fauxnytimes

No such thing as a free lunch department here.

How about plagiarism? Speaking of "faux" how about this comparison of economic moments in our history!
F A U X N E W Y O R K T I M E S : Truth and consequences - going-out-of-business sale? One year on...
"Restructuring debt" for some, like taking down the goal posts for others? Chapter 11 for others (the favorite part of the latest best seller)...the New Yorker is going to look like a comic book soon...and how about some other glossy quarterlies that arrive unsolicited in the mailbox? Chapter 7, liquidation ("going out of business sale"), a possibility, too. G-20 and shrinking.

FROM THE BARD: "There 's daggers in men's smiles". - (Macbeth - Act II, Scene III). Not the bard: how about this for commentary?

How is "W" like "H"...add an "O" and you get, who?
The Cipher in Chief
Unlike prior presidents, Obama remains an enigma to the public.
National Review
Rich Lowry
August 24, 2010 12:00 A.M.

There was a time when Barack Obama disavowed his middle name, Hussein. During the 2008 campaign, Obama’s aides bristled even at references to him by his initials BHO, so sensitive were they to the offending “H.”

Then, after he won the election, he proudly brandished his middle name as evidence of his connection to the Muslim world and of America’s tolerant embrace of people with even the most exotic backgrounds. With new polls showing 18 percent (in a Pew Research poll) or 24 percent (in a Time magazine survey) believing Obama is a Muslim, the name Hussein is surely headed back to a secure, undisclosed location.

That a sliver of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim is not shocking in the context of other bizarre and stupid things they tell pollsters. In a rebuke to geography teachers everywhere, 10 percent of people either don’t think Hawaii is part of the United States or aren’t sure. Twenty percent believe aliens have contacted us here on Earth. And 11 percent have confidence in the United States Congress.

But the numbers tell us something important about President Obama: We don’t know him. The most powerful and famous man in the country is still the mysterious stranger. He rose from nowhere, winning an election based partly on being an unknown quantity, and an unknown quantity he remains.

Obama has proven adept at crafting and then casting off synthetic identities. He was the good-government, process-obsessed reformer — until he wanted to raise countless millions of dollars outside the campaign-finance system. He was the post-partisan scourge of politics as usual — until his hyper-partisan first 18 months in office. He was the moderate — until he pushed his vast left-wing spending agenda.

Obama’s candidacy always had the sense about it of a supremely artful marketing campaign. His bio video during the Denver convention made him sound like a corn-fed product of the American heartland. There was barely a hint of the father from Kenya and the boyhood in Indonesia and Hawaii — in short, what made him so biographically alluring to worshipful journalists.

He was the blank canvas upon which people could paint their visions of grandeur. One moment Obama was the loyal parishioner of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who converted him to Christianity and was the fount of preacherly wisdom from whom Obama ripped off his most famous rhetorical riff, “the audacity of hope.” The next, he’d hardly heard of the good reverend.

An element of the Obama-is-a-Muslim opinion is perfervid critics wanting to believe the worst of him, but not all. According to Pew, the number of Americans who identify him as Christian has declined from 51 percent in October 2008 to just 34 percent. The more we see of him, the less we know of him. Only 46 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of blacks think Obama is a Christian. His faith simply hasn’t made an impression on the public.

Compared with his predecessors, Obama is as transparent as a billiard ball. You knew George W. Bush was an unapologetically pro-business, freedom-spreadin’ Texas evangelical. You knew Bill Clinton was a flawed but brilliant Southern operator, part of whose charm was the ability to lie with impressive fluidity. Who is Obama?

He’s a man constantly traveling under a cloak of ideological falsity, since he can’t speak frankly of his big-government ambitions. He’s emotionally remote. And he’s the product of life experiences alien even to his most natural supporters. In the heat of the controversy over her firing from the Agriculture Department, civil-rights activist Shirley Sherrod pointedly noted that Obama “is not someone who has experienced what I have experienced through life.”

None of this would matter particularly if Obama’s program were working — he could identify himself with its successes. As it is, he’s the cipher in chief, overexposed but underperforming, as detached as a law-school lecturer. President Obama is assuredly not a Muslim. For many of his countrymen, though, he remains a question mark.

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This opinion piece assumes that the President didn't really mean what he said in the first place.
The anti-statesmen
New York Post
By JOHAN GOLDBERG
Last Updated: 12:53 AM, August 18, 2010
Posted: 12:20 AM, August 18, 2010

The Ground Zero mosque controversy is one of the stupidest debates of our time. I don't mean the substance of the debate (though there's no shortage of stupidity on that front, either). I mean that we're having it at all.

The CIA usually defends its existence by pointing out that we never hear about its successes, only its failures: The bombs that don't go off don't make headlines. Politics works the same way. Good politicians instinctively see down the road and around the corner. Great politicians do this not just with political headaches but with weighty affairs as well. We call such foresight statesmanship.

With the Ground Zero mosque, we've gotten the exact opposite. The supposedly pragmatic political wise men have been blinded by ideology or incompetence and have failed to see what was so obviously around the corner. A big honking Islamic center built to capitalize on 9/11, in a building that was damaged on 9/11? What could go wrong? It's as if they've wanted to turn a dumb idea into an emotional, unwinnable national controversy.

Let's start with the incandescent idiocy of Mayor Bloomberg. If Bloomberg had foresight, he'd have prevented anyone from ever hearing the words "Ground Zero" and "mosque" in the same sentence.

Bloomberg isn't only the mayor. He's also a billionaire with vast sway in the city's media, finance and cultural institutions. Moreover, the Big Apple is a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape for landlords and developers. Rent control, historic preservation, zoning, environmental impact, community protests, union delays -- not to mention plain old red tape and corruption -- offer enough tools to stop any project before it starts. (Heck, Ground Zero is still a gaping hole, and everyone has wanted that land to be developed, fast.)

The notion that Bloomberg couldn't have quietly stopped this in New York is like saying Satan is powerless to do anything about the heat in Hades. He could have kept the molehill from becoming a mountain with an afternoon's worth of phone calls. The center would be built, just not so close to Ground Zero; no big deal.

But instead of quietly extinguishing a controversy, Bloomberg said it was as important a "test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime."

He also insists that opponents should be "ashamed" of their bigotry, even though he expects "special sensitivity" from the mosque's backers. Apparently, it's only shameful to think Ground Zero requires "special sensitivity" if you oppose the mosque. Bloomberg apparently needs a tutor to pass his own church-state test.

Which brings us to President Obama (who himself could have quietly intervened months ago) and what may be his most embarrassing blunder yet. At a White House dinner with Muslim leaders Friday night, Obama offered what every major journalistic outfit in the country took to be unqualified support for building the mosque. Indeed, Obama aides preened over his moral courage, telling the New York Times that there was no doubt which side he would take.

"He felt he had a responsibility to speak," said David Axelrod, as if he was drafting the inscription on Obama's Profiles in Courage Award. But by Saturday morning, Obama tried to weasel out of it with the sort of lawyerly parsing everybody despises. Speaking to reporters in Florida, Obama claimed he had no position on the "wisdom" of the project, and anyone who mistook his academic comments about building a mosque in Lower Manhattan for an endorsement misunderstood him.

Well, if his real intent was to remain agnostic, he should fire his speechwriter.

But of course his intent was to seem heroically principled. But when he was hit with a foreseeable backlash (in one poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the mosque), he once again led with his glass jaw and, in effect, told everybody they were too dimwitted to grasp the brilliant nuance of his remarks.

This was the opposite of statesmanship. By elevating a stupid idea and a poisonous debate, he forced everyone to take a side on a polarizing issue (including vulnerable Democrats like Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who late Monday came out against the mosque), while undermining his own credibility, not to mention America's reputation around the world.

And it all could have been avoided with some foresight and a few phone calls.

Why is this editorial a joke?
Breaking a Promise on Surveillance
NYTIMES Editorial
July 29, 2010

It is just a technical matter, the Obama administration says: We just need to make a slight change in a law to make clear that we have the right to see the names of anyone’s e-mail correspondents and their Web browsing history without the messy complication of asking a judge for permission.

It is far more than a technical change. The administration’s request, reported Thursday in The Washington Post, is an unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.

In a 1993 update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Congress said that Internet service providers have to turn over to the F.B.I., on request, “electronic communication transactional records.” The government says this includes the e-mail records of their subscribers, specifically the addresses to which e-mail messages were sent, and the times and dates. (The content of the messages can remain private.) It may also include Web browsing records. To get this information, the F.B.I. simply has to ask for it in the form of a national security letter, which is an administrative request that does not require a judge’s signature.

But there was an inconsistency in the writing of the 1993 law. One section said that Internet providers had to turn over this information, but the next section, which specified what the F.B.I. could request, left out electronic communication records. In 2008, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion saying this discrepancy meant the F.B.I. could no longer ask for the information. Many Internet providers stopped turning it over. Now the Obama administration has asked Congress to make clear that the F.B.I. can ask for it.

These national security letters are the same vehicles that the Bush administration used after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to demand that libraries turn over the names of books that people had checked out. The F.B.I. used these letters hundreds of thousands of times to demand records of phone calls and other communications, and the Pentagon used them to get records from banks and consumer credit agencies. Internal investigations of both agencies found widespread misuse of the power, and little oversight into how it was wielded.

President Obama campaigned for office on an explicit promise to rein in these abuses. “There is no reason we cannot fight terrorism while maintaining our civil liberties,” his campaign wrote in a 2008 position paper. “As president, Barack Obama would revisit the Patriot Act to ensure that there is real and robust oversight of tools like National Security Letters, sneak-and-peek searches, and the use of the material witness provision.”

Where is the “robust oversight” that voters were promised? Earlier this year, the administration successfully pushed for crucial provisions of the Patriot Act to be renewed for another year without changing a word. Voters had every right to expect the president would roll back authority that had been clearly abused, like national security letters. But instead of implementing reasonable civil liberties protections, like taking requests for e-mail surveillance before a judge, the administration is proposing changes to the law that would allow huge numbers of new electronic communications to be examined with no judicial oversight.

Democrats in Congress can remind Mr. Obama of his campaign promises by refusing this request.

Pentagon scrambles to assess Wikileaks damage
YAHOO
By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer
26 July 2010

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon said Monday it was trying to assess the damage caused by the leak of some 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war.

The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops.

Wikileaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted 76,000 of the reports to its website Sunday night. The group said it is vetting another 15,000 documents for future release.

Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need "days, if not weeks" to review all the documents and determine "the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners."

The White House says it didn't try to stop news organizations who had access to secret U.S. military documents from publishing reports about the leaks. However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it did ask Wikileaks — through reporters who were given advanced copies of the documents — to redact information in the documents that could harm U.S. military personnel.

It was not clear whether Wikileaks decision to withhold 15,000 of its files was related.

The Pentagon declined to respond to specifics detailed in the documents, including reports of the Taliban's use of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.

"Just because they are posted on the Internet, doesn't make them unclassified," Lapan said.

The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified information. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised on Monday that the release of documents — one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history — was just the beginning.

Assange told reporters in London that he believed that "thousands" of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged that such claims would have to be tested in court.

Assange pointed in particular to a deadly missile strike ordered by Taskforce 373, a unit allegedly charged with hunting down and killing senior Taliban targets. He said there was also evidence of cover-ups when civilians were killed, including what he called a suspiciously high number of casualties that U.S. forces attributed to ricochet wounds.

The Defense Department declined to respond to specifics contained in the documents, citing security reasons.

But Lapan said that coalition forces have made great strides in reducing the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the release of the documents "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk," while Pakistan dismissed the documents as malicious and unsubstantiated.

Pakistan Ambassador Husain Haqqani said the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities." Islamabad's ministry of foreign affairs issued a similar statement, defending Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, against allegations it has supported insurgent networks.

"The people of Pakistan and its security forces, including the ISI, have rendered enormous sacrifices against militancy and terrorism," the ministry wrote.

NATO refused to comment on the leak, but individual nations said they hoped it wouldn't harm current operations in Afghanistan.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there has been significant progress recently in building up the Afghan state "so I hope any such leaks will not poison that atmosphere."

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle warned about possible "backlashes" and urged all sides in Afghanistan to work toward national reconciliation.

Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the documents reflect his view that U.S. war strategy was adrift last year, before President Barack Obama's decision to retool the war plan and add tens of thousands of U.S. forces.

Skelton, D-Mo., warned Monday that the documents are outdated and "should not be used as a measure of success or a determining factor in our continued mission there."

U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the deluge of classified documents since the leak of helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 fire fight in Baghdad. That was blamed on Manning, the 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst who was charged with releasing classified information earlier this month.

Manning had bragged online that he downloaded 260,000 classified U.S. cables and transmitted them to Wikileaks.org.

Assange on Monday compared the impact of the released material to the opening of East Germany's secret police files. "This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives," he said.

He also said his group had many more documents on other subjects, including files on countries from across the globe.

"We have built up an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures," he said.

Assange said he believed more whistle-blowing material will flood in after the publicity about the Afghan files.

"It is our experience that courage is contagious," he said.

"I'm shocked, shocked, to hear that gambling is going on in this establishment...Excuse me sir, here are your winnings" Casablanca
The fix was in
NYPOST
By JONATHAN STRONG
Last Updated: 5:08 AM, July 25, 2010
Posted: 12:33 AM, July 25, 2010

In 2007, when Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein founded JournoList, an online gathering place for several hundred liberal journalists, academics and political activists, he imagined a discussion group that would connect young writers to top sources.

But in the heat of a bitter presidential campaign in 2008, the list’s discussions veered into collusion and coordination at key political moments, documents revealed this week by The Daily Caller show.

In a key episode, JournoList members openly plotted to bury attention on then-candidate Barack Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, for instance, suggested an effective tactic to distract from the issue would be to pick one of Obama’s critics, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

Conservative critics of Washington’s journalistic establishment have long charged the media with a striking liberal bias. But those critics have also said the problem was mostly unintentional, the result of a press corps made up mostly of Democratic-leaning scribes.

Yet JournoList’s discussions show an influential left-wing faction of the media participating in a far more intentional sort of liberal bias.

JournoList’s members included dozens of straight-news reporters from major news organizations, including Time, Newsweek, The Associated Press, Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg, Huffington Post, PBS and a large NPR affiliate in California.

Also included were numerous A-list columnists and top editors. Beyond the higher-ranking members were hundreds of lesser figures, many from Washington’s liberal magazines that have long served as a stable of talent from which mainstream media organizations grab talented young writers.

In the case of the Rev. Wright story, Obama was then being hurt politically for his decades-long association with the toxic pastor, who infamously called the Sept. 11 attacks America’s “chickens coming home to roost” and urged God to “damn” America rather than bless her.

Chris Hayes, a top editor for the liberal magazine The Nation, urged his colleagues in April 2008 to avoid the subject of Wright because talking about it at all would hurt Obama. Hayes directed his message specifically to the straight-news reporters reading his post, saying: “Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor.”

On the day Sen. John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, JournoList members instantly mobilized to identify the most effective attack line against her.

“The criticism of her really, really needs to be ideological, not just about experience. If we concede she’s a ‘maverick,’ we will have done John McCain an enormous service,” said blogger Ed Kilgore.

Defenders of JournoList have pointed out that many of the most incendiary comments come from liberal opinion writers. They argue that those writers aren’t purporting to be neutral or objective, but are rather open about their opinions.

Of course, the defense does not absolve the dozens of straight-news reporters on the List. And it also ignores a key tenant of journalism: independence.

The public trusts journalists, even those writing “analysis,” to say what they believe, not what they believe needs to be said to help their political “team” or “side.” Michael Tomasky, a liberal columnist for The Guardian, recalled on JournoList how as an editor for a liberal magazine he would “correct interns, and not always politely, when they used ‘we’ to speak of Democrats.” The reason, he explained in an interview, is that journalists “need to retain enough independence to criticize when criticism is called for.”

How, then, to explain this quote regarding a possible, but disingenuous attack line against Sarah Palin: “If we were the GOP, we’d be taking this opportunity to shout long and loud how unprepared Palin is — ‘She doesn’t even know what Fannie and Freddie are . . . in the middle of a housing crisis!’ . . . That’s the difference in the game as played by us and by them.”

That JournoList sentiment came from Ryan Avent, then a blogger for the nonpartisan Economist magazine, now an editor there.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reports that the members of JournoList, which Ezra Klein disbanded weeks ago, have since reunited in a new online forum and are coordinating their responses to The Daily Caller’s stories.

Led by blogger Matt Yglesias, their attacks have focused on questioning the context of the e-mails — an oft-used refuge for those caught saying embarrassing things.

How much context does one need, though, to understand “Call them racists”? And as the villain in a Clint Eastwood movie famously put it, who’s “we,” sucker?

Jonathan Strong is a writer for The Daily Caller.

Excerpts from JournoList;

ON OBAMA

When Obama won, reporter Alyssa Rosenberg of Government Executive magazine ditched her neutrality. “A lot of horribly ugly stuff got repudiated tonight. But it doesn’t end here. We need to keep making the case to the folks who disagreed with us.”

ON RUSH LIMBAUGH

Asked how she would react if Rush Limbaugh were having a heart attack right in front of her, Sarah Spitz, a producer for Southern California NPR affiliate KCRW, said she would “laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out.”

ON SARAH PALIN

“Okay, let’s get deadly serious, folks,” Ed Kilgore, managing editor of the Democratic Strategist, wrote. “Sarah Palin’s just been introduced to the country as a brave, above-party, oil-company-bashing, pork-hating maverick ‘outsider.’ What we can do is to expose her ideology.”

ON THE REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT

“Whether we are defending Wright or repudiating him, we are talking about what liberalism’s enemies want us to be talking about,” David Roberts of Grist magazine said. “The problem is that none of us are thinking about how to take control of the discussion.”

Air-Kisses and Sniping? That’s Politics on the Real Housewives of D.C.
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, NYTIMES
June 18, 2010

WASHINGTON

NEIGHBORS in the sleepy Washington suburb of North Chevy Chase, Md., were all aflutter when a pair of glamorous Britons — Catherine Ommanney, a willowy blond interior designer, and her new husband, Charles, a hotshot photojournalist — moved in two years ago.

Charles Ommanney, rakish and cosmopolitan with a thick mop of curls, had chronicled the presidency of George W. Bush and the rise of a little-known Illinois senator named Barack Obama for Newsweek. His wife, nicknamed Cat, made a splash in the London tabloids when, between marriages, she confessed to a “long and lovely” kiss with Prince Harry after a lively night on the town.

“Mummy kissed the prince,” her young daughters, Jade and Ruby, reported to classmates at the local elementary school.

Now Mummy and Charles are splitsville, as they say in showbiz, and soon more than the neighbors may be clucking about them. Bravo, the entertainment company, announced last week that Mrs. Ommanney is one of five Washington-area women who star in its latest foray into the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction realm of American domesticity: “The Real Housewives of Washington D.C.”

The show, much-anticipated here, has its debut Aug. 5 — and yes, it will include the publicity-hungry Salahis, Michaele and Tareq, who made headlines and landed themselves in the thick of a criminal investigation in November when they crashed the social event of the season, the Obamas’ first state dinner.

But viewers expecting a glimpse of the inner lives of the politicians and power brokers who actually run this town may be in for a disappointment.

Washington is, after all, a place where success depends on a certain level of discretion. And as everyone knows, discretion and reality television do not mix.

“We never envisioned that Nancy Pelosi would be a real housewife of D.C.,” said Abby Greensfelder, whose company, Half Yard Productions, created the show for Bravo. “We didn’t do any traditional casting. It was all talking to people who knew people who knew people. That’s the way in which D.C. works. It’s a town that’s all about the proximity to power, and it operates in these concentric circles, around the White House.”

It is on the outer rings of these concentric circles that the D.C. housewives exist, and they have spawned a kind of self-examination here about just what “real” Washington is.

Aside from the irreverent Cat Ommanney and the social-climbing Michaele Salahi, the cast includes Mary Amons, a granddaughter of the television personality Arthur Godfrey, who lives with her husband and five children in the same McLean, Va., neighborhood as Dick Cheney; Lynda Erkiletian, a divorced mother of four who founded a local modeling agency and dates a much younger man; and Stacie Turner, the cast’s only black woman, who grew up in foster care, has a Harvard M.B.A., runs a successful real estate business and seems to have the most down-to-earth family of the bunch.

IF the first episode (Bravo provided a sneak peek last week) is any guide, the show reveals a none-too-flattering side of life in a city where connections are the local currency, and what you know is sometimes less important than whom. It is rife with the kind of air-kissing and sniping “Housewives” aficionados expect; at one point, Lynda derides a polo match hosted by the Salahis as a “little goat rodeo,” and accuses Michaele of being dangerously skinny. It is all played out against the backdrop of what Ms. Greensfelder calls “the wallpaper of Washington”: politics.

In a nod to race relations in the age of Obama, a slightly tipsy Mary babbles during a dinner party that “salons need to integrate,” provoking arched eyebrows from Stacie, seated next to the prominent black hair stylist Ted Gibson. Michele S. Jones, the Pentagon’s liaison to the White House, turns up at the polo match; as Salahi watchers know, the couple tried to use her to snag an invitation to the state dinner.

Name-dropping abounds. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. makes a cameo, when Charles Ommanney texts his wife a cellphone image of him wearing sunglasses and kicking back in his limousine. Cat Ommanney moans about the Obamas’ failure to reply to her wedding invitation, and provokes an uproar by calling George W. Bush a gentleman.

There are no congressmen or high-flying campaign consultants to be seen, but a health care lobbyist and self-styled Republican strategist, Edwina Rogers, does wander in, wearing too much red lipstick and a garish feathered hat. Mrs. Rogers, whose husband, Ed, worked for the first President Bush, created a ripple here when she turned up on YouTube wrapping presents with sheets of uncut dollar bills from the gift shop of the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

It’s enough to make the capital’s official arbiters of good taste turn up their collective noses and sniff. After all, this is Washington, not Orange County or New Jersey.

“People in Washington don’t want to call attention to themselves — attention creates envy and envy creates enemies,” said Lea Berman, a former White House social secretary. “Washington is so different from any of the places where they have these shows. They’re all in places where being famous for being famous is enough. There’s no achievement behind it, and Washington is an achievement-oriented town.”

Others, like Michelle Delino, the cast member Lynda Erkiletian’s good friend, are trying to sound optimistic.

“I do think we’re going to have a classier set of ladies, with one exception,” she said, in an obvious reference to the Salahis, “who will elevate the show and bring it to a higher standard, because it’s pretty low, when you see what New Jersey was all about.”

Washington is a transient city, and those who grew up here wear their native status as a badge of honor. Ms. Greensfelder is among them. She says she has long believed “D.C. has an interesting story to tell,” and pitched a show to Bravo several years ago. The company wasn’t interested.

That changed with the election of Mr. Obama. So in early 2009, Ms. Greensfelder began tapping into her own connections. She didn’t have to look far; her husband, Franklin Foer, is the editor of The New Republic. Her goal, she said, was to “represent an authentic view of Washington in the context of the ‘Real Housewives’ franchise.”

It wasn’t easy. Juleanna Glover, a Republican lobbyist and social hostess, let a Bravo crew film one of her parties, but drew the line there. “There’s only a small portion of my life that I can share outside password-protected e-mail communications,” Ms. Glover explained.

The flap over the Salahis, which took place near the end of production, complicated matters. Suddenly, Bravo had evidence that could be relevant to a criminal investigation. Ms. Greensfelder and Andy Cohen, a senior vice president at Bravo, declined to say whether they turned over any videotape. But they say they have “cooperated fully” with authorities. Mr. Cohen, who refers to the party crashing as “that incident in November,” said Bravo actually contemplated killing the show.

“It was either going to be, we kill the show altogether or we do it with Michaele,” Mr. Cohen said. “Her story from the beginning is so intertwined with the other five that it would not have been possible to cut her.”

And the escapade brought Bravo the kind of hype money can’t buy. As Sally Quinn, the grande dame of Washington’s politico-journo elite, said, “I think it would have died without the Salahis.”

Much has changed since the heady days of the Obama inaugural, when the country was aglow with good feelings for the new president, and some here wonder whether reality television can rekindle the romance. Tammy Haddad, a media consultant and veteran network producer here, sounded doubtful.

“In a year where the country has turned against Washington,” she said, “it seems a big stretch to believe that even the successful Bravo could get America to embrace it.”

Much has changed for some cast members as well. Life on camera can be tough on a marriage, and the word here is it may have been too tough on the Ommanneys. The pretty yellow clapboard house they rented, where crews filmed Cat and her daughters frolicking in the yard, is empty, its shades drawn tight. The girls have been shipped back to England to live with their father.

Ms. Greensfelder says viewers won’t see much of the breakup; things apparently fell apart after taping ended. Fodder, perhaps, for next season.

Not yet a year and a half on in his first term, President going grey (oil spill)? "Barrack" center; undergrad Obama.

US President Barack Obama has postponed his visit to Australia twice...

Australia parliament gift shop withdraws 'Barrack' mug
Page last updated at 08:58 GMT, Tuesday, 8 June 2010 09:58 UK

A gift shop at Australia's Parliament House has withdrawn 200 mugs intended to mark US President Barack Obama's visit because of a spelling glitch.

The A$10 ($8.2, £5.6) mugs welcomed "Barrack Obama" - a mistake attributed to an official who ordered them.

Two were sold before the error was spotted but the rest have since been scrapped.

They would not have been needed anyway - Mr Obama has cancelled his visit to deal with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

It is the second time the US president has delayed a planned trip to Australia.

He cancelled one earlier this year to focus on his healthcare reform bill.

The black and white mugs featured a smiling picture of Mr Obama beneath his misspelt name in large, bold type.

Parliamentary services secretary Alan Thompson told AFP news agency that his staff had learned a "valuable lesson".

If Mr Obama scheduled a fresh visit, new mugs would be ordered with more attention to detail, he said.

"It did seem a good idea at the time and I think it would have made an excellent keepsake had he arrived and had the spelling been correct," he said.

Another 'job offer'
By KIRSTEN POWERS
NYPOST
Last Updated: 4:37 AM, June 4, 2010
Posted: 11:53 PM, June 3, 2010

After first stonewalling, the White House yester day confirmed that it tried to lure Andrew Romanoff out of the Colorado Senate primary with an administration job, to help its preferred candidate, incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet.

Sound familiar?

The Denver Post ran a story on the rumored job offer last September -- but White House spokesman Adam Abrams said then, "Romanoff was never offered a position within the administration."

Under the Bill Clinton standard, that's true: There was no formal "offer." But Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina's e-mail outlined in great specificity three government jobs that happened to be open, should Romanoff (who'd previously been denied an administration job) decide not to run.

The White House's reasoning is migraine-inducing: It insists it didn't offer a job -- but also that the president has an interest in influencing party primaries. But if the president wasn't offering a job, then what was he doing to prevent a primary contest?

He was offering a job. Stop insulting our intelligence.

But that's not the worst. To justify the presidential interest in influencing party primaries, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday noted, "We went through a contested primary, and they aren't fun things." Huh?

By that logic, Obama should have been pushed out of the 2008 primaries to avoid a contentious fight and give the establishment candidate, Hillary Clinton, a walk to the nomination. At the outset, she was by far the favored candidate. Does the White House not see the irony in trying to entice two insurgents (Romanoff and Pennsylvania's Joe Sestak) out of challenging the establishment choice?

Many Beltway talkers are claiming that the president actually has the "right," as head of the party, to clear the field in primaries. Sorry, the only people with the right to choose a nominee are primary voters. We live in the United States, not some Middle Eastern dictatorship (or, apparently, Chicago).

When I voted for Obama, I voted for him to be president, not for him to use government jobs or perks to drive out qualified challengers in Democratic primaries.

It's maddening to hear the claim that a president has a "right" to use taxpayer-funded jobs (or even an advisory-board post) to consolidate his political power. One of the most frustrating problems in American politics is the power of incumbency, which leaves our government a sewer of career politicians who are nearly impossible to depose once they get elected.

What the president has a "right" to do is to use his own time to help a candidate raise money or campaign. He has no right whatsoever to dole out to his cronies jobs that American taxpayers expect to be filled with qualified candidates.

Then there's the blather that voters don't care about this stuff or actually expect the president to behave this way.

Wrong again. In the last year, we've seen revolts against backroom deals over health reform (anger that may have been the final straw in electing Sen. Scott Brown). Here in New York, Democrats revolted when the White House tried to pressure Gov. Paterson from running to keep his job. Yes, Paterson later dropped out on his own -- but the Marist poll found 62 percent of voters and 51 percent of Democrats saying the administration should butt out.

Indeed, the recent revelations raise the question of just what offers the White House made to clear the way for Andrew Cuomo -- and for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

Here's an idea for the Obama White House: Stop meddling. You do your job, and let the American voters do theirs. kirstenpowers@aol.com

Disgracing America

The president has made foreign-policy blunders before, but this week marked a new low.

Pres. Barack Obama, who got his start in politics in the living room of domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and spent his first year in office apologizing for American history, has now decisively tipped U.S. foreign policy toward America’s enemies. Events of the past week have left no doubt.

There is a pattern. President “Let No Crisis Be Wasted” Obama twists events to justify his radical agenda. A financial crisis becomes the excuse for a massive health-care entitlement. An oil spill is exploited to push an unpopular energy tax. And a jihadist publicity stunt — the Gaza flotilla — becomes the occasion to throw Israel to the wolves.

One mentions Ayers and Dohrn not to dwell on the past but because — hello! — the pair has been involved with the Free Gaza movement, one of the organizers of the so-called Freedom Flotilla. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez has announced that he too would like to participate in the next running of the blockade — and why not? President Obama has blessed the project.

By 1) declaring through Secretary of State Clinton that the blockade of Gaza is “unsustainable and unacceptable”; 2) joining the U.N. Security Council in “condemn[ing] those acts which resulted in the loss of at least ten civilians and many wounded”; and 3) having a White House official tell the Washington Post that there is now a “general sense in the administration that it’s time to change our Gaza policy,” the Obama administration has handed the terrorists a victory.

To review: In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, forcibly uprooting 8,500 Jewish settlers and evacuating all soldiers. The Palestinians were left free to form their own government and run their own affairs. Much of value was left behind. MSNBC reported at the time that “American Jewish donors . . . bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million last month and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash.”

But the day after Israeli troops departed, the greenhouses were looted. MSNBC reported: “Palestinian police stood by helplessly Tuesday as looters carted off materials from greenhouses in several settlements, and commanders complained they did not have enough manpower to protect the prized assets. In some instances, there was no security and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said.”

In 2007, Hamas, the Iranian-backed, Islamist terror group, staged a coup and gained control of Gaza. Too busy to tend greenhouses, they occupied themselves raining 10,000 missiles on Israeli cities and sending kidnappers and suicide bombers across the border.

Israel imposed a blockade to prevent Hamas from receiving weapons or the materials from which to make weapons. Egypt too blockades Gaza. Food, medicine, and other humanitarian relief flow to the inhabitants on a daily basis through Israel. There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. As the Washington Post, reports “Gazans readily admit that they are not going hungry . . . [but they] used to be earning $100 per day, smoking Marlboros and going to Egypt every two months on vacation.”

Hamas’s charter calls for Israel’s destruction, and for the murder of all Jews “no matter how long that should take.” By focusing on the blockade — as the jihadis and blockade-runners would wish — instead of on Israel’s justified self-defense, the administration has undermined our own arguments for defeating terrorists.

The administration let it be known that it had “warned” Israel to “use restraint” against the Gaza convoy. There was no corresponding warning to Turkey about supporting and supplying the illegal flotilla. Come to think of it, where was the U.S. warning to Turkey or Brazil for linking arms with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month and easing Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb?

The depths of President Obama’s radicalism were evident a year ago, when he sided with Hugo Chávez and the Castro brothers against the people of Honduras as Chávez wannabe Manuel Zelaya attempted to seize power in violation of the country’s constitution. For an American leader to side openly with leftist thugs was shocking.

And when President Obama lost his voice as thousands of brave Iranians braved clubs and bullets to demand their freedom, his values were suspect.

But this week is a new low. Under President Obama’s leadership, the United States has capitulated to terror tactics and to the despicable temptation to blame Israel. America has always been the one country in the world that reliably countered the bullying and the grotesque double standards much of the world applies to Israel. Obama has now joined the jackals. What a disgrace.

Gangster Government Becomes a Long-Running Series
First the Chrysler bailout, now the Dodd bill and the SEC’s complaint against Goldman Sachs.
Michael Barone, National Review Online
April 22, 2010 12:00 A.M.

Almost a year ago, in a Washington Examiner column on the Chrysler bailout, I reflected on the Obama administration’s decision to force bondholders to accept 33 cents on the dollar on secured debts while giving United Auto Workers retirees 50 cents on the dollar on unsecured debts.

This was a clear violation of the ordinary bankruptcy rule that secured creditors are fully paid off before unsecured creditors get anything. The politically connected UAW folk got preference over politically unconnected bondholders. “We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government,” I wrote. “It is likely to be a continuing series.”

Fast forward to last Friday, when the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Goldman Sachs, alleging that the firm violated the law when it sold a collateralized debt obligation based on mortgage-backed securities without disclosing that the CDO was assembled with the help of hedge-fund investor John Paulson.

On its face, the complaint seems flimsy. Paulson has since become famous because his firm made billions by betting against mortgage-backed securities. But he wasn’t a big name then, and the sophisticated firm buying the CDO must have assumed the seller believed its value would go down.

That’s not the only fishy thing about the complaint. Yesterday came the news — undisclosed by the SEC Friday — that the commissioners approved the complaint by a 3–2 party-line vote. Ordinarily, the SEC issues such complaints only when the commissioners unanimously approve.

Fishy thing Number Three: Democrats immediately used the complaint to jam Sen. Christopher Dodd’s financial regulation through the Senate.

You may want to believe the denials that the Democratic commissioners timed the action in coordination with the administration or congressional leaders. But then you may want to believe there was no political favoritism in the Chrysler deal, too. The SEC complaint looks a lot like Gangster Government to me.

The Dodd bill, however, has it trumped. Its provisions promise to give us one episode of Gangster Government after another.

At the top of the list is the $50 billion fund that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation could use to pay off creditors of firms identified as systemically risky — i.e., “too big to fail.”

“The Dodd bill,” writes Rep. Brad Sherman (D., Calif.), “has unlimited executive bailout authority. That’s something Wall Street desperately wants but doesn’t dare ask for.”

Politically connected creditors would have every reason to assume they’d get favorable treatment. The Dodd bill specifically authorizes the FDIC to treat “creditors similarly situated” differently.

Second, as former Bush administration economist Larry Lindsey points out, the Dodd bill gives the Treasury and the FDIC authority to grant an unlimited number of loan guarantees to “too big to fail” firms. CEOs might want to have receipts for their contributions to Sen. Charles Schumer and the Obama campaign in hand when they apply.

Lindsey ticks off other special favors. “Labor gets ‘proxy access’ to bring its agenda items before shareholders as well as annual ‘say on pay’ for executives. Consumer activists get a brand-new agency funded directly out of the seniorage the Fed earns. No oversight by the Federal Reserve Board or by Congress on how the money is spent.”

Then there are carve-out provisions provided for particular interests. “Obtaining a carve-out isn’t rocket science,” one Republican K Street lobbyist told the Huffington Post. “Just give Chairman Dodd and Chuck Schumer a s—-load of money.”

The Obama Democrats portray the Dodd bill as a brave attempt to clamp tougher regulation on Wall Street. They know that polls show voters strongly reject just about all their programs to expand the size and scope of government, with the conspicuous exception of financial regulation.

Republicans have been accurately attacking the Dodd bill for authorizing bailouts of big Wall Street firms and giving them unfair advantages over small competitors. They might want to add that it authorizes Gangster Government — the channeling of vast sums from the politically unprotected to the politically connected.

That can boomerang even against the latter. Goldman Sachs employees gave nearly $1 million to the Obama campaign and $4.5 million to Democrats in 2008. That didn’t prevent Goldman from being shoved under the SEC bus.

Gangster Government may look good to those currently in favor, but as some of Al Capone’s confederates found out, that status is not permanent, and there is always more room under the bus.

All the President's Goldman men
New York Post
By MICHELLE MALKIN
Last Updated: 1:34 AM, April 21, 2010
Posted: 1:16 AM, April 21, 2010

While President Obama assails the culture of greed and recklessness practiced by the men of Goldman Sachs, his administration is infested with them. The White House can no more disown Government Sachs than Obama can disown Chicago politics.

Obama is headed to Wall Street tomorrow to demand "financial regulatory reform" -- just as the US Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil suit against Goldman Sachs for mortgage-related fraud.

Question the timing? Darn tootin'.

As the New York Post reported Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee immediately bought sponsored Internet ads on Google that direct Web surfers who type in "Goldman Sachs SEC" to Obama's fund-raising site.

"It's time to hold the big banks accountable," the DNC message bellows.

Democrats are silent on the $994,795 in Goldman Sachs campaign cash that Obama bagged in the 2008 presidential race. The class-warfare Dems are also mum on all the president's Goldman men sitting in the catbird's seat:

* Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler is Obama's Commodity Futures Trading Commission head. He was confirmed despite heated congressional grilling over his role, as Reuters described it, "as a high-level Treasury official in a 2000 law that exempted the $58 trillion credit default swap market from oversight. The financial instruments have been blamed for amplifying global financial turmoil."

Gensler said he was sorry -- hey, it worked for tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner -- and was quickly installed to guard the henhouse.

* Goldman kept White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a $3,000 monthly retainer while he worked as presidential candidate Bill Clinton's chief fund-raiser, as first reported by Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney. The financial titans threw in another $50,000 to become the Clinton primary campaign's top funder.

Emanuel received nearly $80,000 in campaign contributions from Goldman during his four terms in Congress -- investments that have reaped untold rewards, as Emanuel assumed a leading role championing the trillion-dollar TARP banking bailout law.

* Former Goldman lobbyist Mark Patterson serves under Geithner as his top deputy and overseer of TARP bailout -- $10 billion of which went to Goldman Sachs.

Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based think tank devoted to transparency in government, noted that, while Patterson agreed to recuse himself on any Goldman Sachs-related issues or related policy concerns, it "still creates a serious conflict for Geithner, as Treasury is being partly managed by a former Goldman lobbyist. Geithner is also placed in a tough position considering that his chief of staff is limited in the areas in which he can work (supposedly)."

* National Economic Council head Larry Summers reaped nearly $2.8 million in speaking fees from many of the major financial institutions and government bailout recipients he now polices, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Lehman Bros. and Goldman. A single speech to Goldman in April 2008 brought in $135,000.

Summers has prior experience negotiating government-sponsored bailouts that benefit private concerns. In 1995, he spearheaded a $40 billion Mexican peso bailout that bypassed Congress.

Summers personally leaned on the International Monetary Fund to provide nearly $18 billion for the package. Summers' boss, then Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, was former co-chairman of Goldman -- the Mexican government's investment banking firm of choice.

Rubin continues to mentor another of his former employees with regular visits and chats -- Treasury Secretary Geithner, who was head of the New York Federal Reserve in 2008 when it ordered bailed-out AIG not to disclose its sweetheart payments to big banks including, you guessed it, Goldman Sachs.

As Obama harangues Wall Street to clean up its house, all the president's Goldman Sachs men have their feet on the coffee table at his.

FACT CHECK: Obama skips fine print in nuke speech
YAHOO
By ANNE GEARAN, AP National Security Writer
13 April 2010

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama laid out a nightmare scenario on Tuesday — a terrorist with atomic bomb materials no bigger than an apple who could launch an attack killing hundreds of thousands of people.

In doing so, Obama skimped on details that make that kind of attack a more remote danger than he implied in his brief opening remarks to more than 40 world leaders, even as he got the broad picture right. The gathering, called by Obama, was intended to focus global attention on the problem of nuclear materials that could fall into the wrong hands.

Here's a look at the facts behind Obama's outline of the threat from nuclear terrorism:

OBAMA: Said in comparing today's threat to that during the Cold War: "The risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations has gone down, but the risk of nuclear attack has gone up."

THE FACTS: Yes, the bleak Cold War vision of mutual annihilation is all but gone now, and in its place is a new kind of risk. But linking the two, as he did, implies that the outcome from both scenarios is comparable.

He is correct that the numerical risk of an attack is higher now simply because there is so much material stockpiled and so many ways it could be misused. Yet the consequences are more limited now than from a nuclear exchange between superpowers with thousands of warheads each. The more likely scenario now is a limited attack confined to one city rather than global nuclear winter.

OBAMA: Said nuclear materials that could be stolen or sold for use as a weapon exist in dozens of nations.

THE FACTS: Correct. Arms control experts count roughly 40 nations with either weapons stocks or other nuclear facilities or material that could be misused. In most cases, however, the material or facilities are under what those nations claim is sufficient control.

OBAMA: "Just the smallest amount of plutonium — about the size of an apple — could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people."

THE FACTS: The apple might be a nice visual, but perhaps a little misleading.

Brookings Institution arms control expert Steven Pifer, largely agreeing with Obama, has one quibble: He says such a package would be closer to the size of a grapefruit.

More broadly, it is true that highly trained scientists and engineers with specialized equipment could fashion a small bomb that, as Obama said, could kill hundreds of thousands. But the facilities and technique needed to do so are presumed to be beyond the current reach of most terrorist groups or militant movements.

The scenario of a miniature but extraordinarily lethal bomb is hardly impossible, nonproliferation experts say, but probably represents less of a risk than a terrorist group getting hold of 50-80 pounds of enriched uranium and fashioning a crude device that would be larger and harder to conceal. Such a crude device might, however, be just as deadly.

OBAMA: "Terrorist networks such as al-Qaida have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it."

THE FACTS: Al-Qaida's desire for at least crude nuclear capability is taken as a given, although Obama and other U.S. officials have not spelled out exactly how the terrorist network has pursued atomic weapons so far.

Since a Senate super-majority wasn't enough to get his way for the first year...
Obama Making Plans to Use Executive Power
NYTIMES
By PETER BAKER
February 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities.

Mr. Obama has not given up hope of progress on Capitol Hill, aides said, and has scheduled a session with Republican leaders on health care later this month. But in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign.

“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff...more here.

Any president has vast authority to influence policy even without legislation, through executive orders, agency rule-making and administrative fiat. And Mr. Obama’s success this week in pressuring the Senate to confirm 27 nominations by threatening to use his recess appointment power demonstrated that executive authority can also be leveraged to force action by Congress.

Mr. Obama has already decided to create a bipartisan budget commission under his own authority after Congress refused to do so. His administration has signaled that it plans to use its discretion to soften enforcement of the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military, even as Congress considers repealing the law. And the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with possible regulations on heat-trapping gases blamed for climate change, while a bill to cap such emissions languishes in the Senate.

In an effort to demonstrate forward momentum, the White House is also drawing more attention to the sorts of actions taken regularly by cabinet departments without much fanfare. The White House heavily promoted an export initiative announced by Commerce Secretary Gary Locke last week and nearly $1 billion in health care technology grants announced on Friday by Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, and Hilda L. Solis, the labor secretary.

White House officials said the increased focus on executive authority reflected a natural evolution from the first year to the second year of any presidency.

“The challenges we had to address in 2009 ensured that the center of action would be in Congress,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “In 2010, executive actions will also play a key role in advancing the agenda.”

The use of executive authority during times of legislative inertia is hardly new; former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush turned to such powers at various moments in their presidencies, and Mr. Emanuel was in the thick of carrying out the strategy during his days as a top official in the Clinton White House.

But Mr. Obama has to be careful how he proceeds because he has been critical of both Mr. Clinton’s penchant for expending presidential capital on small-bore initiatives, like school uniforms, and Mr. Bush’s expansive assertions of executive authority, like the secret program of wiretapping without warrants.

Already, Mr. Obama has had to reconcile his campaign-trail criticism of Mr. Bush for excessive use of so-called signing statements to bypass parts of legislation with his own use of such tactics. After a bipartisan furor in Congress last year, Mr. Obama stopped issuing such signing statements, but aides said last month that he still reserves the right to ignore sections of bills he considers unconstitutional if objections have been lodged previously by the executive branch.

Another drawback of the executive power strategy is that actions taken unilaterally by the executive branch may not be as enduring as decisions made through acts of Congress signed into law by a president. For instance, while the E.P.A. has been determined to have the authority to regulate carbon emissions, the administration would rather have a market-based system of pollution permits, called cap and trade, that requires legislation.

Still, presidents have logged significant accomplishments through the stroke of a pen. In 1996, on his own authority, Mr. Clinton turned a 2,600-square-mile section of southern Utah into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, in what was called at the time his boldest environmental move. Mr. Bush followed suit in 2006 by designating a 140,000-square-mile stretch of islands and ocean near Hawaii as the largest protected marine reserve in the world, in what some see as his most lasting environmental achievement.

The use of executive power came to a head this week when Mr. Obama confronted Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, about nominations held up in the Senate. In a meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Obama turned to Mr. McConnell and vowed to use his power to appoint officials during Senate recesses if his nominations were not cleared.

By Thursday, the Senate had voted to confirm 27 of 63 nominations that had been held up, and the White House declared victory. Two administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Friday that the White House had drafted a list of about a dozen nominees for the president to appoint during the recess that just began, but most were among those cleared.

Mr. McConnell’s office denied that the president’s threat had anything to do with the confirmations, pointing out that the Senate regularly passes a batch of nominees before going on recess.

“All presidents get frustrated with the pace of nominations, and all Congresses say they’re doing their best, so it’s not a surprise,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell. “But the fact is nominees are being confirmed, particularly those nominated since December.”

The recess appointment power stems from the days when lawmakers were in session only part of the year, but in modern times presidents have used it to circumvent opposition in the Senate. Mr. Clinton made 139 recess appointments, 95 of them to full-time positions, while Mr. Bush made 171, with 99 to full-time jobs. Mr. Obama has yet to make any.

Those given such appointments can serve until the end of the next Congressional session. As a senator, Mr. Obama was less enamored with recess appointments. When Mr. Bush used the power to install John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Obama called Mr. Bolton “damaged goods.”

But the White House argued that Mr. Obama’s choices have been held up more than Mr. Bush’s and left open the prospect of giving recess appointments to some of those still held up, including Craig Becker, a labor lawyer whose nomination for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board has been blocked.

“If the stalling tactics continue,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, “he’s not ruling out using recess appointments for anybody that he’s nominated.”

ANOTHER "OOPS" MOMENT?
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is demanding that Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and others accused of insider trading hand over recordings of wiretap evidence, but the defendants have refused to give them up.

SEC and Galleon defendants tussle over wiretaps
YAHOO
Jan 26, 2010 9:04

In a flurry of letters made public on Monday in the high-profile Manhattan federal court case involving employees of some of America’s best-known companies, Rajaratnam and his co-accused argue that the recorded conversations belong only in a parallel criminal investigation.

Rajaratnam’s lawyers Terence Lynam and John Dowd wrote in a letter to US District Court Judge Jed Rakoff that the law “denies the SEC any authority to obtain or use wiretaps as part of its civil enforcement efforts because the SEC is not a law enforcement agency ... which is why the United States Attorney’s Office has not simply released the wiretaps to the SEC.”

The office of the Manhattan US Attorney, in its own letter to the judge, asked him to compel the defendants to produce wiretap recordings in their possession to the SEC for its case. Prosecutors allowed the defendants access to the recorded conversations so their counsel could refer to them as part of their defense. While the SEC and federal prosecutors often coordinate with each other, there are limits on the information they can share.

Rajaratnam, 52, is the most prominent defendant among 21 people criminally or civilly charged last October and November in what federal prosecutors described as the biggest hedge fun insider trading case in the United States. The accused include employees of International Business Machines Corp, McKinsey & Co executive management consultants and Intel Capital, an arm of Intel Corp.

Rajaratnam’s lawyers have argued that the wiretaps were obtained unlawfully and violated his constitutional rights.

The judge had scheduled a civil trial to begin on Aug. 1 even as the coast-to-coast criminal probe continues.

Seven in Galleon case plead not guilty
YAHOO
Feb. 2, 2010

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former stock trader Zvi Goffer, dubbed "Octopussy" in the sprawling Galleon hedge fund insider trading case, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday along with six others to securities fraud charges.

The seven, traders and lawyers, appeared before Manhattan federal court Judge Richard Sullivan to answer an indictment unsealed on January 21, charging them with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

They were arrested November 5, 2009, weeks after U.S. prosecutors arrested and charged Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam in the case.

The probe, described by prosecutors as the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in the United States, targeted companies and employees from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Goffer once worked at Galleon and later at the Incremental Capital trading firm. A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint described him as being nicknamed "Octopussy" in the purported insider trading network because of the breadth of his sources.

Aside from Goffer, the others who pleaded not guilty on Tuesday were three others associated with Incremental: Zvi Goffer's brother Emanuel Goffer, Michael Kimelman and David Plate; Arthur Cutillo, who had been a lawyer at Ropes & Gray LLP; and another lawyer, Jason Goldfarb.

Also indicted was Craig Drimal, whom prosecutors said worked in Galleon's offices but was not employed there.

The case is USA v. Goffer et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 10-056.

SEC mistakenly received Galleon wiretaps: briefs
YAHOO
By Grant McCool
Feb. 2, 2010

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Criminal prosecutors apparently made the mistake of giving to the SEC, wiretap recordings gathered against Galleon hedge fund insider trading defendants, a legal brief said, potentially compounding a fight over confidential evidence central to the case.

The recordings were returned to prosecutors when the mistake was discovered, the office of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney said in a January 27 court filing, which was made public on Tuesday.

The SEC, pressing civil charges against Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and a score of others, demanded in court on January 25, that defendants hand over recordings of wiretap evidence used to charge them in a parallel criminal case.

But subsequent court filings said the SEC had already been in possession since mid-December of some non-consensual recordings related to defendant and former trader, Zvi Goffer.

"Yesterday, the government learned that, in mid-December 2009, it inadvertently provided the SEC with recordings of certain communications intercepted," the letter brief of January 27 by U.S. prosecutor Jonathan Streeter, said.

While the SEC and criminal prosecutors often coordinate with each other, there are limits on the information they can share in parallel civil and criminal cases.

Caption these: when the camera is rolling (at left) and in an more unguarded moment - thinking twice about dissing the Supremes? Or maybe being diplomatic and saying the both major Parties are only so far apart on health care or other major subjects - the subtitle on the right would then read "You mean they're not?"

EDITORIAL: Obama's loose grip on reality
THE WASHINGTON TIMES editorial
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

President Obama's response to the catastrophic political failures of his freshman year in office is to fight harder for more of the same. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett made the point explicitly on Sunday, asserting that the White House is "not hitting a reset button at all." That reflects the kind of political savvy that handed the safest Democratic Senate seat in America to a Republican.

Mr. Obama seems unaware that he is part of the problem. The president credited Scott Brown's historic Senate-race victory in Massachusetts last week to the same voter frustration that swept him into office in 2008. The glitch in that worldview is that Mr. Brown ran explicitly against the Obama agenda.

Mr. Obama's response to comparisons to 1994, when Democrats lost control of both the House and Senate, is that "the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me." Mr. Obama certainly is making a big difference, but none that should give comfort to his party.

Gallup polling data show he is the most polarizing first-year president since records have been kept, significantly more so than Bill Clinton, the previous record holder. Mr. Obama's approval rating dropped faster than Mr. Clinton's in his first year, and generic ballots for the 2010 race show Republicans in an as good or better position compared to 1994 or 2006, when Congress last changed hands. A Fox News poll from January 2006 found a 51 percent disapproval rate for the then-Republican Congress. The same poll this month shows disapproval with the Democratic Congress at 63 percent.

The White House claims it hasn't reached out enough to the American people, but the real problem is that Mr. Obama's vaunted oratorical skills have had a short shelf life. In the administration's first months, the president regularly took to the airwaves to push his agenda, attempting to mimic President Reagan's effective use of television to circumvent congressional roadblocks. However, networks began to push back when it became clear that giving up valuable prime-time slots to Mr. Obama meant ratings death. Now the half-serious story making the rounds is that the State of the Union speech was scheduled so as not to conflict - or compete - with the premiere of the final season of "Lost." The president's relentless reliance on teleprompters likewise has become a national joke, building the impression that America elected a reader when it needs a leader.

The Obama team is reaching out to 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe for damage control, which suggests that since they cannot govern, they might as well campaign. Mr. Plouffe counsels pushing ahead vigorously on health care, which would doom many Democratic members of Congress. He suggests that the government "create" jobs, which it claims to be doing even as unemployment swells. He says the Democrats should not accept any "lectures" on spending, even though last year's $1.42 trillion deficit tripled the record set in 2008. Mr. Plouffe advises that Democrats "run great campaigns," which is the equivalent of a coach telling his team that the way to win is to score more points. He also helpfully cautions against "bed-wetting," an echo of Mr. Obama's admonition not to get "wee-wee'd up." Apparently Democrats see bladder control as the key to victory.

Mr. Obama is in a state of denial. His party's losses in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts all sent the message that the American people want the party in power to govern more wisely. For the time being, Democrats still enjoy substantial margins in both houses, but their agenda is stalled because it's painfully out of step with what the country wants. Mr. Obama pledges to keep on fighting, but pushing harder for ruinously bad policies is not populism; it is political suicide.

(l) Senator Obama in 2002 on Trent Lott; (r.) a much younger President Obama basically making the same 2010 comment he made about Sen.Harry Reid.

Obama in '02: 'The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott'
Weekly Standard
BY John McCormack
January 9, 2010 5:28 PM

In light of President Obama's decision to forgive Harry Reid's remarks about Obama's skin color and lack of a "Negro dialect," check out what Obama said about Trent Lott in 2002:

    Illinois Senator Barack Obama (D-13th), who hosted WVON's Cliff Kelley Show, challenged the Republican Party to repudiate Lott's remarks and to call for his resignation as senate leader.

    "It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do," said Obama.

    He said: "The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party."

--From the December 12, 2002 issue of the Chicago Defender.

Purported crasher claims to have gotten invite
YAHOO
January 11, 2010

WASHINGTON – A man who may have been a third uninvited guest at White House state dinner for India's prime minister asserted Monday that he did receive an invitation.

But when pressed in a nationally broadcast interview, Washington businessman Carlos Allen said only that he had gotten a White House invitation for the day. But he couldn't display anything with his name on it. Allen said he didn't know precisely the nature of Secret Service procedures, but insisted repeatedly he had not crashed the Nov. 24 State Dinner for visiting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Allen was among three people who purportedly went without invitations to the official party that President Barack Obama gave for Singh — a circumstance that has caused a continuing controversy long after the lights were darkened.

Two others, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, got in without displaying invitations to security personnel on site, and so far have resisted congressional subpoenas seeking their testimony. The Secret Service acknowledged that mistakes were made, leading to a security breach.

Allen, unlike the Salahis, never got close to Obama at the event.

Interviewed Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Allen said repeatedly: "I was invited. I actually got an invitation in the mail. I have the actual invite." But the business executive acknowledged under questioning by anchor Robin Roberts that he couldn't produce any piece of paper — including a table assignment card — with his name on it.

Allen, who operates an event business called Hush Galleria, said that a Secret Service employee checked him through security and a White House employee later directed him to a seat at his request.

Appearing with Allen, attorney A. Scott Bolden said, "Whether you believe that he had an invitation or a place card or not," he became an invitee at some point in the evening.

"He asked a White House staffer, 'Where do I sit,' and a White House staff steered him to that seat," Bolden said. "Doesn't sound like Carlos Allen is a criminal trespasser. He's a cooperative witness with the Secret Service, and we'll see how this plays out."

Allen said he'd gone to a nearby hotel where he ultimately hooked up with an Indian delegation after failing to gain admittance at either of two Secret Service-guarded gates at the Executive Mansion.

"It was cold. It was raining. I had a cough, I had a cold," he said, adding that he found well-dressed people lined up in a lobby when he arrived at the Hotel Willard.

"I started seeing a lot of people in the hallway. As I was looking around, everyone was looking good," he said. "They said, 'It's time to go to the White House.' So I got in line with everybody else. I basically had my invite. ... I went up to the Secret Service individual. He basically wanded me. He checked to make sure that I had nothing wrong ... and I basically walked in."

Allen explained that he removed a Web posting about the dinner because he was concerned about "a frenzy" surrounding the Salahis.

"Their faces were everywhere," he said of the Salahis, " and my focus was to do good things. ... I didn't want to embarrass anyone. I did not want to embarrass my president."

HUH?
They're working together to bring down America?

Obama’s Twelve Days of Christmas
Not a creature was stirring...not even Mike Leiter.
Weekly Standard
BY William Kristol
January 18, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 17

On the first day of Christmas, we were attacked.

On the second day of Christmas, the enemy combatant who had been dispatched from Yemen to attack us—who boarded a plane to Detroit with a valid multiple-entry visa despite our having been warned about him by his father, despite his having spent months with an al Qaeda leader in Yemen who was closely monitored by U.S. intelligence, and despite his buying a one-way ticket with cash and boarding without luggage—was arraigned before a judge, provided with a lawyer, and informed of his right to remain silent. The Transportation Security Administration ordered that airplane passengers remain seated for the final hour of all flights. President Obama remained silent.

On the third day of Christmas, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs went on the Sunday talk shows to assure Americans that “the system worked.”

On the fourth day of Christmas, the president interrupted his vacation in Hawaii to “assure” the American people that, basically, all was well: “An alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.”

On the fifth day of Christmas, the president came off the golf course to speak again. He now told us of some “serious concerns” that had been raised by the Christmas day incident—it turned out a “systemic failure” had occurred that allowed for a “potential catastrophic breach of security.”

On the sixth day of Christmas, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center continued the ski vacation he had left for the day after Christmas, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency continued to enjoy his holiday on the West Coast.

On the seventh day of Christmas, the White House issued a statement that the president had spoken that morning with his two nonvacationing terrorism advisers, Napolitano and Deputy Assistant to the President John Brennan, and that he had called a meeting for Tuesday when everyone was back in Washington.

On the eighth day of Christmas, everyone celebrated the New Year.

On the ninth day of Christmas, the president told us that the extremist wasn’t isolated, after all. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had “trained,” “equipped,” and “directed” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to attack the United States.

On the tenth day of Christmas, John Brennan was a guest on all the Sunday news talk shows. He explained that Abdulmutallab “received training” at one of several terror training camps in Yemen and that “he was clearly directed to carry out this attack [by] al Qaeda, the senior leadership there. This is something that we’re very concerned about. We’re concerned that they may be, in fact, trying to get other operatives, non-Yemenis and others, to train inside of Yemen, to send to the West.”

Brennan nonetheless defended treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal suspect, saying we could plea bargain with the terrorist in return for information he might have about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and about other attackers who might be on the way. Brennan also reiterated the Obama administration’s intention to continue paroling terror detainees to Yemen as part of the Obama quest to close Guantánamo.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, President Obama arrived back in Washington.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the State Department announced that Abdulmutallab’s visa had been revoked.

On the feast of the Epiphany, Obama’s national security adviser told USA Today that Americans would feel “a certain shock” when they saw the report that was to be released the next day.

And Americans did feel “a certain shock”—not so much from the report as from Napolitano’s profession of surprise at al Qaeda’s “tactic of using an individual to foment an attack.” Meanwhile, Brennan expressed alarm about cooperation between Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and about the fact that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was “actually launching individuals here.”

So, two weeks after the Christmas attack, the Obama administration may finally have awakened to the fact that we are facing an ongoing threat from a sophisticated global terror group with at least two capable and connected nodes, in Pakistan/Afghanistan and in Yemen. And that there are people being trained we probably don’t know about, in places we may not have yet discovered, to attack the United States of America. And they don’t take Christmas vacations.

We presume the Obama administration’s Christmas vacation is over. It would be good if they also abandoned their yearlong attempt to take a holiday from history.

Not photoshop image - reality, even if without an invitation!

No photo of this expansion of "open door" policy...
AP Exclusive: Tourists enjoy White House breakfast
By BEN EVANS, Associated Press Writer
Dec. 15, 2009

WASHINGTON – It wasn't a state dinner, and they didn't crash it on purpose.

Still, a Georgia couple who showed up at the White House a day early for a tour somehow wound up at an invitation-only breakfast with President Barack Obama and the first lady. It left the White House once again explaining how people who were not on an event guest list wound up being ushered into the presidential mansion anyway.

The improbable adventure of Harvey and Paula Darden, Obama supporters from Hogansville, Ga., took place on Veterans Day, two weeks before Virginia socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi infamously crashed the Obamas' state dinner for the prime minister of India.

The Dardens mistakenly showed up a day early for a tour scheduled through their congressman.

The White House and Secret Service both said the Dardens went through the appropriate security screenings and were allowed into the breakfast as a courtesy because there were no public tours the day they arrived.

That explanation was news to Harvey Darden, 67, a retired pharmacist, who said he and his wife never were told about the breakfast. They thought they were simply starting their tour until they were ushered into the East Room, offered a buffet spread and told they'd be meeting the president.

"The further we got into the White House, the more surprised we were," Darden told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "My wife looked at me and I looked at her, and I said, 'You know, I don't know if we're in the right place.'"

They approached a White House aide with their concern that they had veered off course but were told to "just go with the flow," Darden said.

"I felt kind of funny because I was the only man in the room that wasn't dressed in a coat and tie," he added. "I was just a plain tourist."

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said agents performed the same screening procedures on the Dardens that were used for other breakfast guests: They checked the Dardens' names and did a criminal background check — steps that were not taken for the Salahis at the Nov. 24 state dinner.

Because the Dardens were able to pass Secret Service vetting, they were allowed to attend the breakfast for veterans as a "nice gesture," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. He added that it's not unusual for White House staff to take people who are cleared in for tours to other events if there is space, including Marine One arrivals, East Room events and Rose Garden ceremonies.

Shapiro said the White House Office of Public Engagement, which Obama created to engage citizens in White House activities, was responsible for clearing in the Dardens, as well as the other breakfast guests. The social office handled admittance to the Indian state dinner.

On the morning the Dardens showed up, security officials working from a list of names began letting people inside. When the Dardens reached the checkpoint, they said they were told their names weren't on the list and were asked to present photo identifications and other information.

After waiting for agents to check their information, they were allowed in and directed into the East Room, where about 200 people were gathered for the breakfast.

The Dardens approached an aide who was mingling with guests.

"I told him, 'I don't think this is part of the White House tour,'" Darden said. "He said, 'No it's not. It's an invitation event for veterans.'"

The official, whose name and title Darden didn't remember, asked whether Darden was a veteran. Darden told him he was a Navy veteran, and the aide suggested he stay, Darden said.

So the Dardens served themselves at the buffet, and took their seats. Shortly thereafter, Barack and Michelle Obama arrived and began talking and getting photographs with guests at each table. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, also stopped by.

Darden said it was "quite a treat" to meet the Obamas and the Bidens. But he remains puzzled about how he was escorted into a private breakfast — and he grew a little anxious after the Salahi episode exploded in the news.

The couple's only regret, Darden said, is that they haven't received a copy of that picture taken with the Obamas.

Media Equation: Reality TV’s Glare Hits High Office
NYTIMES
By DAVID CARR
December 7, 2009

When Barack Obama became president, he promised a “new era of openness.” After almost a year of a media diet that seemed to be all-Obama, all-the-time that concluded in a reality-program couple crashing a state dinner at the White House, I’d be O.K. with the kimono closing a bit.

When Michaele and Tareq Salahi waltzed uninvited into the White House for a state dinner almost two weeks ago, their camera crew from Bravo’s forthcoming “The Real Housewives of D.C.” was left waiting outside, but it’s not as if their presence would have been much of a breach of current protocol.

After all, like much of daily life there, their visit was recorded and uploaded on the White House Flickr feed, the always-on streaming window into “the people’s house,” a nickname that has never been more apt than under the current residents.

Considering the White House’s hulking, media-rich Web site, its Facebook page, photo galleries and podcasts on iTunes, the presidency seems less threatened by the incursion of a reality show than running an administration that is in danger of becoming one.

One of the downsides of having a president who is also Celebrity in Chief is that it creates the impression that the leader of the free world is part of a milieu that is more TMZ than C-SPAN. In an effort to remain connected to the social media world that was so much a part of his electoral victory, the Obama administration may be guilty of a very contemporary common offense: Oversharing.

“In the context of a president that you see all the time and hear from all the time, how important does the speech at West Point, the most important speech of his presidency, become?” asks Lawrence O’Donnell, a producer and writer on “The West Wing,” among other projects, and an analyst on MSNBC. “It becomes like weather reports, just another of many messages from the president.”

Mr. O’Donnell added that the administration is experimenting in a different age of communication and has solid demographic reasons for communicating early and often on a variety of platforms.

The president can’t be blamed for a few knuckleheads trying to game their way into his presence, but his shared love of the camera leaves him vulnerable to suggestions that he is too busy appearing as the president and not busy enough being one. And we all know that television shows — reality or otherwise — can jump the shark.

The White House, something of an imperial palace under President Bush, has become the most camera-infested place since “Big Brother.” Oprah Winfrey was there last week with a giant camera crew in tow, chatting with the first couple and taking in the Christmas decorations.

She and the first lady shared the cover of her magazine back in April, not to be confused with the Vogue cover Michelle Obama did back in March. Mrs. Obama will also be starring in an episode of “Iron Chef” this January and has already done a live shot for Jay Leno from the White House.

The unauthorized visit of “The Real Housewives of D.C.” candidates probably caused the biggest ruckus at the White House since 1829, when Andrew Jackson fled the place because 20,000 of his close, personal friends showed up to celebrate his inauguration. Perhaps the Salahis were just taking the president at his word when he promised a new era of openness.

The Obamas, by the way, aren’t the only big users of social media at the White House. In a bit of a red-faced response to Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton on Capitol Hill about the incident, Mark Sullivan, the Secret Service director, said the breach was discovered by looking at Facebook.

The gate-crashers weren’t so much invading the Obamas’ privacy as trying to grab some of the abundant media limelight already there. It’s not as if they were the only media-connected people in attendance: Brian Williams, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” and Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric, which just announced it was selling majority ownership of NBC Universal, were at the same state dinner.

They are more or less related by affiliation with the crashers, because Bravo, the ring leader of the camera crew, is a division of NBC Universal. (By the way, guys, making the occupants of the White House look like fools just before you are about to run a regulatory gantlet is probably not a great opening strategy.)

Mr. Williams and the president are already burger-and-fries buddies, having gone out for fast food last spring with a camera crew. President Reagan was the first sitting president to dine as an ordinary customer at a public restaurant, but the restaurant was Le Cirque; no cameras were allowed. And when Andy Warhol documented the event, it was in his diary, not on a Facebook page.

Compare that to Mr. Obama’s outing to Five Guys, where he is filmed taking burger orders from staff members — “You want fries?” — and then sets off with Mr. Williams in the limo, sitting with jacket off and feet up on the seats.

I like that the current president gets out of the bubble, that he enjoys a burger, and is willing to walk back into the White House with a greasy go-bag for the staff. I’m not sure being able to watch it all unfold is good for his presidency.

“When he ran, the Obamas were pitched as kind of a reality show to the public. We’d hear about his dinners with Michelle and we felt like we knew them,” said Michael Hirschorn, a former executive at VH1 who now runs Ish Entertainment, which produces reality programming. “But now that he is in office, there is a danger of the mystique going away. The problem with social media and constant video is that it flows like water and reduces everything to the same level. Not much of it is special, and it all becomes content, even if it’s the president.”

The clamor, media and otherwise, that the Obamas have created in Washington of course brings to mind another handsome young couple with beautiful children who riveted the nation when they moved in to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It was, after all, Jacqueline Kennedy who first introduced the televised version of the White House to citizens, giving CBS News a lengthy tour.

But the peek was carefully scripted, following her maxim of “minimum information given with maximum politeness.” To watch the tour more than four decades later on YouTube, it looks less like the dawning of a new media age than a quaint reminder of a bygone era when distance between the press and the presidency was vast. It’s a long way from flipping on the TV at bedtime and seeing the first lady doing a “Ten @ Ten” question riff with her buddy Jay.

Mrs. Kennedy may have been impossibly glamorous and done her share of image management, but she had a chaste relationship with the camera and the public.

“I want to live my life, not record it,” she said.

Scene of the first State Dinner in honor of P.M. of India
Obviously, "Devil Wears Prada" not required viewing for Secret Service or Marines guarding the safety of the President (we refer to the staff preparation for greeting line at the Metropolitan Museum party...).

Redefinition of "Party Planner" - how about the "Spell-checkerer Czar?"
Agents Put On Leave After State Dinner Breach
NYTIMES
By JANIE LORBER
December 3, 2009, 12:34 pm

The head of the United States Secret Service told lawmakers today that the agents responsible for letting Michaele and Tareq Salahi into the White House state dinner last month have been placed on leave.

“The individuals have been identified and have been put on administrative leave,” Mark Sullivan, the agency’s director, said during a hearing called by the House Homeland Security Committee to investigate the White House security breach. The agents could face dismissal. Mr. Sullivan ruled nothing out, saying “appropriate action” would be taken once the agency’s investigation was completed.

Mr. Sullivan gave a few other details about the inquiry into just how the uninvited couple managed to get beyond two security checkpoints staffed by the Secret Service. Agents were supposed to be checking guests names against a list of vetted names compiled by the White House social staff.

He said the incident was “pure and simple this is a human error,” adding, “when people don’t follow the established guidelines, something like this is going to happen.”

The incident at the state dinner occurred against a flurry of discussion about whether Mr. Obama faces more security threats than his predecessors — coupled with the fact that he received Secret Service protection earlier than most presidential candidates during his campaign.

At the hearing, Mr. Sullivan said that despite reports to the contrary, President Obama is under no greater threat than the previous two presidents, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
During the hearing, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, held up a photo of Michaele Salahi posing with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the state dinner.Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times During the hearing, Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, Democrat of Texas, held up a photo of Michaele Salahi posing with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the state dinner.

Absent from the hearing were the Salahis and Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary. Although some committee members threatened to subpoena those witnesses, at this point, the Salahis declined on advice of their lawyer. In addition, the White House announced on Wednesday that Ms. Rogers would not testify, and cited the separation of powers under the Constitution as a reason for blocking her appearance.

At the hearing, Mr. Sullivan said the Secret Service accepted responsibility for the security breach. He said the agent should have contacted his immediate supervisor and communicated with the White House staff upon finding that the Salahis were not on his list. None of this happened. The Salahis told the agent that they should have been on the list and that they were invited. The agent also did not call the protocol center to determine whether the couple had clearance, he added.

In the absence of a representative from the White House social office, lawmakers pressed Mr. Sullivan for an explanation of how during preparations for the event the Secret Service and White House agreed not to place an administration representative at the initial check point as is customary.

Republicans were particularly incensed that Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary declined to testify and the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter King, said he wanted to subpoena Ms. Rogers in addition to the Salahis. (In either case, the entire committee would need to vote in favor of a subpoena.)

“We always expect the Secret Service to take a bullet for the president, but we don’t expect the Secret Service to take a bullet for the president’s staff,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a Republican of Pennsylvania.

Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, however, did not seem as perturbed.

“The social office plans parties. They are not responsible for security,” he said. “When pressed he repeated, “They are party planners.”

The unforgettable 'turkeys' of 2009
NYPOST
By MICHELLE MALKIN
Last Updated: 7:42 AM, November 26, 2009
Posted: 1:14 AM, November 26, 2009

As we gather round the Thanksgiving table, bow our heads in prayer and feast on the holiday bird, it is only fitting to take a moment to fete the unforgettable turkeys of 2009.

The stimulus: Back in February, I wrote that if the trillion-dollar stimulus plan were a Thanksgiving dinner entree, it would be a Turbaconducken -- the heart attack-inducing dish of roasted chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey, all wrapped in bacon. And so it has come to pass. After the Democratic majority larded up the spending package with earmarks and bribes, President Obama declared it pork-free and has stubbornly touted its job creation benefits for out-of-work Americans.

Reality check? The Washington Examiner reports that more than 10 percent of the jobs the Obama administration claimed were "created or saved" by the stimulus are doubtful or imaginary. ABC News uncovered countless examples of bogus congressional districts listed as stimulus beneficiaries by the Obama stimulus tracking website, Recovery.gov. The money has been lavished on shady beauty schools in New Hampshire, prison inmates in Texas and wind companies in Spain and China. Just this week, a California audit found that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation overstated the number of jobs saved by federal stimulus dollars by upward of 13,000.

While this Generational Theft Act soaks up our tax dollars and add to our children's and grandchildren's debt, the Democrats are cooking up a second stimulus turkey to provide federal infrastructure money to public-sector unions.

President O-bow-ma: The candidate who pledged to restore America's standing in the world couldn't figure out how to stay standing in front of world leaders. In April, he crouched before Saudi King Abdullah. This month, he provoked global derision when he broke protocol and performed a spineless blunder in front of the Japanese emperor.

His body language reflected the administration's broader foreign policy prostrations -- including scrapping missile defense in the Czech Republic and Poland, canceling a meeting with the Dalai Lama to appease China, sitting on its hands this summer during the Iranian election protests and unveiling the 9/11 show trials in New York City that will provide a platform for jihadis and Bush-haters.

Green-jobs czar Van Jones: This turkey was recruited by Team Obama's Chicago pal Valerie Jarrett, who boasted about recruiting the Marxist rabble-rouser from Oakland. He openly crusaded to free Philadelphia death row cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, bashed capitalism with radical revolutionary rhetoric and signed a 9/11 conspiracy petition that he meekly disavowed in a botched attempt to save his job. He is now at the Center for American Progress.

The other turkey in the story, Jarrett, escaped unscathed and went on to push the Obamas into their failed crony campaign for the 2016 Olympics bid in Copenhagen -- a taxpayer-funded, hubris-infused debacle. Rio got the Games. America got a closer look at the pay-for-play patrons, power brokers and developers in the Windy City.

The New York Times: Scooped by Fox News, conservative blogs and talk radio on the exploding ACORN scandal, the paper whitewashed its own role in covering up the community-organizing racket's financial shenanigans last fall when it cut off a reporter's investigation a few weeks before Election Day. Jill Abramson, the Times' managing editor for news, acknowledged that her staff was "slow off the mark" and blamed "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio."

Recently, the paper's Web site showed that its real motto is "All the inconvenient news that's fit to suppress." The Times' top environmental blogger, Andrew Revkin, refused to reprint damning e-mails leaked by a hacker showing a trail of manipulated climate-change data. The Times had no problem exposing national-security secrets to undermine Bush. But shed light on scientific hoaxes that undermine Al Gore? Unethical!

Tea Party-bashers: Millions of ordinary, peaceful Americans joined the Tea Party movement to revolt against big government, backroom deals and the Beltway culture of corruption. SEIU labor boss Dennis Rivera accused them of "terrorist tactics." Team Obama's astroturfers declared all-out war on them.

For refusing to shut up in the face of such unhinged bigotry, and for exposing the foulness of the political fowl, I have two words for them: Thank you.

FIRST STATE DINNER AND PARTY-CRASHERS: You can't make this stuff up! Reality state dinner.

LIKE A GAME OF "CLUE"
A map of the White House and the South Lawn, tracing the movements of state dinner party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Alison Victor/Daily News; Katey Couric, Rahm Emanuel photo in NY POST

Uninvited Pair Met Obama; Secret Service Offers Apology
NYTIMES
By HELENE COOPER and BRIAN STELTER
November 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama and his wife, Michelle, had a face-to-face encounter with the couple who sneaked into a state dinner at the White House this week, White House officials acknowledged on Friday. The revelation underscored the seriousness of the security breach and prompted an abject apology from the Secret Service.

A White House spokesman said that the couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi of Virginia, met and shook hands with the president and the first lady in the receiving line in the Blue Room, as the Obamas greeted each of their 400 invited guests Tuesday night before moving to a tent on the South Lawn for dinner.

