My-Way-Or-The-Highway Disease...

I'm sorry, but does Paul Krugman, esteemed Professor of Economics, Nobel Prize Winner, understand how the Constitution works?

Now, I'm not about to dismiss what Paul Krugman generally has to say. Let me acknowledge something that too many writers are afraid to: SOMEONE WHO IS NOT ME KNOWS MORE ABOUT THE FREAKIN' ECONOMY THAN I DO.

Wow. That wasn't hard.

At the same time, I'm not sure Dr. Krugman knows more about Politics than I do. That's what's been scaring me about his last few columns and blogposts.

Then again, he was a Hillary supporter.

(Sorry Hillary Supporters out there, but I've come to notice that some Hillary supporters out there in the Press and Blogosphere are quicker than most to slam the President when he miffs them for whatever reason. Steve Clemons is another example of this.)

Okay, back to Krugman.

He knows more about the Economy than I do. (Duh.)

He knows more about the Economy than you do. (Double Duh.)

He's right about the size of the Stimulus (hint: it's not big enough).

He's right that Obama got nothing for his outreach to Republicans (hint: they gave him nothing for trying to reach across the aisle).

But whether we like it or not, the Senate Republicans had a right to try and derail this thing.

They're going to fail, and fail miserably…but they had a right.

Would that Democrats had shown the same spine during the Patriot Act debate, or when they were hemming and hawing over Bush's Tax Cuts.

Now, let's be honest, it's incredibly stupid policy, and politically suicidal for the GOP to do this. (Polls are showing that the Congressional GOP is taking it in the shorts.)

Note: Before we all go hand-in-hand into the insanity of repealing the filibuster, let us remember that one day we won't be in the majority, and that throwing away the minority's power isn't exactly thinking-ahead. Plus, how loud were we all --rightly-- howling when they wanted to take away the filibuster with the Nuclear Option not that long ago??

In his article: The Destructive Center, Paul Krugman doesn't spend two pages eviscerating brain-dead "moderates" like Ben Nelson (D-NE), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) (the people who jammed this compromise down our throats). No instead, he spends his time eviscerating President Obama.

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.

After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.

Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.

But wait! There's more:

So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”

No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.

Your confidence is always appreciated, Professor Krugman.

Dr. Krugman does understand that Legislation originates in the Congress, right? I mean, as much as Obama can offer up suggestions, or even make demands, it's going to start in some poor schmuck Congressman's (or Congresswoman's) hands first, and then get exposed to the rotting open air of the Leglistative process, where we've gone from a few egos, to 535 of them.

But the egos aren't just on Capitol Hill. I think a lot of pundits seem to be suffering from some kind of left-wing variant of George Bush syndrome (also known as My-Way-Or-The-Highway Disease). Wherein everyone with a soapbox declares their economic plan as the only way out, and then follow it up by declaring if his (or her) plan "isn't passed exactly as I have written it, the economy will implode and it'll all be Obama's fault for not listening to me."

Obama campaigned on a promise to change Washington and reach across the aisle. Now suddenly, a lot of people on our side of the aisle seem to be saying "You really didn't mean that, did you?"

The President clearly reached across the aisle as promised. The Republicans slapped him in the face for it. Message received. Obama turned around and started firing back in the last couple of days, culminating in tonight's Presser and the Town Hall in Elkhart, Indiana (a safe McCain district rewarded for their loyalty with %15 Unemployment.)

Krugman's take is only valid if you do not accept what the President was doing was part of a larger strategy.

There is the Banking Strategy, Regulatory Reform, and Health Care Reform.

More importantly, there is Stimulus Parts 1 and 2.

The currently Stimulus Package may be too small for what needs to be accomplished, but ripping the President makes sense only if you assume that this is the only Stimulus package we need this year.

Back on January 5th, Richard Wolffe of Newsweek posited that very notion on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(Richard's part begins about 2:47 into the video, but his part about a second stimulus begins about 5:58 into the video).

But at the same time, believe it or not, there was a warning of the dangers of too much stimulus.

Under current conditions, however, it's much better to err on the side of doing too much than on the side of doing too little. The risk, if the stimulus plan turns out to be more than needed, is that the economy might overheat, leading to inflation…

Who left us with that little nugget?

Oh yeah, Paul Krugman.

Now, to be fair, he said more than that, and that certainly wasn't the crux of his argument. He was, and remains, afraid that any Stimulus Shortfall won't be made up by the Fed or anybody else.

Clearly, someone in the Obama Administration is also afraid of the Economy overheating, and leading to inflation (I am SO learning this on the fly), so why not break the Stimulus into two parts?

The overall strategy, I think, was to have a big, broad, bi-partisan bill come out early on, get signed; and then see what happens. With the size of the Stimulus Package we're talking now, the Economy would start to get a little better, but at the same time, not be totally on the road to recovery. Thus, Obama would turn to the Congress and say we need more, and while some bellicose Republicans would throw up their arms in the air (like they just don't care…'cause they don't), but by then they would have already invested too much in the Stimulus to let it fail.

Clearly, that's not going to happen now.

But it's going to be interesting. A second round of stimulus is clearly going to be a harder sell than the first. But there are tricks (of the dirty underhanded partisan kind) that can get around that. Attaching said Stimulus II to the Defense Appropriations Bill comes right to mind.

I'm not 100% sure how Banking Reform and Regulatory Reform fit within the Congress? Does Obama have to do to them, or is he going to make sweeping changes to the way they do business without them?

And then there's Health Care Reform. I really want to see what happens with that one. We've had the Republicans freaking out over the concept of Stimulus. I've long assumed that the Health Care debate was going to be one of the Senate's uglier chapters.

But if you see…night after night…day after day…of Republicans on the T.V., arguing against Health Care the way they've argued against the Stimulus Package?

Christmas could be coming early this year.

Obama: "Now Is The Time"... (VIDEO)

"Now I'm not going to tell you that this bill is perfect. It isn't. But it is the right size, the right scope, and has the right priorities to create jobs that will jumpstart our economy and transform it for the twenty-first century.

