Times Misses Olympics Gaffe

From Warner Todd Huston at Red State:
All day Friday the newspapers, TV stations, radio, and the Internet were abuzz with Barack Obama’s failed joke about the Special Olympics Thursday night on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. In shades of John Kerry’s failed joke about the unschooled being “stuck in Iraq,” the president’s apologists said he was merely joking and didn’t mean to say anything disparaging about people with developmental challenges. Still, the incident stirred passionate discussion all day Friday. At least it did for everyone but The New York Times’s Helene Cooper.
Cooper seemed not to even realize it happened if her review of the show is any indication.
One has to wonder, with the entire country talking about Obama’s Special Olympics quip, how did Cooper miss that part of the story? Why would she not even make a passing notation of the controversy the joke caused?

Frank Rich: Obama's Failing

From Frank Rich in the New York Times:

A charming visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”
Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country’s surge of populist rage could devour the president’s best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn’t get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster.
Otherwise it never would have used Lawrence Summers, the chief economic adviser, as a messenger just as the A.I.G. rage was reaching a full boil last weekend. Summers is so tone-deaf that he makes Geithner seem like Bobby Kennedy.
Bob Schieffer of CBS asked Summers the simple question that has haunted the American public since the bailouts began last fall: “Do you know, Dr. Summers, what the banks have done with all of this money that has been funneled to them through these bailouts?” What followed was a monologue of evasion that, translated into English, amounted to: Not really, but you little folk needn’t worry about it.
Yet even as Summers spoke, A.I.G. was belatedly confirming what he would not. It has, in essence, been laundering its $170 billion in taxpayers’ money by paying off its reckless partners in gambling and greed, from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup on Wall Street to Société Générale and Deutsche Bank abroad.
Summers was even more highhanded in addressing the “retention bonuses” handed to the very employees who brokered all those bad bets. After reciting the requisite outrage talking point, he delivered a patronizing lecture to viewers of ABC’s “This Week” on how our “tradition of upholding law” made it impossible to abrogate the bonus agreements. It never occurred to Summers that Americans might know that contracts are renegotiated all the time — most conspicuously of late by the United Automobile Workers, which consented to givebacks as its contribution to the Detroit bailout plan. Nor did he note, for all his supposed reverence for the law, that the A.I.G. unit being rewarded with these bonuses is now under legal investigation by British and American authorities. . . .

Inquiring Americans have the right to know why it took six months for us to learn (some of) what A.I.G. did with our money. We need to understand why some of that money was used to bail out foreign banks. And why Goldman, which declared that its potential losses with A.I.G. were “immaterial,” nonetheless got the largest-known A.I.G. handout of taxpayers’ cash ($12.9 billion) while also receiving a TARP bailout. We need to be told why retention bonuses went to some 50 bankers who not only were in the toxic A.I.G. unit but who left despite the “retention” jackpots. We must be told why taxpayers have so little control of the bailed-out financial institutions that we now own some or most of. And where are the M.R.I.’s from those “stress tests” the Treasury Department is giving those banks?
That’s just a short list. In general, it’s hard to imagine taxpayers shelling out billions for a second bank bailout unless there’s a full accounting of every dime of the first, and true transparency for the new plan whose rollout is becoming the most attenuated striptease since the heyday of Gypsy Rose Lee. . . .

Another compelling question connects all of the above: why has there been so little transparency and so much evasiveness so far? The answer, I fear, is that too many of the administration’s officials are too marinated in the insiders’ culture to police it, reform it or own up to their own past complicity with it.

Cartoon by Michael Ramirez, Investor's Business Daily

President Hedges On Holder

From Helene Cooper at the New York Times:
President Obama has chided his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., for describing America as a “nation of cowards” when discussing race, wading into a tumult that flared over Mr. Holder’s indictment of the way this country talks about ethnicity.
“I think it’s fair to say that if I had been advising my attorney general, we would have used different language,” Mr. Obama said in a mild rebuke from America’s first black president to its first black attorney general.
In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, the president said that despite Mr. Holder’s choice of words, he had a point.
“We’re oftentimes uncomfortable with talking about race until there’s some sort of racial flare-up or conflict,” he said, adding, “We could probably be more constructive in facing up to sort of the painful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination.”
Mr. Holder made his comments last month during an address to employees at the Justice Department, saying that “though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been and we, I believe, continue to be in too many ways essentially a nation of cowards.”
His remarks ignited protest, particularly from conservatives. One post, by Stephan Tawney on the American Pundit blog, said that “our attorney general is black, both major parties are led by black men, the president is black.”
“And yet,” Mr. Tawney wrote, “we’re apparently a ‘nation of cowards’ on race.”
Mr. Obama was asked whether he agreed with Mr. Holder. He hesitated for five seconds before responding.
“I’m not somebody who believes that constantly talking about race somehow solves racial tensions,” Mr. Obama said. “I think what solves racial tensions is fixing the economy, putting people to work, making sure that people have health care, ensuring that every kid is learning out there. I think if we do that, then we’ll probably have more fruitful conversations.”
Why didn't the President separate himself from the remarks of his attorney general last month when those remarks were made?
And now that he's been asked about the remarks, why does Obama continue to hedge and indicate that Holder "had a point?" Why is the President's veiled criticism couched in terms such as "I think it's fair to say . . . we would have used different language."
Go ahead and say it, Mr. President: "His words were wrong. This is not the view of my administration."
And why didn't the reporters ask the President this question: "Mr. President, have you spoken to Attorney General Holder about his remarks?"