That disclosure coincided with a statement from the director of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan, saying that his agency was “deeply concerned and embarrassed” by the events. Secret Service officials said the agency wanted to interview everyone connected with the episode, including the Salahis, and had not ruled out criminal charges.

“The preliminary findings of our internal investigation have determined established protocols were not followed at an initial checkpoint, verifying that two individuals were on the guest list,” Mr. Sullivan said.

“Although these individuals went through magnetometers and other levels of screening, they should have been prohibited from entering the event entirely,” Mr. Sullivan said. “That failing is ours.”

On Friday night, the White House released a photograph of the couple in the receiving line, being greeted by Mr. Obama. In the photo, a smiling Mrs. Salahi, wearing a red and gold sari, is clasping Mr. Obama’s hand with both of hers, as her husband looks on. The prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is standing next to Mr. Obama.

Mrs. Salahi’s Facebook page has photographs of the couple with officials including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. It is not known who took the pictures.

The couple’s lawyer, Paul W. Gardner of Baltimore, asserts that the Salahis had been “cleared, by the White House,” to be at the event, and so were not really “crashing.” Mr. Gardner declined a request to elaborate on his assertion...

Both reality television and the Internet have trained people “to brand themselves, to distribute themselves, to get themselves out there,” said James Hay, a communications professor at the University of Illinois and a co-author of the book “Better Living Through Reality TV.”

State dinner party crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi: Tracing their movements in the White House
DAILY NEWS STAFF
Friday, November 27th 2009, 4:54 AM

KEYS TO MAP

1. Michaele and Tareq Salahi are believed to have lined up here, under canopy, near which Facebook photo of her with Marines was taken. They then went through the magnetometers and walked on to Center Hall.

2. Next, they went upstairs into the Cross Hall and the State Dining Room, where they mingled with guests.

3. After mingling in the State Dining Room, the Salahis went into the Diplomatic Reception Room, then walked from there through the South Portico on their way to the South Lawn.

4. At the South Lawn, the Salahis were photographed with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Vice President Biden. The Biden picture seems to show the Salahis made it to the main tent, where the dinner with the President and First Lady was held.

Obamas’ Uninvited Guests Prompt an Inquiry
NYTIMES
By HELENE COOPER and BRIAN STELTER
November 27, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Secret Service is investigating how a couple aspiring to be reality-show celebrities managed to appear at President Obama’s first state dinner without being on the guest list, provoking questions about security at the White House.

The inquiry was begun after a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, slipped past multiple layers of high-level White House security Tuesday night and managed to rub shoulders, literally, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, among others, at Washington’s most exclusive social event this year.

Edwin M. Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service who spent his Thanksgiving Day dealing with phone calls from reporters, would not discuss the investigation in detail but said the initial focus was on “a Secret Service checkpoint which did not follow proper procedure to ensure these two individuals were on the invited guest list.”

While the question of how well the president is protected is never a casual one, it has taken on special resonance with Mr. Obama, the nation’s first black president. Even when he was a candidate, his security rivaled that of a sitting president, because of both the size of the crowds he attracted and the number of threats. Secret Service agents began guarding him 18 months before the November 2008 election, the earliest a candidate has ever been provided protection. It was not clear how close the couple got to the Obamas.

Representative Peter T. King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, called for a Congressional investigation, saying in an interview Thursday that he was shocked at the lack of security at the White House on Tuesday night. Since 2003, the Secret Service has been part of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Obviously, somebody dropped the ball,” said Mr. King, of New York. “I mean, you’re talking about the president of the United States and the vice president and a powerful world leader, the prime minister of India.” The prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was the guest of honor.

Mr. King said he had seen people turned away from similar White House events, including a congressman who brought his daughter instead of his wife, whose name was on the list. He also raised concerns about the Secret Service’s assertion that Mr. Obama was safe because all guests passed through metal detectors.

“The fact they went through the magnometer is incidental,” he said. “They could have had anthrax on them. They could have grabbed a knife from the dining room table.”

He added, “The next time it will be a far worse reality than a reality TV show.”

Mr. and Mrs. Salahi, meanwhile, remained silent Thursday about their White House visit.

Producers for Bravo, the cable channel, have been following and filming the couple this fall. The channel confirmed that Michaele Salahi was being seriously considered for the coming series “The Real Housewives of D.C.”

In a statement on Thursday, Bravo said Half Yard Productions, the producer for the series, had been under the impression that the Salahis, two polo-playing devotees of Washington’s social swirl and online social networks alike, had been invited to the dinner.

The “Housewives” cast “has not been finalized,” Bravo said. “Michaele Salahi is under consideration as a cast member; as such, Half Yard Productions were filming the Salahis on that day. Half Yard was only aware that per the Salahis they had been invited as guests.”

A White House official, informed of Bravo’s statement, said that was not the case. “We’ve already confirmed that they weren’t invited,” he said.

A publicist for the couple, Mahogany Jones, said they would not comment formally for now, but issued a statement.

Their counsel, Paul W. Gardner, “states emphatically that the Salahis did not ‘crash’ this event,” the statement said. “We look forward to setting the record straight very soon.”

Mr. Gardner, an entertainment lawyer, did not respond to a message left at his Baltimore office.

Brian Williams, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News” and a guest at the dinner, saw the Salahis arrive when he was waiting in a line of cars to enter the East Gate of the White House. In interviews broadcast on NBC on Thursday, Mr. Williams said the couple’s vehicle was turned away, adding, “Actually the first ring of Secret Service security had worked.”

“After their vehicle was turned away, they hopped out,” Mr. Williams said. “What attracted our attention was there was at least one camera trailing them. And a makeup woman got out and fixed the woman’s hair and then started powdering the man’s forehead.”

The Salahis apparently then joined a line of dinner guests at an entrance for pedestrians. What happened at checkpoints at that entrance is the focus of the Secret Service investigation.

Not two hours after the party, Mrs. Salahi had on her Facebook page a dozen photos of her and her husband with Washington’s social elite.

There the couple were, with Mayor Adrian M. Fenty of the District of Columbia “and his lovely wife,” Michelle (Mrs. Salahi is holding Mr. Fenty’s elbow). There Mrs. Salahi was, with three Marines in full-dress attire (her hand is touching the collar of one Marine, who smiles at the camera). And then there she was, her sari glittering, snaked around a grinning Mr. Biden, her hand resting on his chest, his arm wrapped around her waist; and both Salahis, with a smiling Mr. Emanuel, described on Mrs. Salahi’s Facebook page as “Chief of Staff of the United States White House.” It was not clear who took the pictures for Facebook.

The White House has said the Salahis were not seated for the dinner. It was not clear Thursday when they left the White House on Tuesday, and under what circumstances.

Whether or not they wind up on “Housewives,” the couple have certainly acted as if they were stars. They are now scheduled to be on “Larry King Live” on Monday.

On her celebrity-minded Facebook page, Mrs. Salahi telegraphed her television aspirations, writing, “Get Ready Kelly Ripa — Don’t you want a friend to tag team Regis!” She also suggested herself as a co-host for NBC’s “Today” show. On Facebook, she has more than 4,000 friends.

“There are definitely people that lobby very aggressively to be on shows,” said Michael Hirschorn, a former executive vice president for original programming at the reality-centric VH1 channel and a founder of Ish Entertainment.

The stunt brought to mind another set of fame-seekers: the Heene family of Fort Collins, Colo., who mesmerized the nation for several hours last month after setting aloft a homemade saucer-shaped balloon — and the notion that their 6-year-old son was in it — in an apparent effort to gain attention from television producers.

Mr. Hirschorn said prospective reality stars were becoming smarter about “self-producing,” knowing they had to inject drama into the shows.

“At this point,” he said, “there must be what, a thousand reality personalities on TV at any one time? So they know they have to stand out.”

Even so, Mr. Hirschorn added, this “would seem extreme to me.”

A Stylish State Dinner, With Typos
NYTIMES
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
November 25, 2009, 12:24 am

The White House pulled out all the stops in preparation for President Obama’s first state dinner on Tuesday night, hiring a new florist, selecting a renowned guest chef and even inviting a number of high-profile musicians to perform.

But one person the White House apparently neglected to hire was a spell checker.

The special dinner menu — a lavish mélange of Indian and American favorites as well as several excellent wines — was rife with typos.

The second course of the evening was paired, for example, with a delicious 2006 Brooks Riesling, which, the menu noted, was bottled in “Wilamette Valley, Oregon.”

A diligent copy editor would have changed that to the proper spelling, “Willamette Valley.”

For their third course, the 320 guests were offered a dish that, according to the menu, included potato dumplings with tomato chutney and “chick peas,” which should in fact have been “chickpeas.” That course, the menu noted, was paired with an excellent red wine, a “2007 Granache” from Beckmen Vineyards. The correct spelling of the popular varietal, one of the most widely planted types of red grape in the world, is actually “Grenache” with only one “a,” not two.

The last bottle of the night was equally impressive, a sparkling chardonnay from Virginia. It was listed as a “Thibaut Janisson Brut,” missing a hyphen between the first two words. And last but not least, the dessert may have been free of error in taste, but not so in spelling. It included, according to the menu, passion fruit and vanilla “Gelees,” the French word for “gelled,” which, when written correctly, includes an acute accent on the second “e.”

Op-Ed Columnist

Thanks for the Memories

NYTIMES
By MAUREEN DOWD
November 25, 2009

WASHINGTON

At his Cabinet meeting Monday afternoon, President Obama took a moment to give thanks to his team.

Sipping a glass of water, the president offered special gratitude to the woman on his right.

“I advised this hard-working Cabinet to get a little bit of rest this week,” he said, looking at Hillary Clinton, “particularly the people who have been traveling around the globe day-in and day-out and don’t know what time zone they’re in.”

The secretary of state, with a china cup and saucer in front of her, smiled.

In the back of the room, back where they were parched, back where no water or coffee was served for the two-hour meeting, sat Greg Craig, the White House counsel who was a ghostly presence, given his death by a thousand leaks.

Only a year after he had helped Barack Obama get elected by eviscerating his close friend, Clinton White House colleague and Yale Law School classmate, Hillary Clinton, Craig was himself eviscerated by the Obama inner circle.

I remember meeting Craig at a book party during the campaign. He upbraided me for writing critical things about Obama. I didn’t like being chastised, but I admired his loyalty.

It couldn’t have been easy for Craig, a special counsel in the Clinton White House who directed the response on impeachment, to break away from the Clintons and help the insurgent Obama shatter Hillary’s dream of shattering the Oval glass ceiling.

As Todd Purdum wrote of Craig in The Times in 1998, “At Yale, he surrendered his $75-a-month apartment in New Haven to Mr. Clinton and his girlfriend, Hillary Rodham, who were a class behind him, and he remains especially close to Mrs. Clinton, friends say.”

In a memo he sent to the press during the bitter 2008 Democratic primary, Craig made the case that Hillary had exaggerated her foreign policy experience and that she did not pass “the Commander-in-Chief test.”

It was brutally effective, taking apart her claims of involvement, country by country, and noting: “As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue — not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.”

I often wondered if Craig and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, the other former Clinton official who helped undermine Hillary’s foreign policy record, would have done so if they had known that after turning on Hillary they would once more end up working beside her; if they had known that Obama can often be more interested in wooing opponents than tending to those who put themselves on the line for him.

There were complaints that Craig was out of the loop, but couldn’t Obama have walked the single West Wing staircase up to his counsel’s office and looped him in?

Craig was, after all, simply defending positions that Obama himself took during the campaign, from closing Gitmo to greater transparency.

The way the Craig matter was handled sent a chill through some Obama supporters, reminding them of the icy manner in which the Clintons cut loose Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier. But then, Obama is surrounded by many old Clinton hands (and a Clinton).

Writing in Politico, Elizabeth Drew called it “the shabbiest episode of his presidency,” saying that it had caused people who had helped Obama rise to question whether he would behave in as classy and non-Clintonian a fashion as they had hoped.

It recalled Obama’s failure to lift a finger to help Caroline Kennedy — after she had lifted him at a crucial moment — when the loopy Gov. David Paterson was dragging her through mud and refusing to announce a decision on the appointment for the New York Senate seat. Paterson was being lobbied by a vengeful Bill Clinton. Bill was still upset at Caroline for bestowing the Camelot mantle, which he had tried to claim during his campaigns, on Obama. Yet no one from the Obama camp tried to counteract Bill and straighten out Paterson.

Although a handful of donors were invited to the premiere state dinner Tuesday night — as well as erstwhile allies Craig and Hillary — many donors and passionate supporters are let down by Obama’s detachment, puzzled at his failure to make them feel invested when he’s certain to come back to tap their well soon enough.

It is especially puzzling given that Obama faces tough midterms and a less-than-certain re-election — and given that we all now know someone on the unemployment line. (A new poll shows Obama and Sarah Palin neck and neck among independents, but then it is a Fox survey.)

Bill Clinton may not have cared any more about contributors than Obama does, but he was such a talented politician that he made them feel as though they were in “a warm bath,” as one put it.

Obama is more like a cold shower.

The "I told you so" moment...perhaps? Hubris?
Obama, Holder predict conviction in 9/11 case
YAHOO
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer
Nov. 18, 2009

WASHINGTON – From opposite ends of the globe, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder firmly rejected criticism Wednesday of the planned New York trial of the professed Sept. 11 mastermind and predicted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be exposed as a murderous coward, convicted and executed.

"Failure is not an option," Holder declared.

The president, in a series of TV interviews during his trip to Asia, said those offended by the legal rights accorded Mohammed by virtue of his facing a civilian trial rather than a military tribunal won't find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

Obama, who is a lawyer, quickly added that he did not mean to suggest he was prejudging the outcome of Mohammed's trial. "I'm not going to be in that courtroom," he said. "That's the job of the prosecutors, the judge and the jury."

The president said in interviews broadcast on NBC and CNN that experienced prosecutors in the case who specialize in terrorism have offered assurances that "we'll convict this person with the evidence they've got, going through our system."

In Washington, the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Holder for hours about his decision to send Mohammed and four others from the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to New York for trial in a federal courthouse blocks from the site of the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

The attorney general said he is certain the men will be convicted, but even if a suspect were acquitted, "that doesn't mean that person would be released into our country."

Tempers flared when Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., challenged Holder to say how a civilian trial could be the best idea, since Mohammed had previously sought to plead guilty before a military commission.

"How can you be more likely to get a conviction in a (civilian) court than that?" pressed Kyl, to applause from some in the hearing room.

The attorney general said his decision was not based "on the whims or the desires of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... He will not select the prosecution venue. I will. And I have."

Critics of Holder's decision — mostly Republicans — have argued the trial will give Mohammed a world stage to spout hateful rhetoric. Holder said such concerns are misplaced, because judges can control unruly defendants and any pronouncements by Mohammed would only make him look worse.

"I have every confidence that the nation and the world will see him for the coward that he is," Holder told the committee. "I'm not scared of what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has to say at trial — and no one else needs to be, either."

Democrats on the panel were largely supportive of the administration's decision.

"We're the most powerful nation on earth; we have a justice system that is the envy of the world. We will not be afraid," said Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Among the spectators were some relatives of 9/11 victims who disagree with Holder's plan to put Mohammed, the most senior al-Qaida suspect in U.S. custody, on public trial.

Opponents of the plan, including Holder's predecessor, Michael Mukasey, have accused him of adopting a "pre-9/11" approach to terrorism.

Holder emphatically denied that.

"We are at war, and we will use every instrument of national power — civilian, military, law enforcement, intelligence, diplomatic and others — to win," Holder said.

But South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called the decision "a perversion of justice" by putting wartime enemies into the civilian criminal justice system. "We're making history, and we're making bad history," Graham said.

The attorney general said he does not believe holding the trial in New York — at a federal courthouse that has seen a number of high-profile terrorism trials in recent decades — will increase the risk of terror attacks there.

He also voiced support for extra federal money for the city to help safeguard the area while the trials are under way.

Alice Hoagland, whose son Mark Bingham died aboard Flight 93, spoke with Holder after the hearing had ended. One of four jetliners hijacked on 9/11, Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers rushed the cabin.

"We are heartsick and weary of the delays and machinations," said Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, Calif.

Holder sought to reassure her there was evidence, not yet made public, that makes federal court the best place to try Mohammed.

"I guess what I'm saying is trust me," the attorney general said quietly, as reporters and security staff crowded around the pair.

"I will trust you. I will defer judgment," said Hoagland, though she added she still has serious doubts about his plan.

Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%
NYTIMES
By DAVID LEONHARDT
November 7, 2009

For all the pain caused by the Great Recession, the job market still was not in as bad shape as it had been during the depths of the early 1980s recession — until now.

With the release of the jobs report on Friday, the broadest measure of unemployment and underemployment tracked by the Labor Department has reached its highest level in decades. If statistics went back so far, the measure would almost certainly be at its highest level since the Great Depression.

In all, more than one out of every six workers — 17.5 percent — were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.

This includes the officially unemployed, who have looked for work in the last four weeks. It also includes discouraged workers, who have looked in the past year, as well as millions of part-time workers who want to be working full time.

The official jobless rate — 10.2 percent in October, up from 9.8 percent in September — remains lower than the early 1980s peak of 10.8 percent.

The rate is highest today, sometimes 20 percent, in states that had big housing bubbles, like California and Arizona, or that have large manufacturing sectors, like Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

The new benchmark is a sign of just how much damage financial crises tend to inflict. A recent book by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, two economists, found that over the last century the typical crisis had caused the jobless rate in the country where it occurred to rise for almost five years. By that standard, the jobless rate here would continue rising for two more years, through the end of 2011.

Most economists predict that the rate will in fact begin to fall next year, largely because of the federal government’s aggressive response — fiscal stimulus, interest-rate cuts and a variety of creative steps by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department. Friday’s report showed that monthly job losses continued to slow recently, though the improvement has been gradual.

At the White House Friday, President Obama signed a bill to extend unemployment benefits and a tax credit for home buyers, and said that he was looking at ways to enact more stimulus. On Wednesday, the Fed announced that it expected to leave its benchmark interest at zero for “an extended period.”

Nearly 16 million people are now unemployed and more than seven million jobs have been lost since late 2007.

Officially, the Labor Department’s broad measure of unemployment goes back only to 1994. But early this year, with the help of economists at the department, The New York Times created a version that estimates it going back to 1970. If such a measure were available for the Depression, it probably would have exceeded 30 percent.

Compared with the early 1980s, a smaller share of workers today are officially unemployed and a smaller share are considered discouraged workers.

But there are many more people who would like to be working full time and have been able to find only part-time work, according to the government’s monthly survey of workers. The rapid increase in their ranks and in the officially unemployed has caused the rate to rise much faster in this recession than in the early 1980s. Two years ago, it was only 8.2 percent.

One of the more striking aspects of the Great Recession is that most of its impact has fallen on a relatively narrow group of workers. This is evident primarily in two ways.

First, the number of people who have experienced any unemployment is surprisingly low, given the severity of the recession. The pace of layoffs has increased, but the peak layoff rate this year was the same as it was during the 2001 recession, which was a fairly mild downturn. The main reason that the unemployment rate has soared is the hiring rate has plummeted.

So fewer workers than might be expected have lost their jobs. But those without work are paying a steep price, because finding a new job is extremely difficult.

Second, wages have continued to rise for most people who still have jobs. The average hourly wage for rank-and-file workers, who make up about four-fifths of the work force, actually accelerated in October, according to the new report.

Even though some companies have cut the pay of workers, the average hourly wage has still risen 1.5 to 2.5 percent over the last year, depending on which government survey is examined. Average weekly pay has risen less — zero to 1 percent — because hours have been cut. But average prices have fallen. Altogether, the typical worker has received a 1 to 2 percent inflation-adjusted raise over the last year.

In the other two severe recessions in recent decades, workers with jobs fared considerably worse. At the same point in the mid-1970s downturn, real weekly pay had fallen 7 percent; in the early 1980s recession, it had fallen 4 percent.

It is a strange combination: workers who still have a job are doing better than in other deep recessions, but the unemployment and underemployment have risen to their highest level since the Depression.

A poster of President Barack Obama, right, by artist Shepard Fairey is shown for comparison with this file photo of then-Sen. Barack Obama by Associated Press photographer Manny Garcia.
Garcia/AP; Shepard Fairey

AP says artist made up story about Obama poster
Norwalk HOUR
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
October 20, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Associated Press said Shepard Fairey concocted the story that he was mistaken about which photo he used to create the famous Obama HOPE poster.

The news organization also disputes Fairey's contention that he has not personally profited from the iconic red, white and blue image.

Days after Fairey acknowledged trying to destroy potentially damaging evidence in his legal battle with the AP, the news organization filed amended papers in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday accusing the poster artist of deliberate deception. Until recently, Fairey had claimed his image was based on a 2006 photo of then-Sen. Barack Obama, seated next to actor George Clooney. Fairey now says he used a solo, close-up shot of Obama, as the AP had long alleged.

"It is simply not credible that Fairey somehow forgot in January 2009 which source image he used to create the Infringing Works, which were completed only a year earlier in January 2008," according to the papers filed Tuesday.

"It also strains credulity that an experienced graphic designer such as Shepard Fairey misremembered cropping George Clooney out of a source image and making other changes ... when no such cropping or other changes were ever made."

Calls and e-mail messages to Fairey's lead counsel, Anthony Falzone, and Fairey's publicist, Jay Strell, were not immediately returned.

Fairey sued the not-for-profit news cooperative in February, arguing that he didn't violate copyright law because he dramatically changed the image and thus was protected by "fair use" guidelines. The AP countersued in March, saying the uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo violated copyright laws and signaled a threat to journalism.

"Fair use" is determined, in part, by how much a new work changes an older one. The photo that Fairey acknowledges using appears closer to the "HOPE" artwork than does the picture of Obama and Clooney.

Fairey has long contended that he did not make money off of the image, which has appeared on posters, buttons, shirts and stickers, in books and in museums, including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. But the AP alleged Tuesday that Fairey, through his Obey Clothing store, has "generated substantial revenue from the commercial exploitation of the Obama posters on T-shirts and other merchandise."

In the papers filed Tuesday, the AP added Obey Clothing as a counterclaim defendant.

The photo of Obama and Clooney was taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia, on assignment for the AP, at the National Press Club in Washington. Garcia, who also shot the solo picture, filed his own suit in July claiming he owned the copyright.

------

AP Television Writer Frazier Moore in New York contributed to this report.

Artist Shepard Fairey admits cover-up in photo flap over Obama 'HOPE' poster
NYDaily News
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, October 17th 2009, 12:32 PM

NEW YORK - Shepard Fairey's claim that he had the right to use a news photo to create his famous Barack Obama "HOPE" poster became a widely watched court case about fair use that now appears to have nearly collapsed. By Friday night, his attorneys - led by Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University - had withdrawn from the case and said the artist had misled them by fabricating information and destroying other material.

Fairey himself admitted that he didn't use The Associated Press photo of Obama seated next to actor George Clooney he originally said his work was based on - which he claimed would have been covered under "fair use," the legal claim that copyrighted work can be used without having to pay for it.

Instead he used a picture the news organization has claimed was his source - a solo picture of the future president seemingly closer to the iconic red, white and blue image of Obama, underlined with the caption "HOPE."

Fairey said that he tried to cover up his error by submitting false images and deleting others. The distinction is critical because fair use can sometimes be determined by how much of an original image or work was altered in the creation of a new work. If Fairey didn't need to significantly alter the image he used - in this case the solo shot of Obama - then his claim could have been undermined. Fair use cases also may consider the market value of the copyrighted material and the intended use of the newly created work.

"Shepard Fairey has now been forced to admit that he sued the AP under false pretenses by lying about which AP photograph he used," said AP vice president and general counsel Srinandan R. Kasi.

"Mr. Fairey has also now admitted to the AP that he fabricated and attempted to destroy other evidence in an effort to bolster his fair use case and cover up his previous lies and omissions."

Kasi said Fairey's admission struck "at the heart" of Fairey's defense that he was protected by fair use. Kasi said the AP would continue to pursue its countersuit alleging that Fairey willfully infringed the AP's copyright. It was not immediately clear from the statements issued and court filings if Fairey would continue with his case, but a person close to Fairey said that the artist would. The person was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Fairey, 39, had claimed he based his "HOPE" drawing on a photo of then-Sen. Obama seated next to Clooney. The photo was taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia, on assignment for the AP, at the National Press Club in Washington. Fairey now says he started with a solo photograph of Obama - taken at the same event, by the same photographer. The AP has long maintained that Fairey used the solo shot for the poster.

Fairey sued the not-for-profit news cooperative in February, arguing that he didn't violate copyright law because he dramatically changed the image. The AP countersued in March, saying the uncredited, uncompensated use of an AP photo violated copyright laws and signaled a threat to journalism. Fairey, a Los Angeles-based street artist with a long, often proud history of breaking rules, said in a statement Friday that he was wrong about which photo he used and that he tried to hide his error.

"In an attempt to conceal my mistake, I submitted false images and deleted other images," said Fairey. "I sincerely apologize for my lapse in judgment, and I take full responsibility for my actions, which were mine alone."

He said he was taking steps to correct the information and regretted that he didn't come forward sooner. Attorneys for Fairey have withdrawn and, in papers filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, stated that he misled them. They also amended the original court documents, reflecting that Fairey used a different picture. "Mr. Fairey was apparently mistaken about the photograph he used when his original complaint for declaratory relief was filed on February 9, 2009," the papers say.

"After the original complaint was filed, Mr. Fairey realized his mistake. Instead of acknowledging that mistake, Mr. Fairey attempted to delete the electronic files he had used in creating the illustration at issue.

He also created, and delivered to his counsel for production, new documents to make it appear as though he had used the Clooney photograph as his reference." Although he said he was "very sorry to have hurt and disappointed colleagues, friends, and family," Fairey said that the real issue was "the right to fair use" so artists can create freely.

"Regardless of which of the two images was used," he said, "the fair use issue should be the same."

The dispute between Fairey and the AP has led to a strong debate between artists and free speech advocates defending Fairey and photographers and journalism organizations citing the need for copyright protection.

The "HOPE" image has appeared on countless posters, stickers and buttons. It has appeared in several books and in numerous museums, including a mixed-media stenciled collage version added to the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Fairey also used the AP photograph for an image designed specially for the Obama inaugural committee, which charged anywhere from $100 for a poster to $500 for a poster signed by the artist. It is unclear how much, in total, Fairey may have earned from the design.

Fairey has said that he first designed the image in early 2008, after he was encouraged by the Obama campaign to come up with some kind of artwork. The AP plans to donate any proceeds received for past use of the photo to the AP Emergency Relief Fund, which assists staffers and their families around the world who are victims of natural disasters and conflicts.

In February 2009, Fairey was arrested when he went to Boston for an event kicking off his solo exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, among the most popular in the museum's more than 70-year history.
He faced dozens of vandalism charges, but nearly all were dropped. He pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges last summer and was sentenced to two years probation.

Working together better...the aim of Obama administration bureaucrats. More layers of government...read about one example here.

THEME SONG OF ADMINISTRATION?

Blaming the First Lady for Chicago ouster in first round? Not funny.
Since he bothered to go at all, he should have stayed and made them do it to his face - just our opinion.

'Let me be clear' ... President Obama overuses the phrase 'Let me be clear'
NY Daily News
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tuesday, October 13th 2009, 10:15 AM

WASHINGTON — For all his flourish, President Barack Obama sure falls back on a few familiar phrases. Make no mistake. Change isn't easy. It won't happen overnight. There will be setbacks and false starts.

Those who routinely listen to the president have come to expect some of those expressions to pop up in almost every speech. (That includes you, cynics and naysayers, the ones Obama mentions all the time without identifying who is saying nay.) Yet in the portfolio of presidential phrases, none is more pervasive than Obama's four-word favorite: Let me be clear.

It is his emphatic windup for, well, everything.

"Let me be clear," he said in describing his surprise at winning the Nobel Peace Prize. "I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

"Let me be clear," he said in one of his dozens of pitches for a health insurance overhaul. "If you like your doctor or health care provider, you can keep them."

Presidents talk so much in public that is not surprising to find rhetorical patterns. Although Obama is known for a flair with the written and spoken word, his hardest mission is often to make complicated matters relevant to the masses. So clarity, it seems, is of the highest order.

Terrorists? "Now let me be clear: We are indeed at war with al-Qaida and its affiliates."

Student testing? "Let me be clear: Success should be judged by results, and data is a powerful tool to determine results."

Iran? "Let me be clear: Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat, not just to the United States, but to Iran's neighbors and our allies."

Auto bailouts? "Let me be clear: The United States government has no interest in running GM."

The president takes the phrase everywhere.

In Moscow: "Let me be clear: America wants a strong, peaceful, and prosperous Russia."

In Ghana: "Let me be clear: Africa is not the crude caricature of a continent at perpetual war."

In Italy, bemoaning poor U.S. leadership on climate change: "Let me be clear: Those days are over."

In Trinidad, announcing new aid: "Let me be clear: This is not charity."

Obama has used the same phrase, or a variation of it, to make his point about the strategy in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, U.S.-China relations, bipartisanship, pet legislative projects and Turkey's bid to join the European Union. He has relied on it to look ahead ("Let me be clear: We pay for this plan," Obama says of his college initiative) and to look back ("Let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed" he says of economic models he dislikes.)

White House spokesman Josh Earnest says Obama's style, which he referred to as presidential throat "clearing," is purposeful.

"While some in Washington seek political advantage by hiding behind ambiguity," Earnest said, "the president regularly seeks to make it clear where he stands and what he intends to do."

Perhaps the nation should have seen this coming. Candidate Obama set the tone.

"Let me be clear: It's outrageous that we find ourselves in a position where taxpayers must bear the burden for the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street and Washington," Obama said in September 2008.

There must be something catchy to all this. The people around Obama are just as insistent. Here's Vice President Joe Biden, assuring members of Georgia's Parliament that U.S. efforts to reset relations with Russia wouldn't come at their expense: "Let me be clear: They have not, they will not, and they cannot." And senior adviser David Axelrod, on missed legislative deadlines on health care: "Let me be clear. We're less interested in hard deadlines than in moving the process forward."

Lest anyone get too serious about this, Obama has lightened the mood with the phrase, too. He made state lawmakers laugh when he said the massive taxpayer-financed stimulus plan wouldn't be spent on frivolous projects such as dog parks.

"Now, let me be clear," Obama said in March, before Bo the dog arrived. "I don't have anything against dog parks."

Clearly.

Beware Premature Prizes

Semi-regular thoughts on foreign affairs, politics, and books, from George Packer
October 9, 2009

President Obama should thank the Nobel committee and ask them to hold on to the Peace Prize for a couple more years. The prize should be awarded for achievement, not aspiration, and so far Obama’s main achievement has been getting elected President, which is in a different category. He shouldn’t contribute to the unfair accusation that he is all talk by accepting an award based on speeches he gave in Berlin, Prague, and Cairo. Europeans’ relief in seeing the last of George W. Bush and their adoration of Obama are entirely understandable, but in the U.S. we've moved on from November 4, 2008, and these days Obama is—in a way that's both inevitable and healthy—a working President, with his share of troubles and mistakes, who is trying to get some difficult things done but hasn’t come close to accomplishing them yet. This seems like a prize for Europeans, not Americans, and I worry that at home it will damage him politically by reinforcing the notion that he is—and will be—a world icon rather than a successful President. I don’t mind him being the former, but I most want him to be the latter. Not even a Rookie of the Year is ready to be elected to the Hall of Fame. I’m afraid this prize will be bad for Obama. For political reasons and on the merits, he should paraphrase Shakespeare to the Nobel committee: “As you shall prove me, praise me."

Op-Ed Columnist
The Rabbit Ragu Democrats
By FRANK RICH
October 4, 2009

IN the annals of American excess, there often arrives a moment when those with too much money, too much clout and too much hubris just can’t stop themselves from tempting the fates. They throw an over-the-top party in public, or parade their wealth and power before the press, and the next thing you know their world, and sometimes ours, has crashed.

In the go-go Reagan 1980s, the junk bond king Michael Milken bedazzled investors with lavish Predators’ Balls in Beverly Hills. Sure enough, he and Wall Street would end the decade in ruin. Back East, the financier Saul Steinberg celebrated his 50th birthday in 1989 with a $1 million party in the Hamptons. “Honey, if this moment were a stock, I’d short it,” he said when toasting his wife. He would soon suffer a stroke and see his company go bankrupt.

Steinberg sold his vast New York apartment to the private equity titan Stephen Schwarzman. In February 2007, Schwarzman marked his 60th birthday with a highly visible multimillion-dollar bacchanal in the Park Avenue Armory. Though Schwarzman hasn’t suffered much since — he is tied for 50th on the new Forbes list of the 400 wealthiest Americans — his bash presaged the bust to come. He became, as James Stewart wrote in The New Yorker, “the designated villain of an era on Wall Street — an era of rapacious capitalists and heedless self-indulgence.”

It’s in this context that you have to wonder what some of the Obama era’s most moneyed and White House-connected lobbyists were thinking as they preened before a Washington Post reporter recently for two lengthy articles. We’re not even nine months into the new administration, yet these swaggering, utterly un-self-aware influence peddlers seem determined to prove that nothing except the party affiliations has changed in the Beltway’s pay-for-play culture since Tom DeLay. If these lobbyists were stocks, I’d short them.

One of the articles focused on Heather Podesta — “The It Girl of a New Generation of Lobbyists” — who lobbies for health care players like Eli Lilly, HealthSouth and Cigna. Podesta is half of what The Post has called a “mega-lobbying” couple. Her husband, with his own separate (and larger) lobbying shop, is Tony Podesta, the brother of John Podesta, the Clinton White House chief of staff who ran the Obama transition. Back in November, Tony Podesta told The Times that only “very unsophisticated” clients would hire his firm because of his brother’s role in assembling the new administration. That encyclopedic and ever-expanding list of “unsophisticated” clients includes Amgen and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — and that’s just among the A’s. His business was up 57 percent from last year in the first six months of 2009. Heather Podesta’s was up 65 percent.

When we first meet Heather Podesta in The Post, she is being bussed on the cheek by Charles Rangel at his August birthday party at New York’s Tavern on the Green. In keeping with the usual pattern of blowback, it took only one day after the article appeared for The Times to report that Rangel, the ethically challenged chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was guilty of yet another lapse: He’d neglected to list at least $500,000 in assets on his 2007 Congressional disclosure form. As if that were not karmic retribution enough, Tavern on the Green filed for bankruptcy just days after that.

The second Post article, on the front page two weeks ago, described the scene, as well as the rabbit ragu, at Ristorante Tosca, the lobbyists’ hangout on F Street in downtown Washington. The Post did not mention that it is just four blocks away from the location of the now defunct Signatures, the restaurant whose owner, Jack Abramoff, was the go-to fixer of the DeLay “K Street project” before scandal brought him down.

The stars of Tosca’s “Power Section,” we learned, include the Podestas, Tom Daschle (“not technically a registered lobbyist” but, as The Post put it, “a ‘special policy adviser’ — wink wink”) and Steve Elmendorf (who “eats lunch out only at Tosca”). Elmendorf was chief of staff to the former Democratic House leader Dick Gephardt. A quick visit to opensecrets.org reveals that Elmendorf Strategies’ client list includes Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, among other players in the coming battle over financial regulation reform. Then again, as The Nation details in its current issue, Gephardt has also lobbied for Goldman, among many other corporate clients in opposition to the populist policies he once championed.

Barack Obama promised a change from this revolving-door, behind-closed-doors collaboration between special interests and government. He vowed to “do our business in the light of day” — with health care negotiations broadcast on C-Span — and to “restore the vital trust between people and their government.” He said, “I intend to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over.” That those lobbyists would so extravagantly flaunt their undiminished role shows just how little they believe that a new sheriff has arrived in Dodge.

In his scathing Wall Street Journal column on The Post articles last week, Thomas Frank crystallized the gap between Obama’s pledge and this reality. “There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama ‘Hope’ poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists.” That’s no joke: It was donated by Tony and Heather Podesta.

Obama’s promise to make Americans trust the government again was not just another campaign bullet point; it’s the foundation of his brand of governance and essential to his success in office. At the first anniversary of the TARP bailout of the banks, we can see how far he has to go. Americans’ continued suspicion that Washington is in cahoots with powerful interests in joints like Tosca is contributing to their confusion and skepticism about what’s happening out of view in the battle over health care reform.

The public is not wrong. The administration’s legislative deals with the pharmaceutical companies were made in back rooms. Business Week reported in early August that the UnitedHealth Group and its fellow insurance giants had already quietly rounded up moderate Democrats in the House to block any public health care option that would compete with them for business. UnitedHealth’s hired Beltway gunslingers include both Elmendorf Strategies and Daschle, a public supporter of the public option who nonetheless does some of his “wink, wink” counseling for UnitedHealth. The company’s in-house lobbyist is a former chief of staff to Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader. Gephardt consults there too.

But it’s not as if the Republicans now have the public’s back. DeLay may be reduced these days to violating public taste rather than the public trust on “Dancing With the Stars,” but back on Capitol Hill, his successors keep the K Street faith. In their campaign to kill the public option, G.O.P. leaders often cite data from the Lewin Group, a research company, which has projected that 88 million Americans might quit their private insurance plans if given a government alternative. (The Congressional Budget Office puts the figure at the far less earthshaking 10 to 11 million.) Lewin, which repeatedly insists it’s still a nonpartisan outfit, was actually bought by a subsidiary of UnitedHealth in 2007. The Huffington Post reported in August that John Boehner and Eric Cantor — who use Lewin’s findings to scare voters about a “government takeover” of health care — are big recipients of UnitedHealth campaign cash.

Next up will be the overhaul of financial regulations. With job seekers now outnumbering job openings 6 to 1 in America, many still wonder why most of the big-dog culprits who helped speed the national meltdown — from lying and gambling bankers to shyster subprime mortgage packagers to executives at delinquent ratings agencies — have not shared their pain. In his speech marking the anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ failure, Obama chastised Wall Street for having taken irresponsible risks. But of course it is already back doing exactly that.