I also can't tell you with one hundred percent certainty that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope. But I can tell you with complete confidence that endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will bring only deepening disaster.

We've had a good debate. Now it's time to act. That's why I am calling on Congress to pass this bill immediately. Folks here in Elkhart and across America need help right now, and they can't afford to keep on waiting for folks in Washington to get this done."

--President Barack Obama. Elkhart, Indiana.

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The President playing it cool during the same apperance.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Complete Text of the remarks is as follows:

I want to start by thanking Ed for coming here today and sharing his family's story with all of us.

You know, we tend to take the measure of the economic crisis we face in numbers and statistics. But when we say we've lost 3.6 million jobs since this recession began - nearly 600,000 in the past month alone; when we say that this area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America, with an unemployment rate over 15 percent; when we talk about layoffs at companies like Monaco Coach, Keystone RV, and Pilgrim International - companies that have sustained this community for years - we're talking about Ed Neufeldt and people like him all across this country.

We're talking about folks who've lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its place. Parents who've lost their health care and lie awake nights praying the kids don't get sick. Families who've lost the home that was their corner of the American dream. Young people who put that college acceptance letter back in the envelope because they just can't afford it.

That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true measure of this economic crisis. Those are the stories I heard when I came here to Elkhart six months ago and that I have carried with me every day since.

I promised you back then that if elected President, I would do everything I could to help this community recover. And that's why I've come back today - to tell you how I intend to keep that promise.

The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression. Economists from across the spectrum have warned that if we don't act immediately, millions more jobs will be lost, and national unemployment rates will approach double digits. More people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse.

So we can no longer afford to wait and see and hope for the best. We can no longer posture and bicker and resort to the same failed ideas that got us into this mess in the first place - and that the American people rejected at the polls this past November. You didn't send us to Washington because you were hoping for more of the same. You sent us there with a mandate for change, and the expectation that we would act quickly and boldly to carry it out - and that is exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.

That is why I put forth a Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that is now before Congress. At its core is a very simple idea: to put Americans back to work doing the work America needs done.

The plan will save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years. But not just any jobs - jobs that meet the needs we've neglected for far too long and lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth: jobs fixing our schools; computerizing medical records to save costs and save lives; repairing our infrastructure; and investing in renewable energy to help us move toward energy independence. The plan also calls for immediate tax relief for 95 percent of American workers.

Now I know that some of you might be thinking, well that all sounds good, but when are we going to see any of that here in Elkhart? What does all that mean for our families and our community? Those are exactly the kind of questions you should be asking of your President and your government, and today, I want to provide some answers - and I want to be as specific as I can.

First, this plan will provide for extended unemployment insurance, health care and other assistance for workers and families who have lost their jobs in this recession.

That will mean an additional $100 per month in unemployment benefits to more than 450,000 Indiana workers, extended unemployment benefits for another 89,000 folks who've been laid off and can't find work, and job training assistance to help more than 51,000 people here get back on their feet.

That is not only our moral responsibility - to lend a helping hand to our fellow Americans in times of emergency - but it also makes good economic sense. If you don't have money, you can't spend it. And if people don't spend, our economy will continue to decline.

For that same reason, the plan includes badly needed tax relief for middle class workers and families. The middle class is under siege, and we need to give you more of the money you've earned, so you can spend it and pay your bills. Under our plan, individuals get $500 - families, $1,000 - providing relief for nearly 2.5 million workers and their families here in Indiana.

The plan will also provide a partially refundable $2,500 per-student tax credit to help 76,000 Hoosier families send their kids to college. This will benefit your household budgets in the short run, and will benefit America in the long run.

But providing tax relief, and college assistance and help to folks who've lost their jobs is not enough. A real recovery plan helps create more jobs and put people back to work.

That's why, between the investments our plan makes - and the tax relief for small businesses it provides - we'll create or save nearly 80,000 badly needed jobs for Indiana in the next two years. Now, you may have heard some of the critics of our plan saying that it would create mostly government jobs. That's simply not true. More than 90 percent of these jobs will be in the private sector. More than 90 percent.

But it's not just the jobs that will benefit Indiana and the rest of America. It's the work people will be doing: Rebuilding our roads, bridges, dams and levees. Roads like US 31 here in Indiana that Hoosiers count on, and that connect small towns and rural communities to opportunities for economic growth. And I know that a new overpass downtown would make a big difference for businesses and families right here in Elkhart.

We'll also put people to work rebuilding our schools so all our kids can have the world-class classrooms, labs and libraries they need to compete in today's global economy.

Investing in clean alternative sources of energy and the electric grid we need to transport it from coast to coast, helping make Indiana an energy-producing state, not just an energy-consuming state. Weatherizing homes across this state, and installing state of the art equipment to help you control your energy costs.

Building new high-speed broadband lines, reaching schools and small businesses in rural Indiana so they can connect and compete with their counterparts in any city in any country in the world.

And there is much, much more.

Now I'm not going to tell you that this bill is perfect. It isn't. But it is the right size, the right scope, and has the right priorities to create jobs that will jumpstart our economy and transform it for the twenty-first century.

I also can't tell you with one hundred percent certainty that everything in this plan will work exactly as we hope. But I can tell you with complete confidence that endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will bring only deepening disaster.

We've had a good debate. Now it's time to act. That's why I am calling on Congress to pass this bill immediately. Folks here in Elkhart and across America need help right now, and they can't afford to keep on waiting for folks in Washington to get this done.

We know that even with this plan, the road ahead won't be easy. This crisis has been a long time in the making, and we know that we cannot turn it around overnight. Recovery will likely be measured in years, not weeks or months. But we also know that our economy will be stronger for generations to come if we commit ourselves to the work that needs to be done today. And being here in Elkhart, I am more confident than ever before that we will get where we need to be.

Because while I know people are struggling, I also know that folks here are good workers and good neighbors who step up, help each other out, and make sacrifices when times are tough. I know that all folks here are asking for is a chance to work hard - and to have that work translate into a decent life for you and your family.

So I know you all are doing your part out here - and I think it's about time the government did its part too. That's what the recovery plan before Congress is about. And that is why I hope Congress passes it as soon as humanly possible, so we can get to work creating jobs, helping families and turning our economy around.