O: Don't Stuff $$ In Matresses

From Helene Cooper ans Sheryl Gay Stolberg in the New York Times:
Addressing the fear and uncertainty among Americans as job losses mount and stock markets sink, Mr. Obama urged Americans to “be prudent” in their personal financial decisions, but not to hunker down so much that it would further slow the recovery.
“What I don’t think people should do is suddenly stuff money in their mattresses and pull back completely from spending,” he said.
Still, he avoided guessing when the situation might begin to turn around. “Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year,” he said. “How long it will take before recovery actually translates into stronger job markets and so forth is going to depend on a whole range of factors.” . . .
Mr. Obama’s uncertain forecast about when the economy will begin to rebound contrasted with the projections embedded in the budget he recently released.
That plan rested on the assumption that the economy would shrink by 1.2 percent this year, a projection that many economists, including some in his administration, consider overly optimistic because it implies the economy would bounce back in the second half of this year.
Don't "stuff money in their matresses?" I've heard of stuffing money under the matresses but in the matress? That's a new one.

Sleveless? In February?

I thought I was the only one who noticed this but here's Nia-Malika Henderson at Politico:

Whether FLOTUS [Michelle Obama] is in the White House kitchen, dancing the night away at a ball or in the hallowed (and usually conservative) halls of Congress taking in her husband's speech, she seems to prefer going sleeveless, winter be damned.

Like her husband, she's a fitness fanatic, and at POTUS's address last night, she was probably the only woman in the hall showing off her arms.

Fashionistas, who say FLOTUS will renew an interest in high fashion as well as off the rack items, are surely watching and taking notes. The message last night? Ditch the jacket and skirt look and go a little glam.

And here's Jodi Kantor in the New York Times:

It is February and Washington is freezing, but in appearance after appearance, the first lady displays her long, muscular arms. She is sleeveless on the cover of the new Vogue, she was sleeveless when she discussed menus on Sunday in the White House kitchen, and last night she was sleeveless again, in the House chamber for her husband’s first address to Congress. (All of the other women in the room seemed to be wearing long sleeves; a few even wore turtlenecks). . . .

“Oh my god,” Cindi Leive, the editor of Glamour magazine, exclaimed while watching the address, she said via email. “The First Lady has bare arms in Congress, in February, at night!”
Mrs. Obama’s super-sculpted arms are the result of years of effort. When her children were young, she began working out with a personal trainer, splitting sessions with girlfriends to save money. In recent years, she has exercised several times a week, often rising hours before her daughters to do cardio and lift weights, or spending Saturday sessions with the same personal trainer who guided her husband. At the gym, she is focused and competitive, friends say, counting her reps and teasing when they do not finish theirs.
Now those arms have become Mrs. Obama’s most constant accessory, whether she is wearing a Gap sundress or a designer ballgown. On the Vogue cover, the first lady wears little makeup, subtle jewelry, a simple sheath. It’s her arms that pop out, rippled and gleaming.

"Rippled and gleaming?"

I dunno. I always think it's more intriguing when a gal leaves more (not less) to the imagination.

And, BYW: Aren't short sleeves (or sleeveless tops) totally out of place in northern regions in February?

Goodbye Saturn, Pontiac

From Micheline Maynard at the New York Times:
The brand that was once hailed as an important part of the future of General Motors now will be part of its past.
GM said Tuesday that it would phase out its Saturn brand by 2012. It does not plan to develop any more new vehicles for Saturn, which began 19 years ago as an effort to attract owners of small Japanese cars.
G.M. also said it was considering its options for the Pontiac division. The Pontiac name, part of the car business since 1932, could remain on some models, but may no longer be a separate division. G.M. said Pontiac would be a “focused brand” with fewer models.
The disclosures by G.M., contained in a viability plan submitted to the government, means that G.M. plans to cut its brands in half, to four: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC.
It said last fall that it would try to find buyers for Hummer and Saab. On Tuesday, it said it would decide on Hummer’s fate by March 31.
But is four the right number?
After all, most of its big competitors, including Toyota, Honda and Chrysler, build their businesses around three brands or fewer in the United States. Ford is moving to shed its foreign brands and plans to focus primarily on three — Ford, Lincoln and Mercury.

Banks Near Collapse

From Steve Lohr at the New York Times:
Some of the nation’s large banks, according to economists and other finance experts, are like dead men walking.
A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent.
None of the experts’ research focuses on individual banks, and there are certainly exceptions among the 50 largest banks in the country. Nor do consumers and businesses need to fret about their deposits, which are federally insured. And even banks that might technically be insolvent can continue operating for a long time, and could recover their financial health when the economy improves.
But without a cure for the problem of bad assets, the credit crisis that is dragging down the economy will linger, as banks cannot resume the ample lending needed to restart the wheels of commerce. The answer, say the economists and experts, is a larger, more direct government role than in the Treasury Department’s plan outlined this week.
The Treasury program leans heavily on a sketchy public-private investment fund to buy up the troubled mortgage-backed securities held by the banks. Instead, the experts say, the government needs to plunge in, weed out the weakest banks, pour capital into the surviving banks and sell off the bad assets.
It is the basic blueprint that has proved successful, they say, in resolving major financial crises in recent years. Such forceful action was belatedly adopted by the Japanese government from 2001 to 2003, by the Swedish government in 1992 and by Washington in 1987 to 1989 to overcome the savings and loan crisis.
“The historical record shows that you have to do it eventually,” said Adam S. Posen, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Putting it off only brings more troubles and higher costs in the long run.”
Of course, the Obama administration’s stimulus plan could help to spur economic recovery in a timely manner and the value of the banks’ assets could begin to rise.
Absent that, the prescription would not be easy or cheap. Estimates of the capital injection needed in the United States range to $1 trillion and beyond. By contrast, the commitment of taxpayer money is the $350 billion remaining in the financial bailout approved by Congress last fall.e Lohr at the New York Times: