Darn guy keeps multi-tasking. Here he is talking about food safety.
Aravosis: Pare down the agenda?
Note to media: The dumb guys has left the building. The smart guy is here now.
I know the media, and America, got used to having presidents who could juggle more than a pretzel or a jelly bean at a time. But those days are over.
All this talk from the Republicans, the media, and even some Democrats that Obama is just trying to do too much - we're all going to die! What exactly has Obama done that's been too much in his first 50 days? He passed a stimulus package that may have averted a depression. What else? Seriously. He's revoked a few executive orders, but that's a signature. What has Obama done that has so distracted him from the business of the country?
It's a Republican talking point that the media seems willing to buy, and even some Democrats are falling for it. The only way to stop Obama from governing is to claim that when he governs he's wasting time that should be focused on the economy. Mind you, when he does focus on the economy the Republicans all vote en masse to stop him from doing anything on the economy.
You get the picture.
America, we no longer have a cerebrally-challenged simian as commander-in-chief. President Obama has a brain and can handle doing what presidents are SUPPOSED to do. He can handle being the leader of the free world. Let him.
digby suggests that financial industry poobahs are Begging For Pitchforks
Masters of the universe must be coddled or they'll hold their breath until they turn blue:Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.I'm sure none of you have ever had your compensation be subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by your employers, have you?
An official in the Obama administration official said Saturday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner had called A.I.G.’s government-appointed chairman, Edward M. Liddy, on Wednesday and asked that the company renegotiate the bonuses.
Administration officials said they had managed to reduce some of the bonuses but had allowed most of them to go forward after the company’s chief executive said A.I.G. was contractually obligated to pay them.
In a letter to Mr. Geithner, Mr. Liddy wrote: “Needless to say, in the current circumstances, I do not like these arrangements and find it distasteful and difficult to recommend to you that we must proceed with them.”
Mr. Liddy did agree to Treasury’s request to scale back corporate bonuses for senior partners. But he said he had “grave concern about the long-term consequences of the actions we are taking today.
“On the one hand, all of us at A.I.G. recognize the environment in which we operate and the remonstrations of our President for a more restrained system of compensation for executives. On the other hand, we cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers — if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.
Perhaps these incredibly valuable workers should form a union.
- DougJ also finds this Distasteful
It’s distasteful to stop paying the geniuses at AIG millions of dollars in bonuses the same way that it’s distasteful to enforce our laws by investigating the Bush administration, the same way it’s distasteful to ask George Will to stop lying about science, the same way it’s distasteful to criticize Jim Cramer.All this stuff is really a matter of taste.
- Chris in Paris: AIG is doing it again
What the hell does it take to get someone to shut this team down? The AP is reporting $165 million in bonuses while the Wall Street Journal claims the number is $450 million. They obviously have too many friends in all the right places because this is disgraceful and unacceptable. AIG has clearly convinced too many in power - throughout this administration and Congress - that if they don't allow bonuses, everyone will walk. Let. Them. Walk....Golly, well if Timmy Geithner said so, AIG will act. Geithner has been such a firebrand, standing up for the American investor who has lost their retirement plans. It's hard to understand how so many people believe Geithner is in deep over his head and not up for the job. Sure, he sat on his hands and did nothing for years while working at the NY Fed, but can't they see that he kindly asked AIG to scale back bonuses after they rolled out yet another round just to kick sand in the face of the American public? I hear he asked very sternly and insisted they would all be very naughty if they ran over him again.
The leadership out of the Obama administration has been oh so impressive and investors become happier by the day as they watch such forceful displays of executive power. What red blooded American doesn't like to be abused by Wall Street and lose their retirement money? Heck, there's no way the public would ever start pointing the finger at Obama for failing to stand up to Wall Street with this response. Nope, never, ever, never.- UPDATE: atrios pleads Stop Feeding Me A Shit Sandwich:
Summers argued today that the Obama administration has sought to limit the AIG bonuses. "We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system," Summer said. It's called bankruptcy you idiot.- UPDATE. Josh Marshall. As noted last night, I don't think contractual bonus obligations have much standing in bankruptcy proceedings. But this article from CFO.com, sent along by TPM Reader JM, suggests that that's only the start of it. The article is about the follow-on to the Lehman bankruptcy. But what it argues is that if creditors can show the the bankrupt institution was actually insolvent at the time the payments were made they can force the execs to cough up earlier bonuses as well. And remember AIG was in dire straights long before the US government stepped in and provided the lifeline last fall.