Thank you, and I'd now like to open this up for questions.

The Fireside chat for February 7, 2009

Dangerous Waters you're swimming in...

A question for our Republican friends...

Even though the new President has bent over backwards to be bipartisan, even at the risk of pissing off his own base, he's done so...and you've slapped him in the face for it.

He caved to some of your demands on putting tax cuts into the Stimulus, even though it may be a bad idea.

He's open to trimming some of (but not all) of the size of the Stimulus (it still has to be in the $800 Billion dollar range, though).

And now he's even caved to your (well, Kit Bond's) self-important demand that the CIA Interrogators won't be prosecuted.

Here's my question. What if the Stimulus goes down?

What if it takes Bipartisanship with it?

What's going to save your CIA Interrogators then?

If Stimulus goes down, what incentive is there for the Obama Administration not to declare all out war on the Bush Administration? What's to stop the Justice Department? More importantly (and constitutionally, since its their Stimulus Bill you're pissing on) what's to stop the House?

It's the old Washington saying, the enemy isn't the other party, it's the Senate.

If I were my Republican friends, I'd think long and hard about this.

Damn. (AUDIO)

Obama: Speech at the Energy Department Feb. 5, 2009 (VIDEO)

UPDATE: (4:24pm Pacific)

Here is the complete transcript:

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY STAFF

U.S. Department of Energy
Washington, D.C.

12:12 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you so much. Well, it is a thrill to be here. Thank you, Secretary Chu, for bringing your experience and expertise to this new role. And thanks to all of you who have done so much on behalf of the country each and every day here at the department. You know, your mission is so important, and it's only going to grow as we transform the ways we produce energy and use energy for the sake of our environment, for the sake of our security, and for the sake of our economy.

As we are meeting, in the halls of Congress just down the street from here, there's a debate going on about the plan I've proposed, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.

This isn't some abstract debate. Last week, we learned that many of America's largest corporations are planning to lay off tens of thousands of workers. Today we learned that last week, the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. Tomorrow, we're expecting another dismal jobs report on top of the 2.6 million jobs that we lost last year. We've lost half a million jobs each month for the last two months.

Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude as has been proposed deserves the scrutiny that it has received over the last month. I think that's a good thing. That's the way democracy is supposed to work. But these numbers that we're seeing are sending an unmistakable message -- and so are the American people. The time for talk is over. The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families and businesses across the country.

And I refuse to let that happen. We can't delay and we can't go back to the same worn-out ideas that led us here in the first place. In the last few days, we've seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read but you'd be very familiar with because you've been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They're rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that government doesn't have a role to play; that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges -- the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.

Just as past generations of Americans have done in trying times, we can and we must turn this moment of challenge into one of opportunity. The plan I've proposed has at its core a simple idea: Let's put Americans to work doing the work that America needs to be done.

This plan will save or create over 3 million jobs -- almost all of them in the private sector.

This plan will put people to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, our dangerous -- dangerously deficient dams and levees.

This plan will put people to work modernizing our health care system, not only saving us billions of dollars, but countless lives.

This plan will put people to work renovating more than 10,000 schools, giving millions of children the chance to learn in 21st century classrooms, libraries and labs -- and to all the scientists in the room today, you know what that means for America's future.

This plan will provide sensible tax relief for the struggling middle class, unemployment insurance and continuing health care coverage for those who've lost their jobs, and it will help prevent our states and local communities from laying off firefighters and teachers and police.

And finally, this plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time.

After decades of dragging our feet, this plan will finally spark the creation of a clean energy industry that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next few years, manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells, for example -- millions more after that. These jobs and these investments will double our capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years.

We'll fund a better, smarter electricity grid and train workers to build it -- a grid that will help us ship wind and solar power from one end of this country to another. Think about it. The grid that powers the tools of modern life -- computers, appliances, even BlackBerrys -- (laughter) -- looks largely the same as it did half a century ago. Just these first steps towards modernizing the way we distribute electricity could reduce consumption by 2 to 4 percent.

We'll also lead a revolution in energy efficiency, modernizing more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improving the efficiency of more than 2 million American homes. This will not only create jobs, it will cut the federal energy bill by a third and save taxpayers $2 billion each year and save Americans billions of dollars more on their utility bills.

In fact, as part of this effort, today I've signed a presidential memorandum requesting that the Department of Energy set new efficiency standards for common household appliances. This will save consumers money, this will spur innovation, and this will conserve tremendous amounts of energy. We'll save through these simple steps over the next 30 years the amount of energy produced over a two-year period by all the coal-fired power plants in America.

And through investments in our mass transit system to boost capacity, in our roads to reduce congestion, and in technologies that will accelerate the development of innovations like plug-in hybrid vehicles, we'll be making a significant down payment on a cleaner and more energy independent future.

Now, I read the other day that critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of the money to modernize the entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state of the art fuel efficiency. This is what they call pork. You know the truth. It will not only save the government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making these cars, it will set a standard for private industry to match. And so when you hear these attacks deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself -- are these folks serious? Is it any wonder that we haven't had a real energy policy in this country?

For the last few years, I've talked about these issues with Americans from one end of this country to another. And Washington may not be ready to get serious about energy independence, but I am. And so are you. And so are the American people.

Inaction is not an option that is acceptable to me and it's certainly not acceptable to the American people -- not on energy, not on the economy, not at this critical moment.

So I am calling on all the members of Congress -- Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate -- to rise to this moment. No plan is perfect. There have been constructive changes made to this one over the last several weeks. I would love to see additional improvements today. But the scale and the scope of this plan is the right one. Our approach to energy is the right one. It's what America needs right now, and we need to move forward today. We can't keep on having the same old arguments over and over again that lead us to the exact same spot -- where we are wasting previous energy, we're not creating jobs, we're failing to compete in the global economy, and we end up bickering at a time when the economy urgently needs action.

I thank all of you for being here, and I'm eager to work with Secretary Chu and all of you as we stand up to meet the challenges of this new century. That's what the American people are looking for. That's what I expect out of Congress. That's what I believe we can deliver to our children and our grandchildren in their future.