Meanwhile, we’re hearing of behind-the-scenes Congressional softening of perhaps the most promising component of the White House’s modest financial regulatory package, a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Real-estate brokerages are being exempted from its purview, and banks will not be required to offer “plain vanilla” mortgages. As in health care, the question of what the White House will really fight for in financial reform remains open. While the ostentatious daily predators’ ball at Ristorante Tosca is a bad omen, we don’t know yet whether that omen is for the lobbyists, or the Obama administration, or both.

This is history that the president still has the power to write. It will be written in the bills he will or won’t sign into law. We can only hope that he learned an important lesson from his stunning failure to secure Olympic gold for his political home of Chicago last week. If the Olympic committee has the audacity to stand up to a lobbyist as powerful as the president of the United States, then surely the president of the United States can stand up to the powerful interests angling to defeat his promise of reform.

It was like a sprint relay - bad baton pass!
For Obama, an Unsuccessful Campaign
NYTIMES
By PETER BAKER and JEFF ZELENY
October 3, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama not only failed to bring home the gold, he could not even muster the silver or bronze.

A 20-hour mission across the ocean to persuade the International Olympic Committee to give the Summer Games of 2016 to Chicago ended with the president’s adopted hometown finishing fourth of four candidate cities.

Although Chicago might have lost to Rio de Janeiro for reasons that had little to do with Mr. Obama, the fact that he made himself the face of its bid invariably meant that its defeat would be taken as a stinging rejection of its favorite son.

Losing out on the Olympics, of course, is not the sort of war-and-peace issue that defines a presidency, and the embarrassment will presumably fade in a news cycle or two. But it provides fodder for critics who are already using it as a metaphor for a president who, in their view, focuses on the wrong priorities and overestimates his capacity to persuade the world to follow his lead.

Mr. Obama looked glum as he returned to Washington on Friday afternoon and said, “I wish that we had come back with better news from Copenhagen.” He portrayed the defeat as if it were little more than a lost game of pickup basketball. “One of the things that I think is most valuable about sports is that you can play a great game and still not win,” he said in the Rose Garden.

Republicans excoriated Mr. Obama’s decision to go in the first place, even sending out an e-mail statement while he was addressing the committee in Copenhagen with the subject line “Wrong Priorities.” Republicans also quickly linked the failed effort to Friday’s jobs report, which showed the unemployment rate ticking up to 9.8 percent in September.

“Our country needs the president’s undivided attention on the urgent issues facing American families today: rising unemployment, soaring health care costs, winning the war in Afghanistan and dealing with Iran’s nuclear threat,” said Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Some International Olympic Committee members said that the vote was not a rejection of Mr. Obama and that his presentation was formidable. Richard W. Pound, a committee member from Canada, said that the other cities wanted to knock Chicago out early because they thought it would have been more difficult to do so in the later rounds.

“I’m sure that a lot of the political maneuvering was based on the fact that Obama was probably going to come and was coming, so they said, ‘We’ve got to keep Chicago out of play or we’re all dead,’ ” said Mr. Pound, who added, “I think he made a lot of friends here, got a lot of respect.”

In Chicago, the disappointment was deep but not aimed at the president. A city preparing for a victory rally — even the famed Picasso in Daley Plaza was decorated with an enormous Olympic medal — reacted with silence and disappointment.

Barry Bowlus, one of those waiting in Daley Plaza, said that at least Mr. Obama had tried. Had he not gone at all, Mr. Bowlus said, “there would have been a lot more heck for him to pay around here.”

Mr. Obama’s decision to become the first American president to lobby the Olympic committee in person, just two weeks after saying he was too busy with health care legislation, was a gamble from the start. It was predicated on the theory that Mr. Obama’s star power overseas — “the best brand in the world,” as his advisers have put it — was luminescent enough to make the difference.

Given that Mr. Obama flew overnight and made his presentation about 3 a.m. Washington time, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said it consumed few regular work hours that would have gone to other priorities. Mr. Obama also used the opportunity to meet for 25 minutes with his commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who flew to Copenhagen from London, where he was on business. “The biggest loss of anything on this trip was sleep,” Mr. Gibbs said.

How much it cost taxpayers to fly Air Force One and its backup plane, transport the armored presidential limousines across the ocean and provide security for the whirlwind trip was uncertain.

Mr. Obama was in Copenhagen for just five hours and did not stay for the vote. He learned Chicago lost in the first round while watching a CNN transmission whose signal cut in and out as Air Force One passed over Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.

But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances, relying instead on the Chicago 2016 committee assertions that the city had enough support to finish in the top two. Mr. Obama, Michelle Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Jarrett worked the phones in recent weeks without coming away with a sense of how behind Chicago really was.

“Most of our information came from the committee and the Chicago folks,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president. “But I don’t want to leave the impression that somehow we went on the basis of faulty information. We went because it was the right thing to do.”

When Chicago was eliminated in the first round after receiving only 18 of 94 votes, senior Democrats began debating whether it had been wise for the president to become so invested in the bid. But with Mr. Obama flying back to Washington and out of pocket for hours, Mr. Axelrod rushed onto television to defend the effort.

“I don’t view this as a repudiation of the president and the first lady,” he said. “He would do it again if he had the opportunity.”

Still, several friends and aides to Mr. Obama said Friday’s outcome had a similar feeling to the campaign’s loss in the New Hampshire primary. But unlike the presidential race, the quest to host the Olympic Games had no more contests to go.

Monica Davey contributed reporting from Chicago and Juliet Macur from Copenhagen.

Chicago Loses Bid for 2016 Olympic Games
NYTIMES
By JULIET MACUR and LYNN ZINSER
October 3, 2009

COPENHAGEN — The International Olympic Committee delivered a stunning blow to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, knocking it out of the voting in the first round Friday, leaving Rio de Janeiro and Madrid waiting for the announcement which city will host the Games. Tokyo was eliminated in the second round.

I.O.C. president Jacques Rogge made the announcement as the first round concluded, a surprisingly early exit, especially because of President Barack Obama’s whirlwind trip to boost the bid of his adopted city. Mr. Obama was the first American president to make an in-person appeal for a bid city and first lady Michelle Obama had also come earlier this week to lobby I.O.C. members for votes. Chicago’s bid leaders had worked for nearly four years and spent close to $50 million to bring the Olympics to the United States for the first time in 20 years. Chicago had been considered among Olympic insiders as a favorite to win the Games, along with Rio.

Throngs watching the voting in downtown Chicago’s Daley Plaza gasped in disappointment as the announcement was made. United States Olympic Committee leaders appeared stunned by the news and had no comment as they left the voting hall. Mr. Obama was flying back to Washington at the time of the vote. The announcement of the winner is expected at 6:30 p.m. local time, 12:30 Eastern time.

Teams from the four candidate cities — Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo — delivered their final presentations to the 104-member I.O.C. and answered every lingering question about the strengths and weaknesses of their bids earlier Friday. A 10-person Chicago bid team, led by the president and Mrs. Obama, put on a presentation heavy on emotion and visual images without getting too deep into he details of the the bid.

“To host athletes and visitors from every corner of the globe is a high honor and a great responsibility,” Mr. Obama whose Chicago home is a short walk from the prospective Olympic Stadium. “And America is ready and eager to assume that sacred trust.”

In the official question-and-answer session following the Chicago presentation, Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, asked the toughest question. He wondered how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Games because doing so can sometimes, he said, be “a rather harrowing experience.”

Mrs. Obama tapped the bid leader Patrick G. Ryan, so Mr. Obama could field that question.

“One of the legacies I want to see is a reminder that America at its best is open to the world,” he said, before adding that the White House and State Department would make sure that all visitors would feel welcome.

Tokyo went next and tried to overcome impressions conveyed by I.O.C. evaluations that its bid was lacking. The bid team emphasized to the committee how environmentally friendly its plans are and the positive impact an Olympics would have on the youth of Japan.

“A lot of I.O.C. members suggested that we needed more passion and emotion,” bid leader Dr. Ichiro Kono said afterward. “We wanted to show that.”

“It would be the best Olympic Games for the preservation of the world,” Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara said, referring to how green Tokyo’s Games would be.

Rio de Janeiro, considered by Olympic insiders a front-runner along with Chicago, followed Tokyo. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, gave an impassioned speech to the membership, focusing Rio de Janeiro’s hope to host South America’s first Olympics. He said that of the top 10 economic powers in the world, Brazil is the only one not to host an Olympics.

“For the others it would be just one more Games, for us it would be an unparalleled opportunity,” he said. “It would send a message the Olympic Games belong to all people, all continents and all humanity.

He added, “Give us this chance and you will not regret it, be sure.”

The Rio bid also tried to dispel worries about crime.

“We know that some of you have questions about security,” Rio de Janeiro state Governor Sergio Cabral said, as he addressed the committee. “Changes have been made, happily as a result of sport.”

Cabral pointed out that at the 2007 Pan American Games, which were held in Rio de Janeiro, “saw no incidents large or small.”

Madrid gave its presentation last, as Spain made is fourth consecutive pitch to host an Olympics. Madrid was voted out of the competition for the 2012 Games in the third round after gathering the most votes in the previous round.

Presenters focused on the mantra, “Sport makes us equal. It makes us better,” and emphasized that Madrid enjoys more support among its residents than competing cities. In an opinion poll commissioned by the I.O.C. for the last technical evaluation, the Games had 85 percent support in Madrid and 86 percent nationally.

“Our candidacy is reliable because it is united politically and united with the feelings of the population and because it has shown that it could learn and improve,” Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero said when addressing the I.O.C. members.

Former I.O.C. president Juan Antonio Samaranch went as far as asking the I.O.C. members for a personal favor when he addressed the crowded room.

“Dear colleagues, I know I’m very near the end of my time, I’m 89 years old,” he said. “I ask you to consider granting my country the honor and also the duty to organize the Games and Paralympic Games in 2016.”

After Madrid finished, the I.O.C. disappeared behind closed doors to vote. The eligible voters cast their votes electronically – and secretly. The members from countries vying for the bid must sit out until their city is eliminated. (The United States has two I.O.C. members.) If no city receives a majority of the votes in the first round, the city with the lowest number of votes is dropped from the ballot. If there is a tie in the final round, I.O.C. President Jacques Rogge steps in to vote or asks the I.O.C. executive board to break the deadlock. The United States does not have a member on that board.

Chicago spent nearly $50 million preparing its bid and is trying to bring the Summer Games to the United States for the first time since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The last time a United States city hosted any Olympics was the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

Smiling and waving as he left the convention center to fly home, Mr. Obama said, “The only thing I’m upset about is that they arranged for me to follow Michelle. That’s always bad.” The United States Olympic Committee chairman, Larry Probst, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and two athletes — Olympic champion decathlete Bryan Clay and former Paralympian Linda Mastandrea — also spoke during the 45-minute presentation that was designed not to be too flashy.

“Our intent was to demonstrate to them we will be good partners and that we are people they could trust,” Doug Arnot, director of sports and operations for Chicago 2016.

The delegation’s presentation started with a video montage of Chicago, including bikini-wearing volleyball players on Lake Michigan beaches. The song, “Sweet Home Chicago” played in the background. “It made me miss home,” Mr. Obama said. The last time around, in the competition to host the 2012 Games, London beat Paris by the slim margin of 54-50. New York City’s bid was eliminated in the second round of voting.

Every bid team brought distinguished leaders, including King Juan Carlos for Spain and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama for Japan. Dozens of Olympians have flooded the city to lobby for their city’s cause, including the Brazilian soccer legend Pelé.

“In these last few days, it’s all about momentum,” one I.O.C. member, Dick Pound, of Canada, said. “Every city knows that.”

With Mrs. Obama and Oprah Winfrey headlining the delegation, the Chicago team has been reminding I.O.C. members of their Olympic plan, which would put the Games along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and in century-old city parks, with Chicago’s dramatic skyline as the backdrop. The Chicago City Council voted 49-0 to cover any financial shortfalls, which is a first for a U.S. bid.

“Some of what the I.O.C. considers has nothing to do with the strength of the bids themselves,” said Frank Lavin, the former U.S. ambassador to Singapore, who worked on New York City’s failed bid to host the 2012 Games.

“A lot of it is political and that encompasses different levels: international politics, personalities, internal I.O.C. politics,” he said.

EDITORIAL: At the president's pleasure
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Monday, September 28, 2009

A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man." At the very least, statutory rape occurred. Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse. That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama's "safe school czar." It's getting hard to keep track of all of this president's problematic appointments. Clearly, the process for vetting White House employees has broken down.

In this one case in which Mr. Jennings had a real chance to protect a young boy from a sexual predator, he not only failed to do what the law required but actually encouraged the relationship.

According to Mr. Jennings' own description in a new audiotape discovered by Fox News, the 15-year-old boy met the "older man" in a "bus station bathroom" and was taken to the older man's home that night. When some details about the case became public, Mr. Jennings threatened to sue another teacher who called his failure to report the statutory rape "unethical." Mr. Jennings' defenders asserted that there was no evidence that he was aware the student had sex with the older man.

However, the new audiotape contradicts this claim. In 2000, Mr. Jennings gave a talk to the Iowa chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an advocacy group that promotes homosexuality in schools. On the tape, Mr. Jennings recollected that he told the student to make sure "to use a condom" when he was with the older man. That he actively encouraged the relationship is reinforced by Mr. Jennings' own description in his 1994 book, "One Teacher in 10." In that account, the teacher boasts how he allayed the student's concerns about the relationship to such a degree that the 15-year-old "left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated."

Mr. Jennings' denials about these events reveal a lack of remorse. He has not admitted that he made mistakes in this case, and he now refuses to answer any questions about the scandal. Don't forget, this is a presidential appointee we're talking about. Mr. Obama should make clear what his standards are for public servants serving at the pleasure of the president. Encouraging and covering up man-boy sexual activity are serious offenses. The White House should force Mr. Jennings to come clean.

Mr. Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools and about his utter contempt for religion that render him unsuitable for a prestigious White House appointment. His job in the Obama administration is to ensure student safety, and this scandal directly calls into question his ability to perform that job. Mr. Jennings and Obama administration officials refuse to answer any questions about this newly discovered evidence. A lot of Americans want answers about this guy and how he was approved for a job in the White House.

So you want to know why this photo is in place of the obvious one, subject of this article? I guess you didn't major in Art History or follow the art world theft list!

All the news that fits we print department, 2009
Van Jones — unfit for print
NYPOST
By KYLE SMITH
Last Updated: 3:51 AM, September 13, 2009
Posted: 1:10 AM, September 13, 2009

“This is not an excuse,” the managing editor of The New York Times said after offering the following excuse for completely missing the Van Jones story, except in a blog post: “Our Washington bureau was somewhat short-staffed during the height of the pre-Labor Day vacation period.”

Here’s how long-staffed The New York Times actually is. Long after Glenn Beck reported — back in July — that Jones was history’s first communist czar, and even after Gateway Pundit reported, on Sept. 3, that Jones had signed a wackadoodle 9/11 “truther” petition, The Times sent two reporters to Boston (in a story published Friday, Sept. 4) to pre-report the non-story of Joseph P. Kennedy II’s run for Ted Kennedy’s seat. (He later said he wasn’t interested. Also, the picture of Joseph the Times ran was actually of his brother Max.)

On Sept. 5 (still no word about Van Jones being a Red Green), the Times’ crack political team informed us that the Naked Cowboy was dropping out of the mayoral race.

On Sept. 6, The Times broke the story that “Diane Sawyer, coolly regal, is a born anchor, albeit in an ever-evaporating sea” and, under a piece headlined “Reading Underground,” gave us all food for thought with the subhed, “Even while pressed against strangers, even while stumbling home from a party, New Yorkers read on the subway.”

Granted, the Times must devote a lot of personpower to its vast corrections column. But if it is so flush that it can afford to hire, like the boy with the shovel who follows the elephant in the parade, a personal fact checker for TV critic Alessandra Stanley, surely it can scrounge up an intern to report that there’s a communist truther working as the president’s green jobs czar, or that a congressman was demanding his resignation (Sept. 4).

Jill Abramson, the managing editor, admitted only to being “a beat behind” the story but added that the paper had caught up — after the saga was over. The EMS equivalent of this statement would be, “Sorry I didn’t take your 911 call for four days. At least I was in time for the funeral.”

Although Abramson’s excuse was not an excuse, she proceeded to offer another one: “Mr. Jones was not a high-ranking official.”

Oh. And here I was, thinking that he was “one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers,” as I was told by, well, The Times, on its Caucus blog on Sept. 5. Confusing, confusing.

Only in Timesland can you be in charge of doling out $80 billion in contracts (“A Small White House Program” — The Times’ John M. Broder, on Sept. 6) and be less important than the Naked Cowboy.

The Times was aware of the story, knew it was bigger than most of the stuff it puts in the paper every day, and had plenty of resources to cover it.

But The Times purposely ignored it because it was hoping that the story would go away, because it likes people like Comrade Jones and was hoping he wouldn’t be forced out. The Times doesn’t like people like Glenn Beck and didn’t want him to be able to claim Jones’s scalp. The Times’ prejudice blinded it to the fact that Jones’ fall became obvious on Friday, when a White House spokesman refused to defend him.
Newspaper of record? The Times isn’t so much a newspaper as a clique of high school girls sending IMs to like-minded friends about their feuds and faves and raves and rants. OMFG you guys! It’s no more objective than Beck is.

Jones wasn’t an obscure functionary. There was a huge profile devoted to him in The New Yorker back in January. He was a “legendary figure” in the environmental movement, says The Washington Post. He got four breathless fanzine pages devoted to him in Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s bestselling book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded.” He was a rising cstar, maybe even a supercstar.

To date, The Times has still not told its readers that Jones is or was a communist, calling this notion merely a charge made only by Republicans — we all know how nutty they are! — not as a fact.

Yet Jones said in 2005, “By August [of 1991], I was a communist” and “I met all these young radical people of color — I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, ‘This is what I need to be a part of.’ ” If Comrade Jones has disavowed communism, I couldn’t find any mention of it.

The Times continues to treat communism as a cute campus peccadillo like pot smoking or nude streaking. A Times think piece (Sept. 9) worried that Jones’ fall was “swift and personal.” Being a communist is personal but being the pregnant teen daughter of a vice presidential candidate is public business?

Beck doesn’t claim to be neutral, and neither should The Times. It doesn’t have to report both sides of the news any more than Beck has to give equal time to Janeane Garofalo.

But — in both cases — wouldn’t that be fun?

Since this is the "faux NYTIMES" page, we thought this column reprint might fit (not necessarily the opinion of the management here)
Charlatan-in-Chief: The core of Obama’s medical-care plan is the promise of something for nothing.
Washington Times
By Thomas Sowell
September 11, 2009

‘Hubris-laden charlatans” was the way a recent e-mail from a reader characterized the Obama administration. That phrase seems especially appropriate for the Charlatan-in-Chief, Barack Obama, whose speech to the joint session of Congress was both a masterpiece of rhetoric and a shameless fraud.

To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit is world-class chutzpah and an insult to anyone’s intelligence. To do so after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the glittering words.

Did we really need CBO experts to tell us that there is no free lunch? Some people probably did, and the true believers in the Obama cult may still believe the president, instead of believing either common sense or budget experts.

Even those who can believe that Obama can conjure up the money through eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” should ask themselves where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses, and hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients.

If he can’t pull off that miracle, then government-run medical care in the United States can be expected to produce what government-run medical care in Canada, Britain, and other countries has produced — delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not to mention arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats.

Obama can deny it in words, but what matters is deeds. And no one’s words have been more repeatedly the direct opposite of his deeds — whether the issue is how his election campaign would be financed, how he would not rush legislation through Congress, or how his administration was not going to go after CIA agents for their past efforts to extract information from captured terrorists.

President Obama has also declared emphatically that he will not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations — while telling the Israelis where they can and cannot build settlements and telling the Hondurans whom they should and should not choose to be their president.

One of the secrets of being a glib talker is not getting hung up over whether what you are saying is true. You must give your full attention to what is required by the audience and the circumstances of the moment, without letting facts get in your way and cramp your style. Obama has mastered that art.

Con men understand that their job is not to use facts to convince skeptics but to use words to help the gullible believe what they want to believe. No message has been more welcomed by the gullible, in countries around the world, than the promise of something for nothing. That is the core of Barack Obama’s medical-care plan.

President Obama tells us that he will impose various mandates on insurance companies but will not interfere with our free choice between being insured by these companies or by the government. But if he can drive up the cost of private insurance with mandates and subsidize government insurance with the taxpayers’ money, how long do you think it will be before we have the “single payer” system that he has advocated in the past?

Mandates by politicians are what have driven up the cost of insurance already. Politicians love to play Santa Claus and leave it to others to raise prices to cover the inevitable costs.

Politicians have driven privately owned municipal transit systems out of business in many cities, simply by imposing costs and restricting the fare increases needed to cover those costs. The federal government can drive out private insurance the same way that local politicians have driven out private municipal transit and replaced it with government-run transit systems.

Barack Obama’s insistence that various dangerous policies are not in the legislation he proposes sounds good but means nothing. Unbridled power is a blank check, no matter what its rationale may be. No law gave the president of the United States the power to fire the head of General Motors, but TARP money did.

When there are “advisory” panels on what treatments to approve and the White House’s existing medical advisor has complained of Americans’ “over-utilization” of medical care, what does it take to connect the dots?

— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

NYTIMES editorial board discovers this LWVUS "National Voter" report...
Editorial: Financing Health Care Reform
NYTIMES
July 7, 2009

If health care reform falls apart again in Congress, the most likely cause will be failure to agree on how to subsidize coverage for tens of millions of uninsured Americans. The cost will almost certainly be at least $1 trillion over the next decade and perhaps much more, depending on how generous the reform might be.

President Obama is right to insist that reform be fully paid for over the next decade lest it drive up the federal deficit and lead to higher interest rates that might deepen the recession. That means either cutting spending or raising additional money.

Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has decreed that reform must be financed entirely by savings or revenues within the health care system. He believes that that would force greater efficiencies from a notoriously wasteful enterprise. Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the Democrat who is chairman of the committee, seems inclined to accept that notion to win Republican votes for a filibuster-proof majority.

Our preference would be to extract savings from the bloated, inefficient health care system — but also to raise revenues from a wider pool, preferably from well-to-do Americans who could be taxed more for a badly needed reform that would benefit all Americans.

The first task is to find savings. Some respected analysts suggest that as much as 30 percent of all health care spending in this country — some $700 billion a year — may be wasted on tests and treatments that do not improve the health of the recipients. If even half that money could be recaptured, the amount saved would be more than enough to finance health care reforms.

Overspending, however, permeates the system and would be devilishly difficult to eliminate in any systematic manner that reaped savings within the decade. Most of the truly “game-changing” innovations that could slow the rate of increase in health care costs — electronic medical records, research comparing the effectiveness of treatments, restructuring the way doctors organize themselves — will take years to affect costs and quality.

Still, it is important to push ahead quickly. Even if the benefits won’t show up for two or three decades, it is imperative to slow the rise in costs to a more affordable rate. And some respected analysts believe the big long-term reforms could yield some relatively quick savings.

Meanwhile, it will be important to get some guaranteed fast savings from the health care industries by cutting and reallocating hundreds of billions of dollars from projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid, as the Obama administration has proposed and Congress is considering. Just to be sure, Congress ought to establish a fail-safe mechanism that could impose additional cuts after a few years if savings are less than projected.

Even with all the cuts people are considering, new fees or taxes will almost certainly be necessary. Most health economists believe that the current tax exemption for employer-provided health benefits should be capped or eliminated. They say it is regressive and encourages generous policies that can lead to excessive use of medical care. A cap might make sense and would draw revenues from within the health care system. But surely it would be wise to cast a wider net — taxing products that are bad for one’s health, such as sugared drinks and alcohol, or limiting itemized deductions for wealthy Americans as Mr. Obama has suggested.

Any talk of new taxes provokes criticism and doubt that the nation can afford to reform the health care system in the midst of a deep recession. But the president is right, as he told a town hall meeting in Virginia recently, that “the costs of inaction, of not doing anything, are even greater.”

The nation can either make the hard choices needed to reform health care in the next decade or watch during that time as costs continue to soar, millions more people lose their health insurance and individuals and families face rising premiums and greater cost-sharing as employers shift more of the burden or drop their coverage.

Op-Ed Columnist
And the Angels Rejoice
NYTIMES
By DAVID BROOKS
May 26, 2009

There is nothing so inspiring as public service, so I’ve been incredibly moved over the past few weeks to watch squads of corporate executives come to the White House so President Obama could announce that he was giving away their money.

A few weeks ago, we were privileged to see a gathering of health care executives standing behind the president as he announced that they would be donating $2 trillion in future revenue to the cause of health care reform.

Recently we were uplifted when the president informed Chrysler’s secured creditors that they had agreed to donate their ownership stake in the company to the United Auto Workers. Just last week, we were enthralled to see a group of auto executives beaming with pride as the president announced that in order to reduce gas consumption, they would henceforth be scaling back on all those car lines that consumers actually want to buy.

These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II. The press conferences and events marking this new spirit of cooperation have been the emotional highlights of the administration so far.

These events usually begin when the executives gather in the Oval Office, where they experience certain Enhanced Negotiating Techniques. I’m not exactly sure what the president does to inspire the business leaders’ cooperation and sense of public service, though those who remember the disembowelment scene in “Braveheart” will have a general idea.

Then the president leads the executives out onto the White House lawn for the announcement ceremony. Often, the president will still be carrying the riding crop and the pliers used in the private negotiation. He moves to the microphone while the executives take their pre-assigned places behind him, the jingle of their leg shackles blending with the dulcet tones of spring. I thought one hospital executive was so moved by the occasion that he had slipped into catatonic shock, except that he was blinking “Save Me! Save Me!” in Morse code to his shareholders.

“We meet at an exciting moment for our country, a time of unprecedented cooperation between government and private industry,” the president intones, lifting his foot from the trachea of an unconscious pharmaceutical executive. “Many of the business leaders behind me have seized an exciting opportunity to join the nonprofit sector without even switching jobs.”

At this, the C.E.O.’s behind him don frozen smiles, exuding the sort of spontaneous enthusiasm often seen at North Korean pep rallies.

During the press conference with health care executives, I don’t even think Obama meant to give away $2 trillion of their money. He was going to give away just $750 billion, but he got carried away by the Era of Responsibility. “The stakeholders behind me have promised to cut costs by nearly 2 percent a year,” the president riffed. (The executives’ lips were like dead worms stretched across mirthless smiles. Their cheeks were like hardened clumps of concrete.) “They have agreed to support the administration’s reform package.” (Coronaries, epileptic seizures all around.) “They have agreed to donate their kidneys in my office right after this ceremony.” (The executives were now flopping about the stage, like a 3-D version of the Heimlich poster.)

These executives have been invited to make these donations in the same spirit that the Cossacks invited my ancestors to emigrate to the Lower East Side. And yet there is a moment during each of the ceremonies when the spirit of the Almighty descends upon the congregation. It usually happens while the president is describing the glorious future. He’ll be describing how, in three years, he will slash the deficit by cutting taxes and doubling spending. He will be describing how, in three years, he will create millions of jobs by raising energy costs.

You can see the ecstasy of Washington promise-making spread joy from soul to soul. Infected by these visions, automakers vow that in three years they will have created a resurgence of enthusiasm around the Chevy Aveo. Financiers vow they will build an entirely new banking industry that doesn’t rely so much on loan repayment. Health care executives vow that in three years they’ll perform CAT scans at Kinko’s.

Some say these are just meaningless promises that ignore hard choices and that no one has any intention of keeping. But this is ungenerous. At these events, the president has taken former rivals and has joined them in the holy bonds of mutual fantasy. He has taken a divided nation and has given us photo-ops to bind us and remind us of our common humanity. Business lies down with government. Management embraces labor. You call it what you will; I call it beautiful.

Obama Makes Push for Credit Card Legislation
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 9, 2009
Filed at 8:13 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Putting himself on the side of fuming consumers, President Barack Obama is pushing Congress to send him legislation by Memorial Day that would put a tighter rein on the credit card industry.

''Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe,'' Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address released Saturday. ''But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties and hidden fees that have become all-too common.''

Obama has prominently lobbied for a bill calling for a credit card crackdown. It already has cleared the House and awaits action in the Senate.

''I'm calling on Congress ... to pass a credit card reform bill that protects American consumers so that I can sign it into law by Memorial Day,'' Obama said. ''There is no time for delay. We need a durable and successful flow of credit in our economy, but we can't tolerate profits that depend upon misleading working families. Those days are over.''

But there's no certainty Congress will deliver by the end of the month.

The banking community is fighting back. Credit-card executives maintain that new restrictions could backfire on consumers, making it harder for banks to offer credit or put credit out of reach for many borrowers. They also contend that the sweeping rules already ordered by the Federal Reserve, beginning next year, address many of the consumer-protection concerns expressed by the president and members of Congress.

The bill's boosters are tapping into public anger over corporate excesses and the conduct of companies receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

The House measure, called the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights, passed on a bipartisan vote of 357-70 following lobbying by the Obama administration. It would prohibit so-called double-cycle billing and retroactive rate hikes and would prevent companies from giving credit cards to anyone under 18.

If they become law, the new House provisions won't take effect for a year, except for a requirement that customers get 45 days' notice before their interest rates are increased. That would take effect in 90 days.

Obama spoke to the public's frustration with credit cards.

''You shouldn't have to fear that any new credit card is going to come with strings attached, nor should you need a magnifying glass and a reference book to read a credit card application,'' Obama said. ''And the abuses in our credit card industry have only multiplied in the midst of this recession, when Americans can least afford to bear an extra burden.''

Why didn't they save money and fuel and just photoshop the images? Like Andy did...or is Lady above faux Warhol?

W.H. hits CNN for Coast Guard report
YAHOO NEWS
Carol E. Lee, Jen DiMascio Carol E. Lee, Jen Dimascio Fri Sep 11, 12:31 pm ET

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today criticized CNN – not the Coast Guard – over the panic caused by the agency’s training exercise on the Sept. 11 anniversary, saying that the alarm could have been avoided if the network had checked its facts.

Gibbs said he wouldn’t second-guess Coast Guard leadership for holding a Potomac River exercise on the morning of the 9/11 commemoration. But he took a shot at CNN, which initially didn’t know the maneuvers in the Potomac were an exercise and erroneously reported that gunshots were fired – something the homeland security department said didn’t occur.

“Let’s understand that best I can tell there was reporting based on listening to a police scanner that was not verified, and then it was on television and now we’ve raced back to find out that it’s a training exercise. So I think it appears as if a lot of this might have been avoided,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs told reporters that the Coast Guard was holding a news conference to explain the exercise. "Hopefully CNN will go,” Gibbs quipped. "My only caution would be that before we report things like this, checking would be good."

The incident also set off a terse exchange between Gibbs and CNN reporter Elaine Quijano over the incident as Gibbs briefed reporters in his office. Quijano asked whether the public should have been informed about a training exercise on the 9/11 anniversary.

She also asked why Gibbs didn’t think the Coast Guard incident was comparable to an Air Force One flyover in New York for a photo shoot in April that set off a panic there. The head of the White House military office, Louis Caldera, resigned in the wake of that incident.

"If we set aside the media coverage, would you be asking this question?" Gibbs said.

“She doesn’t do hypotheticals,” another reporter joked, using a response Gibbs likes to give reporters who pose “if” questions.

“But reports them,” Gibbs said.

“Well, look,” Quijano said, “I’d like to set that aside for just a minute.”

“No I understand, and it’s not directed at you, just writ large at CNN,” Gibbs said.

As Quijano pressed further, Gibbs said, "If anybody was unnecessarily alarmed based on erroneous reporting that denoted that shots had been fired, I think everybody is apologetic about that."

CNN, in a statement Friday afternoon, did not express regret for the network’s erroneous report or admit to jumping the gun on the story.

“Given the circumstances, it would have been irresponsible not to report on what we were hearing and seeing,” the statement read. “As with any breaking news story, information is often fluid and CNN updated the story with the official explanation from the Coast Guard as soon as it was provided.

The Coast Guard acknowledged at a news conference that its personnel simulated the sound of gunfire on an open police radio frequency – which might have caused the confusion. “That ‘bang bang’ was verbalized on the radio but I want to emphasize no shots were fired,” said Vice Adm. John Currier, the Coast Guard chief of staff.

But Currier did not apologize for the training exercise. He did promise the agency would review both the timing of its exercises as well as the way it works with the media.

“No I am not issuing an apology,” Currier said, adding that he felt the agency’s “normal, low profile” training activities was blown out of proportion by erroneous news reports of shots ringing out over the Potomac River. “It’s unfortunate that it’s been raised to this level,” Currier said.

Asked whether the morning of the Sept. 11 anniversary was the best day for such an exercise – which featured patrol boats making rapid, defensive maneuvers in the Potomac River – Currier said, “We will look at our procedures and the timing of this exercise.” He also said the Secret Service wasn’t notified in advance of the exercise and there was minimal coordination with other agencies because it was a routine exercise.

Earlier, the Coast Guard defended the timing by saying the best way to remember the tragic day is by being prepared. “The best way that we in the Coast Guard can remember Sept. 11 and our security obligations to the nation is to be always ready and this requires constant training and exercise,” said Lt. Nadine Santiago in a statement.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) is calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to explain the timing of the exercise, which occurred as while top officials were attending memorial services for 9/11. Homeland Security oversees the Coast Guard.

“The anxiety caused by this situation on such a solemn day is extremely disturbing,” said Voinovich, a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “It sounds very much like the left hand didn’t know what the right hand was doing.”

Napolitano’s spokeswoman Sara Kuban said the secretary has asked Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen for a full account of what happened. The Coast Guard’s Baltimore Sector office signed off on the scheduling decision, Currier said.

At the White House, Gibbs defended the importance of such training exercises. “I assume that there’s a training exercise going on somewhere in this country right now. I think we’re all safer because of training exercises. My only caution would be before we report things like this, checking would be good.”

As for holding one on the anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Gibbs said, “I tend not to question law enforcement in trying to keep the nation’s capital safe. If they feel like they need a training exercise, I’m not sure that we’re to second guess.”

Whether the exercise is appropriate is “a decision that’s made by the Coast Guard,” Gibbs said.

After Air Force One Flyover, Military Office Director Resigns
NYTIMES
By Jeff Zeleny
May 8, 2009, 4:08 pm

The White House

The White House released a photo of the plane flying over New York City on Friday.
The director of the White House Military Office has resigned, an administration official said Friday, two weeks after he authorized an Air Force One flyover of the Statue of Liberty that terrified thousands of people in New York City.

Louis Caldera, who served as the secretary of the Army in the Clinton administration, had apologized for approving the flyover. But Mr. Caldera submitted his resignation on Friday, after the president ordered up an internal White House review on the matter.

On April 27, a plane that usually serves as Air Force One was flying low over the New York City skyline, trailed closely by two fighter jets. It was a photo opportunity – authorized by several government officials, including Mr. Caldera – that infuriated President Obama.

Last week, Mr. Obama ordered a deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, to review the incident.

The White House released the photograph on Friday afternoon, hoping to put an end to the incident before the weekend.

FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape
DAY
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
Posted on Apr 29, 9:23 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It actually was partly him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped the latest in a string of precipitously out-of-balance budgets. And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead. At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.

His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating. He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.

A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: "We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs." - from news conference.

THE FACTS: This assertion is flawed on several levels. For starters, the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since Obama took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even if Obama's stimulus bill saved or created as many jobs as he says, that number is dwarfed by the number of recent job losses.

But Obama's number is murky, at best. The White House has not yet announced how it intends to count jobs created by the stimulus bill. Obama's number is based on a job-counting formula that his economists have developed but have not made public. Until that formula is announced - probably in the coming week or so - there's no way to assess its accuracy.

Whatever the formula, economists who study job creation say it will require some creative math. That's because Obama has lumped "jobs saved" in with "jobs created." Even economists for organizations that stand to benefit from the stimulus concede it probably is impossible to estimate saved jobs because that would require calculating a hypothetical: how many people would have lost their jobs without the stimulus.

---

OBAMA: "We must lay a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century. And that's exactly what this budget begins to do. It contains new investments in education that will equip our workers with the right skills and training; new investments in renewable energy that will create millions of jobs and new industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings that will bring down our deficit." - news conference.

THE FACTS: While the budget does set a roadmap for achieving the president's goals, it says nothing about how to pay for his health plan, expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. And while the deficit, under the plan, would drop to $523 billion in 2014, it achieves it with unrealistic assumptions, such as projections that spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will amount to only $50 billion a year.

---

OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. ... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, controlled the purse strings that led to the deficit Obama inherited. A Republican president, George W. Bush, had a role, too: He signed the legislation.

Obama supported the emergency bailout package in Bush's final months - a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.

Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.

---

OBAMA: "I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that "sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching." It said that "although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not."

And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care "could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame."

---

OBAMA: "You could cut (Social Security) benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS: Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

That means he would still have to cut benefits, raise the payroll tax rate, raise the retirement age or some combination to deal with the program's long-term imbalance.

Workers currently pay 6.2 percent and their employers pay an equal rate - for a total of 12.4 percent - on annual wages of up to $106,800, after which no more payroll tax is collected.

Obama wants workers making more than $250,000 to pay payroll tax on their income over that amount. That would still protect workers making under $250,000 from an additional burden. But it would raise much less money than removing the cap completely.

---

OBAMA: "My hope is that working in a bipartisan fashion we are going to be able to get a health care reform bill on my desk before the end of the year that we'll start seeing in the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier."

THE FACTS: Obama has indeed expressed hope for a health care plan that has support from Democrats and Republicans. But his Democratic allies in Congress have just made that harder. The budget plan written by the Democrats gives them the option of denying Republicans the normal right to block health care with a Senate filibuster. The filibuster tactic requires 60 votes to overcome, making it the GOP's main weapon to ensure a bipartisan outcome. The rules set by the budget mean that majority Democrats could potentially pass health care legislation without any Republican votes, sacrificing bipartisanship to achieve their goals.