Pi Day. Funny.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Your Sunday Rich offers a very interesting thesis in The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off
...Much as Obama repealed the Bush restrictions on abortion and stem-cell research shortly after pushing through his stimulus package, so F.D.R. jump-started the repeal of Prohibition by asking Congress to legalize beer and wine just days after his March 1933 inauguration and declaration of a bank holiday. As Michael A. Lerner writes in his fascinating 2007 book “Dry Manhattan,” Roosevelt’s stance reassured many Americans that they would have a president “who not only cared about their economic well-being” but who also understood their desire to be liberated from “the intrusion of the state into their private lives.” Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.
In our own hard times, the former moral “majority” has been downsized to more of a minority than ever. ...
...What’s been revealing about watching conservatives debate their fate since their Election Day Waterloo is how, the occasional Frum excepted, so many of them don’t want to confront the obsolescence of culture wars as a political crutch. They’d rather, like Cantor, just change the subject — much as they avoid talking about Bush and avoid reckoning with the doomed demographics of the G.O.P.’s old white male base. To recognize all these failings would be to confront why a once-national party can now be tucked into the Bible Belt.
The religious right is even more in denial than the Republicans. When Obama nominated Kathleen Sebelius, the Roman Catholic Kansas governor who supports abortion rights, as his secretary of health and human services, Tony Perkins, the leader of the Family Research Council, became nearly as apoplectic as the other Tony Perkins playing Norman Bates. “If Republicans won’t take a stand now, when will they?” the godly Perkins thundered online. But Congressional Republicans ignored him, sending out (at most) tepid press releases of complaint, much as they did in response to Obama’s stem-cell order. The two antiabortion Kansas Republicans in the Senate, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, both endorsed Sebelius.
Perkins is now praying that economic failure will be a stimulus for his family-values business. “As the economy goes downward,” he has theorized, “I think people are going to be driven to religion.” Wrong again. The latest American Religious Identification Survey, published last week, found that most faiths have lost ground since 1990 and that the fastest-growing religious choice is “None,” up from 8 percent to 15 percent (which makes it larger than all denominations except Roman Catholics and Baptists). Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as do in organized religion. How the almighty has fallen: organized religion is in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale.
This, too, is a replay of the Great Depression. “One might have expected that in such a crisis great numbers of these people would have turned to the consolations of and inspirations of religion,” wrote Frederick Lewis Allen in “Since Yesterday,” his history of the 1930s published in 1940. But that did not happen: “The long slow retreat of the churches into less and less significance in the life of the country, and even in the lives of the majority of their members, continued almost unabated.”The new American faith, Allen wrote, was the “secular religion of social consciousness.” It took the form of campaigns for economic and social justice — as exemplified by the New Deal and those movements that challenged it from both the left and the right. It’s too early in our crisis and too early in the new administration to know whether this decade will so closely replicate the 1930s, but so far Obama has far more moral authority than any religious leader in America with the possible exception of his sometime ally, the Rev. Rick Warren.
History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return. But after the humiliations of the Scopes trial and the repeal of Prohibition, it did take a good four decades for the religious right to begin its comeback in the 1970s. In our tough times, when any happy news can be counted as a miracle, a 40-year exodus for these ayatollahs can pass for an answer to America’s prayers.
Benen on the media on THE BLAME GAME....
The Washington Post has an odd front-page piece today, rebuking President Obama for reminding audiences that the problems he inherited are, well, problems he inherited.Daily Kos' McJoan: WaPo Trying to Create an Obama U.S. Attorneys Scandal?In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."
It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return -- or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome "inheritance" of its predecessor.
Over the past month, Obama has reminded the public at every turn that he is facing problems "inherited" from the Bush administration, using increasingly bracing language to describe the challenges his administration is up against. The "deepening economic crisis" that the president described six days after taking office became "a big mess" in remarks this month to graduating police cadets in Columbus, Ohio.
"By any measure," he said during a March 4 event calling for government-contracting reform, "my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster."
Obama's more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president's policies are compounding the nation's economic problems.
The problem, if I'm reading the article right, isn't that the president is saying anything untrue. Rather, we're dealing with a dynamic in which one president hands off a catastrophe -- several catastrophes, actually -- to a successor, and the successor isn't supposed to talk about it.
Indeed, the Post's Scott Wilson seems to think the president has exceeded political norms by pointing to the almost-comical mess Bush left on Obama's desk. Wilson chides Obama for using "acid" reminders, offering "partisan" defenses, sounding "petty." To highlight his point, Wilson pointed to the president saying recently that "we've inherited a terrible mess."
That doesn't sound especially "acid," "partisan," or "petty" to me, but your mileage may vary.
The criticism is misplaced here. The typical presidential speech lately starts by acknowledging a problem, followed by some talk about how the problem was created, followed by a description of what he'd like to do about it. If Obama reminds audiences that the disaster(s) he inherited aren't his fault, and that's all he did -- dwell on the past, fail to present solutions -- it would be a problem.
But that's clearly not the case. Bush left Obama to clean up an economic crisis, an abysmal job market, a budget mess, a failing financial industry, a collapsing U.S. auto industry, global warming, an absurd health care system, an equally absurd energy framework, and two costly wars. Reminding Americans of where we've come from and where we're going doesn't seem unreasonable.
The point of articles like these seems to be freeing Bush of accountability and responsibility for his devastating failures. Here's hoping the White House ignores the Post's advice.
The Washington Post's Carrie Johnson writes today that it is "unclear" how Obama will handle replaicing U.S. Attorneys, and that
While he pledged bipartisanship during his campaign, replacing the cadre of mostly conservative U.S. attorneys would signal a new direction.
When President Bill Clinton took office, he fired all U.S. attorneys at once, provoking intense criticism in the conservative legal community and among career lawyers at the Justice Department.
President George W. Bush took a different approach, slowly releasing several of the prosecutors but keeping in place Mary Jo White, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, while she pursued terrorism cases and a politically sensitive investigation of Clinton's pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.
New direction? Oh, really? Via BTD, here's a 2007 LA Times story explaining what really happened with that "different approach" that the Bush administration took:
In a March 4 memo titled "Draft Talking Points," Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos asked, "The [White House] is under the impression that we did not remove all the Clinton [U.S. attorneys] in 2001 like he did when he took office. Is that true?" That is mostly true, replied D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. "Clinton fired all Bush [U.S. attorneys] in one fell swoop. We fired all Clinton [U.S. attorneys] but staggered it out more and permitted some to stay on a few months," he said.
A few minutes later, Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul J. McNulty replied to the same memo. "On the issue of Clinton [U.S. attorneys], we called each one and had them give us a timeframe. Most were gone by late April. In contrast, Clinton [Justice Department] told all but a dozen in early March to be gone immediately," McNulty said.
The difference appears minor. Both McNulty and Sampson acknowledged that the Bush Administration, like the Clinton administration, brought in a new slate of U.S. attorneys within a few months of taking office. But historical data compiled by the Senate show the pattern going back to President Reagan. Reagan replaced 89 of the 93 U.S. attorneys in his first two years in office. President Clinton had 89 new U.S. attorneys in his first two years, and President Bush had 88 new U.S. attorneys in his first two years.
Should Obama choose to replace any U.S. Attorney, it will have nothing to do with Obama's pledge of bipartisanship, nor would it signal a "new direction" in how presidents handle giving out these plum jobs. This is what presidents do upon taking office. The difference is in whether the band-aid is ripped off quickly or slowly.
Any potential scandal would not be in President Obama choosing to put in place his own picks, but if he decided down the road to fire any of them who were refusing to use their offices for political purposes. Like his predecessor did.
Which brings us back to the WaPo story, and the "scandal" it looks like they are trying to gin up.
Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, who oversaw a recent FBI raid of fundraisers close to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), told local reporters after the November election that she did not plan to voluntarily resign. Buchanan had held top political jobs in the Bush Justice Department, where she directed the office of violence against women and led the unit that oversees the nation's U.S. attorneys. She is a member of the conservative Federalist Society legal group and cultivated close connections to former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), an advocate for antiabortion and Christian groups.
"It doesn't serve justice for all the U.S. attorneys to submit their resignations at one time," Buchanan told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last year. "I am open to continuing further service to the United States."
Ms. Buchanan serves at the pleasure of the President. If the President decides to fire her, whether or not she's involved in the Murtha investigation, it will not be a political decision on the part of President Obama, however the WaPo is choosing to preemptively spin it.
John Cole: Nate Silver Explains It All
atrios on Your Liberal MediaI glanced over that WSJ piece by Scott Rasmussen yesterday, and then I looked at the gallup poll numbers, which seem to me to be remarkably steady, and then I looked at the aggregate numbers at pollster.com, and the first thing I thought was that if you take out the Rasmussen outliers, this looks relatively stable.
Today I see that Nate has gone through and explained what I already knew- Obama’s numbers aren’t crashing to earth as some are claiming.
At any rate, as a general rule I just have no faith in Rasmussen polls.
Washington Post completely shuts out Dems and liberals for earmark discussion.atrios says it's Not Just Wingnut Media: It hasn't just been the fringier wingnut media making up Obama campaign promises. David Ignatius did. Maureen Dowd did.
I get what they're trying to do here - ask earmark opponents if they ever like earmarks - but it's just another example of our national press only giving a shit about what Republicans think.
Nobody cares.
DougJ: A fact’s a fact
... Checking back in with the American media with at least a slight sense of distance, it is striking how much harder they are on Obama they were on Bush.
I don’t say that as a complaint, simply a statement of fact.
David Broder has already declared that Obama’s honeymoon is over. I don’t say that as a complaint either, but since the “honeymoon period” is largely a construct of the punditocracy which Broder heads up, this does mean that Obama’s honeymoon is over. Indeed—other Villagers like Dowd and Ignatius are already savaging Obama.
Now, by any reasonable measure, the Bush honeymoon lasted until mid-2003. One might argue that part of this was the 9/11 effect. In a time of national crisis, the media might be expected to rally around the president.
On the other hand, this recession is a national crisis too, and it has only served to amplify criticism of Obama. Whereas we were told with Bush, that because of the War on Terror, we were either with the president or with the terrorists, we are now told with Obama, that because of the recession, that we have to hold Obama to a higher standard than other presidents.
If one believes, as I do, that good decisions come from close scrutiny, then one must also believe that presidents should be scrutinized more closely during times of crisis. But it’s difficult for me to understand why this applies to Obama and not to Bush.
I realize that everything I say here may seem obvious to people. But I rarely see it stated as a matter of fact, which in my opinion it is.
What is the cause of this? Some of it is that liberals like to criticize (I know I do), while conservatives like to fall in line. Some of it is that “nonpartisan” commentators gain in stature when they attack Democrats and fall when they criticize Republicans. Maybe these facts constitute the entire explanation.
But it’s hard for me to see how this doesn’t end in ruin. Media scrutiny does, I believe, make for smarter, more careful decision-making. But it also makes for tougher political sledding. So the very thing that makes our government work also makes political leaders unpopular. And, for whatever, reason it now distributes itself differently for one party than the other.
Is this one of those systemic flaws that can’t be corrected?
Benen on THOSE BIASED SMITHSONIAN SCIENTISTS....
The Washington Post had an interesting piece the other day on creationist groups visiting the Smithsonian, ostensibly to see what they're up against. The piece highlighted a field trip with students from Jerry Falwell's college.Every winter, David DeWitt takes his biology class to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, but for a purpose far different from that of other professors.
DeWitt brings his Advanced Creation Studies class (CRST 390, Origins) up from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., hoping to strengthen his students' belief in a biblical view of natural history, even in the lion's den of evolution.
His yearly visit to the Smithsonian is part of a wider movement by creationists to confront Darwinism in some of its most redoubtable secular strongholds. As scientists celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, his doubters are taking themselves on Genesis-based tours of natural history museums, aquariums, geologic sites and even dinosaur parks.
"There's nothing balanced here. It's completely, 100 percent evolution-based," said DeWitt, a professor of biology.
Imagine that. The National Museum of Natural History is limited, exclusively, to natural history. The nerve.
Indeed, the dreaded Accuracy Scourge is common throughout the Smithsonian Institution. At the National Air and Space Museum, it's completely, 100% based on the notion that planets in our galaxy orbit the sun. You won't find one word about the geocentric model. At the National Museum of American History, museum officials insist on presenting history as it actually happened. At the National Portrait Gallery, they insist on showing portraits.
It's outrageous.
Yglesias: The Disappearing Jim Cramer
The big Jim Cramer / John Stewart showdown Thursday night was widely considered newsworthy. It was discussed on almost every blog, I read articles about it in The Washington Post and The New York Times, etc. And the news divisions of the General Electric Corporation had found earlier iterations of the feud newsworthy, featuring Cramer on various segments on MSNBC and the NBC-distributed Martha Stewart show. But after Cramer proved unable to defend himself, the GE suits ordered their subordinates to put corporate ass-covering over their jobs as journalists and they all merrily hopped along agreeing not to highlight the interview.
But via Amanda Terkel, we see that not everyone at CNBC is happy with Cramer’s performance:
Cramer has told colleagues he felt blindsided by Stewart’s hostile approach. But many CNBC staffers were furious with Cramer yesterday for failing to defend the network’s reporting or to criticize Stewart’s video clips as selectively edited or out of context. CNBC declined all interview requests, saying in a statement: “CNBC produces more than 150 hours of live television a week that includes more than 850 interviews in the service of exposing all sides of every critical financial and economic issue. We are proud of our record.”
The fact that they’re proud of their record tells you about what you need to know about them. Genuine snake oil salesman are just trying to make money. CNBC producers seem to have gotten so twisted around that they think selling snake oil is genuinely virtuous.
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