Thank you so much, everybody. I appreciate it. Thank you. (Applause.)

A matter of emphasis...

I love the Mainstream Media because you can always go there to get such straight answers.

Can you detect the sarcasm in my voice? It's a blog, it's hard to tell.

For example, in Reuters today, you see the following headline: Obama CIA pick may back "limited" abuse prosecution.

President Barack Obama's choice to head the CIA said on Thursday he would support "limited" prosecution of any agents who deliberately violated the law in interrogating terrorism suspects.

Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, in Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination, broke with outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden to support a congressional inquiry into the agency's detention and interrogation program launched after the September 11 attacks.

He said the Senate Intelligence Committee would be an appropriate place for an inquiry "to learn lessons from what happened" in the program, and said he would do everything he could to cooperate.

Ahhh, wonderful to hear.

But wait a minute Reuters is European. (Damn you, old Europe!!) Time Magazine, a fine American publication, on the other hand, has a different take entirely called: Panetta: Don't Punish Waterboarding.

CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta says the CIA interrogators who used waterboarding or other harsh techniques against prisoners on the authority of the White House should not be prosecuted.

Panetta told a Senate panel on Thursday that those individuals should not be prosecuted or investigated if they acted pursuant to the law as presented by the attorney general.

See, America the trick is...you gotta keep reading, because Time Magazine eventually says the same thing, despite its headline; which as you know is written by someone else.

However, Panetta says that if interrogators went beyond the methods that they were told were legal, they should be investigated and prosecuted.

The Bush White House approved CIA waterboarding of three prisoners in 2002 and 2003. The CIA banned the practice internally in 2006.

President Barack Obama has prohibited harsh interrogation techniques.

For the record, that's whole Time article.

But before we go cheering Reuters, they loop back as well:

Panetta said he considered "waterboarding" to be torture, but did not support prosecuting agents who relied on high-level legal guidance allowing such techniques.

But at the same time...

However, "if there were those who deliberately violated the law, and deliberately took actions which were above and beyond the standards presented to them, then obviously in those limited cases there should be prosecution," he said.

This is all good, but the truth of what's going to happen probably lies somewhere in between Reuters and Time. I bet Panetta wouldn't mind prosecuting some of his guys, if for no other reason than to get them to squeal on the big fish: Rummy, Cheney and the unemployable Gonzalez. But remember, he's not a prosecutor. He also doesn't want to start a rebellion on his first day at Langley.

The best strategy is to punt the thing to Congress, and let them do the dirty (and constitutionally mandated) work.

But if there's one thing to bear in mind, that did put me in a bit of a cold sweat, it's this paragraph from the Reuters article:

Panetta said he would if necessary ask Obama to allow harsher interrogations than those covered by the Army Field Manual, which the president last month set as the government standard. The manual bans techniques such as waterboarding.

"I would not hesitate," to seek broader interrogation authority, Panetta said, adding "I think that this president would do nothing that would violate the laws that are in place."

He promised to tell Congress if Obama were to authorize a departure from standards the president imposed last month.

So...the President might go back to torture, but he'll warn us first?

I don't see how that stands with "this president would do nothing that would violate the laws that are in place." Methinks (mehopes) this is a way to placate the Republicans on the panel.

The President continues...

From the Washington Post.  There's more, but this the good stuff...

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long. And because we have, our health-care costs still rise faster than inflation. Our dependence on foreign oil still threatens our economy and our security. Our children still study in schools that put them at a disadvantage. We've seen the tragic consequences when our bridges crumble and our levees fail.

Every day, our economy gets sicker -- and the time for a remedy that puts Americans back to work, jump-starts our economy and invests in lasting growth is now.

Now is the time to protect health insurance for the more than 8 million Americans at risk of losing their coverage and to computerize the health-care records of every American within five years, saving billions of dollars and countless lives in the process.

Now is the time to save billions by making 2 million homes and 75 percent of federal buildings more energy-efficient, and to double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy within three years.

Now is the time to give our children every advantage they need to compete by upgrading 10,000 schools with state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries and labs; by training our teachers in math and science; and by bringing the dream of a college education within reach for millions of Americans.

And now is the time to create the jobs that remake America for the 21st century by rebuilding aging roads, bridges and levees; designing a smart electrical grid; and connecting every corner of the country to the information superhighway.

These are the actions Americans expect us to take without delay. They're patient enough to know that our economic recovery will be measured in years, not months. But they have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide.

So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

The writer is president of the United States.

I had to leave that last part in.  Too cool.

Colbert nails 'em...(VIDEO)

Staunch Conservative Stephen Colbert (not to be confused with Comedy Central Comedian Stephen Colbert) has a warning for the Republicans.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

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Let's get it on…

This morning, Barack Obama struck back…

President Obama mounted a staunch defense today of the economic stimulus plan now before Congress, chiding critics who want it to focus primarily on tax cuts and asserting that Americans rejected their theories in the November elections.

In an appearance at the White House with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, Obama urged Congress to act quickly on the stimulus package, which has come under attack from Senate Republicans and some Democrats alarmed by its roughly $900 billion price tag.

"We know that even if we do everything we should, this crisis was years in the making, and it will take more than weeks or months to turn things around," Obama said. "But make no mistake: A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future. Millions more jobs will be lost. More businesses will be shuttered. More dreams will be deferred."

Oh yeah...

Proof, once again, that the man's read The Defining Moment. Action, and action now.

But my favorite moment, one reflective of the campaign, is his turning toward the Conversative talking point, and finally…finally…counterpunching.

Apparently referring to Republican foes of the stimulus plan, Obama said recent criticisms of it "echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place: the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems, that we can ignore fundamental challenges like energy independence and the high cost of health care, that we can somehow deal with this in a piecemeal fashion and still expect our economy and our country to thrive."

Obama added: "I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

Translation. I won. Get over it. Lead. Follow...or prepare to get rolled over.

Rod Blagojevich and his one moment of sanity. (VIDEO)

I think the man's scum, but Blago made his best case for going on TV as much as he did during the run up to his Impeachment Trial.  He said he had young daughters, and didn't want them to believe he was guilty (about 3:15 in). Okay, even though I think he is guilty, I can live with that.  I understand that.

At the same time, he lied about being allowed to call witnesses. As I recall, he wanted to pull down every member of the Obama Administration to embarass them during his trial. The Illinois Senate said no, only witnesses germane to the case would be allowed, and Blagojevich threw a hissy fit, going on all those aforementioned Talk Shows, claiming he wasn't allowed any witnesses at all.

From the Chicago Sun Times:

The rules do prohibit both House impeachment prosecutors and the governor’s lawyers from subpoenaing people who “could compromise the U.S. Attorney’s criminal investigation of Rod R. Blagojevich.” But none of the rules prohibit Blagojevich from presenting his side of the story, said Sen. Matt Murphy (R-Palatine), one of the people who drafted them.

The President is Wrong...

"This will be the first time on this blog that I am going to wholeheartedly disagree with Barack Obama.  He wants to appoint Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican as Commerce Secretary, theoretically giving the Democrats a 60 seat majority after the Democratic New Hampshire Governor, John Lynch, appoints his replacement.  But...

"Senator [Judd] Gregg [R-NH] has said he would not resign his seat in the U.S. Senate if it changed the balance in the Senate," Governor John Lynch said in a statement given to the Union Leader. "Based on my discussions, it is clear the White House and Senate leadership understand this as well."

Hey, I got an idea.  Maybe Judd Gregg shoudn't be Commerce Secretary.

This is not a guy or a position that I'm losing a lot of sleep over. Personally, I would have stuck with Richardson, despite his troubles, especially after seeing this.

Added to that, let's face facts, Judd Gregg was about to get his ass kicked in the upcoming Senate Elections in 2010. Why help him or his party out? If he wants the job, then these are the conditions. You take it, I appoint who I want (a Democrat). If that's too much for you, fine. Stay in the Senate, and get removed via the ballot box. Works for me either way.

Blue Hampshire has more about this. (They're a progressive site dealing exclusively with New Hampshire Politics. And no, it's not one I regularly visit.)

But if the Republicans filibuster just one bill out of the Senate after today, I think John Lynch should pay a political price for his decision.  While I'm sure there's been pressure from Harry Reid and Barack Obama, the final decision rests with John Lynch, and he should have said hell no...

Don't forget your Frank Rich for the day...

Frank Rich of the New York Times:

[Y]ou might think that a loyal opposition would want to pitch in and play a serious role at a time of national peril. Not by singing “Kumbaya” but by collaborating on possible solutions and advancing a policy debate that many Americans’ lives depend on. As Raymond Moley, of F.D.R.’s brain trust, said of the cross-party effort at the harrowing start of that presidency in March 1933, Hoover and Roosevelt acolytes “had forgotten to be Republicans or Democrats” as they urgently tried to rescue their country.

The current G.O.P. acts as if it — and we — have all the time in the world. It kept hoping in vain that the fast-waning Blago sideshow would somehow impale Obama or Rahm Emanuel. It has come perilously close to wishing aloud that a terrorist attack will materialize to discredit Obama’s reversals of Bush policy on torture, military tribunals and Gitmo. The party’s sole consistent ambition is to play petty politics to gum up the works.

If anything, the Republican Congressional leadership seems to be emulating John McCain’s September stunt of “suspending” his campaign to “fix” the Wall Street meltdown. For all his bluster, McCain in the end had no fixes to offer and sat like a pet rock at the White House meeting on the crisis before capitulating to the bailout. His imitators likewise posture in public about their determination to take action, then do nothing while more and more Americans cry for help.

The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.

...


The Republicans do have one idea, of course, but it’s hardly fresh: more and bigger tax cuts, particularly for business and the well-off. That’s the sum of their “alternative” stimulus plan. Obama has tried to accommodate this panacea, perhaps to a fault. Mainstream economists in both parties believe that tax cuts in the stimulus package will deliver far less bang for the buck than, say, infrastructure spending. The tax-cut stimulus embraced a year ago by the G.O.P. induced next-to-no consumer spending as Americans merely banked the savings or paid down debt.

The Pre-Superbowl Interview (VIDEO)

And between you and me, Obama pretty much nailed the game.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Fireside chat for January 31, 2009

Time to get off the stick, and to finish the Financial Recovery Act. Oh, and Wall Street, stop with the bonuses, already!

Proud to be an American...

Arkansas...

A resolution congratulating Barack Obama on his election as president was rejected by a committee of the Arkansas House of Representatives after lawmakers objected to language in the measure that referred to the United States as “a nation founded by slave owners.”

TPM: Well, there's your problem right there...

It began with a 17-2 vote. The Senate Judiciary committee voted "controversial" Attorney General Appointee, Eric Holder, out of said committee and onto the full Senate where he's expected to be confirmed. My bet is that, despite the hemming and hawing of the Senate Republicans, no one wanted to be on the wrong side of history and vote against the first black Attorney General in U.S. History.

And for the record, the two Senators who were more than comfortable being on the wrong side of history (and being labeled as racists by me, personally) were: John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

To my Father, who is planning on moving to Texas (voluntarily), all I can say is way to go. Your Senator at work!

Then one local paper stepped up with this tasty nugget of news:

President Obama's choice to run the Justice Department has assured senior Republican senators that he won't prosecute intelligence officers or political appointees who were involved in the Bush administration's policy of "enhanced interrogations."

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond, Missouri Republican and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview with The Washington Times that he will support Eric H. Holder Jr.'s nomination for attorney general because Mr. Holder assured him privately that Mr. Obama's Justice Department will not prosecute former Bush officials involved in the interrogations program.

Kit Bond...one of the original, and greatest of the Reagan Airheads.

All of the sudden, everyone is running with that quote: TPM, Huffington Post (well, HuffPo did cover the story at some point, and fortunately changed it)…

…finally, Holder's aides called bull!@$%.

"Eric Holder has not made any commitments about who would or would not be prosecuted," the aide said via e-mail. "He explained his position to Senator Bond as he did in the public hearing and in his responses to written questions."

Even Judicary Chairman Pat Leahy of Vertmont cracked back on the supposition that the Nation's Top Cop would fail to prosecute crimes where he saw them.

"It would be completely wrong if a senator said, 'I'll vote for you if you promise to withhold prosecution of a crime'," Leahy told me. "No senator would make a request like that. It'd be improper."

In fact, in a written response to a question by Torture defender John Kyl of Arizona, Holder said:

Prosecutorial and investigative judgments must depend on the facts, and no one is above the law. But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in "reasonable and good-faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions" authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full-blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution.

Not comforting, but acceptable...provided no one gets in the way of Congress investigating this mess.

So where did this story come from?

Well, all one has to do is look at the original source of the Kit Bond quote.

The Washington Times, the Fox News of Newspapers.

There's your problem right there.

Times of London: Reporting, Optional.

Is the British Press any better than the American Press when it comes to abject laziness??

Here's the headline: "Freed Guantánamo prisoners taunt US as closure plan falls apart"

Falls apart...

Falls apart???

So...there's a quote in this piece saying conclusively that the President has abandoned his plans to close GITMO?

Oh, there's not?

So what the @$%@#$ are you talking about??

There's plenty of stuff (stuff not being the same thing as quotes mind you) about EU Ministers saying they won't take back GITMO Prisoners:

At a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels yesterday, the idea of taking in about 60 Guantánamo inmates cleared for release received a far from enthusiastic response, with some members, including Britain, appearing to reject the prospect.

But, looking at other papers you get a slightly different response...and by different, by which I mean completely the opposite:

"This is an American problem and they have to solve it but we'll be ready to help if necessary … I think the answer of the EU will be yes," Javier Solana said before the gathering of European foreign ministers, when asked whether the EU could take some former Guantánamo prisoners.

In case the Times of London isn't familiar with the concept, that was a quote...

Granted, there is some resistance to the proposal. The Guardian goes as far as to say that the issue threatens to split the E.U., but...

Those harbouring doubts – including Germany, Austria and the Netherlands – are concerned about the possibility of accepting former inmates who might still prove a danger, a risk highlighted when it emerged last week that Said Ali al-Shihri, who was released from Guantánamo in 2007, is now al-Qaida's deputy leader in Yemen.

"There is no question that chief responsibility to do with solving the problem of this detention centre lies with those who set it up, the Americans themselves," Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, said. "But it is also a question of our credibility of whether we support the dismantling of this American camp or not."

SunTimes: This is what I was talking about...

All you folks out there supporting Burris (Dad), now you see what I was worried about, and why I think this guy is scum:

“If there was no Martin Luther King Jr. and no Roland Burris, there would be no Barack Obama in the White House today,” Burris said to cheers at a Rainbow PUSH Coalition breakfast in Chicago. “We must recognize, friends, that we all stand on each other's shoulders.”

The Fireside chat for January 24, 2009

His first as President...

Obama's Negotiating Style (VIDEO)

Keith: Bush targeted Reporters for Surveillance (VIDEO)

According to a former N.S.A. Analyst, Russell Tice, the Bush Administration's surveillance program was far, far, far wider than earlier guessed. The Bush Administration was targeting specific groups for surveillance, especially Journalists.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

TPM: Your take #28

Mea culpa.  I confess.  I am reader MJ.  Duh.

BBC: MLK...Negro President in 25 years or less...

Martin Luther King...from a BBC Interview in 1964 (embeding not available), saying that there will a Negro President in 25 years or less...

So he was a little off...

HuffPo: Are you @#$% kidding me??

Is there any wonder why I remain a Liberal who doesn't like other Liberals?

From today's Huffington Post:

Obama's First Betrayal?

Has President-elect Barack Obama committed his first betrayal? Has he turned away from his most exalted ideals in an act of such spiritual malfeasance that it will condemn his administration?

Some observers cite the fact that the stimulus package contains money for AmeriCorps but nothing for the Peace Corps as evidence that the president-elect has turned his back on his pledge to double the size of Kennedy's most noble child. There is buzz among former Volunteers and others associated with the Peace Corps that the expanded future of the organization is in immediate and dramatic peril.

If this is really what this article is about, we deserve to lose.

The Next Step...(VIDEO)

"As President, I will need the help of all Americans to meet the challenges that lie ahead. That's why I'm asking people like you who fought for change during the campaign to continue fighting for change in your communities. Since the election hundreds of thousands of you have shared your ideas about how this movement should move forward..."



It is time to bring our Army to Washington, and demand the change we voted for.

The Fireside chat for January 17, 2009

Sullivan: Taibbi vs. Friedman...

This originally comes from Andrew Sullivan.  It's Matt Taibbi being Matt Taibbi, but since's absolutely obliterating Thomas Friedman, it's all so especially enjoyable:

To review quickly, the “Long Bomb” Iraq war plan [Tom] Friedman supported as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone else’s face; the “Electronic Herd” of highly volatile international capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn’t pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved “Golden Straitjacket” of American-style global development (forced on the world by the “hidden fist” of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new book; and, most humorously, the “Flat World” consumer economics Friedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total unreality that even his wife’s once-mighty shopping mall empire, General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone. So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.

What the fuck else is he going to be?

And, according to Sullivan, that was one of the nicer paragraphs.

FiveThirtyEight: Is Nate becoming the Anti-Sirota??

Sirota blasts Obama.  I'd rip him, but since I didn't bother to read his piece, that'd be unfair.  Instead, I'll just ignore him.

Still, Nate Silver steps up.  He doesn't blast Sirota, but he does refute him, and the knee-jerk anti-Bailout mania that seems to be sweeping the country...

The reason, of course, that Coburn and the other 18 senators changed their stance on the bailout is not because of any underlying change in philosophy but because of political opportunism. The Obama administration has now inherited the burden of the bailout package from the Bush administration; as such, it is easier for Republicans to oppose it. Likewise, it is harder for Democrats like Jeff Merkely and the Udall Cousins, who railed against the bailout on the campaign trail, to vote to oppose it.

The bailout, undoubtedly, is highly unpopular. Getting to run a commercial that accuses your opponent of having voted for "a $700 billion giveaway to Wall Street" is the sort of stuff that can win you an election.

But does the fact that the optics of the bailout are poor mean that it is poor policy? Does it mean, moreover, that opposing the bailout is the right "progressive" policy stance?

On the contrary, the fact that the Republican and Democratic positions on the bailout appear to be so fluid would seem to indicate that it not an issue particularly well described by traditional ideological frameworks like liberal versus conservative. Either the bailout is a necessary evil to get the economy moving again -- a goal that benefits progressives and conservatives alike -- or it isn't. This is largely an empirical question rather than an ideological one.

WaPo: Spare me the sanctimony...

I love hearing such moral certainty out of blank Newspaper Editorial pages: "The attorney general nominee must explain his role," the Washington Post demands.

Must, explain his role.

So...people should be held accountable for the crap they've committed in the past?

People like...the Washington Post Editorial Board who cheerleaded us into the Iraq War.

Courtesy Think Progress:

After Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. [2/6/03]

The Perils of Passivity [2/13/03]

But the United States cannot again join the Security Council in backing down from a confrontation with the Iraqi dictator, as it did repeatedly during the 1990s, also under pressure from France and Russia. [2/16/03]

In the case of Iraq, the functioning of American democracy has been pretty straightforward. President Bush has been respectful of opponents, at least at home, as he should be on such a momentous issue. [2/23/03]

Raw Story: That's NOT what he said...

The Raw Story headline says it up front: "Obama: Killing bin Laden may not be essential".

Problem, that's not what he said.

You be the judge.

The quote-misquote is taken from a leaked CBS Interview. Here's what the President-Elect said.

"I think that we have to so weaken his infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function," Obama said.

"My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives, then we will meet our goal of protecting America."

When you lead with a headline that says Killing bin Laden may not be essential, A) you've made it sound like that's a direct quote, when it's not. B) It further makes it sound like Obama's taking the Bush cue of "I don't think about him very much." It suggests a lackadaiscial attitude toward pursuing Bin Laden.

Was there anything lackadaiscial in that statement?

I'm sorry, but what part of "my preference obviously would be to capture or kill him" didn't Raw Story understand??

The word "essential" appears once in the Raw Story story...in the headline, odds are written by someone else.

UPDATE (12:02pm): To clarify, a far more accurate, and simpler, take on what Obama said, is "We don't have to kill him to neutralize him as a threat."

But by saying what they said, how they said it, they're making it sound like Obama said "Killing Osama? We can take it or leave it". It's a subtle change, but it changes the meaning of the quote.

Obama at Harvard. Obama Now.

The story of the President-Elect's rise to become the first African-American to be the Editor of the Harvard Law Review is pretty well known.

But consider the parallels of those heady days, and compare them to now:

Ideological battles raged at the law school. Students clashed over faculty diversity and political correctness. Some even booed and hissed one another in class.

Obama, though liberal, was elected with help from conservatives. He prompted criticism from more liberal classmates by putting conservatives in key editorial positions. Some of his toughest critics were black students who complained that he didn't appoint more African Americans to top posts.

“That was the first time I had to deal with something that I suspect I'll have to deal with in the future, which is balancing a broader constituency with the specific expectations of being an African American in a position of influence,” he would later tell biographer David Mendell. “As for the criticism, I'm not sure there was anything all that surprising about that.”

The controversy mirrors the backlash from liberals today who fault some of his early appointments as well as his choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation.

“He struck me as moderate in the context of campus politics,” says classmate Adam Charnes, a Republican who would work in the Bush Justice Department and now practices in Winston-Salem. “His cabinet appointments are consistent with the Barack that I knew, someone who doesn't take a hard and fast ideological position on things.”

But as an editorial point, remember this story for future days...

[Sarah] Higgins [one of the lead interview subjects of the McClatchy Story] recalls Obama walking in during another argument.

He summoned one editor to a meeting and began climbing the stairs to his cramped second-floor office. The editor made no move to follow and kept arguing. Obama paused.

“Upstairs, now,” he said firmly. He kept walking. The editor sheepishly followed.

When he's ready to strike, he will strike.

Obama to America: Stay Home!! (VIDEO)

Okay, just kidding. He doesn't say that...

...exactly.

Obama's given an pre-Inaugural Video about what he expects (crowds, difficulty getting around) and what events are out there (plenty), and what he'd like us all to do on MLK Day.

TPM: Even Josh is starting to annoy me...

First it was, Obama's not being aggressive enough to beat Hillary in the Primary. Then, it's he's not doing enough in the General to take down McCain. Now, he's not being ambitious enough in pursuit of the stimulus.

I'm sorry, but when is Josh going to get it through his head that Obama moves at a different clip than he's used to. Josh has been massively wrong about Obama in the past, and frankly I could give a rat's ass if he's got a problem with the pace Obama's moving at. He's smarter than you are. Get used to it, or don't. I could care less one way or the other.

He pulls back. He plans. He strikes. That's pretty much the basic Obama modus-operandi.

Last I checked, we're in planning mode for another 5 days.

January 20th, 12:00pm Eastern Standard Time, I think we'll see some action.

A Call To Renewal (VIDEO)

A little piece of then-Senator Obama from 2006...

Making the headline bigger doesn't make the news bigger...

Now, I love big, macho headlines as much as the next guy, but c'mon Huffington Post. "Obama Issues First Veto Threat"??

Seriously?

Through the Bush Administration, the President-Elect's made a request for the second half of the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program). This would be part of the $700 Billion Dollars Congress allocated to help...you know...stop the Western world from imploding.

Our outgoing Treasury Secretary Andrew Mell--eerrr, sorry. I'm thinking of Herbert Hoover's waste of space Treasury Secretary. I should be thinking of Bush's waste of space Henry Paulson (every bit as dim as the Wikipedia picture implies), who at first promised to spend the first part of the $350 Billion dollars on helping homeowners stay in their homes...