---

Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Kevin Freking and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Translated: everybody takes a pay/benefits/retirement cut or we can't put out a major daily newspaper - how about the a weekly Boston Globe?
New York Times chairman weighs in on Boston Globe
DAY
Published on 4/23/2009

NEW YORK (AP) Weighing in on the future of The Boston Globe, New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says "we hope to place this great newspaper on a path to sustainability."

Sulzberger, speaking at the company's annual shareholder meeting Thursday, batted away specific questions on the Globe's fate.

The Times Co., which bought the Globe in 1993, has threatened to pull the plug on the money-losing newspaper if it can't get $20 million in employee concessions. He said the newspaper faces stark choices as it grapples with a steep advertising downturn.

"Of all our properties, The Boston Globe has been most dramatically affected by the secular and cyclical forces that are roiling the entire media industry," he said.

ECONOMIC FORECASTING: These glasses definitely more than half full--but full of what?

More sloppy interpretation - a la Jimmy Carter stuff?
Fidel Castro: Obama 'misinterpreted' Raul's words
DAY
By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer
Posted on Apr 22, 2009 8:18 AM EDT

HAVANA (AP) -- Fidel Castro says President Barack Obama "misinterpreted" his brother Raul's remarks regarding the United States and bristled at the suggestion that Cuba should free political prisoners or cut taxes on remittances from abroad as a goodwill gesture to the U.S.

Raul Castro touched off a whirlwind of speculation last week that the U.S. and Cuba could be headed toward a thaw in nearly a half-century of chilly relations. The speculation began when the Cuban president said leaders would be willing to sit down with their U.S. counterparts and discuss "everything," including human rights, freedom of the press and expression, and political prisoners on the island.

Obama responded at the Summit of the Americas by saying Washington seeks a new beginning with Cuba, but he also said Sunday that Cuba should release some political prisoners and reduce official taxes on remittances sent to the island from the U.S.

That appeared to enrage Fidel Castro, 82, who wrote in an essay posted on a government Web site that Obama "without a doubt misinterpreted Raul's declarations."

The former president appeared to be throwing a dose of cold water on growing expectations for improved bilateral relations - suggesting Obama had no right to dare suggest that Cuba make even small concessions. He also seemed to suggest too much was being made of Raul's comments about discussing "everything" with U.S. authorities.

"Affirming that the president of Cuba is ready to discuss any topic with the president of the United States expresses that he's not afraid to broach any subject," Fidel Castro wrote of his 77-year-old brother, who succeeded him as president 14 months ago.

"It's a sign of bravery and confidence in the principles of the revolution," he said, referring to the rebel uprising that toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista and brought the Castros to power on New Year's Day 1959.

"Nobody should assume that he was talking about pardoning those sentenced in March 2003 and sending all of them to the United States, if the country were willing to liberate the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes," Castro wrote.

He was referring to 75 leading political opposition leaders who were rounded up and imprisoned six years ago. Some 54 of them remain behind bars, though Raul Castro suggested last year that Cuba would be willing to liberate some political prisoners if U.S. authorities would free five Cuban spies.

Castro compared the prisoners arrested in 2003 to exiles who attacked the island's southern coast during the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and said they were "at the service of a foreign power that threatens and blockades our country," referring to charges they conspired with Washington to destabilize the communist system.

The ex-president had previously expressed his admiration for Obama, but this time Castro blasted the new U.S. president for showing signs of "superficiality."

He also defended Cuba's right to levy a 10 percent fee on every U.S. dollar sent to relatives on the island by Cuban-Americans, saying if the money arriving from abroad "is in dollars, all the more reason we should do it because it is the currency of the country that blockades us."

All top Cuban leaders routinely call the 47-year-old trade embargo against this country a blockade.

"Not all Cubans have family members overseas that send remittances," Castro said, adding that Cuba uses the revenue from fees on exchanging dollars to provide free health care, education and subsidized food to all of its population.

How about "free trade?" At least in this hemisphere? Full speed ahead - oh, gosh, did we say we were going to "re-open NAFTA" during the campaign? Story April 20, 2009 here.
Obama Tempers Optimism With Reality on Economy
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:40 a.m. ET
April 14, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama proclaimed signs of economic progress Tuesday but also warned Americans eager for good news that ''by no means are we out of the woods.''

In a speech planned for Georgetown University today, Obama aimed to juggle his glass-half-full take on the economy with a determination to not be stamped as naive or overly rosy in the face of stubborn problems that linger. His latest remarks come as he nears the symbolic 100-day mark in office, important because that has become a traditional marker by which to judge new administrations.

''There is no doubt that times are still tough,'' Obama said, according to excerpts of his speech released in advance by the White House. ''But from where we stand,'' he said, ''for the very first time, we are beginning to see glimmers of hope. And beyond that, way off in the distance, we can see a vision of an America's future that is far different than our troubled economic past.''

Obama's message was enveloped in contradictory signals Tuesday about the economy's health, but also buttressed by a contention by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the recession may be bottoming out. Retail sales fell unexpectedly in March, decreasing by 1.1 percent. At the same time, wholesale prices dropped sharply as the cost of gasoline and other energy plummeted, fresh evidence that inflation appears to pose little threat to the economy.

In a speech prepared for students and faculty at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Bernanke, like Obama, said there have been flickering signs of improvement, citing recent data on home and auto sales, home building and consumer spending. But the broader message that a full turnaround might be a long time coming may not be welcome to a weary U.S. public.

Obama said a complete recovery depends on two things: building a new foundation for the U.S. economy and making changes in the political landscape. And he was avoiding any significant policy announcements, endeavoring instead to paint a broad picture of what his administration has already done to right the situation.

Obama said the rules governing the financial system must be brought into the Digital Age and that the economy must be transformed from one less dependent on a risk-obsessed financial sector and more on clean energy, good education and health care costs brought under control.

''We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand,'' he said, invoking a Biblical reference to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. ''We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest, where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad.''

Obama also said the problem is exacerbated by politicians with an outsized interest in scoring points and an impatient media.

''When a crisis hits,'' he said, ''there's all too often a lurch from shock to trance, with everyone responding to the tempest of the moment until the furor has died away and the media coverage has moved on, instead of confronting the major challenges that will shape our future in a sustained and focused way.''

''This can't be one of those times,'' Obama said.

With the university students and faculty as well as labor, grass roots and political leaders, Obama is trying to show he is focused on the economy after two weeks that, both by design and circumstance, have been dominated primarily by foreign affairs.

Obama put his fledgling presidency on the line when he advocated sweeping new government intervention and spending to right the troubled economic conditions. Shortly after taking office he signed a $787 billion package intended to boost the economy and his administration also has unveiled a slew of other programs aimed to right the troubled home, banking and auto sectors.

''Taken together, these actions are starting to generate signs of economic progress,'' he said, citing canceled government-sector layoffs, new clean-energy industry hires, a spate of refinancings, and signs of increased credit flows.

But, the president said, ''2009 will continue to be a difficult year.'' He predicted more job losses, foreclosures, and gyrating stock markets.

I'm shocked, shocked to hear that Lawrence Summers was paid millions by the banks - he's been drinking Rubin Koolaid for so long he can't get his stories straight - got his ethics from a lawyer!
Financial Industry Paid Millions to Obama Aide
NYTIMES
By JEFF ZELENY
April 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — Lawrence H. Summers, the top economic adviser to President Obama, earned more than $5 million last year from the hedge fund D. E. Shaw and collected $2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street companies that received government bailout money, the White House disclosed Friday in releasing financial information about top officials.

Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments. Last year, he reported making 40 paid appearances, including a $135,000 speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, in addition to his earnings from the hedge fund, a sector the administration is trying to regulate.

The White House released hundreds of pages of financial disclosure forms, which are required of all West Wing officials. A White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said the compensation was not a conflict for Mr. Summers, adding it was not surprising because he was “widely recognized as one of the country’s most distinguished economists.”

Mr. Summers’s role at the White House includes advising Mr. Obama on whether — and how — to tighten regulation of hedge funds, which engage in highly sophisticated financial trading that many analysts have said contributed to the economic collapse.

Mr. Summers, a former president of Harvard University, was Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. He appeared before large Wall Street companies like Citigroup ($45,000), J. P. Morgan ($67,500) and the now defunct Lehman Brothers ($67,500), according to his disclosure report. He reported being paid $10,000 for a speaking date at Yale and $90,000 to address an organization of Mexican banks.

While Mr. Obama campaigned on a pledge to restrict lobbyists from working in the White House, a step intended to reduce any influence between the administration and corporations, the ban did not apply to former executives like Mr. Summers, who was not a registered lobbyist. In 2006, he became a managing director of D. E. Shaw, a firm that manages about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.

“Dr. Summers was not an adviser to or an employee of the firms that paid him to speak,” Mr. LaBolt said.

He added, “Of course, since joining the White House, he has complied with the strictest ethics rules ever required of appointees and will not work on specific matters to which D. E. Shaw is a party for two years.”

A review of hundreds of pages of financial disclosure forms on Friday evening offered an extensive portrait of the wealth of top officials in the Obama administration. The forms detail the salaries, bonuses and investments of the president’s circle of advisers, many of whom took deep pay cuts from the private sector and sold their companies to work at the White House.

David Axelrod, who was the chief campaign strategist to Mr. Obama and now serves as a senior adviser to the president, reported a salary of $1 million last year from his two consulting firms. Over the next five years, according to his disclosure form, he will get $3 million from the sale of the two firms, which provide media and strategic advice to political clients. He listed assets of about $7 million to $10 million, and reported a long list of Democratic clients and a few corporate concerns, including AT&T and the Exelon Corporation, a nuclear energy company.

The disclosure forms also shed further light on the compensation received by a top Obama aide who previously worked for Citigroup, one of the largest recipients of taxpayer bailout money. The aide, Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, received more than $7.4 million from the company from January 2008 to when he joined the White House this year.

That money included a year-end bonus of $2.25 million for work in 2008, which Citigroup paid him in January. Such bonuses have prompted political controversy in recent months, including sharp criticism from Mr. Obama, who in January branded them as “shameful.”

The White House had previously acknowledged that Mr. Froman received such a year-end bonus and said he had decided to give it to charity, but would not say what it was.

The administration said Friday that Mr. Froman was working on giving the $2.25 million to a combination of charities related to homelessness and cancer, which took the life of his son this year.

The remainder of Mr. Froman’s earnings from Citigroup included deferred compensation and bonuses for work performed in prior years, as well as a $2 million payment for waiving his carried-interest stake in several private equity funds.

The White House said Mr. Froman decided to take the buyouts to avoid having to recuse himself from foreign-policy issues related to the funds’ investments, like India infrastructure, which means he would be taxed at ordinary income rates on the money.

Millionaires work in a variety of positions across the administration, and they include Desirée Rogers, the White House social secretary. Ms. Rogers, a close Chicago friend of the Obama family, reported income of $2.3 million last year. She earned a salary of $1.8 million from People’s Gas & North Shore Gas, along with three other sources of income from serving on insurance company boards.

Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser, reported earning $3.9 million as a partner at the Washington law firm O’Melveny & Myers. His disclosure form says major clients included Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Apollo Management, a private equity firm in New York that specializes in distressed assets and corporate restructuring.

Mr. Donilon is also entitled to future pension payments from Fannie Mae, where he worked from 1999 to 2005.

April Fool! The end result was what the Justice Department wanted, anyway!
U.S. Plans to Drop Case Against Former Senator From Alaska
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:02 a.m. ET
April 1, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department asked a judge Wednesday to toss out the corruption conviction of former Sen. Ted Stevens because prosecutors withheld evidence from his defense team during his trial. The department is abandoning a hard-fought victory that had turned into an embarrassment. The prosecutors who handled the trial have been removed from the case and their conduct is under investigation.

A week after his conviction, Stevens lost his Senate seat in the November election. The patriarch of Alaska politics since before statehood, Stevens, 85, also was the longest serving Republican senator. He appealed his conviction and has been awaiting sentencing. Stevens was convicted of seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor.

The trial was beset by government missteps, which continued even after the guilty verdict was read. The trial judge grew so infuriated he took the unusual step of holding the Justice Department in contempt. In court filings, the Justice Department admitted it never turned over notes from an interview with the oil contractor, who estimated the value of the renovation work as far less than he testified at trial.

''I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial,'' Holder said in a statement released Wednesday. He said the department must ensure that all cases are ''handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice.''

The Justice Department is seeking to have the indictment against Stevens dismissed. If U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan agrees, Stevens' conviction would be vacated. Stevens' attorneys praised Attorney General Eric Holder as ''a pillar of integrity'' for his decision to disregard a jury verdict that they said was obtained unlawfully.

''In essence, the government tricked the jury into returning a tainted verdict against the senator based on false evidence,'' Stevens' lawyers Brendan Sullivan Jr. and Robert Cary said in a statement.

''This case is a sad story and a warning to everyone. Any citizen can be convicted if prosecutors are hell-bent on ignoring the Constitution and willing to present false evidence,'' their statement said.

In December, Stevens asked a federal judge to grant him a new trial or throw out the case, saying his trial had many deficiencies. Judge Sullivan held Justice Department lawyers in contempt in February for failing to turn over documents as ordered. He called their behavior ''outrageous.''

The judge had ordered Justice to provide the agency's internal communications regarding a whistle-blower complaint brought by an FBI agent involved in the investigation of Stevens. The agent objected to Justice Department tactics during the trial, including failure to turn over evidence and an ''inappropriate relationship'' between the lead agent on the case and the prosecution's star witness. The decision was first reported Wednesday by National Public Radio.

Sen. Mark Begich, the Democrat who won Stevens' seat away from him, called the decision to drop the case ''reasonable.''

''I didn't think Senator Stevens should serve time in jail and hopefully this decision ensures that is the case,'' Begich said in a statement.

Military strained by Obama trip
Washington Times
Bill Gertz INSIDE THE RING, Air Obama
Thursday, April 2, 2009

President Obama's European visit this week has strained Air Force heavy-airlift capabilities and obliged the military to hire more foreign contractors to help resupply U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, according to military sources.

The large delegation traveling with the president in Europe required moving several transports, including jumbo C-5s and C-17s, from sorties ferrying supplies to Afghanistan to European bases for the presidential visit, said two military officials familiar with the issue. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid any misunderstanding with White House officials.

The Air Mobility Command, part of the U.S. Transportation Command, was ordered to provide airlift for the president's entourage of nearly 500 people, including senior officials, staff, support personnel, news reporters and some 200 Secret Service agents for the European visit, which began Tuesday in London.

Airlift for the traveling entourage also was used to move the president's new heavy-armored limousine and several presidential helicopters used for short transits.

To make up for the shortfall, the Air Force had to increase the number of Eastern European air transport contractors hired to fly Il-76 and An-124 transport jets into Afghanistan loaded with troop supplies, the two officials said.

The airlift crunch comes at a particularly difficult time, as the military is stepping up deliveries of supplies in advance of a surge of 21,000 U.S. troops.

One official said the problem was not only the vehicles and helicopters that were needed for presidential security, but also the unusually large number of people traveling with the president. The official said U.S. taxpayers are paying twice for airlift, once for Air Force jets that are not available for a war zone and again for foreign contractor aircraft that are.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment. Col. Gregory Julian, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, said he was unaware of a transport shortage but noted that it was not unusual for the military to hire air-transport contractors in such circumstances.

Presidential logistics for such trips involve a complicated military process that involves insuring smooth travel and having backup aircraft ready for use. Such large trips as the current European one generally cost millions of dollars.

Navy Capt. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman with U.S. Transportation Command, said there was no link between increased contractor airlift in Afghanistan and the aircraft used for presidential travel this week.

"Contractual airlift [IL-76 and AN-124] used to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan is not in any way connected to presidential movement requirements," he said.

Transportation command "routinely" contracts with U.S. air freight lines that subcontract with companies flying Il-76s and An-124s to move large military vehicles.

"This is simply a 'best business practice' that allows us to meet the needs of our warfighters at the best cost for the taxpayer," he said.

The spokesman also said budgets for Afghanistan and presidential travel come from different accounts. "The taxpayer does indeed pay for strategic lift for our warfighters in Afghanistan, but they also pay for presidential support," he said. "These missions are distinctly separate and are therefore funded separately."

Mr. Obama and his group, which includes medical personnel and food specialists, will spend eight days in Europe visiting five nations for the G-20, NATO and European Union summits and side visits to the Czech Republic and Turkey. After the first three days in Britain, the party will travel to Strasbourg, France, and Kehl, Germany, for NATO's 60th anniversary summit before traveling to Prague on April 5 and then to Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey on April 6.

Capt. Aandahl would not say how many transports were used to move the presidential group, nor provide costs.

So long GWOT

The U.S. government is playing down the Obama administration's decision to do away with the term "global war on terrorism," known for the past eight years by the acronym GW0T.

A survey of several departments and agencies shows that the term "global war on terrorism," while not specifically banned, is in disfavor due to the new administration's decision not to label counterterrorism efforts a war.

A White House official said the terminology change is less about semantics and more about the focus of the Obama administration, "keeping America safe."

A military official close to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said budget guidance from the White House recommended ending use of GWOT for budget documents. Instead, the favored term will be "overseas contingency operations."

Adm. Mullen for the past two years avoided using the term and has encouraged others not to use it, the official said.

An FBI official also said there is no ban on using the term GWOT within the main domestic counterterrorism agency.

"The administration has stopped using the phrase, and I think that speaks for itself," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters en route to Europe earlier this week. "I haven't gotten any directive about using it or not using it. It's just not being used."

A Pentagon spokesman referred to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' response Sunday to a question about war terminology. Mr. Gates did not answer directly but suggested that dropping the term was part of a "broader kind of strategy" and noted that "people [are] looking for differences where there are none."

A CIA spokesman pointed to recent comments by CIA Director Leon Panetta, who, like Mr. Gates, sidestepped directly answering a question about the terminology change. "Well, there's no question this is a war," Mr. Panetta said. "We are engaged in a war in which, you know, when our men and women are at risk and are being killed on the battlefield and when there are those who threaten to come here and kill Americans, there's no question in my mind that we are facing the terrorists, and we are facing a threat to this country that requires we do everything possible to try to protect our safety...."

A counterterrorism official explained that jettisoning the term "war on terror" is more rhetorical than political.

"The people fighting against al Qaeda and its sympathizers understand both the nature of that fight and the nature of the enemy. It is not a war against a tactic. It is a war against terrorists who want to attack our country," the official said.

The Air Force has ruled out the possibility that a burning Russian rocket booster re-entering the atmosphere was the cause of the bright light in the sky seen recently along the East Coast.

The Joint Space Operations Center, known as "JSPOC," which monitors man-made objects in space, concluded that a Soyuz rocket body that some experts thought was the cause actually came through the atmosphere near the Philippine Sea.

"The JSPOC is not aware of any phenomena that would explain the events near Virginia," Stefan T. Bocchino, a spokesman for the 30th Space Wing, told Inside the Ring.

The Air Force will not say whether a meteor caused the light show and booms Sunday night, viewed and heard by people from southern Virginia through northern Maryland.

"We do not track natural phenomena, so we really can't speculate what it was," Mr. Bocchino said.

Bremer's Surge

He was the man President George W. Bush tapped to run Iraq in those highly chaotic post-invasion days when a deadly insurgency was taking hold.

Special correspondent Rowan Scarborough recently caught up with L. Paul Bremer III, the former ambassador and aide to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger who nows does consulting and sits on a Catholic Charities board.

The topic: the troop surge that even Mr. Obama, who opposed it and said it would not work. Mr. Obama later called it a surprising success.

"I have always been optimistic about the long run in Iraq, and I continue to be," Mr. Bremer said. "I think the success of the surge has made a very important difference and allowed the provincial elections to go off actually very well, considering. It brings the Sunnis back into the political process, which was important. They made a strategic mistake by not participating in the election in '05. And now I am glad to see the president show flexibility and obviously following the guidance of his military guys on the withdrawal. We just have to be steady, and I think they're going to make it."

Mr. Bremer was lambasted by some in Congress during his 14-month reign. Democrats, in particular, criticized his decisions to abolish the Iraq army and flood the country with sequestered Iraqi oil cash, huge amounts of which went missing.

Today, Mr. Bremer defends those decisions. He points out that early on he recognized a need for more American troops to quell the violence but was rebuffed by the Pentagon and White House.

"I was one who called for more troops and a coherent counterinsurgency strategy right from the start, even before I went to Iraq," Mr. Bremer said. "I was pleased when the president finally decided to do that at the end of 2006. The reason I'm optimistic in the long run about Iraq is because, if you look at it, particularly if you compare it to Afghanistan, this is a country which has a highly educated population, urbanized. About 75 percent of the people live in towns. They have a tradition of a well-educated middle class. They've obviously got wealth, both in oil and water. There's no reason, because they are proud of their history, why the Iraqis can't make a success of it. It turned out to be harder than we thought it was going to be, and it certainly took longer to get the right strategy in place."

Asked what was done right in 2003-04, Mr. Bremer said, "I think the most important political measure we helped with was the constitution. And, indeed, the constitution has basically bounded the political life of Iraq since we left."

Obama Plays Down Rift Over Economy on Eve of Summit
NYTIMES
By DAVID E. SANGER and MARK LANDLER
April 2, 2009

LONDON — President Obama attempted to play down evidence of a continuing rift with allies over how to revive the global economy on Wednesday, only to be undercut by new demands from Germany and France for sweeping global financial regulations that could reach well inside American borders.

At the same time, Mr. Obama issued a caution that the United States was unlikely to return to its role as a “voracious consumer market” that could anchor the world economy, and warned that other nations needed to do more to revive growth in their home markets.

The signs of continued discord came on the eve of a summit meeting intended to show international solidarity to fight the downturn — and to provide Mr. Obama with his first major moment on the world stage. The president spent the day balancing messages of humility — he acknowledged that the financial crisis started in the United States — with efforts to convince his fellow leaders that they should follow his prescription of heavy financial stimulus and more rigorous regulation.

But despite calls for unity from Mr. Obama and the British prime minister, Gordon Brown — the host of the Group of 20 meeting that formally begins Thursday — the French and German leaders held a joint, and combative, news conference to underscore their differences with the Anglo-American approach to the crisis. While President Nichoals Sarkozy of France did not repeat an earlier threat to walk out of the conference — “I just got here,” he joked — he made it clear he would reject an agreement that puts off stringent new regulations on banks, tax havens, and hedge funds.

“The decisions need to be taken now, today and tomorrow,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “This has nothing to do with ego. This has nothing to do with temper tantrums. When it comes to historic moments, you can’t circumvent them.”

He added that tougher regulation — he has called for a “global regulator” would be able to reach inside the borders of the United States and other large nations to deal with international financial firms — is “nonnegotiable.”

“The compromise has to come from all countries around the world,” he said. Saying he trusted Mr. Obama, Mr. Sarkozy said he did not want to point fingers about the crisis. But then, in a verbal jab he has used before, he added, “the crisis didn’t actually spontaneously erupt in Europe.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, for her part, said more spending was not worth debating.

“That is not a bargaining chip,” she said, adding, by contrast, “Regulation is something that is everyone’s interest.”

Mr. Obama and Mr. Brown used a joint news conference earlier in the day to emphasize that differences with France and Germany over stimulus and regulation of the global economy were “vastly overstated.” Mr. Brown argued that the world had learned the hard lessons of a similar summit here in 1933, which ended in failure. That outcome would not be repeated on Thursday, Mr. Brown argued. And it still seemed likely that leaders would issue a collective statement of resolve at the conclusion of Thursday’s meeting, though one that papers over disagreements about how to respond to the crisis now and to prevent new financial meltdowns in the future.

In a busy day of face to face to meetings, Mr. Obama also met for the first time with President Hu Jintao of China, the country that is essentially being asked to bankroll much of the upwards of $2 trillion in deficits the United States will run up this year to finance its recovery package, bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit, and two wars. But in a meeting that American officials described as “businesslike” Mr. Hu apparently said nothing about previous Chinese cautions that the country would have to be convinced that the U.S. had a long-term plan to bring down its deficits before it invested more heavily in American securities

In essence, the United States is pressing Europe and other nations to spend more now — when a coordinated stimulus could do the most good. But over the long term, Mr. Obama appeared to be preparing the world for a reshaped global economy in which the United States no longer was the ultimate export market for the world’s established and emerging powers. It was that habit of overconsumption, he appeared to say, that led to the boom-and-bust cycles that he has said must end.

Speaking alongside Mr. Brown after the two men met, Mr. Obama warned against returning the United States to the habits of the past decade, and the twin trade and budget deficits they created.

“The United States will do its share,” he said, “but I think that one of the things that Gordon and I spoke about is the fact that in some ways the world has become accustomed to the United States being a voracious consumer market and the engine that drives a lot of economic growth worldwide. And I think that in the wake of this crisis, even as we’re doing stimulus, we have to take into account our own deficits.”

The German and French leaders laid out a different argument: That the United States has only now begun to understand the cost of poorly regulated free market capitalism, and must now bow to the European model. “The foundation for this new financial architecture must be laid now,” Mrs. Merkel said. “That is why we seem to be so tough.”

The German chancellor, who meets Mr. Obama one on one this weekend, rejected attempts to link the American and British demands for fiscal stimulus programs to the French and German agenda on regulations. Although Germany did implement a reasonably large stimulus package this year, it has not agreed to one for 2010, contending that its generous social safety net makes further spending unnecessary. Mr. Sarkozy seemed more in the mood for horse-trading. He said France had made a gesture to the United States by rejoining the command structure of the NATO alliance, and he implied that the United States needed to make a similar gesture in the regulatory arena.

Saying he trusted President Obama, Mr. Sarkozy said he did not want to point fingers about the crisis. But he added, “the crisis didn’t actually spontaneously erupt in Europe.”

GOOD INAUGURAL ADDRESS - BUT NOT MEMORABLE (GUY IN THE CAP WROTE IT?). Record brief inaugural address by Mr. Faux-Bama

Not so fast!
Obama Apologizes For Gaffe on Special Olympics
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:03 p.m. ET
March 20, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has apologized for a gaffe in which he described his bowling skills as akin to participants in the Special Olympics, a sports program for people with intellectual disabilities.

Obama made the mistake during an interview on Thursday night on "The Tonight Show" with host Jay Leno, the first time a sitting U.S. president had been on the show.

Talking about living in the White House, Obama said he had been practicing his bowling in the home's bowling alley and had scored a 129 out of a possible 300. It was an improvement on the embarrassing 37 he had rolled during a stop on the presidential campaign trail a year ago.

"It's like -- it was like Special Olympics or something," Obama said.

The Special Olympics is a global nonprofit organization serving some 200 million people with intellectual disabilities, with a presence in nearly 200 countries worldwide. They compete in sporting events like the real Olympics. Soon after the Jay Leno interview, Obama telephoned Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver to apologize.

Shriver told ABC's "Good Morning America" television show that Obama had apologized "in a way that I think was very moving" and that he said "he did not intend to humiliate the population, didn't want to embarrass or give anybody any more reason for pain or kind of suffering."

Shriver said people should gain a lesson from the incident.

"I think it's important to see that words hurt. Words do matter. And these words in some respect, can be seen as humiliating or a put-down to people with special needs, do cause pain. And they do result in stereotypes," Shriver said.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said Obama "made an offhand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics."

"He thinks that the Special Olympics are a wonderful program that gives an opportunity to shine to people with disabilities from around the world," Burton said.

Shriver said he knows of a Special Olympian in the Detroit area who has bowled three perfect games of 300 and "he said he would be more than welcome to find the time to come to the White House and teach the president."

Op-Ed Columnist: No Boiled Carrots
NYTIMES
By MAUREEN DOWD
March 18, 2009

WASHINGTON

Barack Obama even needs a teleprompter to get mad.

On St. Patrick’s Day, the president spoke a bit of Gaelic, dyed the White House fountains green and talked about his distant relatives in the tiny Irish town of Moneygall, aptly named since money and gall are the two topics now consuming him.

But Mr. Obama is still having trouble summoning a suitable flash of Irish temper at the gall of the corrupt money magicians who continue to make our greenbacks disappear into their bottomless well. He’s got to lop off some heads.

As he watches the fury of ordinary Americans bubble up at those who continue to plunder our economy, he should keep in mind one of my dad’s favorite Gaelic sayings: “Never bolt the door with a boiled carrot.”

His lofty team of economic rivals is looking more like a team of small forwards and shooting guards. At the White House on Monday, the president read reporters some tough talk from the teleprompter about the chuckleheads at A.I.G., accusing them of “recklessness and greed.”

But it was his own boiled carrots who acted shocked at bonuses that they should have known were coming, and should have dismantled before handing A.I.G. another $30 billion two weeks ago. It is bad enough that the billions are being laundered through A.I.G. to the likes of bailout double-dippers Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America, not to mention foreign banks.

Mr. Obama belatedly tried to stop the tumbrels that began rolling toward the Potomac after Larry Summers went on Sunday talk shows to assert that there was nothing the administration could do about the blood-sucking insurance monstrosity’s venal payout.

Summers, who inspires lusty dreams of A.I.G. tormentor Eliot Spitzer, asserted that the government “cannot just abrogate” contracts with financial vampires. It seems as though it would be pretty easy to upend a bonus contract that must read something like: “If you ruin the world economy, we’ll pay you an extra million.”

As Andrew Cuomo pointed out on Tuesday, 11 of the A.I.G. executives who received retention bonuses of $1 million or more — including one who received $4.6 million — were not even retained. They’re no longer working at A.I.G. Bonuses were paid to 52 people who have left the company.

At first, on the nutty bonuses, Team Obama thought it could get away with the same absurd argument used to justify the nearly $8 billion in unnecessary earmarks it allowed Congress to jam into this year’s overdue spending bill: It was written last year; we’re just signing off on it; we’ll do better in the future.

What President Obama should have said to the blood-sucking bums at A.I.G., many of them foreigners who were working at the louche London unit, was quite simple: “We stopped the checks. They’re immoral. If you want Americans’ hard-earned cash as a reward for burning up their jobs, homes and savings, sue me.”

He also should have saved a dollar a year and fired Ed Liddy. There must have been ways to avoid rewarding the perpetrators of our financial crisis and Liddy seems to have seriously explored none of them.

Barney Frank told reporters: “I think the time has come to exercise our ownership rights ... and then say as owner, ‘No, I’m not paying you the bonus. You didn’t perform. You didn’t live up to this contract.’ ”

Cuomo, who seems far more intent on transparency than Mr. Obama, and Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary who reluctantly signed off on the bonuses, issued subpoenas for the names of the bonus babies. Cuomo started an investigation of whether the payments were fraudulent because the company knew it did not have the funds to cover them.

The president needs to brush back the arrogant, greedy creeps who kneecapped capitalism, rather than cosseting Wall Street for fear of looking like an avatar of socialism.

Geithner, who comes from the cozy Wall Street club, and Liddy believe it’s best to stabilize the company and keep on board the same people who invented the risky financial tactics so they can unwind their own rotten spool.

Isn’t that like giving bonuses to the arsonists who started a fire because they alone know what kind of accelerants they used to start it?

“Their mythology starts with the false premise that these are irreplaceable geniuses,” says Cuomo.

Boiling mad that A.I.G. made more than 73 millionaires in the unit that felled the firm, Cuomo called the company’s counsel on Monday to demand that she stop payment on the checks. Cuomo was informed that the money had already been direct-deposited in the accounts of the derivative scoundrels with the push of a button.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving
NYTIMES Editorial
March 17, 2009

After four bailouts totaling some $170 billion, the American International Group has finally answered some of the questions about where the money went. Unfortunately, the answers have only succeeded in raising many more questions.

On Saturday, Americans learned that A.I.G. planned to pay $165 million in bonuses to executives and employees in the very division that caused the problems that led to the federal bailouts. Taxpayers have every right to be outraged, and President Obama was right to acknowledge that outrage on Monday, when he vowed to try to stop the payments.

Mr. Obama’s tough talk, however, contrasted with comments made by his top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, and by the Treasury Department. They had already expressed dismay but said that legally they could do nothing to stop the bonuses, which, in fact, had already mostly been paid on Friday.

It is frustrating enough for Americans to try to figure out which part of that mixed message reflects the administration’s true position. But the bigger issue is that the bonuses are something of a distraction. Seen by themselves, the payments are huge, but they are less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the money already committed to the A.I.G. bailout.

Which brings us to the second disclosure of recent days. It was common knowledge that most of the A.I.G. bailout money had been funneled to the company’s trading partners — banks and other financial firms that would have lost big if A.I.G. were allowed to fail. On Sunday, after much prodding by Congress and the public, A.I.G. finally released the partners’ identities, along with amounts paid thus far to make them whole.

The largest single recipient was Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion). The amount — hardly chump change even by Wall Street standards — appears to contradict earlier assertions by Goldman that its exposure to risk from A.I.G. was “not material” and that its positions were offset by collateral or hedges. If so, why didn’t the hedges pay up instead of the American taxpayers?

Other recipients include 20 European banks that received a total of $58.8 billion and Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion), Bank of America ($5.2 billion) and Citigroup ($2.3 billion).

Altogether, the disclosures account for $107.8 billion in A.I.G. bailout money. Which leaves us wondering about the rest of the money. Another $30 billion was added to the A.I.G. bailout pot this month and must be accounted for as soon as it is spent. That leaves some $32 billion unaccounted for. Where did it go?

Taxpayers also need to be told the precise nature of the banks’ dealings with A.I.G. Appearing on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, described A.I.G. as a company “that made all kinds of unconscionable bets.” Well, on the other side of those bets are the banks that received the bailout money. It is possible that one side of a bet is acting unconscionably and that another side is acting in good faith. But it’s also possible that both sides are trying to play an unseemly game to their own advantage.

Congress must investigate, and the new disclosures give them enough to get started. Untangling all the entanglements is not only essential to understanding how the system became so badly broken, but also to restoring faith in the government that it is up to the task of fixing it.

Europe Hedges on Guantánamo Detainees
NYTIMES
By WILLIAM GLABERSON and STEVEN ERLANGER
March 16, 2009

European countries that in recent months have offered to help the Obama administration close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, by possibly resettling detainees have begun raising questions about the security risks and requirements if they accept prisoners who were described for years by Bush administration officials as “the worst of the worst,” according to diplomats and officials on both sides of the Atlantic.

The concerns, and a deep suspicion of whether the American intelligence community will share full information on the prisoners, are likely to complicate the resettlement effort, which is critical to President Obama’s fulfilling his pledge to close Guantánamo within a year. The offers, from Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland and other countries, have been widely seen as efforts to win favor with the new administration by helping to close the camp in Cuba, which was a contentious issue during the Bush years.

Still, with a first round of talks on the Guantánamo issues scheduled for Monday in Washington between Obama administration officials and a high-level delegation from the European Union, several European leaders have recently emphasized that they can make no firm commitments until they are given complete details on the prisoners.

“We’d have to study concrete cases,” María Teresa Fernández de la Vega Sanz, Spain’s deputy prime minister, said in an interview last week.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently told reporters she was “quite encouraged at the positive, receptive responses we’ve been getting” to requests for help in accepting Guantánamo detainees.

But some European officials said the Obama administration had yet to detail what would be involved in resettling detainees and whether the United States would also open its doors to Guantánamo prisoners, which the Bush administration declined to do.

“We understand, you have a big problem,” said one European official who said he would speak only if not identified. “And we appreciate what President Obama has said about closing Guantánamo. But that doesn’t automatically mean putting all the remaining inmates on a plane and sending them to Europe.”

Obama administration officials say some 60 of the remaining 241 detainees, those who cannot be sent to their home countries for humanitarian or other reasons, could be resettled in Europe. A senior State Department official conceded that there were some concerns in Europe about accepting Guantánamo detainees. But the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not designated to speak publicly on the issue, argued: “It is really just a small effort to help us deal with a legacy of the past. This is something we inherited, too.”

A senior French official said France was “ready to help,” but that “Guantánamo is an American responsibility.”

“It’s not an absolute condition, but it would be easier if the U.S. administration is willing to take some detainees,” said the French official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, as did several officials in other countries, to avoid antagonizing the Obama administration.

American officials conceded that talks with Europe were likely to be complex, but said they were working with intelligence agencies to provide as much information about detainees as possible. The senior State Department official said that the White House was considering whether any detainees might be admitted into the United States, in part because of the European focus on that issue.

The detainees most often mentioned for resettlement in the United States are 17 Uighurs, members of a Chinese Muslim minority, who American officials say cannot be returned to China for fear of mistreatment. The men have argued that they were allies of the United States who were wrongly rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. After court battles, the Bush administration conceded that the men were not enemies of the United States.

Both American and European Union officials described the talks scheduled for Monday as a critical first step for any possible resettlement of Guantánamo detainees, saying that common European ground rules would ease the way toward decisions by individual countries. Jacques Barrot, a European Union vice president who is to lead the European delegation, said there was an opportunity “to turn together a dark page” in the history of the fight against terrorism. But officials said the delegation was arriving with far more questions than answers.

Among the host of questions, European officials said, was whether the former prisoners would need to be monitored, whether they would have full travel rights in Europe and whether detainees might entangle their countries’ courts in years of legal battles by suing former American officials for their imprisonment and treatment. Obama administration officials are working on a two-pronged plan to close the prison. They are analyzing how many detainees might be tried, most likely in the United States, and working toward transferring scores of the others.

The Bush administration often failed when it asked other countries to accept detainees, partly because those requests were usually accompanied by public comments defending the imprisonments by describing the detainees as dangerous terrorists.

The new administration is sending a different message. “We are less vested in trying to prove that these people are rightly held,” the senior State Department official said.

Given that stance by the Obama administration, some European officials say Washington’s focus on sending the detainees to Europe raises many questions. Germany’s interior minister, Wolfgang Schauble, has suggested publicly that if Guantánamo detainees pose no security risk, there is no reason the United States should not take them.

“We should know what is being asked of us,” said Pekka Lintu, Finland’s ambassador in Washington.

