen or so workers in just one city could hamstring much of the nation's overnight delivery service. …Lawmakers have long recognized that certain sorts of transportation companies are the lifeblood of interstate commerce. That's why they wrote the Railway Labor Act to apply special labor-relations rules to railroads and, eventually, airline-based businesses such as FedEx Express. Since 1926, the RLA has provided successfully for means other than strikes to resolve labor disputes fairly and quickly, without favoring either side.  The RLA does not, however, apply to non-rail, mostly ground-transportation companies such as the United Parcel Service. UPS instead is governed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the terms of which favor unions such as the Teamsters, which represents UPS drivers. Naturally, this means UPS and the Teamsters both have an interest in kneecapping FedEx Express. Together, the ground-delivery company and the union have executed what The Hill newspaper called a lobbying "pincer movement" to transfer authority over FedEx Express from the RLA to the NLRA.  The UPS corporate political action committee has "given more money to federal lawmakers than any other company over two decades," according to Bloomberg News, with $77,900 from UPS employees going to Mr. Oberstar since 1989. The Teamsters, who lean heavily Democratic, have donated $86,500 to Mr. Oberstar during that period. See: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/09/kneecapping-fedex/?feat=home_editorials 7) The Labour Party and the EU Take A Beating in Britain’s Elections The polls said it would be bad for Labour. But no one expected it to be this bad. On Thursday, Britons voted in local county elections and elections for the European Parliament. The result was a devastating repudiation of Gordon Brown’s tottering government, and of the cause of European integration. First, the local numbers. England’s divided up into 34 counties. After the elections, the Conservatives control 30 of them. The Liberal Democrats run one county council. The remaining three are not controlled by any one party. There are 2,362 council seats. The Conservatives went into the election with over a thousand more than Labour. They now have 1,531. Across all of England, Labour lost 291 seats and now has only 178. The Tories now completely dominate local government in England, with only the Liberal Democrats retaining any strength. As bad as that is, the results in the European elections were even worse for Labour. It took third place, with just over 15 percent of the vote. It was lucky to do that well: the Liberal Democrats were only two percentage points behind it. The winners were the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), on over 17 percent of the vote, and, of course, the Tories, with over 28 percent. Both UKIP and the Conservatives increased their vote share. All in all, it was the worst showing for Labour in a national election since 1918. See: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/08/the-labour-party-and-the-eu-take-a-beating-in-britain’s-elections/ 8) North Korea Threatens A “Merciless Offensive” Consistent with the highly-belligerent posture North Korea has taken in the past three weeks, and the “rapid-fire series of provocations“ it has initiated since the beginning of 2009, Pyongyang yet again chose to escalate its rhetoric, this time threatening to use its nuclear weapons in a “merciless offensive” if provoked. After testing its second nuclear device in less than three years, numerous ballistic missile tests, deciding to withdraw from the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, and sentencing two American journalists to 12 years hard labor, North Korea took another unprecedented step in announcing for the first time it was prepared to use nuclear weapons in an offensive capacity. Up until now North Korea has insisted its nuclear program was purely for defensive purposes. See: http://blog.heritage.org/2009/06/09/north-korea-threatens-a-“merciless-offensive”/#more-8209