...but then he saw that a bunch of his Wall Street buddies (remember, Paulson was working at Goldman Sachs before being pinched by the Bushies) need--...err, sorry wanted money, he went back on his word to Congress, gave the money to his pals, figuring that once Wall Street had money to lend, the homeowners would be just fine.

Two months later. Wall Street has its money. We don't know who got what because Paulson ain't saying, at least not to us. Homeowners are still going broke, and nobody's lendin' nothin'...

Needless to say, Congress is feeling a wee-bit burned by the experience.

So the President-Elect wants to use the second half of this $700 Million Appropriation for (hopefully) the purpose for which it was intended. Congress wants strict oversight of the disbursment of these monies, unlike last time.

Now, the trick is the GOP is already thumping their chest, saying that they'll stop the bill.

Having lost still more seats in both Houses in the last election, good luck with that.

The odds of this bill passing are distant and remote. There's a stimulus train comin' down the tracks, and only a few want to get in its way.

I expect a small number of Democrats to defect and vote with the GOP, but probably in similiar numbers to the amount of Republicans who will vote for the second half, especially if the words "helps Homeowners" and "Oversight" are used.

So, if by some miracle Eric Cantor (not worth linking, but expect to see his name a lot in the next four years) and the other House and Senate Republicans pass this bill to stop Obama from getting the second half, Obama has threatened to...gasp, shock and horror...veto the legislation.

To me the bigger story would come in the GOP actually making it that far.

Memo to Huffington Post, Charles Foster Kane was wrong. Making the headline bigger doesn't make the news bigger...

UPDATE (3:35 Pacific): CNN now has the story, thus raising the temperature a little bit. But the fundamentals haven't changed.

Pollster: Obama's Favorability...

In case you were wondering...

WSJ: Is Timothy Geithner in trouble??

Facing the most severe economic catastrophe in...literally...decades, what are we going to talk about? Another Nanny of suspect immigration status.

You have got to be freakin' kidding me...

But apparently, scumbag Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) brought the subject up today, and now Max Baucus (D-MO), according to Politico (no link because it's on the Politico 44 site), has called committee members to his office this afternoon to discuss the issue ahead of Geithner’s confirmation hearing.

Again, you have got to be freakin' kidding me...

We're doing this?? We're going there???

Why is it that the most landbound, border-locked states always getting their knickers in a twist about the immigration status of...well, whoever??

I hold the Senator from Iowa, right now, beneath contempt. If this is the kind of crap he wants to pull, then the sooner he retires the better.

Oh, and the Wall Street Journal has it too. (I thought they'd championed Geithner's appointment like a month ago??).

A reading of the article in Murdoch seems to tamp down some of the smoke coming from the headlines at TPM and Politico:

According to people familiar with the matter, Mr. Geithner employed a housekeeper whose immigration papers expired during her tenure with Mr. Geithner, currently president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The woman went on to get a green card to work legally in the country and federal immigration authorities didn't press charges against her, these people said.

The second issue involved taxes due while Mr. Geithner worked for the International Monetary Fund between 2001 and 2004. As an employee, Mr. Geithner was technically considered self-employed and was required to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for himself as both an employer and an employee.

He apparently failed to do so, resulting in Internal Revenue Service audits his last two years at the IMF. As soon as the IRS brought the issue to his attention, he paid the taxes with interest, these people said.

It's unclear how much of an impediment these issues will be to Mr. Geithner's nomination. On its merits, his ascension has been widely praised. Mr. Geithner spent most of his career managing government responses to financial crises, from the 1990s bailouts of Mexico, Indonesia and Korea, to the market meltdown that has brought Wall Street to its knees.

But wait, Murdoch continues:

Obama aides said they didn't believe these issues would present a problem, given the minor nature of the infractions and the gravity of the role he has been nominated to take.

On the tax front, Mr. Geithner's oversight is not uncommon. The IRS has mandated loose rules for U.S.-born IMF employees unaware of their obligations to pay payroll taxes.

Sen. Baucus nonetheless decided to hold a closed-door meeting to allow the two matters to be aired before Mr. Geithner's public confirmation hearing.

"It's important that I talk to senators, which I'm going to be doing," Sen. Baucus said as he went into the meeting.

Democratic senators plan to defend Mr. Geithner, saying that the nature of the complaints pale in comparison to the gravity of the crises he has been asked to face, a severe economic recession, turmoil in the financial markets and the collapse of the U.S. auto industry.

Does Art. 1, Sec. 5 mean anything??

I still think this is a bad idea...

The Left starts pushing back...

Just watching the blogs tick by on Huffington Post, you see the following headlines:

Maybe, Going Forward, We Should Just Let Bernie Madoff Off?

I understand it's smart for Obama to hold his cards close on torture and war crimes prosecutions, but the reason that's being given for not pursuing them makes little sense.

Jane Hamsher bleating on again. Here's my question, let's say there was an ethically challenged Administration leaving office, with a lot of questions that opposing party wanted answered (perhaps even legitimately), and a hardcore base demanded prosecutions.

Now shift the year to 2001.

Now what do you say to the idea of prosecuting the last administration?

Obama on Torture: Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

This answer tracks the language of many torture apologists (and advocates) in Washington, who posit a choice between protecting the country today and second-guessing the past.

Two Questions

Two questions we should demand Congress ask of Eric Holder before confirming him. The same two questions Mukasey refused to answer.

This last one is from John Cusack, star of stage and screen. While he asks a question I'd like to see answered myself, what if the answer doesn't meet with his approval? Does he suggest dumping the first black Attorney General? He doesn't seem to have an answer for this one.

But the good news is that I'm finally seeing some pushback from my fellow lefties against my fellow lefties...

Who Needs the Right When the Left Has Itself?

This is the nub of it for me with the Lefties: they do not truly understand who they are, nor what they are motivated by. The slightest bump in the road leads to anarchy or dissent.

Barack Obama and Ernie Shore

Barack Obama is like a relief pitcher who was brought in to pitch with his team down by about ten runs and is somehow expected to lead them to victory.

Why Aren't Democrats Supporting Obama?

This is nuts. No doubt Democrats have a tradition of tearing down their own presidents, but usually it takes a few years. Not now. The GOP must be chortling.