EDITORIAL: Obama's reliance on teleprompters
Washington Times
Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Is President Obama able to conduct a news conference without a teleprompter? Is he is an automaton in answering questions? With all the jokes about Karl Rove as George Bush's brain or cracks during the 1980s about Ronald Reagan supposedly being an amiable dunce, could you imagine the reaction if either president had used a teleprompter to answer questions? The late night joke writers wouldn't have let it go until the president gave in to the merciless ridicule as he was painted as an idiot who couldn't tie his shoes without being fed instructions on how to do it.

As it was, Mr. Bush suffered a deluge of unfounded criticism over the "bulge" in his jacket during the first presidential debate in 2004. The bizarre claim was that somehow this bulge allowed Karl Rove or someone else to tell Mr. Bush what to say during the debate. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe raised the issue. Salon.com asked, "Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with John Kerry?" The Washington Post noted, "Journalists had been passing around the link to the photo all week" and referred to the "widespread" speculation.

Well, it might be time to ask even more seriously if David Axelrod is Barack Obama's brain.

Finally, last Friday, Politico broached a topic that has been talked about in Washington for months - Obama's almost total reliance on a teleprompter. The Politico went so far as referring to it as a "crutch" that created awkward moments witnessed by the press that made taking pictures of the president and others in the White House tricky. It is hard for the media to ignore the teleprompter when they are angling for shots so that the teleprompters aren't blocking pictures of the president and others.

Towson University political science professor and presidential historian Martha Joynt Kumar noted this use of the teleprompter "is just something presidents haven't done." Until now.

Just last week, Obama's presentation of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as head of Health and Human Services created an awkward silence between the Obama and Sebelius presentations while everyone had to wait for the teleprompters to be lowered to be moved out of the way. Politico mentioned the "uncomfortable laughter" the delay produced from the audience.

The American Spectator notes that for many events: "... down to many of the questions and the answers to those questions. ... [t]eleprompter screens at the events scrolled not only his opening remarks, but also statistics and information he could use to answer questions." It quoted one Obama advisor as saying that Mr. Obama is looking at installing a computer screen in White House podiums so "it would make it easier for the comms (communications) guys to pass along information without being obvious about it."

The notion that a computer technician is queuing up the president's answers to questions is disturbing. One can easily imagine a Saturday Night Live skit where a technician waits with a canned set of answers to possible questions and from time to time cues up the wrong one.

Some have noted that Mr. Obama's stumbling speeches have occurred when teleprompters have malfunctioned. The Politico reports that President-elect Obama's vacation to Hawaii last year was actually used to try "wean[ing] himself off of the device ... But no such luck."

Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog followed the Late Night comics during the first month of the Obama presidency and noted the complete lack of jokes about the new president. Of course, that is nothing new. During the campaign last year from Jan. 1 to July 31, the Center for Media and Public Affairs found that both John McCain and Hillary Clinton had at least twice as many jokes about them by network comedians as about Mr. Obama.

Yet possibly the comedians have an excuse for missing this, given the virtually complete lack of coverage by the news media. With all the effort to maneuver camera shots to avoid teleprompters blocking Mr. Obama's pictures, the news media has no such excuse.

While the teleprompter might let Mr. Obama blame someone else whenever the answer turns out to be wrong, we would like to have a president who occasionally comes across as more than a TV anchor reading a script.

On the White House; To Keep in Touch, Obama Picks Up the Phone
NYTIMES
By JEFF ZELENY
March 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama may like his Blackberry, but he loves the telephone.

Whether he has a few spare minutes in the Oval Office, sitting aboard Air Force One or waiting in the wings before delivering a speech, he often picks up the phone and makes a call or two. On some days, aides say, Mr. Obama makes at least two dozen calls in an attempt to stay connected to — and glean information from — the outside world.

The telephone habits of the president came to light late last week when Mr. Obama unexpectedly called George W. Bush to inform him of the administration’s plan to remove most combat troops from Iraq over the next 19 months. That call, like many of those made to others in recent weeks by the new president, took the recipient by surprise.

The calls have not only been going out to members of Congress, governors and other dignitaries, but also to an array of experts who Mr. Obama has long been turning to for counsel and guidance.

“The president is reading and receiving a lot of information, but he still likes to pick up the phone and talk to people,” said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, who is often in the room when Mr. Obama is making calls. “Asking questions or getting ideas, you get instant feedback. And most of all, you can stay connected.”

On Saturday evening, for example, Mr. Gibbs said he was sitting in the Oval Office when the president placed a call to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas to inform her that she had been selected as his latest nominee to serve as Health and Human Services secretary. Those types of courtesy calls are made by all presidents, but they do not offer a full window into how attached Mr. Obama is to the telephone.

To fully understand Mr. Obama’s penchant for making calls, it is important to turn back the page to the days when he was dialing the numbers by himself, long before the White House switchboard could connect him to anyone in the world.

At the end of his first year in Washington, Mr. Obama was asked to explain the best aspect of being a senator. His answer from an interview on Dec. 16, 2005, offers a glimpse into his attachment to the telephone, which aides said has not gone away.

“Everybody takes your phone calls,” Mr. Obama told me. “If there is a topic I’m interested in, I can call the smartest people in the world on that topic and talk to them about it. Sometimes they’ll come into my office and that is just a huge luxury.

“If I’m interested in finance, I can call Warren Buffett. If I’m interested in health care, I can call the top administrators or health-care experts in the country. If I’m interested in foreign policy, I can not only call experts here, but I can call experts overseas,” Mr. Obama added. “That’s fun.”

The White House archives show that President Woodrow Wilson made the first transcontinental call from the Oval Office on January 25, 1915. Mr. Obama’s first came barely an hour after stepping into the office for the first time on the morning of Jan. 21, as he reached out to four Middle Eastern leaders to talk about the peace process.

Since then, according to an official record, Mr. Obama has called the presidents of China, Lebanon, Colombia and South Africa. He has talked to the prime ministers of Japan, Australia, Canada and Iraq, and the king of Saudi Arabia.

The calls to foreign leaders, which are primarily made from a highly secure telephone at his desk in the Oval Office, are standard fare for all presidents. But it is the calls to a wide variety of others — aides say his call list is confidential, just as his calls are secure — that make this president’s phone work more unusual.

“He’s always looking for ways to connect outside the bubble,” said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, who still excuses himself from the dinner table when he receives a call from Mr. Obama on some nights around 11 p.m., just as he did throughout the course of his two-year presidential campaign

During the legislative debate over the economic recovery package, several senators and representatives reported receiving multiple calls from the president, more than they remember getting from Mr. Bush. Shortly after Air Force One returned to Washington from a visit to Indiana, the president dialed Senator Richard G. Lugar, the state’s senior Republican, who was among Mr. Obama’s friends in the Senate.

“The president called twice,” said Mr. Lugar, who told Mr. Obama on the second call that he intended to vote against the stimulus bill. Rather than jumping off the phone, Mr. Lugar recalled that the two talked for a while longer. “He said he hoped that it would not set the tone for future relations. I told him I look forward to happier times.”

While his political advisers, legal team and security detail tried to dissuade him from keeping his Blackberry after he was elected — a fight that Mr. Obama ultimately won — there has been far less debate about weaning him from his telephone.

That, aides concede, is not negotiable for the country’s first president who rose to power in a culture of unlimited cell phone calling plans.

Now, Mr. Obama is surrounded by telephones. There is a large, gray Raytheon phone — programmed with speed dial buttons to most of his top aides (from “Senior Advisor Axelrod” to the “CIA Director”) — in nearly each room of the White House. He also has one in his office aboard Air Force One. And, Mr. Gibbs said, the president was particularly impressed by the many phones inside the presidential limousine.

“He thinks the coolest thing about this,” Mr. Gibbs said, “is that you can pick up the phone and say, ‘I need to reach so and so,’ and a minute later, the phone rings and they are on the line.”

Op-Ed Columnist: Stage of Fools
NYTIMES
By MAUREEN DOWD
March 4, 2009

WASHINGTON

If only Shakespeare had known how to Twitter.

There was a bit of King Lear in the scene on the Senate floor, a stormy, solitary John McCain on “this great stage of fools,” as the Bard wrote, railing against both parties and the president in fiery speeches and rapid-fire tweets.

“He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath,” the Fool told Lear.

And he’s truly mad that trusts in the promise of a presidential candidate to quell earmarks.

The 72-year-old senator who seemed hopelessly 20th century when he confessed during the campaign that he didn’t know how to use a computer or send an e-mail has now mastered the latest technology fad, twittering up a twizzard to tweak his former rival.

Before the Senate resoundingly defeated a McCain amendment on Tuesday that would have shorn 9,000 earmarks worth $7.7 billion from the $410 billion spending bill, the Arizona senator twittered lists of offensive bipartisan pork, including:

• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. “quick peel me a grape,” McCain twittered.

• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.

• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.

• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.

• $819,000 for catfish genetics research in Alabama.

• $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi.

• $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas. (McCain, a devotee of Vegas and gambling, must really be against earmarks if he doesn’t want to “sustain” Vegas.)

• $2 million “for the promotion of astronomy” in Hawaii, as McCain twittered, “because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.”

• $167,000 for the Autry National Center for the American West in Los Angeles. “Hopefully for a Back in the Saddle Again exhibit,” McCain tweeted sarcastically.

• $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society in Hawaii. “During these tough economic times with Americans out of work,” McCain twittered.

• $200,000 for a tattoo removal violence outreach program to help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past. “REALLY?” McCain twittered.

• $209,000 to improve blueberry production and efficiency in Georgia.

“When do we turn off the spigots?” Senator McCain said in his cri de coeur on the Senate floor. “Haven’t we learned anything? Bills like this jeopardize our future.”

In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign.

He’s been lecturing us on the need to prune away frills while the economy fizzles. He was slated to make a speech on “wasteful spending” on Wednesday.

“You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation,” he said recently about the “hard choices” we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget.

He reckons he’ll need Congress for more ambitious projects, like health care, and when he goes back to wheedle more bailout billions, given that A.I.G. and G.M. and our other corporate protectorates are burning through our money faster than we can print it and borrow it from the ever-more-alarmed Chinese.

Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that “the status quo is not acceptable,” even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork.

Obama spinners insist it was “a leftover budget.” But Iraq was leftover, too, and the president’s trying to end that. This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget “line by line” and cut pork.

On “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed the bill as “last year’s business,” because most of it was written last year.

But given how angry Americans are, watching their future go up in smoke, the bloated bill counts as this year’s business.

It includes $38.4 million of earmarks sponsored or co-sponsored by President Obama’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis; $109 million Hillary Clinton signed on to; and $31.2 million in earmarks sought by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with colleagues.

(Even Barack Obama was listed as one of the co-sponsors of a $7.7 million pet project for Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions until he got his name taken off last week.)

And then there are the 16 earmarks worth $8.5 million that Emanuel put into the bill when he was a congressman, including money for streets in Chicago suburbs and a Chicago planetarium.

Blame it on the stars, Rahm, or on old business. But as Shakespeare wrote in “Lear”: “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeits of our own behavior — we make guilty of our own disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars.”

Biden think of this, too? A form of "testing" a new President...
Russian Bomber Neared Canada Before Obama Visit
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 9:32 a.m. ET
February 27, 2009

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian fighters scrambled to intercept an approaching Russian bomber less than 24 hours before U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Ottawa last week, Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said on Friday.

The Bear bomber did not enter Canada's Arctic airspace but the Canadian fighters had to order the plane to turn back, MacKay said at a news conference.

Obama spent a few hours in the Canadian capital on February 19 on his first foreign trip since taking over at the White House.

"I'm not going to stand here and accuse the Russians of having deliberately done this during the presidential visit but it was a strong coincidence, which we met with the presence, as we always do, of F-18 fighter planes ... and sent a strong signal that they should back off and stay out of our air space," said MacKay.

He also said Russia had stepped up its bomber flights toward the Canadian Arctic in the last few years, reviving a practice that was common during the Cold War.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Gee, why do you think this is?
Democrats Strike Different Tone on Katrina
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:43 a.m. ET
February 19, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there's not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there's no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf's fiercest advocates say they're happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

''I'm not saying there won't be a need in the future, but right now the focus is not on more money, it's on using what we have,'' said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., who has criticized Democrats and Republicans alike over Katrina funding.

It's a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf's needs years later. Just last summer, Democrats accused Bush of putting Iraq before New Orleans when he sought to block Gulf Coast reconstruction money from a $162 billion war spending bill. Bush was pilloried for not mentioning the disaster in back-to-back State of the Union addresses.

Former Rep. Jim McCrery, R-La., who helped lead the fight for Gulf aid before retiring last year, said he was surprised by the lack of Katrina money in the bill, but figures lawmakers may be granting Obama leniency due to the magnitude of the country's current economic challenges.

''Any new president is going to have a little honeymoon,'' said McCrery, who is now a lobbyist. ''I'd like to think that the tone would have been the same with any new president.''

Thomas Langston, a Tulane University political scientist, said Democrats may be ''playing nice'' to keep in good favor. But dire needs remain, he said.

''Hopefully they've gotten some promises behind the scenes about longer-term commitments,'' Langston said. ''Like most people down here, I would hate for anybody to get the impression that, 'We're good, thank you.'''

Katrina was blamed for more than 1,600 deaths and $41 billion in property damage. Critics say the Gulf Coast remains vulnerable to similar devastation without significantly strengthened levees and other flood controls. The federal government has devoted more than $175 billion to the region since Katrina ripped through New Orleans in 2005, and billions remain unspent. It's unclear how much more money will be needed, but nearly everyone agrees the federal government should continue investing heavily in the region's levees and other infrastructure to prevent a repeat of Katrina's devastation.

Under the $787 billion stimulus bill, states will share more than $90 billion in infrastructure money. Gulf states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama can use their funds for Katrina-related projects, but they'll get the same formula-based share that other states receive. There was hardly a complaint as Obama and other Democratic leaders pieced together the package. Members of the all-Democratic Congressional Black Caucus, who have called Bush's Katrina funding a moral failure, said they were thrilled with the stimulus bill. Landrieu won several provisions that do not allocate new money but are aimed at cutting through red tape to free up existing funds.

''I think people looked at how generous Congress has been in the past,'' said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. ''(The states) have to demonstrate that they can be good custodians of the money.''

Thompson and others say new funding wasn't necessary in the stimulus largely because billions of federal dollars remain bogged down in bureaucracy or tied up in planning. As a result, they said, Katrina funding doesn't fit with the quick-spending purpose of the stimulus bill, which is aimed at kick-starting the economy.

Ironically, Bush made similar arguments in recent years as Gulf advocates latched onto nearly any legislation they could find to pursue reconstruction money. For example, he routinely argued that Katrina funding didn't belong in war spending bills and that new funding wasn't urgent because unspent billions were already in the pipeline.

In part, the lack of criticism this year could reflect a stronger trust by fellow Democrats that Obama will follow through with his campaign pledge to rebuild levees and ''keep the broken promises'' to the Gulf.

Whether the grace period continues could hinge on how Obama addresses the issue in future spending bills.

Without discussing specific funding plans, White House spokeswoman Gannet Tseggai said Obama is ''dedicated to rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and looks forward to working with Congress to ensure they get the help they so desperately need.''

Carlos Slim Helú: The Reticent Media Baron
NYTIMES
By MARC LACEY
February 16, 2009

MEXICO CITY — Carlos Slim Helú was clearly annoyed. He had invited dozens of foreign correspondents to lunch one day last fall and, after many questions about business trends, one journalist pressed him on how it felt to be worth so much in a country in which many people struggle to get by. Mr. Slim cut off the questioner and defended his stewardship of a vast business empire. His curt tone made clear that he did not favor that line of questioning.

Mr. Slim, Mexico’s richest man and now a major shareholder in and lender to The New York Times, has a complex relationship with the news media. He invests money in an array of television and newspaper companies and says he sees a bright future for those media companies that adapt. But when the news media focus their spotlight on him, he sometimes gives the impression that he wants to be left alone to make more money in peace.

An avid newspaper reader of what he calls the “paper generation,” Mr. Slim says he sees the shift to digital news, which has left newspaper companies struggling, as not necessarily being their death knell. He likens them to transport companies at the turn of the 20th century that grappled with the advent of motorcars. Those that stuck to horses went belly up.

With telecommunications, retailing and construction companies under his command, Mr. Slim looms large over the media landscape in his country. Notoriously thin-skinned, he does not have to pick up the phone and bellow at those who publish and broadcast something he does not like. His vast resources often translate into less-than-critical coverage. Mr. Slim declined through his spokesman and son-in-law, Arturo Elias, to be interviewed for this article.

Raymundo Riva Palacio, a veteran journalist in Mexico City, said that after he wrote a column in El Universal newspaper in 2006 condemning Mr. Slim as a monopolist, a Slim adviser threatened to remove newspaper ads from his companies. That was no small threat. Mr. Slim’s holdings are so vast that he controls a large chunk of all advertising countrywide. Eduardo García, a Mexican journalist who runs a Spanish-language financial news Web site and follows Mr. Slim, estimated his wealth at almost $44 billion as of the end of 2008.

“I took it as part of the natural dynamic between the media and the powers that be in Mexico,” Mr. Riva Palacio said, adding that the incident was quietly resolved. “That’s how things work here.”

Mr. Elias, the Slim spokesman, said that no ads were removed and that Mr. Slim does not use his economic might that way. “We are an important advertiser, yes, but that doesn’t give us a right to meddle in the editorial side,” Mr. Elias said.

Mr. Slim built his fortune buying distressed companies and turning them around, but he joined the top ranks of the world’s billionaires when he bought the Mexican telephone monopoly, Teléfonos de México, known as Telmex, from the government in 1990. His critics say his political connections won him the company, but he has countered that his winning bid of $1.76 billion was above market price. Today, even though Mexico’s telephone market is ostensibly open to competition, its rates are among the highest in the world. Telmex controls more than 90 percent of the local market for fixed lines and more than 70 percent of the cellphone market. Competitors say the company throws up repeated obstacles and regulators are reluctant to act.

When it comes to the media, Mr. Slim’s family businesses have invested in a variety of television networks and bought a 1 percent stake in The Independent newspaper in Britain last year.

“His leverage is tremendous,” said Mr. García, who publishes a financial news Web site in Mexico City, (sentidocomun.com.mx), that tracks Mr. Slim’s many holdings. “That’s how he muffles all the criticisms that might come his way.”

He may muffle some critics, but not all. Denise Dresser, a Mexican political scientist, regularly suggests in newspaper columns that favorable government treatment, rather than business acumen, made him rich.

“Going down in history as an evil monopolist who fleeced Mexican consumers is not an image of himself that he likes, but it’s a true image,” she said. “The possibility that he would throw his weight around itself acts as a gag.”

But as Mexico’s recession deepens, Mr. Slim’s critics are multiplying. Last week, he forecast grim times for Mexico and received a barely disguised rebuke from President Felipe Calderón, who prefers upbeat assessments, and said, “Those who have received the most from this great nation” are obligated to help.

Mr. Slim bristles at suggestions that he is not doing his part for Mexico. “I think it’s perverse to believe that there shouldn’t be strong companies in poor countries,” he told the journalists who attended the media lunch last fall. Behind the scenes, though, he deploys a team of lawyers to fight efforts by the government to enforce antitrust laws against him. The country’s Federal Competition Commission is looking into Mr. Slim’s companies. But the agency is outspent and outmanned by Mr. Slim. His companies “spend more on a single case than our entire annual budget,” said an official at the commission, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about agency matters.

Even though Mr. Slim sees moneymaking opportunities in the media, Raúl Trejo, a journalism professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said Mr. Slim is not an aspiring media tycoon who dictates news coverage.

At a dinner in London in December, after Mr. Slim bought his initial Times Company stock, a group of British newspaper editors expressed astonishment at the large size of the Times newsroom, which has roughly 1,300 reporters and editors. “He gave no indication whether he knew the size of the staff,” said a participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private. Mr. Elias said recently that Mr. Slim considered his latest investment in The Times — $250 million, for which he will receive a 14 percent interest rate and warrants that are convertible into Times Company shares — as a business deal.

He already owns 6.9 percent of the company and has lost tens of millions on that investment. Under the new financial arrangement, that stake could grow to 17 percent, though he will receive no representation on the company’s board and no shares with special voting rights.

Bankers representing The Times approached Mr. Slim with the investment opportunity, Slim advisers say. Those bankers, at the firm SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, had first approached The Times with the idea of a deal with Mr. Slim, said a Times spokeswoman, Catherine Mathis. Besides the financial benefits, those who know Mr. Slim also see in the deal an effort to bolster his reputation by linking himself with a well-known brand. Stung by suggestions that he is a some kind of robber baron — a label used by Eduardo Porter, a Times editorial writer, in a 2007 op-ed article — Mr. Slim has granted more interviews in recent years and expanded his philanthropic work.

“Unlike a great number of business guys who are only focused on the latest numbers, he has a variety of interests and is focusing more and more on using his wealth to improve the world,” said Alvin Toffler, the futurist author, who is a friend of Mr. Slim’s.

It is not merely Mr. Slim’s resources that help swing coverage his way, Mexican journalists say. Rather, they say, Mr. Slim, a widowed father of six, has an unassuming, avuncular persona. He often shuffles into events alone, his bodyguards well out of sight. Addressing the press, Mr. Slim can appear ill at ease, resembling at times a small business owner rather than Mexico’s richest man. And even when newspapers ran columns criticizing him for his recent negative comments about the Mexican economy, the front pages of leading papers in Mexico City all ran reports on Thursday of a rumored romance between Mr. Slim and Queen Noor of Jordan — speculation that was quickly quashed by Mr. Elias.

“We journalists cover so many bad guys here in Mexico, so many big egos, that Slim, despite all his faults, doesn’t appear all that bad,” said Mr. Riva Palacio, the Mexico City journalist.

Elizabeth Malkin and Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.

Op-Ed Columnist
How to Stock a Cabinet
NYTIMES
By GAIL COLLINS
February 14, 2009

It’s 8 p.m., American TV viewers, so you know it’s time for: Who Wants to Be a Secretary of Commerce?

Twenty eager contenders arrived last month in Coral Gables, Fla., at an exclusive chateau with a defaulted mortgage, ready to compete for the dream job of a lifetime. At the end of each episode, their host, Joe Biden, distributes the coveted Roses of Change, inviting all but one contestant to continue on for another week.

And now, only five remain. They have come from around the nation. People like you and me, only more interested in promoting market compliance.

People like Caroline Kennedy, a mom from Manhattan hoping to find a career that will combine her desire to perform public service at the highest levels with her yen for total anonymity.

Kennedy became the favorite after last week’s show, when she was the only contestant who knew that the pact under which the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security regulates the export of solar cells is known as the Wassenaar Arrangement.

Senator John Kerry, who answered “The Peace of Westphalia,” was sent home. Vice President Biden, who has broken into tears each time he is forced to withhold a rose from a hopeful contestant, sobbed uncontrollably as Kerry recalled how, when he was a child, his grandfather had told him that if he worked hard, one day he might grow up to enforce patent law for the entire nation.

The contestants have grown close to one another over the long weeks of competition. Who could forget the slumber party when Christopher Dodd confessed to the other chateau guests that after all this time as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he still didn’t exactly understand what a toxic asset was? Or the night when Lindsey Graham collapsed from stress after John McCain and Joe Lieberman demanded that he say which of them was his real best friend?

Who Wants to Be a Secretary of Commerce? has proved to be one of the administration’s most popular TV contests. Its ratings have been second only to Survivor: Department of Health, Education and Human Services. The nation gave its heart to the spunky Barbara Mikulski and wept when John Edwards beat her in a fire-starting contest to win the final challenge.

The only slightly less popular So You Think You Can Run the Labor Department riveted the nation when, in a shocking surprise ending, Dennis Kucinich beat out the fan favorite, Chris Matthews, with a crowd-pleasing performance in which Dennis and stunning wife Elizabeth sang “The Ballad of Joe Hill” while dancing the Macarena.

The idea of filling the cabinet via TV games came to President Obama when Senator Judd Gregg changed his mind about becoming secretary of commerce. Gregg lost interest after discovering, late in the day, that he was a Republican and Obama was a Democrat. Instantly, dozens of other senators who were bored working in a place where everything important is decided by the three moderate Republicans, volunteered for the job.

The new system helped reduce hard feelings, increase transparency and halved the unemployment rate in the critical reality-show sector. It worked out so well, in fact, that Obama has begun using it for sub-cabinet posts as well. Keep an eye out for the upcoming The Apprentice: Chief Performance Officer, in which Mitt Romney will be challenged to help Arnold Schwarzenegger save the California economy with a chain of lemonade stands in Los Angeles along Rodeo Drive.

In tonight’s episode of Who Wants to Be a Secretary of Commerce?, attention turns to the Republicans. Graham, McCain and Rudy Giuliani will face off in a series of events that include seeing who can stand on one foot in a rainstorm for the longest time and delivering census forms to a public housing development.

The winner will join Kennedy and dark-horse contender David Petraeus in the Final Three. Each will enjoy a dream dinner in a glamorous Tampa restaurant, during which Biden will ask them whether their role model in the job would be Herbert Hoover, Harry Hopkins or Philip Klutznick.

Meanwhile, in other TV news, NBC has announced its midseason programming will be led off with “The Women From Maine” in which Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins play moderate Republican witches who try to make the world a better and more fiscally responsible place. Harry Reid will co-star as their befuddled landlord who thinks his tenants are unemployed actresses trying to break into the Portland theater business. Arlen Specter will play Squeaky, their impish helper.

Obama cabinet: Unlucky or naive?

By Jonathan Beale
BBC News, Washington
13 February 2009

Picking a Cabinet? Easier said than done. Just ask Barack Obama.

The president came to power with a powerful promise of change and a pledge to end the old politics while ushering in a new era of political integrity.

There was to be political and racial diversity too, but it has not quite worked out as planned.

Nominees have already fallen like flies. Out has gone his first choice of commerce secretary, the New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who is facing an investigation into his links with big business. The president's pick for health secretary, Tom Daschle, has had to pull out too after failing to keep up with his taxes.

The same problem befell Nancy Killefer, earmarked for the job of chief government performance officer. The president wanted Tim Geithner for treasury secretary, and did get his man despite having found another who has been embarrassed by tax issues.

Carelessness

But now there's the case of Judd Gregg, whose sudden departure is rather different from the rest. To misquote Oscar Wilde: to lose one may seem unfortunate but to lose four looks more like carelessness.

Mr Gregg is the first to withdraw his nomination because of "irresolvable conflicts" over policy, and the blame does not all belong to Mr Obama. Only 10 days ago the Republican was happy to accept his nomination as commerce secretary, praising the president's decision to reach across the aisle.

But in hindsight Senator Gregg says it was all a mistake. "I'm a fiscal conservative, as everybody knows a fairly strong one," the Senator said at a hastily-convened news conference.

He added: "It just became clear to me that it would be very difficult, day in and day out, to serve in this cabinet or any other cabinet."

It's just a shame for the Obama team that he had not thought through all that before.

No doubt fellow Republicans have been leaning on the senator to help him with his decision. But why did the words "fiscal conservative" fail to ring alarm bells in the White House - just as they were trying to get Congress to approve the $800bn dollar stimulus bill.

Hard to swallow

While Mr Gregg was making his announcement, Mr Obama was at a factory in Illinois trying to sell the very same stimulus bill that the Republican senator had found hard to swallow.

The president made no reference to his latest problem, but a rather annoyed White House then issued a terse statement saying it was Mr Gregg who had asked to do the job, and that he had made it clear to them he would "support, embrace and move forward with the President's agenda".

The statement rather curtly concluded: "We regret that he had a change of heart."

That's all very well, but were the president and his advisers not being rather naive in assuming that they could appoint a fiscal conservative to the job of commerce secretary? They were, after all, preparing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to revive the ailing US economy.

It's like asking a teetotaller to serve behind the bar. Given the other setbacks it certainly raises questions about the White House vetting process.

The president's promise of bipartisanship is certainly not going according to plan. First there was the Republican revolt over the stimulus bill, now there's one fewer Republican serving in his cabinet. But Mr Obama is not giving up hope yet of creating his "team of rivals" in the mould of one of his political heroes, Abraham Lincoln.

He told reporters travelling with him that he was an optimist and that he would continue to reach out to the other side. His tone was far more conciliatory than the earlier Whitehouse statement. And he even had some nice words for Senator Gregg.

Barack Obama has not lost his faith in his own formidable powers of persuasion. Nor is he the first president to suffer setbacks of this kind. But while his supporters may feel he has just been unlucky, his opponents will accuse him of being naive.

NEW RENDITION: how long do you think it will take until this decision is reversed?
Continuity of the Wrong Kind
NYTIMES Editorial
February 11, 2009

The Obama administration failed — miserably — the first test of its commitment to ditching the extravagant legal claims used by the Bush administration to try to impose blanket secrecy on anti-terrorism policies and avoid accountability for serial abuses of the law.

On Monday, a Justice Department lawyer dispatched by the new attorney general, Eric Holder, appeared before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The case before them involves serious allegations of torture by five victims of President Bush’s extraordinary rendition program. The five were seized and transported to American facilities abroad or to countries known for torturing prisoners.

Incredibly, the federal lawyer advanced the same expansive state-secrets argument that was pressed by Mr. Bush’s lawyers to get a trial court to dismiss the case without any evidence being presented. It was as if last month’s inauguration had never occurred.

Voters have good reason to feel betrayed if they took Mr. Obama seriously on the campaign trail when he criticized the Bush administration’s tactic of stretching the state-secrets privilege to get lawsuits tossed out of court. Even judges on the panel seemed surprised by the administration’s decision to go forward instead of requesting a delay to reconsider the government’s position and, perhaps, file new briefs.

The argument is that the very subject matter of the suit is a state secret so sensitive that it cannot be discussed in court, and it is no more persuasive now than it was when the Bush team pioneered it. For one thing, there is ample public information available about the C.I.A.’s rendition, detention and coercive interrogation programs. The fact that some of the evidence might be legitimately excluded on national security grounds need not preclude the case from being tried, and allowing the judge to make that determination. More fundamentally, the Obama administration should not be invoking state secrets to cover up charges of rendition and torture.

President Obama has taken some important steps to repair Mr. Bush’s damaging legacy — issuing executive orders to prohibit torture, shut secret prisons overseas and direct closure of the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It would have been good if he and Mr. Holder had shown the same determination in that federal court, rather than defending the indefensible.

Andy Warholl made a career of it, so why not this chap?
AP Alleges Copyright Infringement of Obama Image
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:31 p.m. ET
February 4, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) -- On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: A pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE. Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Manny Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington. The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

''The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission,'' the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement.

''AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution.''

''We believe fair use protects Shepard's right to do what he did here,'' says Fairey's attorney, Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a lecturer at the Stanford Law School. ''It wouldn't be appropriate to comment beyond that at this time because we are in discussions about this with the AP.''

Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work.

A longtime rebel with a history of breaking rules, Fairey has said he found the photograph using Google Images. He released the image on his Web site shortly after he created it, in early 2008, and made thousands of posters for the street. As it caught on, supporters began downloading the image and distributing it at campaign events, while blogs and other Internet sites picked it up. Fairey has said that he did not receive any of the money raised.

A former Obama campaign official said they were well aware of the image based on the picture taken by Garcia, a temporary hire no longer with the AP, but never licensed it or used it officially. The Obama official asked not to be identified because no one was authorized anymore to speak on behalf of the campaign. The image's fame did not end with the election.

It will be included this month at a Fairey exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and a mixed-media stenciled collage version has been added to the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

''The continued use of the poster, regardless of whether it is for galleries or other distribution, is part of the discussion AP is having with Mr. Fairey's representative,'' Colford said.

A New York Times book on the election, just published by Penguin Group (USA), includes the image. A Vermont-based publisher, Chelsea Green, also used it -- credited solely to Fairey-- as the cover for Robert Kuttner's ''Obama's Challenge,'' an economic manifesto released in September. Chelsea Green president Margo Baldwin said that Fairey did not ask for money, only that the publisher make a donation to the National Endowment for the Arts.

''It's a wonderful piece of art, but I wish he had been more careful about the licensing of it,'' said Baldwin, who added that Chelsea Green gave $2,500 to the NEA.

Fairey also used the AP photograph for an image designed specially for the Obama inaugural committee, which charged anywhere from $100 for a poster to $500 for a poster signed by the artist. Fairey has said that he first designed the image a year ago after he was encouraged by the Obama campaign to come up with some kind of artwork. Last spring, he showed a letter to The Washington Post that came from the candidate.

''Dear Shepard,'' the letter reads. ''I would like to thank you for using your talent in support of my campaign. The political messages involved in your work have encouraged Americans to believe they can help change the status quo. Your images have a profound effect on people, whether seen in a gallery or on a stop sign.''

At first, Obama's team just encouraged him to make an image, Fairey has said. But soon after he created it, a worker involved in the campaign asked if Fairey could make an image from a photo to which the campaign had rights.

''I donated an image to them, which they used. It was the one that said ''Change'' underneath it. And then later on I did another one that said ''Vote'' underneath it, that had Obama smiling,'' he said in a December 2008 interview with a photography Web site.

Obama Calls for ‘Common Sense’ on Executive Pay
NYTIMES
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and VIKAS BAJAJ
February 5, 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday announced a salary cap of $500,000 for top executives at companies that receive large amounts of bailout money, calling the step an expression not only of fairness but of “basic common sense.”

“We all need to take responsibility,” the president said as he prompted Congress once again to act on his economic stimulus program and repeated his accusations that some Wall Street executives had shown “the height of irresponsibility” when millions of non-wealthy Americans were bearing the burden of Wall Street’s failures.

The people are sick and tired, Mr. Obama said, of seeing Wall Street executives come to the government “hat in hand when they were in trouble, even as they paid themselves customary lavish bonuses.”

“This is America, and we don’t begrudge wealth,” the president said. But Americans definitely begrudge “executives being rewarded for failure,” especially if their earning are subsidized by taxpayers, he said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, appearing with the president, said there is a general feeling among not-so-rich Americans that they are bearing a greater burden because of the financial crisis than those who helped to create it. Mr. Geithner said he would devote “every ounce of energy” to restore public trust in financial institutions — the bedrock of the country’s credit system.

The president used the White House announcement to call for quick action on his stimulus plan, whose cost could approach $1 trillion, depending on the final version that emerges after Senate and House conclude their negotiations.

“A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery and a more uncertain future,” the president said.

Executives of companies getting bailout money will also be prohibited from receiving any bonuses above their base pay, except for normal stock dividends.

The new rules would be far tougher than any restrictions imposed during the Bush administration, and they could force executives to accept deep reductions in pay. They come amid rising public fury about huge pay packages for executives at financial companies being propped up by federal tax dollars.

Executives at companies that have already received money from the Treasury Department would not have to make any changes. But analysts and administration officials are bracing for a huge wave of new losses, largely because of the deepening recession, and many companies that have already received federal money may well be coming back.

Under the Treasury’s $700 billion rescue program, most companies that have received money so far have been considered “healthy” rather than on the brink of collapse.

But five of the biggest companies to get help — Citigroup, Bank of America and the American International Group, General Motors and Chrysler — were all facing acute problems. And top executives at those companies made far more than $500,000 in recent years.

Kenneth D. Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, took home more than $20 million in 2007. Of that, $5.75 million was in salary and bonuses.

Vikram Pandit, who became chief executive of Citigroup in December of 2007 and previously held other senior positions at the bank, made $3.1 million.

Richard Wagoner, the chief executive of General Motors, made $14.4 million, much of it in stock, options and other non-cash benefits. He earned a $1.6 million salary.

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend.”

Mr. Reda said only a handful of big companies pay chief executives and other senior executives $500,000 or less in total compensation. He said such limits will make it hard for the companies to recruit and keep executives, most of whom could earn more money at other firms.

“It would be really tough to get people to staff” companies that are forced to impose these limits, he said. “I don’t think this will work.”

President Obama last week branded Wall Street bankers “shameful” for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was deteriorating and the government was spending billions to bail out some of the nation’s most prominent financial institutions.

“If the taxpayers are helping you, then you have certain responsibilities to not be living high on the hog,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, in an interview with “NBC Nightly News.”

Mr. Obama’s rules are coming just as he is expected to ask for additional sums of money, beyond the $700 billion already authorized, to prop up the financial system, even as he pushes Congress to move quickly on a separate economic stimulus package that could cost taxpayers as much as $900 billion.

Last week, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, proposed a $400,000 salary limit.

Senator McCaskill, reacting to reports of extravagant perks and bonuses at companies like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, had blasted Wall Street executives as “a bunch of idiots” who were “kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer.”

The banks that have received bailout funds already are subject to limits on compensation , but the Bush administration intentionally left them lax. The top five executives at banks that get an equity infusion from the government are restricted from offering golden parachutes, as rich severance packages are called, and any compensation above $500,000 is not tax deductible to the company.

Companies that received emergency money, like Citigroup, faced somewhat tougher restrictions, including a requirement to reduce the bonus pool for the top 50 executives by 40 percent. But even those restrictions come nowhere near the $500,000 cap.

In a letter to Congress last month, Lawrence H. Summers, director of Mr. Obama’s National Economic Council, suggested that the new pay restrictions would apply to all companies that get Federal help.

Without mentioning a particular dollar limit, Mr. Summers wrote that “executive compensation above a specified threshold amount be paid in restricted stock or similar form that cannot be liquidated or sold until the government has been repaid.”

Finance Chairman Breaks Silence on Daschle’s Tax Problems
NYTIMES
February 2, 2009, 10:40 am
By Kate Phillips

As the Senate Finance Committee prepared to meet behind closed doors to examine the tax problems disclosed late last week by Tom Daschle, the nominee for secretary of health and human services, its chairman released his first statement on the issue.

Senator Max Baucus, whose relationship with former Majority Leader Daschle had been rocky over the years, this morning sought to outline the steps his panel is taking to review the potential roadblocks to confirmation that surfaced with Mr. Daschle’s revelations that he had to pay back taxes for a car service provided by a firm he worked for and on income for consulting work. While praising Mr. Daschle as someone who would be an “invaluable” partner in the pursuit of health care reform, Mr. Baucus said:

As indicated by news reports over the weekend, the Senate Finance Committee has been reviewing a number of issues with regard to Senator Daschle’s nomination as part of our vetting process. As with every nominee, all issues raised will be considered carefully and thoroughly by the Finance Committee in the coming days. The Committee will meet this afternoon to discuss the findings of this vetting process and next steps, and I will comment further once I’ve had a chance to hear my fellow senators’ thoughts. We will also make public the information discovered and reviewed in the vetting process.

“I have applauded Senator Daschle’s nomination to the post of H.H.S. Secretary, and my faith in his dedication and qualifications has only been bolstered in recent weeks by our numerous conversations about the pressing need for comprehensive health care reform. The ability to advance meaningful health reform is my top priority in confirming a Secretary of Health and Human Services, and I remain convinced that Senator Daschle would be an invaluable and expert partner in this effort. I am eager to move forward together.”

Earlier, Mr. Daschle had sent a letter expressing his apologies to the committee for the tax issues. A confirmation hearing by the Finance Committee had been snagged over an examination of the tax problems. While Senate Democratic leaders have expressed confidence that Mr. Daschle will ultimately be confirmed, especially in light of his longtime ties to the Senate, Republican leaders and some critics have pointed to the fact that Mr. Daschle is the second nominee to be confronted over personal tax issues. Senate confirmation of Timothy Geithner, the new Treasury Secretary, also had been delayed because of his failure to pay taxes on certain income.

In the years since Mr. Daschle was defeated in 2004 by John Thune, Republican from South Dakota, the top Democrat has earned a sizable income in the private sector as a policy adviser to various companies. The Times’s David Kirkpatrick examined the relationships Mr. Daschle built upon — and the income he amassed — since his departure from the Senate.

Creepy, don't you think? How about official portrait in Times Square? With a running message along the bottom, something like "the end of the world is nigh"
Melding Obama’s Web to a YouTube Presidency
NYTIMES
By JIM RUTENBERG and ADAM NAGOURNEY
January 26, 2009

WASHINGTON — Lyle McIntosh gave everything he could to Barack Obama’s Iowa campaign. He helped oversee an army that knocked on doors, distributed fliers and held neighborhood meetings to rally support for Mr. Obama, all the while juggling the demands of his soybean and corn farm.

Asked last week if he and others like him were ready to go all-out again, this time to help President Obama push his White House agenda, Mr. McIntosh paused.

“It’s almost like a football season or a basketball season — you go as hard as you can and then you’ve got to take a breather between the seasons,” he said, noting he found it hard to go full-bore during the general election.

Mr. McIntosh’s uncertainty suggests just one of the many obstacles the White House faces as it tries to accomplish what aides say is one of their most important goals: transforming the YouTubing-Facebooking-texting-Twittering grass-roots organization that put Mr. Obama in the White House into an instrument of government. That is something that Mr. Obama, who began his career as a community organizer, told aides was a top priority, even before he was elected.

His aides — including his campaign manager — have created a group, Organizing for America, to redirect the campaign machinery in the service of broad changes in health care and environmental and fiscal policy. They envision an army of supporters talking, sending e-mail and texting to friends and neighbors as they try to mold public opinion.

The organization will be housed in the Democratic National Committee, rather than at the White House. But the idea behind it — that the traditional ways of communicating with and motivating voters are giving way to new channels built around social networking — is also very evident in the White House’s media strategy.

Like George W. Bush before him, Mr. Obama is trying to bypass the mainstream news media and take messages straight to the public.

The most prominent example of the new strategy is his weekly address to the nation — what under previous presidents was a speech recorded for and released to radio stations on Saturday mornings. Mr. Obama instead records a video, which on Saturday he posted on the White House Web site and on YouTube; in it, he explained what he wanted to accomplish with the $825 billion economic stimulus plan working its way through Congress. By late Sunday afternoon, it had been viewed more than 600,000 times on YouTube.

The White House also faces legal limitations in terms of what it can do. Perhaps most notably, it cannot use a 13-million-person e-mail list that Mr. Obama’s team developed because it was compiled for political purposes. That is an important reason Mr. Obama has decided to build a new organization within the Democratic Party, which does not have similar restrictions.

Still, after months of discussion, aides said the whole approach remained a work in progress, even after Friday, when the organizers e-mailed a link to a video to those 13 million people announcing the creation of Organizing for America. Mr. Obama’s aides know they have a huge resource to harness, but fundamental questions remain about how it will run and precisely what organizers are hoping to accomplish.

“This has obviously never been undertaken before,” David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager and one of the organizers of this effort, said in the video sent to supporters. “So it’s going to be a little trial and error.”

Even with that video, in addition to one sent earlier in the president’s name, the organization does not have a fully developed Web site, evidence, some of Mr. Obama’s advisers said, of just how murky the mission is.

Mr. Plouffe said the group had not settled on a budget or begun serious fund-raising. The goal is to have a relatively small staff, with representatives in most, if not every, state, and to make up any shortfall in personnel with the use of technology.

There is a clear interest in keeping the Internet-based political machinery that made Mr. Obama’s brand so iconic and that helped him raise record amounts. The new group’s initials, O.F.A., conveniently also apply to his Obama for America campaign. And the desire for the Obama organization to live on was voiced in a meeting of organizers in Chicago after Election Day, and echoed at 4,800 house meetings in December and in a survey completed by 500,000 Obama supporters.

Still, sensitive to ruffling feathers even among fellow Democrats wary of Mr. Obama’s huge political support, Mr. Obama’s aides emphasized that the effort was not created to lobby directly or pressure members of Congress to support Mr. Obama’s programs.

“This is not a political campaign,” Mr. Plouffe said. “This is not a ‘call or e-mail your member of Congress’ organization.”

Instead, Mr. Plouffe said the aim was to work through influential people in various communities as a way of building public opinion.

“So it’s: ‘Here’s the president’s speech today on the economy. Here are some talking points,’ ” he said. “This was a very under-appreciated part of our campaign. If someone who has never been involved in politics before — or is an independent or a Republican — makes this case with their circle of people, that has more impact.”

The operation is being run from borrowed desks on the third floor of the D.N.C. headquarters on Capitol Hill, led by organizers chosen, Mr. Plouffe said, because of skills they demonstrated during the campaign. The head of the group is Mitch Stewart, a low-key operative who helped run Mr. Obama’s effort in three critical states — Iowa and Indiana in the primary season and Virginia in the general election. Another important person in the operation is Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the new executive director of the Democratic National Committee, who was the battleground states director for Mr. Obama in his campaign.

And there will be clear coordination between this independent operation at the Democratic National Committee and a communications arm being set up at the White House, under Macon Phillips, the “new media” director for Mr. Obama’s administration.

Mr. Phillips was an Internet strategist with Blue State Digital, a private firm closely tied to Mr. Obama’s campaign. His team signaled the new direction Mr. Obama is bringing with a redesigned White House Web site that was introduced shortly after Mr. Obama was sworn in and is modeled after his campaign site. It will be continually updated to add presidential orders and blog postings that make the case for administration policy, often echoed by talking points that Organizing for America is sending to supporters.

In an interview, Mr. Phillips, 30, said the site would give the White House another way to reach the public without having to rely on the mainstream news media.

“Historically the media has been able to draw out a lot of information and characterize it for people,” he said. “And there’s a growing appetite from people to do it themselves.”

The approach is causing some concern among news media advocates, who express discomfort with what effectively could become an informational network reaching 13 million people, or more, with an unchallenged, governmental point of view.

“They’re beginning to create their own journalism, their own description of events of the day, but it’s not an independent voice making that description,” said Bill Kovach, the chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. “It’s troublesome until we know how it’s going to be used and the degree to which it can be used on behalf of the people, and not on behalf of only one point of view.”

The undertaking will require Mr. Obama’s aides to wedge technology that worked for them in the campaign into the infrastructure of the White House, with its relatively older technology and security restrictions. Where Mr. Obama’s campaign was free to use Facebook, instant messaging and Twitter, among other forms of communication, the White House faces more constraints. With every note part of the historical record, and new scrutiny on every communication, staff members are unable to access public instant messaging accounts and social networking sites from their desks.

The administration’s Web team has a YouTube channel, but it is already exhibiting the dangers for a White House in the Wild West of the Internet: a page showing Mr. Obama’s inauguration address is littered with offensive commentary from users.

In campaigns, candidates control multimillion-dollar advertising budgets and organizations in 50 states. When they take office, they have had to put their own stamp on existing party organizations, and to rely largely on the news media to communicate with the public. Though he comes to the task with the advantage of a team that proved innovative in using technology and communications advances to reshape electoral politics, Mr. Obama’s challenge is not totally different from the one that faced his predecessors.

“The problem that you have is, you come off a campaign — where there is an infrastructure and a director in every state — and then you have nothing,” said Sara Taylor, a White House political director for Mr. Bush. “You have allied organizations, but they don’t report to you, so you’re relying on allies to be supportive when you don’t have control of those organizations.”

Mr. Obama’s aides acknowledged that after two long years there were also some concerns about “list fatigue.” Mr. Obama, the party and the inaugural committee have reached out to his supporters on the e-mail list so frequently — for money, for input, for help in persuading their neighbors to vote — that some want to give it a rest before cranking it up again.

Even some of Mr. Obama’s most enthusiastic foot soldiers understand the sentiment.

“It’s kind of like we’re spent right now,” said Dr. Robert Gitchell, who campaigned for Mr. Obama in Ames, Iowa. But, “once that fire is lit” in supporters, he said, “it’s easy to trigger them all again.”

Hail to the Faux Chief We Have Chosen as Rehearsal Stand-In
NYTIMES
By MARK LEIBOVICH
January 12, 2009

WASHINGTON — Politics and governance in Washington can sometimes seem like one big cast of characters play-acting prescribed roles and going through the paces. Sunday morning was such a time.

Someone who looked a little bit like Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th president at the United States Capitol. The tall black male delivered a brief inaugural address and then headlined an inaugural parade that ended at his new home, the White House. In fact, it was not really Barack Obama. It was only a stand-in — Staff Sgt. Derrick Brooks of the Army — who played the incoming president in an inaugural rehearsal that took over large areas around the Capitol and the White House for a few hours. The spectacle felt both momentous and kind of weird.

Still, from a distance, it had the look and feel of the real thing: amplified speeches and announcements could be heard several blocks away, honor guards and color guards and processions of dignitaries (or stand-ins thereof) assembled along the western end of the Capitol. The (actual) Marine Band showed up to play “Hail to the Chief” to honor the (fake) new president. Several hundred onlookers, reporters and photographers braved frigid predawn temperatures for the chance to get a lot closer to the faux action than they probably will for the real thing on Jan. 20.

“I’m just honored to be part of this historic event,” said Mr. Obama’s stand-in, Sergeant Brooks, who met a large contingent from the (real) news media a few blocks from the White House after he finished riding in the parade with the stand-in for his wife, Michelle (played by Petty Officer First Class LaSean McCray of the Navy). Sergeant Brooks is 26, well below the legal age of 35 to be president, but there are apparently no age requirements to be the presidential stand-in (or Faux-Bama).

Sergeant Brooks’s principal qualification to play Mr. Obama was that he bore a rough resemblance to the real thing: he stands 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds and thus fills the basic spatial parameters for lighting and camera-angle purposes — the main reason for the rehearsal, organizers said.

“The purpose today is to work through the issues, to make sure we get the logistics right,” said Howard Gantman, staff director for the Senate Rules Committee, who helps to oversee inaugural operations at the Capitol.

There were stand-ins for pretty much everyone, identified by big signs around their necks. Shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday, the stand-in for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered the oath of office to Mr. Faux-Bama, who was flanked by the faux Michelle and stand-ins for daughters Malia and Sasha (played by the children of military personnel).

Mr. Faux-Bama’s entire inaugural speech consisted of six words: “My fellow Americans,” he said. “God bless America.”

When he was announced as the president of the United States for the first time, Mr. Faux-Bama was given an ovation from clusters of people who looked on from the Capitol grounds and the mall. Rehearsal organizers said they had recruited stand-ins through a mass e-mail message to assorted military personnel. They asked for heights and weights and sought people who wanted to do something different. Several stand-ins for lower-profile players (“Outer Platform Hotel Guest”) were culled extemporaneously on Sunday.

“We’ve been doing a lot of standing around, waiting in holding rooms,” said one stand-in, wearing a “Bush Daughter #1” sign inside the Capitol. That would make her Barbara Bush, said the stand-in (played by a Capitol Hill worker, Jamie Sims), who was much more willing to talk to the press than either of the real Bush daughters has been. A few minutes earlier, the stand-ins for the faux first daughter’s faux parents — President Bush (played by Sgt. Bruce Cobbeldick of the Army) and his wife, Laura (played by Petty Officer Second Class Barbara Riani of the Navy) — had descended the east steps of the Capitol and approached a waiting helicopter to ferry them out of Washington.

The faux Bushes did not actually board the helicopter, but it took off anyway.

More than 3,000 people marched in the parade run-through, most of them from the military (roughly three times that number is expected in the real parade). Mr. and Mrs. Faux-Bama rode in the back of a black sport utility vehicle, waving to sporadic gatherings along the route. They emerged from their vehicle at the Treasury, next to the White House, and walked the rest of the way.

Sergeant Brooks wore a full-length black jacket, black gloves and an Army beret while his stand-in wife, Petty Officer McCray, wore a shorter black coat, matching black gloves and a black-and-white Navy cap. They took directions from the choreographers as they walked (“stay together,” “wave a little more”). They acknowledged “congratulations” and “welcomes.” They sometimes held hands, sometimes did not. The drill ended shortly before noon.

Before meeting with reporters near the end of the parade route, the fake new first couple was formally introduced by a military public information officer.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the stand-ins for President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama,” the officer said, and the Faux-Bamas spoke briefly about how honored and proud they were.

Sergeant Brooks divulged that he met the real Barack Obama last week. “He said my ears aren’t as big as his,” reported Sergeant Brooks, who said he thoroughly enjoyed playing the president for a few hours.

“I think he did great,” gushed the faux Michelle, smiling off to his side.

JASON BLAIR REDUX - "ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS WE PRINT" DEPARTMENT...
22 December 2008 I-BBC

Caroline Kennedy is hoping to take over Hillary Clinton's Senate seat

NY Times admits to fake letter
The New York Times has said a letter purporting to be from the mayor of Paris that attacked Caroline Kennedy's bid for a Senate seat was a fake.

The letter, which was signed with the name of Bertrand Delanoe and printed in Monday's paper, called Ms Kennedy's bid "not very democratic" and "appalling".

The New York Times said it had failed to check whether the letter, which was sent by e-mail, was authentic.

It said it had expressed its regrets to Mr Delanoe's office in Paris.

The letter asked what title Ms Kennedy had to apply for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, who has been named secretary of state by US President-elect Barack Obama.

"We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model," the letter said.

"Can we speak of American decline?"

The New York Times said in a statement on its web site that the letter should never have been published.

"Doing so violated both our standards and our procedures in publishing signed letters from our readers," it said.

The newspaper said it was reviewing its procedures for verifying letters to avoid a repetition of the incident.

Judge tossed this try...
Ill. Sinks Deeper Into Chaos Over Scandal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:50 p.m. ET
December 12, 2008

CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois plunged deeper into turmoil Friday over disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich as the attorney general asked the state's highest court to strip the governor of his powers, billions of dollars in bills went unpaid and lawmakers moved closer to impeaching the scandal-plagued politician.

But Blagojevich showed no sign of backing down. He took time to pray with ministers at his home and signed a bill that extends insurance coverage for autistic kids, sending a sign to his critics that he's still in charge. In the midst of it all, the state headed toward an extraordinary constitutional showdown. Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked the Supreme Court to declare Blagojevich unfit to serve, likening his corruption scandal to a debilitating illness as she ramped up pressure on the governor to resign. The move seeks to hand power over to the lieutenant governor.

''I recognize that this is an extraordinary request, but these are extraordinary circumstances,'' Madigan said.

It is the first time in Illinois history that such an action was taken. The attorney general is applying a rule that was intended to cover cases in which a governor is incapacitated for health reasons. The Democrat is ''unable to serve as governor due to disability and should not rightfully continue to hold that office,'' according to the motion. ''His ability to provide effective leadership has been eliminated, and the state government is paralyzed.''

The attorney general, also a Democrat, asked the court to strip the governor of his duties until possible impeachment proceedings and his criminal case run their course. If he does not step down and is not impeached or convicted, Blagojevich could go to the court and ask to be reinstated. The scandal has also begun to impede state business, Madigan said.

Illinois has billions of dollars in unpaid bills, including payments to Medicaid patients, hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and schools, and the state has approved $1.4 billion in short-term borrowing to keep cash flowing. But before the borrowing takes effect, Madigan said she has to certify that there is not any legal proceeding threatening the ability of the governor to hold his office. In light of Friday's filing by her office, Madigan said she can't sign that.

''We will not be able to move forward on it until we have a different governor,'' Comptroller Dan Hynes said.

The state's inability to pay the bills has ''a horrible ripple effect,'' the comptroller said. He said that pharmacies that count on state reimbursements could shut down, and suppliers could stop delivering food to Illinois prisons or letting state troopers buy gasoline. Businesses waiting for the state to pay its bills could lay off workers or simply go bankrupt, Hynes said.

''If our backlog gets worse, people are going to stop providing services,'' he said.

Blagojevich has rebuffed calls to resign after prosecutors accused him of a litany of corruption allegations, including putting President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat up for sale, strong-arming the owners of the Chicago Cubs and threatening to withhold millions of dollars from a children's hospital. Blagojevich began the day praying with several ministers in his home before heading to his office, telling them he is innocent and will be vindicated ''when you hear each chapter completely written,'' according to one of the pastors.

The Rev. Ira Acree said Blagojevich would not discuss details of the allegations against him. He said the governor discussed trying to get a legal and political consultation team in place, but feels as if everything is closing in on him and that he's not getting ''any space or chance to sort anything out.''

''I look at it like this: Everybody that's hurting needs hope, and the family needs hope, and that's what our jobs are as pastors,'' said the Rev. Steve Jones, one of the pastors. ''Nobody should be left hopeless. Nobody, no matter what the circumstances.''

Within a few hours after arriving at work, Blagojevich took his first official action as governor since the scandal broke, signing the autistic health care bill.

''Families of children with autism have a right to access the treatment their children need and today that has finally become a reality in Illinois,'' the governor said. ''I have continued to fight for this cause, and I am pleased to sign this bill into law today.''

Spokesman Lucio Guerrero said the governor has concerned himself with bills that are time sensitive, like Friday's autism measure.

''He wants to show that he's still the governor and still has the authority and responsibility to sign into law important pieces of legislation,'' Guerrero said.

Blagojevich's attorney said the governor also stopped at the federal courthouse for several minutes Friday to complete pretrial paperwork that is required of all defendants. As he left his office, Blagojevich refused to answer questions from reporters, saying only, ''I'll have a lot to say at the appropriate time.''

The fallout over the scandal resumed Friday as John Harris, the governor's chief of staff, resigned. He was arrested with his boss on corruption charges. Harris attorney Jim Sotos said his client resigned ''because it was the right thing to do, and that's all I'm going to say.''

The taint of the scandal followed Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. for a third straight day. A report in the Chicago Tribune said businessmen with ties to the governor and the congressmen discussed raising $1 million for Blagojevich to get him to appoint Jackson to Obama's seat. Jackson flatly denied any wrongdoing. ''It is unfortunate that every appearance the governor makes and meeting he has taints everyone in attendance,'' Jackson said.

In Washington, people who have been briefed on the Illinois governor corruption investigation said Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is not a target of the probe. Emanuel has refused to answer questions about whether he's the ''president-elect adviser'' referred to in the criminal complaint that accuses Blagojevich of putting Obama's Senate seat up for sale. The complaint does not say that Blagojevich ever spoke to the unidentified Obama adviser about the Senate seat.

Blagojevich faced a growing threat of impeachment when lawmakers gather Monday in Springfield. Because that process could take several weeks, Madigan said she felt compelled to go to the Supreme Court to deal with the Blagojevich matter in quicker fashion. Illinois Supreme Court spokesman Joseph Tybor wouldn't comment on when the court might act on Madigan's motion, saying only that it ''will be properly considered.''

The decision to go to the state's highest court was not welcomed by everyone. Democratic Rep. Jack Franks said it would set ''a dangerous precedent'' for the court to remove a governor as proposed by Madigan, who is a likely candidate for governor in 2010. Franks, a fierce Blagojevich critic, said that kind of decision should be left to the General Assembly.

''That's our job, and we should be doing it,'' he said.

Lawmakers also continued their preparations to meet Monday and consider setting up a special election to fill Obama's former Senate seat. Republican Sen. Christine Radogno said a draft of the legislation calls for the primary and general elections to be held in conjunction with municipal elections on Feb. 24 and April 7.

The Heart of Blago: It’s useful to remember that most politicians have an inner Blagojevich.
National Review
By Rich Lowry
December 12, 2008

When Franklin Roosevelt was pounding on the evils of business at the height of the New Deal, the great economist John Maynard Keynes tried to pull him back: “It is a mistake to think businessmen are more immoral than politicians.”

At a time when the titans of American finance have become synonymous in the public mind with recklessness and greed, here comes Illinois governor Rod (F***ing) Blagojevich to confirm Keynes’ long-ago wisdom. His contribution to the contemporary political lexicon is to have made the unnamed, numerated potential U.S. Senate appointees in the complaint against him sound as dirty as the unnamed johns in the Eliot Spitzer case — is it worse to be Senate Candidate 5 or Client 9?

Blagojevich’s greed wasn’t just open and ham-fisted, it was remarkably petty — one scheme he discussed was selling Obama’s Senate seat for a mere $150,000 annual salary for his wife on a corporate board. If that’s all Blagojevich could get for a coveted Senate seat, he wasn’t even very good at corruption.

The sins of Blagojevich obviously don’t taint all politicians, most of whom honorably discharge their duties. But it should tell us at least a little something about the breed that such a monumentally stupid, arrogant, and boorish man was quite adept at his craft, getting elected three times to Congress from Chicago and elected governor twice.

That he was from Chicago was key. The city has never had a reform movement that has overturned the old-school, ethnic-based machine politics. It used to be said that Chicago was the only East European city governed by Irishmen. Its politics became more open by cutting new groups into the loot. Blagojevich’s conversations were probably most spectacular for having been caught on tape, not for their F-bomb-laden, grossly self-interested nature.

All of this would represent a threat to Obama only if his team were caught up in deal-making with Blagojevich. Obama denies it, and Blagojevich cursed Obama for offering nothing but “appreciation” in return for offering to appoint his favored candidate, Obama’s long-term aide Valerie Jarrett. But the scandal is a reminder of the dirty Chicago political ether through which Obama rose without a trace — never challenging the corruption — in the course of a career notionally devoted to reforming politics.

One of the most intriguing questions about Obama in the mess is, “What made him think Valerie Jarrett was qualified to be appointed to the U.S. Senate?” Besides working for Obama, Jarrett’s most notable substantive accomplishment was managing federally subsidized slum property in Chicago, in which line of work her extensive connections served her well.

Obama clearly wanted to reward a friend. Hey, that’s how politics works, even among demi-messianic figures promising to raise us all above selfishness. It’ll be interesting how the natural transactional aspect of politics is distinguished in the Blagojevich case from rank criminality. Was it a crime for Senate Candidate 5, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., allegedly to offer to raise $500,000 for Blagojevich in exchange for the Senate appointment, or just an overly explicit act of normal horse-trading?

If Blagojevich’s instinct for enrichment rose to criminality, it’s hardly unusual. Even the most impeccably liberal scourges of greed manage to get rich quickly after public life. In a two-and-a-half-year period between working in Clinton’s White House and running for Congress, Barack Obama’s new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, made $16.2 million in investment banking at the small firm of Wasserstein Perella. All it took, surely, was hard work, a little luck — and knowing Clinton fundraiser and Wall Street mogul Bruce Wasserstein.

As the debate over private-sector excess and greed continues, it’s useful to remember most politicians have an inner Blagojevich — because they are just as human as the private malefactors they denounce. To paraphrase the late Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil doesn’t run between the public and private sector but “through the heart of every man.” Especially in Chicago.

— Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review

Did Obama team have contact with Ill. governor?
DAY
By RICHARD T. PIENCIAK, Associated Press Writer
Posted on Dec 12, 9:45 AM EST

CHICAGO (AP) -- Barack Obama insists he didn't have any contact with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich or anyone else who might have been scheming to sell the president-elect's U.S. Senate seat. But he has not yet given his transition staff the same clean bill of health - perhaps with good reason.

An examination of the FBI complaint against Blagojevich and the days immediately following Obama's historic election victory suggests the governor was highly interested in Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett as a potential Senate appointee, albeit with a steep price tag. The 76-page complaint contains multiple references to "Senate Candidate 1," whose description clearly fits Jarrett, a former finance chief for Obama's earlier campaigns and incoming senior White House adviser.

In secretly recorded conversations, the Democratic governor said he'd be willing to appoint Jarrett - Obama's supposed favorite to replace him - in return for a high-paying job at a national union organization called Change to Win.

At a news conference Thursday, Obama said his office was assembling any information about possible contacts "between the transition office and the governor's office," and that he intended to release any such detail in the next few days.

"But what I'm absolutely certain about is that our office had no involvement in any dealmaking around my Senate seat," Obama said. "That I'm absolutely certain of."

It remained unclear whether anyone on Obama's team had been in contact with Blagojevich or his associates regarding the Senate seat. According to the complaint, Blagojevich met Nov. 5 with an official of the Service Employees International Union-Local 1 who is believed to be Tom Balanoff, a longtime Obama supporter who spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Blagojevich "understood" that the SEIU official was "an emissary to discuss Senate Candidate 1's interest" in the Senate seat. Though just a day after the election, media reports had already identified Jarrett as being interested in the job. SEIU officials released a statement Thursday saying the organization had been in contact with the U.S. attorney's office and had no reason to believe the union or any union official had been involved in misconduct. The statement said the union, and specifically Balanoff, were "fully cooperating" with the probe.

During a Nov. 5 call, Blagojevich said the Senate appointment was a thing of value, something not given away "for nothing."

Two days later, Blagojevich allegedly suggested he'd be willing to "trade" the Senate seat to Jarrett in exchange for the Health and Human Services secretary's job. He repeated that desire during a separate, three-way call involved Blagojevich, Chief of Staff John Harris and someone identified only as "Advisor B," a Washington-based consultant. Harris noted that Blagojevich also would consider being appointed to a high-paying position at Change to Win and that Balanoff, who declined numerous requests for an interview with The Associated Press, could guarantee the appointment.

In return, Obama would be expected to help Change to Win with its legislative agenda on a national level, said Harris, according to the criminal complaint.

As the FBI listened in, Harris suggested the three-way deal would give Obama "a buffer so there is no obvious quid pro quo" regarding Jarrett. And "Adviser B" said "they should leverage the President-elect's desire to have Senate Candidate 1 appointed to the Senate seat" in exchange for a big job at Change to Win. On Nov. 10, Blagojevich, his wife, Harris, the governor's chief counsel William R. Quinlan and several Washington-based advisers conducted an extraordinary two-hour conference call.

Blagojevich conceded he probably wouldn't get the HHS job or an ambassadorship because of so much negative publicity surrounding him. Using several expletives, Blagojevich said he was reluctant to give Obama "his senator" without anything in return; he said he'd appoint a deputy governor before giving the job to Candidate 1. He also considered appointing himself to the job to avoid impeachment.

During the next 36 hours, the governor grew angry and suggested Obama's camp was not interested in making a deal.

"They're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. (Expletive) them," Blagojevich told Harris in an intercepted call Nov. 11. The men talked about alternative candidates and perhaps starting a nonprofit organization that could possibly be funded by a wealthy Obama supporter, perhaps Warren Buffett. Asked Thursday why the governor might have believed the Obama camp wasn't going to cooperate, Obama refused to speculate.

"I can't presume to know what was in the mind of the governor during this process," he said. "All I can do is read what was in the transcripts, like the rest of you have read it, and shake my head."

On Nov. 12, major news organizations, including the AP, quoted sources as saying Jarrett was not interested in the Senate seat. The Chicago Tribune said it had received an e-mail from Jarrett declaring, "I am not interested in the Senate seat."

But as the day wore on, Blagojevich continued to discuss the possibility of appointing "Senate Candidate 1" in a series of calls; Blagojevich would stay on as governor and ostensibly run the nonprofit. "Adviser B" told the governor he liked the Change to Win job best because "from the President-elect's perspective, there would be fewer `fingerprints'" because the union organization was already in existence and fully funded.

During one of the calls, Blagojevich informed the union official - believed to be Balanoff - that he'd heard Obama now wanted other candidates considered. Balanoff said he would find out if "Senate Candidate 1" wanted to keep pushing for the Senate seat. In an appearance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on Thursday, David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said Obama had intended from the start to have Jarrett in the White House, and that Jarrett withdrew from Senate contention once Obama made his feelings known.

"Valerie Jarrett is a longtime friend, adviser, very able person, and his preference was always that she serve in the White House, and ultimately he expressed that to her," The New York Times quoted Axelrod as saying. "That's why she made the decision. No one in their wildest imagination could have imagined the situation that ensued."

The discussion during a Nov. 13 call between the governor and "Adviser A" made it clear Blagojevich wanted a deal from Obama whether his pick was Jarrett or someone else, according to the complaint. And in subsequent recorded conversations, the governor indeed moved on to other possible candidates, including Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. On Nov. 15, Obama announced the appointment of Jarrett as one of his key advisers. And yet nine days later, Blagojevich may not have given up on the idea that Jarrett was still his way to cash in: According to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., he spoke to the governor about Jarrett on Nov. 24.

"The governor asked me, `What about Valerie Jarrett? Do you think she's serious?'" Durbin said, an apparent reference to her withdrawal from consideration.

"I said, `Yes, I talked to her. She said she doesn't want this. She's going to stick with Obama,'" Durbin said.

Report: Jackson backers sought cash for Ill. gov.
DAY
Information from: Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com
Posted on Dec 12, 8:42 AM EST

CHICAGO (AP) -- Businessmen with ties to both Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson discussed raising $1 million for Blagojevich to help persuade him to appoint Jackson to President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat, according to a published report.

Citing unnamed sources, the Chicago Tribune reports in a story for Friday's editions that businessman Raghuveer Nayak and Blagojevich aide Rajinder Bedi told attendees at an Oct. 31 meeting that they needed to raise the money for the governor to ensure Jackson's appointment.

"Raghu said he needed to raise a million for Rod to make sure Jesse got the seat," an unidentified source who attended the meeting told the Tribune. Blagojevich also attended the meeting, which was sponsored by Nayak, an Oak Brook businessman.

A message left at a listing for Raghuveer Nayak in Oak Brook was not immediately returned early Friday. No published listing for Bedi could be found.

Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on federal corruption charges that allege, among other things, a brazen scheme to put Obama's vacant Senate seat up for sale.

According to the FBI complaint, the Oct. 31 meeting took place the same day federal prosecutors intercepted a conversation in which Blagojevich claims he'd been approached by a representative for an unnamed "Senate Candidate 5" who offered cash in exchange for the Senate seat.

On Wednesday, it was revealed that Jackson was the candidate.

"We were approached 'pay to play,'" Blagojevich said in the call. The candidate would raise $500,000 for Blagojevich, and an emissary would raise an additional $1 million, according to the conversation.

Jackson spokesman Rick Bryant told the Tribune that while Jackson discussed the Senate seat with Nayak, he never asked him to do anything.

Nayak, 54, has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Blagojevich and is also close to the Jackson family. Bedi has also been a Blagojevich fundraiser.

The Oct. 31 meeting led to a Blagojevich fundraiser held Saturday that was co-sponsored by Nayak. The governor attended, as did Jackson's brother Jonathan, who went into business with Nayak several years ago, according to the newspaper report.

Two days later, Jackson met with Blagojevich to discuss the Senate seat.

Man behind curtain is wizard of Rod, Rahm
Chicago Tribune online
John Kass, jskass@tribune.com
December 12, 2008

When it comes to being the guy behind the guy, there is no one more conspicuous than Rahm Emanuel. As chief of staff for President-elect Barack Obama, he's usually at Obama's news conferences, standing off to the side, glowering like some fiercely loyal mini-me. But Emanuel wasn't there Thursday when Obama faced reporters to answer questions about federal charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Dead Meat), accused of trying to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder.

"I have never spoken to the governor on this subject," Obama said. "I am confident that no representatives of mine would have any part of any deals related to this seat."

Wow. No staffers tried to make a deal for his Senate seat?

"I've asked my team to gather the facts of any contacts with the governor's office about this vacant seat, so that we can share them with you over the next few days," Obama said.

He could have just asked Emanuel, but he wasn't there, and reporters kept wondering, "Where's Rahm? Where's Rahm?" What they should have been asking is, "Where's Jimmy?"

As in state Sen. James DeLeo (D-How You Doin?)

DeLeo is an extremely powerful politician. You know this because he's hardly ever quoted in newspaper stories.

Emanuel and DeLeo have a relationship. Emanuel is the congressman from the 5th Congressional District, where DeLeo is the Democratic state central committeeman. What hasn't been reported on much is that Emanuel has not yet resigned from the House. And if you want to play politics in Jimmy's sandbox, you need his OK. DeLeo is also considered by some to be the real governor of Illinois. Blagojevich is the nutty guy who makes the speeches and gets the federal slap. They're so close that if Jimmy suddenly stopped walking, Rod would chip his teeth on the back of Jimmy's head.

It's reasonable to assume that if there's one fellow Rod would talk to about the Senate seat, it's Jimmy. And given their relationship, Jimmy could talk to Rahm. I'm not suggesting money was offered. There is nothing illegal about politicians horse-trading to fill seats. Only when such deals are monetized—as the governor is alleged to have done—is it illegal.

I'm just talking about putting political pieces on the board the Chicago Way. A vacant Senate seat and a soon-to-be vacant House seat in Illinois would be a package deal. Consider this mathematical equation: Jimmy/Rod + Jimmy/Rahm = Happy Rod, Jimmy and Rahm. Get it?

Before he became so powerful, Jimmy was a lowly traffic court bailiff making a measly $20,000 a year. Yet he was able to own shiny new Cadillacs, Jaguars and Mercedes, astounding federal agents, who in 1989 charged him with taking bribes to fix tickets in the Operation Greylord probe of judicial corruption.

Later, his former roommate told a federal grand jury that there was $35,000 in cash in their freezer, carefully wrapped in butcher paper so the bills wouldn't get freezer burn. But the roommate came to Jimmy's defense, saying the money was his, not Jimmy's, and that it came from the roommate's stolen-car business.

At Jimmy's trial, Outfit gambling boss Ken "Tokyo Joe" Eto emerged from the witness protection program to testify that he passed cash to Jimmy via handshakes. Eto had been hiding since Outfit hit men tried to kill him. They used cheap bullets, and three slugs failed to fully penetrate Eto's diamond-hard cranium. The jury didn't believe the feds. They believed Jimmy and acquitted him, so he rose to political prominence, and now Obama's chief of staff is the congressman in the district Jimmy controls.

Jimmy didn't return my call to his office, so we checked other joints. "DeLeo?" said Glenn, the manager at Carmine's. "I've never heard of the name. Who?"

At Tavern on Rush, a hostess said, "I haven't seen him today." A woman at Cafe Bionda simply said, "No, he's not here."

So I phoned the Excelsior Casino in Aruba, where Jimmy takes politicians to gamble, including Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White. I figured Jimmy might be there.

"Who's calling please?" asked a secretary in the office of Michael Posner, the casino boss who has Chicago connections.

Tell him John from Chicago is calling, I said. Posner picked up and was quite chirpy, for about three seconds, until he realized I was a newspaper guy.

"If you want to find him, call him yourself," Posner said. Click.

Later, Jimmy's attorney phoned, upset that I'd called all over looking for him. She told me that Jimmy had nothing to do with any deal for Rahm's seat or Obama's seat.

"The answer is no," said Jimmy's attorney. "No."

OK, but I'm still waiting to hear from Jimmy, so I can ask him about Rod and Rahm. I won't hold my breath. You never hear from the real guy behind the guy. That's how they remain the guy behind the guy.

Obama Says He Never Spoke to Governor on Senate Seat
NYTIMES
By JACK HEALY
December 12, 2008 - note that this is also the wrong date - the great, all-seeing TIMES had a vision? Or maybe a flashback to the Clinton quote "It all depends on what the definition of is is"

President-elect Barack Obama said on Thursday that he never spoke to the governor of Illinois about Mr. Obama’s replacement in the United States Senate, and that no one on his staff had been involved in any deal-making regarding Mr. Obama’s successor.

“That would be a violation of everything that this campaign has been about,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Chicago which was called to announce an appointment to his Cabinet.

In his first extended comments on the unfolding political scandal, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and disappointed” by the details of a complaint filed by federal prosecutors, who have accused the governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, of trying to profit from his power to choose Mr. Obama’s successor. Mr. Obama also restated his call for the governor to resign.

“I think the public trust has been violated,” Mr. Obama said. “I hope that the governor comes to the conclusion that he can no longer effectively serve and that he does resign.”

Mr. Obama said he was compiling information on any possible contacts between his transition team and members of Mr. Blagojevich’s staff. “I want to gather all the facts about any staff contact that may have taken place. We’ll have those in the next few days and we’ll present them.”

He added, “Our office had no involvement in any deal-making around my Senate seat — that, I’m absolutely certain of.” Mr. Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on charges that included trying to cash in on his power to name Mr. Obama’s successor in the United States Senate. According to excerpts of transcripts of taped conversations provided by prosecutors, Mr. Blagojevich wanted to parlay his appointment power to secure an ambassadorship, a Cabinet position, a high-paying nonprofit job for himself or a lucrative spot on a corporate board for his wife.

The governor’s lawyer denied the charges, and Mr. Blagojevich returned to work to address the state’s $2 billion budget gap, a spokeswoman said.

Prosecutors have made a point of saying that Mr. Obama was not implicated in the investigation. Indeed, Mr. Blagojevich is quoted angrily cursing Mr. Obama and his staff in the criminal complaint, saying “they’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation,” according to prosecutors.

Still, for the past three days Mr. Obama and his transition team have been forced to distance themselves from a hometown political scandal, one that has shifted public focus away from Mr. Obama’s Cabinet appointments and plans for the new administration.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama made a brief appearance to discuss climate change with former Vice President Al Gore, but instead faced a barrage of questions about his ties to Mr. Blagojevich.

Mr. Obama said he was “saddened and sobered” by the accusations and told reporters he had not been in contact with the governor or Mr. Blagojevich’s staff. He declined to comment further.

But those comments contradicted an earlier statement by David Axelrod, a senior adviser, who told Fox News on Nov. 23 that Mr. Obama had spoken to Mr. Blagojevich about the Senate seat, and that “there are a whole range of names, many of which have surfaced.”

Late Tuesday, Mr. Axelrod issued a statement saying he had misspoken in his comments to Fox News, and said that Mr. Obama indeed had no contact with Mr. Blagojevich in the conversations over a replacement.

"About Town" has saved this article on the "faux news" page because...it may be just as accurate as the NYTIMES efforts produced by former employee at the upper left.
Officials Say Jackson Was ‘Candidate 5’ in Case
NYTIMES
By DAVID JOHNSTON
December 12, 2008 - a day ahead...it is actually this morning's news, the 11th!

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities on Wednesday identified Democratic Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois as the potential United States Senate candidate who was portrayed in court papers made public Tuesday as being the most deeply enmeshed in the alleged scheme by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to benefit from his appointment of a new senator to the seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

Mr. Jackson said in an interview with ABC News that he did not know whether he was the anonymous Candidate 5 mentioned by federal prosecutors in the affidavit supporting their criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich. He said that the prosecutors in Chicago told him he was not a target of the criminal inquiry. But he said they had asked him to answer questions about the selection process by Mr. Blagojevich to fill the seat.

Mr. Jackson, who has publicly sought the appointment, said he met with Mr. Blagojevich to discuss the job for the first time earlier this week, after not having spoken to him for more than four years. Mr. Jackson said he never authorized anyone to offer anything in return for the appointment. Mr. Jackson, the son of the civil rights leader, was first named by ABC News as the person identified in the criminal complaint as Candidate 5.

“It is impossible for someone on my behalf to have a conversation that would suggest any type of quid pro quo or any payments or offers,” Mr. Jackson said in comments broadcast by ABC News. “An impossibility to an absolute certainty.”

Federal prosecutors in Chicago would not discuss the identity of Candidate 5 and would not comment on whether Mr. Jackson would be interviewed in the case.

The identify of Candidate 5 has been a mystery since the filing of a legal complaint on Tuesday accusing Mr. Blagojevich and an aide of engaging in corruption and conspiracy, stemming in part from an alleged effort by the Governor to sell off Mr. Obama’s seat in return for campaign contributions and lucrative jobs for Mr. Blagojevich and his family.

Of the six candidates for the senate seat who are identified by number in the complaint, but not named, only Candidate 5 is said to have engaged in possible wrongdoing by engaging in discussions through an emissary about a possible quid pro quo with Mr. Blagovich’s camp. The emissary was also not identified by name.

According to the compliant, Mr. Blagojevich threatened to appoint Candidate 5 to the vacant post, rather than another candidate he thought Mr. Obama would prefer, if Mr. Obama would not help place Mr. Blagojevich’s wife “on paid corporate boards right now.”

The complaint also said that in a wiretapped conversation on Oct. 31, Mr. Blagojevich told an associate about an approach by the emissary from Candidate 5: “We were approached ‘pay to play.’ That you know, he’d raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made him [Senate Candidate 5] a senator.”

'All the news we hope to print'
DAY
By Verena Dobnik
Published on 11/13/2008

New York - Commuters nationwide found out during Wednesday's morning rush hour that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had ended and global warming, health care spending and the economy's problems were on their way to being solved.

On behalf of a collective of liberal activists, 1,000 volunteers across the country handed out 1.2 million copies of a spoof of The New York Times, dated July 4, 2009.

At first glance, the parody, which used the Times' Gothic-style font on the nameplate, could easily be mistaken for the real thing.

The 14-page paper - which also announced the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for chief executives and a recall for all gasoline-fueled cars - showed up in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

The pranksters - including a film promoter, a college teacher, journalists and others - said they wanted to encourage the administration of Democratic President-elect Barack Obama to keep its promises.

The publication was funded by small, online contributions “to maintain the pressure on the people we've elected so they do what we've elected them to do,” said a journalist using the pseudonym Wilfred Sassoon for the project because he wanted to protect his real job at a newspaper in the New York area.

He said he helped create the paper with about 30 other people, many of whom work at New York newspapers.

Steven Lambert, an editor of the parody who teaches art at Hunter College and Parsons The New School for Design - and gave his real name - said the project was a success.

”This really resonated with people on the street,” Lambert said. “First, there was a moment of, 'How could this be true?' But then people enjoyed this feeling of, 'Ah, amazing things really could happen!' The paper provides this vision of what's possible if we all work together.”

Lambert said the team included three New York Times staffers whose names will remain secret. He said the group looked into the legal issues raised by the use of The New York Times nameplate style and believes it is within the bounds of what's known as “fair use” under federal copyright law.

On the Times' Web site, spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said: “This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it.”

Sassoon said the project started about six months ago, when “a little group of journalists were sitting around having a beer.”

The group posted a small notice on Craigslist soliciting volunteer writers and others to help. The fake paper was printed at presses around the country and The Yes Men, a New York-based prankster group, provided software and Internet support.

The group said it spent less than $100,000 on the effort.

The lead story appears beneath the headlines “Iraq War Ends” and “Troops to Return Immediately.” Another story declares, “Nation Sets Its Sights on Building Sane Economy.”

The writers' political perspective is clear, from their twist on the Times' own motto “All the news that's fit to print” - “All the news we hope to print” - to a story that has former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitting the Bush administration knew well before the 2003 Iraq invasion that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

There are even fake ads, including one for a South African diamond company promising that a purchase of a diamond “will help fund the creation, fitting and maintenance of a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in one of the continent's brutal conflicts over diamonds.”

It's not the first time the venerable newspaper has been parodied.

One spoof came out during the 1978 newspaper strike and another on April Fools' Day in 1999. The second was printed by British business tycoon Sir Richard Branson and titled “I Can't Believe It's Not The New York Times.”

Times Co. Reports Loss of $74 Million
NYTIMES
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
April 22, 2009

The New York Times Company reported a first-quarter loss of $74.5 million on Tuesday, compared with a loss of $335,000 in the period a year ago, as it joined the roster of newspaper companies recording the steepest advertising declines in generations.

Advertising revenue at the company’s publishing segment fell 28.4 percent in the quarter, including an 8 percent decline in Internet advertising at the News Media Group. The worst drop, 31.6 percent, hit the New England Media Group, which consists primarily of The Boston Globe and its site, Boston.com. The company has told unions at The Globe that the paper is on track to lose $85 million this year, and that unless deep cuts are made, the paper will be sold or closed.

Internet businesses accounted for 12.8 percent of the company’s revenue compared with 11.1 percent in the first quarter a year ago.

Other publishers have seen similar declines in newspaper ad revenue in the first quarter, the sharpest drop since the Depression, and far worse than analysts predicted just a few months ago. The Times Company’s total revenue of $609 million, down 18.6 percent from $747.9 million in the first quarter a year ago, fell more than $20 million short of analysts’ projections.

Newspaper circulation revenue recorded a slight gain, following price increases. And the company’s About Group, a collection of Internet businesses that includes About.com, saw a 4.7 percent drop in revenue. In a statement, the chief executive, Janet L. Robinson, said that the company would fare better in the rest of 2009, in part because of aggressive cost-cutting. The company recently closed its City and Suburban distribution subsidiary, in addition to making cuts in its continuing operations.

“This quarter our operating costs declined 9.5 percent,” Ms. Robinson said. Excluding non-cash items and special charges like severance costs, she said, operating profit for the rest of the year “will improve relative to this quarter.”

She also signaled that the company was far ahead of the goal it set last year of cutting $230 million in annual expenses over the course of 2008 and 2009. “This year we plan to save more than $330 million in operating expenses,” she said.

The first quarter is traditionally weaker than the second for newspaper advertising, and this year the pre-Easter advertising fell in the second quarter, where it was in the first quarter last year.

The Times Company has taken several steps in recent months to shore up its position, including those at The Globe. It raised $225 million from a sale-leaseback of part of its headquarters building, and $250 million in a loan from Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecommunications billionaire who is a major shareholder. The company is also seeking to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team and related businesses. As part of the cost cutting, The Times recently announced plans to eliminate several weekly sections of the paper. In addition, the salaries of nonunion managers were cut 5 percent for the rest of the year, and members of the Newspaper Guild were asked to accept a similar cut.

On a per-share basis, the company’s first-quarter loss was 52 cents a share. Excluding one-time special items, the loss was 35 cents. That number is skewed somewhat by a tax anomaly and other factors, but it is clearly much worse than the average analyst’s prediction of 4 cents on a comparable basis.

New York Times Enters Talks With Lenders
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:18 p.m. ET
December 9, 2008

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York Times Co. said Tuesday it is in talks with lenders about debt payments coming due in the next two years, as the newspaper publisher struggles to weather continued declines in advertising sales.

The New York-based company says it will borrow up to $225 million against the value of its Manhattan headquarters to help repay debt due in May, and is evaluating assets for potential sale as it looks to boost liquidity.

''There is no doubt that 2009 will be among the most challenging years we have faced and more steps will be needed,'' New York Times Chief Executive Janet L. Robinson said Tuesday ahead of a media conference presentation.

The newspaper industry as a whole is facing hefty debt and declining ad sales as more readers flock to the Internet. On Monday, fellow media company Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy to cope with a crushing $13 billion in debt.

The Times has reported that total revenue dropped 9.4 percent in October compared with the same month a year ago. On Tuesday, Robinson said advertising trends declined further in November, particularly in the entertainment, real estate and automotive advertising categories.

In addition to its flagship newspaper, The New York Times Co. also owns The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and several regional newspapers.

Last month, the company slashed its quarterly dividend by 74 percent. The move is expected to save $98 million a year but will curtail the income of its controlling shareholders, the Sulzberger family, who together own about 19 percent of the company.

Chief Financial Officer James Follo said the company does not plan to fully replace its $400 million credit facility, which expires next year. He said New York Times is also looking at other financing alternatives, such as revolvers, public offerings or private placements to help meet its obligations.

Asset sales are are up for discussion, but Follo acknowledged that may be difficult in the current market and credit environment.

Analysts say rival Tribune -- which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and other dailies -- will almost certainly be forced to sell some of its major holdings, which could prove very difficult because of the bad economy and the poor outlook for newspapers.

Also Tuesday, the New York Times also updated its expense guidance. The company now expects depreciation and amortization costs will range between $140 million and $145 million in 2008 and between $135 million and $145 million in 2009.

The company forecasts roughly $140 million in capital expenditures this year, which includes about $22 million for its new headquarters. For 2009, the company expects capital spending will fall to about $80 million.

New York Times shares fell 50 cents, or 6.4 percent, to $7.35. The stock has lost 64 percent of its value since trading at a 52-week high of $21.14 in April.

Union Linked to Illinois Corruption Scandal
NYTIMES
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
December 11, 2008

The Service Employees International Union has long boasted that it is on the cutting edge of the labor movement. But it found itself badly embarrassed this week when it was linked by name to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s maneuvering to secure some financial gain from picking the next Senator from Illinois.

The federal criminal complaint filed against Mr. Blagojevich said his chief of staff, John Harris, had suggested to a service employees’ official that the union should help make the governor the head of Change to Win, the federation of seven unions that broke away form the A.F.L.-C.I.O. The complaint said Mr. Blagojevich was seeking a position that paid $250,000 to $300,000 a year.

In exchange, the complaint strongly suggested, the service employees union and Change to Win would help persuade Mr. Blagojevich to name Valerie Jarrett, President-elect Barack Obama’s first choice, as the state’s new senator. And the union would get help from the Obama administration, presumably for its legislative agenda.

Several union officials in Chicago and Washington said that service employees official approached by Mr. Harris was Tom Balanoff, the president of the union’s giant janitors’ local in Chicago and head of the union’s Illinois state council. Mr. Balanoff, one of the union officials closest to Mr. Obama, is widely seen as an aggressive, successful labor leader, who has helped unionize thousands of janitors not just in the Chicago area but also in Texas.

Reached by telephone on Tuesday, Mr. Balanoff said, “I can’t comment on anything right now.”

The Illinois branch of the service employees issued a statement on Wednesday night saying, “We have no reason to believe that S.E.I.U. or any S.E.I.U. official was involved in any misconduct.” It added that the union and Mr. Balanoff “are fully cooperating with the federal investigation.”

Greg Denier, Change to Win’s spokesman, said the federation “had no involvement, no discussion, no contact” with Mr. Blagojevich or his staff. “The idea of a position at Change to Win was totally an invention of the governor, and his stance has no basis in reality,” Mr. Denier said.

Mr. Denier noted that the presidency of Change to Win was an unsalaried position. The federation’s president, Anna Burger, is the service employees’ secretary treasurer and receives only her S.E.I.U. salary.

Service employee officials said that the criminal complaint does not allege that the unnamed “S.E.I.U. official” did anything wrong. All he did, they said, was listen to Mr. Blagojevich and his chief of staff and ferry some messages for them.

A senior service employees official who insisted on anonymity because prosecutors have asked union officials not to talk said his union was one of many that backed Mr. Blagojevich and has received favors from him. But he said that it was understandable that Mr. Blagojevich would ask the service employees for favor because it was so powerful and was seen as one of the union’s closest to Mr. Obama.

Patrick Gaspard, the former political director of the service employees’ huge New York health-care affiliate, 1199, was political director of Mr. Obama’s campaign.

If Mr. Blagojevich was going to approach a union to help land a cushy job after leaving the Illinois governorship, it probably made sense for him to approach the service employees, the nation’s fastest growing union.

With more than 1.8 million members nationwide, it is the largest union in Illinois, was an early and generous backer of his gubernatorial ambitions and received some important favors from him. In 2005, the governor issued an executive order that enabled the service employees to unionize 49,000 in-home child care providers who were paid through state and federal funds.

Afterward, the service employees negotiated a 39-month contract that raised the child-care providers daily rates by 35 percent on average and provided them with health coverage.

With Mr. Blagojevich evidently hoping to trade favors with President-elect Obama, the service employees seemed like a sensible intermediary because it was widely seen as doing more to elect Mr. Obama than any other union. The service employees’ political action committee spent at least $26 million on Mr. Obama’s behalf in this year’s presidential campaign, making it by far the largest single PAC donor in the campaign.

The service employees union was by far the top overall donor to Mr. Blagojevich’s 2006 re-election campaign, with records showing it donated more than $900,000, or about 5 percent of his total campaign funds.

Michelle Ringuette, a service employees’ spokeswoman, said the political contributions were unusual.

“Many unions make donations to political candidates,” she said, “in the interest of making sure we have elected officials who represent the interest of working families, men and women who get up and go to work every day.”

The service employees’ president, Andy Stern, is often seen as the nation’s most powerful union official, serving as both a dynamo and lightning rod for the labor movement. He led the schism from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and now he is seeking to lead an effort to persuade Mr. Obama to enact two major pieces of legislation in his first 100 days: universal health coverage and the Employee Free choice Act, a law that would make it far easier for workers to unionize.

Mr. Stern was embarrassed early this year when Tyrone Freeman, an official he appointed to run a large, home-care workers’ local in Los Angeles, was suspended and later banned for misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds. Mr. Freeman was found to have improperly directed union funds to his wedding, his wife’s company, even to membership in a private cigar club.

Mr. Stern has named a panel of experts to develop a tougher ethical code for the union.

How long did New York Times editors know of Kouwe’s story copying?
Greenwich TIME - CT POST
February 16, 2010 at 12:25 pm by Teri Buhl

UPDATE 3

The business media was shocked to see the New York Times issue a quasi apology to the Wall Street Journalyesterday over one of its Dealbook reporters, Zach Kouwe, copying story lines and not sourcing original reporting to other news publications. There was also mention that ‘other publications’ had fallen victim to story lifts by Kouwe and a note that the New York Times was investigating the situation. The New York Observer printed a copy of the letter from the WSJ editors to the NYT editors detailing the specific infractions.

But for some who had closely followed stories reported by Kouwe at the NYT’s online business blog, Dealbook, this was not so much of a shock. Examples of his copying other journalists’ reporting and sourcing it as his own went back to 2008 – a few month after he left the New York Post and started with NYT’s Dealbook.

On Dec. 26, 2008, an online publication covering the housing market, Mortgage Implode-O-Meter, published an exclusive news report that a group of financial services firms, led by Steven Mnuchin of Dune Capital, would be buying failed IndyMac Bank from the FDIC. IndyMac was one of the first large thrift banks to be seized by the FDIC at the start of the financial crisis.

A day later, Kouwe reported for the NYT’s Dealbook that Dune Capital was expected to buy IndyMac and added two other names of buyers, JC Flowers and John Paulson, to the story. Kouwe’s report did not credit Mortgage Implode-O-Meter for first breaking the fact that 1) a private equity group was buying IndyMac 2) Dune Capital was involved.

Wire services picked up the NYT’s story and the rest of the business press ended up sourcing Kouwe for breaking the news on the sale of IndyMac to a private equity group. Aaron Krowne, founder of the implode-o-meter sites, noted that an NYT follow could have added significant viewership to his niche business publication, and said that when the NY Times had followed previous exclusive news stories traffic increased to 300,000 viewers.

E-mails were sent to the NYT’s Andrew Ross Sorkin altering him of the news break on December 26th. Then to Kouwe on December 28th asking for an explanation on why Dealbook did not credit Mortgage Implode-O-Meter, when half a dozen other publications including the LA Times had. According to Dealbook’s Web site at the time, Sorkin was listed as Dealbook’s editor. Sorkin did not respond but Kouwe did. In a letter to the author of the story seen by Greenwich TimeKouwe wrote:

    I don’t know what to tell you. Things move so quickly on the Web that citing who had it first is something that is likely going away, especially in the age of blogs.

The New York Time Company corporate Web site states:

    Dealing With Competitors

    33. We compete zealously but deal with competitors openly and honestly. We do not invent obstacles to hamstring their efforts. When we first use facts originally reported by another news organization, we attribute them.

This last sentence seems to contradict what was actually the mindset of this NYT Dealbook reporter.

Kouwe also wrote:

    For instance Dealbreaker and other blogs report on a lot of stories, but I don’t think anybody has ever cited them as being first with a particular scoop. I’ve had it happen to me a bunch of times at The Post and it really didn’t bother me because most readers just don’t care. They don’t read bylines and they don’t care about whether one paper cited a website or another paper in their stories.

A few weeks later on January 12th, 2008 Dealbook followed a news report that had previously been reported first by online Wall Street publication Dealbreaker, but did not credit Dealbreaker for reporting the story or the memo first. The story centered on an internal memo talking about Citibank’s Smith Barney being merged with Morgan Stanley. According to people familiar with the situation, Dealbook was claiming the memo came from their sources, but after being presented with proof of the plagiarism, Dealbook backtracked and admitted the original report should be credited to Dealbreaker. In early 2009 Dealbook was not always adding bylines to its online stories, so it was not clear which writer was claiming he had originally sourced the story. Many of Dealbreaker’s loyal readers assumed it was Sorkin, but people familiar with the situation told Greenwich Time the Dealbook editors eventually admitted it was Kouwe.

Kouwe continued to report news throughout 2009 that had first appeared on Dealbreaker, such as hedge fund returns on assets, but no one was able to prove he didn’t get the documents sourced on his own. Dealbreaker readers continue to voice concerns on the publication’s comment section. In the age of fast-paced reporting on market-moving news, sources do chose to leak documents to multiple publications at about the same time. The question still unanswered is how much of Kouwe’s reporting was he really “borrowing” from the other publication, and did he violate journalistic ethics. Regarding how stories are sourced, it’s not like there are the independent journalism police out there to fine or take away your credentials. It’s a gray line that is often at the discretion of the publication.

When asked if Kouwe would remain on staff, a spokesperson for the New York Times told the Greenwich Time they don’t comment on personnel issues. According to people who spoke with Kouwe last night, he is telling friends he doesn’t think the NYT can afford to keep him on staff and assumes responsibility now for his actions. While this break in journalistic ethics might be considered the sole fault of the reporter who had a successful career of reporting on mergers and acquisitions at the New York Times and the New York Post, we beg to question how long did the Dealbook editors know about these problems before they took action?

UPDATE 2-16-10 4:40 pm

Jeff Bercovici of AOL’s dailyfinance.com is reporting that Kouwe has been suspended and a decision by NYT editors regarding if he will stay on staff could come this evening. Also the Greenwich Time can report that NY Times editors are currently reviewing emails that were used as part of this investigative report.

UPDATE 2-16-10 5:30pm

According to sources inside of the New York Times Dealbook team Kouwe will be fired within the hour.

UPDATE 2-16-10 9:00pm

Zach Kouwe gave the New York Observer an interview claiming he resigned along with a weak explanation of why he plagiarised other journalist. What is still not answered though is why he thought it was OK to violate NY Times policy that says reporters will source other publications that report facts first. Our sources inside the New York Times say he was fired and then offered a chance to resign to save face.

Editor’s note: This reporter has worked as a freelancer for New York Post, Dealbreaker, Trader Monthly, Housingwire, and the Implode-O-Meter publications. She is now a staff reporter for Hearst CT Newspapers.

Hartford Courant Competitors Seethe Over Web Site
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 4, 2009
Filed at 3:10 p.m. ET

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- After cutting its newsroom by half because of the recession and sagging advertising revenue, The Hartford Courant found a new source for news -- its competition -- and found itself in a plagiarism scandal.

The episode began this summer when The Tribune Co.-owned newspaper began summarizing or rewriting other newspapers' stories and putting them on the Courant Web site. The company defended that as a legitimate practice.

But its competitors and some journalism experts said it wasn't so innocent, because the Courant was using stories right from its own backyard rather than around the country.

''They can't afford to cover local news anymore,'' said Chris Powell, managing editor of the family-owned Journal Inquirer newspaper in nearby Manchester. It covers dozens of communities east of Hartford, producing stories about town budgets, school boards and other municipal functions while the Courant has closed bureaus in the area. ''People want local news, so they'll steal it from their competitors. I see it as nothing more than theft.''

Powell's newspaper, which makes news on its Web site available only to paid subscribers, complained to the Courant last week, and followed up with a Page 1 story. It pointed out that some stories the Courant posted from other newspapers on its Web site later appeared in print editions of the Courant with attribution stripped off, or changed to the Courant.

In Friday's newspaper, the Courant's CEO and publisher, Richard Graziano, acknowledged that the Courant had plagiarized its competitors. He apologized to readers in a note on the opinion page.

''We are taking corrective action to prevent it from happening again,'' Graziano wrote.

Graziano's apology appeared to be referring to the fact that online stories landed in the newspaper without proper attribution, and it's not clear whether the newspaper still plans to aggregate news from its competitors -- and give them credit -- online. Since the criticism of that practice emerged, the newspaper's Web site has ceased running such stories. But Courant executives did not return calls seeking comment about whether this was a permanent or temporary change.

Online aggregators, such as Google, Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, link to news from multiple sources. Many newspaper blogs do it, too. And some newspapers share material willingly, to help each other broaden their coverage.

But online aggregation can be controversial if the creators of the original material believe that the aggregator's summaries are thorough enough to dissuade readers from going to the source's own Web site. That loss of traffic can kill ad revenue.

For instance, in December, newspaper publisher GateHouse Media Inc. sued The New York Times Co. over The Boston Globe's practice of running headlines and lead sentences from GateHouse stories on its Web site. The case was settled before going to trial.

The resolution didn't settle the broader question of how much material blogs and news sites can grab from other sites when they also provide links to the original stories. The Associated Press has been an especially vocal critic of the way that some sites aggregate news without paying for it. The AP, a not-for-profit cooperative owned by newspapers, has sued some online aggregators and urged other sites to reduce how much AP content they reproduce, even when they link to the underlying material.

Tribune Co. has stood by the idea of aggregating content on its Web sites in Hartford and elsewhere. Tribune, which is operating under bankruptcy protection, also owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Sun of Baltimore and other newspapers and 23 TV stations.

''Aggregation is something that we are engaged in at all of our newspapers,'' Tribune spokesman Gary Weitman said. ''It is completely appropriate and enables us to provide a broad array of news stories to our readers, viewers and online users.''

The Courant, which won Pulitzer Prizes in 1992 and 1999 and prides itself on being the nation's longest continuously published daily newspaper, announced its Web aggregation plans in July. In a memo describing the role of the ''aggregation editor,'' Editor Naedine Hazell said the person would collect and rewrite other newspapers' content ''to broaden the news we offer readers online and in print.''

Since then, the Courant has posted numerous stories on its Web site that were based on material originally written by newspapers in Torrington, Bristol, New Britain, Waterbury, Stamford and other places. The stories appeared in the main news section of Courant.com, mixed in with articles that were reported by the newspaper's own staff.

In some cases, each paragraph of the story was attributed to the originating newspaper. At other times, the Courant has published just headlines and brief summaries on its Web pages, along with a link to the originating newspapers' Web sites.

Journalism professor Jerry Dunklee at Southern Connecticut State University said that even before the Web stories landed in print, the Courant was violating ethical and legal standards by aggregating local competitors' online material.

''When they cut back staff and take smaller newspapers' and radio stations' reporting, even if they identify the reporter and news organization ... they are still taking that material that they should be covering themselves,'' Dunklee said.

Tribune Company Seeks Bankruptcy Protection
NYTIMES
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
December 9, 2008

The Tribune Company, the newspaper and television chain that publishes The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday.

The move came less than a year after Samuel Zell, a Chicago real estate tycoon, took control of the Tribune chain and took on most of the $13 billion debt burden that now threatens to cripple it in the face of a sinking economy and a collapse in advertising.

Mr. Zell said the company had enough cash to continue operating its 12 newspapers, 23 television stations, national cable channel and assorted other media holdings, and the company insisted that the filing would have no effect on employees’ payroll and benefits, or on the vast majority of their retirement accounts.

But in light of its shrinking cash flow, Tribune decided to file for bankruptcy in a Delaware court, with the urging of some of its major creditors who met with Tribune representatives over the previous three days.

The recession and the shift of advertising to the Internet have hit newspapers with the sharpest drop in advertising revenue since the Depression — Tribune’s papers were down 19 percent in the third quarter — and some major newspapers have defaulted on debt or been put up for sale, with no takers. But Tribune’s problems were made significantly worse by the unusual $8.2 billion deal put together last year by Mr. Zell, which took the company private and nearly tripled its debt load, driving the company deeper into debt than any other major newspaper publisher.

The company has cut its staff and products, deeply and repeatedly, in an attempt to stay ahead of debt payments. In May, it also sold one of its most profitable newspapers, Newsday, to Cablevision for $650 million.

Tribune faces more than $900 million in interest payments over the next year, and a $512 million principal payment due in June.

Tribune filed under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which allows it to continue operating while negotiating with lenders to try and reduce its interest payments and possibly its debt.

The unusually heavy debt burden means Tribune’s bankruptcy is not a harbinger for the newspaper industry, said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. “He took on a huge amount of debt at just the wrong time,” he said of Mr. Zell.

The bankruptcy came together in just a few days, largely to protect the position of banks that hold the bulk of Tribune’s debt, according to people briefed on the talks between them, who were given anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Those banks hold Tribune’s senior secured loans — that is, the first in line to be paid in a bankruptcy — but the company also has junior debts, including a $69.55 million payment that was due on Monday.

On Friday, these people said, Mr. Zell called a meeting with the main senior creditors, including Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, and warned that continuing to pay the junior debt reduced the company’s ability to pay senior creditors later on. In meetings over the weekend, the banks reluctantly advised bankruptcy. The company said it did not make the $69.55 million payment on Monday.

In a note sent to Tribune employees, Mr. Zell cited the state of the industry and the economy, saying, “It has been, to say the least, the perfect storm,” which has made it “extremely difficult to support our debt.” But he did not refer to the role of last year’s deal in creating most of that debt.

The deal created an employee stock ownership plan, which bought all of Tribune’s stock and made the company tax-exempt. That made the employees the titular owners of the company, but they had no say in the matter and have no control over its management. They were promised the possibility of gaining access to their shares and cashing them in several years in the future, but in a bankruptcy, share values are often wiped out.

Mr. Zell, who put up just $315 million of the purchase price, gained control, and the right to buy as much as 40 percent of Tribune’s stock in the future.

A note on an internal Tribune Company Web site said, “All ongoing severance payments, deferred compensation and other payments to former employees have been discontinued and will be the subject of later proceedings before the court.” That made it apparent that employees who recently were laid off or took buyouts would join the long list of unsecured creditors.

James Gerstenzang, a reporter who left The Los Angeles Times’s bureau in Washington last month, said he was trying to figure out whether he was one of those people. He said he had just sent in the last paperwork to approve his expected buyout payment — 49 weeks of pay, after more than 24 years.

“What, I’m supposed to be shocked that Sam Zell isn’t keeping his word?” he asked. “This was their commitment and their credibility.”

A crucial part of Tribune’s strategy for surviving the next year has been to raise cash by selling the Chicago Cubs and its stadium, Wrigley Field, but that effort has been delayed. The company excluded the Cubs and the stadium from the bankruptcy filing, so that it could press ahead with a sale that it hopes will reap more than $1 billion.

The bankruptcy filing “will take pressure off our operations,” Mr. Zell said in a statement. “This restructuring focuses on our debt, not on our operations.”

But bankruptcy — a rare step for a big newspaper company — calls into question the future shape of a company with more than $4 billion a year in revenue and thousands of employees.

James H. M. Sprayregen, a bankruptcy lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis, said companies will often choose to file for bankruptcy when it becomes clear that they will eventually need protection, even if they are making their debt payments. “It obviously wasn’t an emergency or they would have filed Sunday night,” he said. “They chose a time that was financially advantageous.”

Tribune arranged for $50 million in credit from Barclays, and an agreement with Barclays to continue a $300 million line of credit, on which it has already drawn $225 million.

In addition to the banks, the major creditors listed in the bankruptcy filing are hedge funds that hold Tribune loans. The largest individual creditor listed is Mark H. Willes, former chief executive of Times Mirror, the Los Angeles-based newspaper company bought by Tribune in 2000, who the filing says is owed $11.2 million in retirement benefits and deferred pay.

Mr. Zell took control of the company on Dec. 20, 2007, and installed top managers who, like him, had no background in newspapers. They vowed to shake up the company. But Tribune’s results kept declining like those of the industry as a whole. The company had a profit of $37.1 million in the third quarter — down from $216.8 million in the year-earlier quarter — and a $26.2 million loss on its newspapers.

In the Los Angeles Times newsroom, word of the bankruptcy brought few words of surprise.

“I think people are pretty disgusted by the direction things have gone,” said Mitchell Landsberg, a reporter. “There’s no love lost between the employees here and Sam Zell.”

Reporting was contributed by Tim Arango, Rebecca Cathcart, Michael J. de la Merced, Zachery Kouwe, Susan Saulny and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Republican Convention in NYC in 2004 at left
Rebirth of "Manchurian Candidate" concept in American politics...center of picture changes each 4 years? Next, Mr "Faux Politics" himself! NYTIMES gets sued...

Newspapers across the country going from downsizing to slow death spiral
DAY
By Richard Perez-Pena
Published on 3/12/2009

The history of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stretches back more than two decades before Washington became a state, but after 146 years of publishing, the paper is expected to print its last issue next week, perhaps surviving only in a much smaller online version.

And it is not alone. The Rocky Mountain News shut down two weeks ago and The Tucson Citizen is expected to fold next week.

At least Denver, Seattle and Tucson, Ariz., still have daily papers. But now, some economists and newspaper executives say it is only a matter of time - and probably not much time at that - before some major American city is left with no prominent local newspaper at all.

”In 2009 and 2010, all the two-newspaper markets will become one-newspaper markets, and you will start to see one-newspaper markets become no-newspaper markets,” said Mike Simonton, a senior director at Fitch Ratings, which analyzes the industry.

Many critics and competitors of newspapers - including online startups that have been hailed as the future of journalism - say that no one should welcome their demise.

”It would be a terrible thing for any city for the dominant paper to go under, because that's who does the bulk of the serious reporting,” said Joel Kramer, editor and chief executive of MinnPost.com, an online news organization in Minneapolis. “Places like us would spring up, but they wouldn't be nearly as big. We can tweak the papers and compete with them, but we can't replace them.”

No one knows which will be the first big city without a large paper, but there are candidates all across the country. The Hearst Corp., which owns The Post-Intelligencer, has also threatened to close The San Francisco Chronicle, which lost more than $1 million a week last year, unless it can wring significant savings from the operation.

In a tentative deal reached Tuesday night, the California Media Workers Guild agreed to less vacation time, longer workweeks and more flexibility for the Chronicle to make layoffs without regard to seniority. Union officials say they have been told to expect the elimination of at least 150 guild jobs, almost one-third of the total, and management is still trying to negotiate concessions from the Teamsters union. Advance Publications said last fall that it might shut down the Star-Ledger, the dominant paper in New Jersey, but a set of cutbacks and union concessions kept the paper alive in a much-downsized form.

The top papers in many markets, like The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New Haven Register, belong to companies that have gone into bankruptcy in the last three months. The owners insist they have no intention of closing publications, but the management making those assurances may not be in charge when the companies emerge from reorganization.

Other publishers, like the Seattle Times Co. and MediaNews Group, owner of The Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News and The Detroit News, are seen as being at risk of bankruptcy. Many newspapers - from The Miami Herald to The Chicago Sun-Times - have been put up for sale, with no buyers on the horizon.

Ad revenue, the industry's lifeblood, has dropped about 25 percent in the last two years (by comparison, automotive revenue for Detroit's Big Three fell about 15 percent during the same period, although it has accelerated recently), and that slide, accelerated by the recession, shows no sign of leveling off in 2009. Web sites like Craigslist have been to classified ads what the internal combustion engine was to horse-drawn buggies. The stock prices of most newspaper publishers have dropped more than 90 percent from their peaks.

And magnifying the problem, for many chains, is a heavy burden of debt that they took on, mostly in a spree of buying other newspapers from 2005 to 2007, just before the bottom dropped out of the business. The Tribune Co., for instance, owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and other papers, filed for bankruptcy in December, largely because of its debt load. The reality is that even though the economic climate is hard for newspapers, without their debt payments, the publishers in bankruptcy would still make money, as do most newspapers around the country.

But profits are shrinking fast; taken together, major chains had an operating profit margin of about 10 percent in 2008, down from more than 20 percent as recently as 2004, according to research by John Morton, an independent analyst.

The recent closures and threatened closures point to an ominous new trend. For The Chronicle, The Rocky, The Star-Ledger, The Citizen and others, debt was never the problem and they belonged to solvent companies, but still they had been losing money. Analysts say that many other major papers have also slid into red ink recently, including The Washington Post and The Boston Globe (which is owned by The New York Times Co.).

The steady trickle of downsizing that sapped American papers for almost a decade has become a flood in the last few years. The Los Angeles Times still has one of the largest news staffs in the country, about 600 people, but it was twice as big in the late 1990s. The Washington Post had a newsroom of more than 900 six years ago, and fewer than 700 now. The Gannett Co., the largest newspaper publisher in the country, eliminated more than 8,300 jobs in 2007 and 2008, or 22 percent of the total.

Lobbyist Linked by Times to McCain Sues Paper
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:00 p.m. ET
December 30, 2008

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- A Washington lobbyist is suing The New York Times over an article that she says gave the false impression she had an affair with Sen. John McCain in 1999.

Vicki L. Iseman filed the $27 million defamation suit in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday. It also names as defendants the Times' executive editor, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters.

The newspaper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iseman represented telecommunications companies before the Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chaired. In February, as McCain was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, the Times reported that McCain aides once worried the relationship between Iseman and McCain had turned romantic.

At the time, McCain denounced the story as false. Iseman also denied it later.

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
NYTIMES
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: November 12, 2008

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh.

(For what it’s worth, another reporter for The New York Times is an acquaintance of Mr. Gorlin and vouches for his identity, and Mr. Gorlin is indeed “Mr. Eisenstadt” in those videos. He and his partner in deception, Dan Mirvish, have entries on the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. But still. ...)

They say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

The hoax began a year ago with short videos of a parking valet character, who Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish said was the original idea for a TV series.

Soon there were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph W. Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.

When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.

It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Mr. Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”

Before long Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.

In June they produced what appeared to be an interview with Eisenstadt on Iraqi television promoting construction of a casino in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Then they sent out a news release in which he apologized. Outraged Iraqi bloggers protested the casino idea.

Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.

In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.

Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.

Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”

And then there is William K. Wolfrum, a blogger who has played Javert to Eisenstadt’s Valjean, tracking the hoaxster across cyberspace and repeatedly debunking his claims. Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish praised his tenacity, adding that the news media could learn something from him.

“As if there isn’t enough misinformation on this election, it was shocking to see so much time wasted on things that didn’t exist,” Mr. Wolfrum said in an interview.

And how can we know that Mr. Wolfrum is real and not part of the hoax?

Long pause. “Yeah, that’s a tough one.”

So Obama is turning the heat up in the White House--how is that consistent with Global Warming threat?

White House Unbuttons Formal Dress Code
NYTIMES
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
January 29, 2009

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Thus did a rule of the George W. Bush administration — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times — fall by the wayside, only the first of many signs that a more informal culture is growing up in the White House under new management. Mr. Obama promised to bring change to Washington and he has — not just in substance, but in presidential style.

Although his presidency is barely a week old, some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already becoming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama likes to have his workout — weights and cardio — first thing in the morning, at 6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)

He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second comm