The CIA Interrogation Memos

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3a, Part 3b, Part 4a, Part 4b

And Obama's statement:

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.

Nukes

Steve Coll of The New Yorker lays out Obama's challenge of striving towards nuclear non-proliferation:


"Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and Sam Nunn are among the Cold War-era defense hawks who have preceded Obama to an embrace of nuclear abolition. Even so, it is commonplace to criticize this vision as naïve, since the goal is unlikely to be achievable anytime soon. This criticism distorts the abolitionist movement’s work; its supporters do not generally waste time on speculative debates about when and how a world containing precisely zero nuclear weapons might eventually be created. Instead, they want to drive down the world’s nine nuclear arsenals to much smaller sizes as quickly as possible—perhaps to the tens or low hundreds of weapons, in the case of the United States—and, while doing so, to make nuclear weapons as illegitimate and impractical as possible."

Still a Politician

I love Obama, but sometimes I'm reminded that in many ways, he is still a politician. Nowhere is this more apparent than his stance on gay marriage. He is FOR civil unions but AGAINST gay marriage. Now, it's understandable why he held this position during the campaign; He was courting independents who were more likely to be swayed by social issues.

However, the Windy City Times reported that when President Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, he was unequivocally for same-sex marriage President-elect Obama’s answer to a 1996 Outlines newspaper question on marriage was:

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” There was no use of the phrase “civil unions”

Granted, it's possible Obama has changed his views over the past 13 years, but more than likely he has been playing politics. As the population continues to shift towards favoring gay marriage, I won't be surprised when the President reverts back to his old stance.

The YouTube Presidency

From the New York Times:

"... and while Obama’s campaign speeches weren’t delivered expressly for YouTube the way Oval Office addresses are delivered for TV, the versions of those speeches millions of us saw were tailored to the site, with titles, omissions, crowd cutaways, highlight footage and a dozen other manipulations of sound and image that affected the impression they made. When Obama delivered his speech on race a year ago, the campaign uploaded, for example, its own version of the speech; it was cleaner and more elegantly produced than the CNN version, and it has been played more than 1.5 million times.

Every one of the president’s weekly public-address videos is conspicuously labeled “public domain,” and commentary is welcome. Plenty of detractors weigh in. Name-calling — “socialist pig,” “fascist in chief” — jostles for space with praise (“Nice to have an articulate, intelligent, thoughtful president again”). In general, the effect is one of openness and inclusiveness, even as the shooting and spreading of the videos has been tightly controlled. As of this writing, no video has surfaced, for example, from a St. Patrick’s Day White House event with the Irish prime minster, at which Obama thanked himself in an effort to parody an earlier teleprompter mishap. Could this be because his joke might be taken out of context by those who consider him the Teleprompter President?"

GOP Budget Plan

I might as well call my blog fivethirtynine, but this was too good to pass up. The GOP proudly boasted about its numberless budget plan, and Nate Silver got a sneak peak.

Presser Roundup

Gawker has a round-up of some of the worst offenders of the press conference:

"Major Garret: Fox News. For finding a way to ask an economic question involving both the words "communist" and "socialist," and for using a White House press conference as a platform from which to pitch his idea for a dystopian science fiction TV series.

The Chinese are about to launch a global currency, you see, while European socialists are bringing about a New Dark Age by not allocating more GDP to government spending, like, uh, Milton Friedman would.

In summary: You're gay for France and all Soviet sympathizers everywhere, Mr. President, but where are your red friends now, mmmmmm? Least relevant question of the presser; also, the one most likely to make your target Fox News viewer do a fist-jab in his Barcalounger."

The Disconnect

After watching Obama's press conference and subsequent analysis after on CNN, the opposition to the President's ambitious (pseudonym for expensive) budget is predicated on the idea that spending trillions of dollars on education, health care and energy is 1. hypocritical, as Obama chastised the Bush Administration for racking up huge debts, 2. will further weaken our economy, as a $15-20 trillion dollar deficit will hurt America's ability to borrow and 3. detracts from the focus on solving the banking and housing crisis. These are legitimate concerns. Here is a visual representation of what just one trillion dollars looks like. It's staggering and difficult to wrap the head around.


The growth projections are debatable. The prospects of Geithner's banking plan are debatable. Just about every proposal set forth in the administration's agenda is debatable. But what Obama reiterated throughout the presser is that 1. inaction will eventually bankrupt our country and 2. the opposition has failed to present a viable alternative. Obama is essentially doubling down on the premise that the only way to spur sustained growth in our economy is to spend massively on the front end in hopes of generating innovation, jobs and ultimately wealth on the back end.

The disconnect lies in the failure of the opposition to recognize that we are no longer in a 1990s economy or even a pre-2009 economy. In the former, the creation of wealth was largely driven by our leverage of globalization practices. American businesses either took advantage of outsourcing or the inferior economies of our trade partners. In the latter, the creation of wealth was driven by speculative markets.

With the rise of power in foreign markets and the impending overhaul of regulation, neither philsophies will work. Unfortunately for a lot of sectors, whether its energy in the case of Enron, technology in the case of the dot com bust era or banking, it's hard to imagine a scenario where vast amounts of wealth can be created by betting on what something will be worth on the future. With tighter regulation, it will be much more difficult to circumnavigate "the system" without the checks and balances to nip a speculative market gone wild in the bud before it ever gets out of hand.

So what does this mean? It means that our economy must be rebuilt on more efficient systems and more tangible, current assets. The massive overhaul of health care, energy, and education will cost big dollars, but it will generate a smarter nation, facing less obstruction and costs in medicine, with renewable forms of energy that can create jobs and be sold to the rest of the world. To assume improving the quality of the three through expensive and exhausting overhauls does not correlate with a more robust and reliable economy is an outdated mentality. It is uncomfortable, dangerous and unproven, but the alternative, laissez faire attitude will keep us stuck in 2009 while the rest of the world forges ahead.

Junkie Theater

In the era of skank of love busses, karaoke on steroids, and NCIS24CSIs, the best show in town is our president facing off against the hungry hungry hypocritical press corp. Hungry, because Obama remains one of the few chunks of ratings gold left on TV. Hypocritical, because the same networks and publications who chastise him for late-night sit downs and ESPN Barack-etology, salivate at the opportunity to spread the wealth of soundbites and optics to every nook and cranny of the media universe.

Since the inauguration, Obama has been attacked for appearing too aloof, too serious, too unserious, too nuanced, too vague, too pessimistic, and too optimistic. Yes, a lot of these contridictions are coming from opposing sides: republicans vs. democratics, bankers vs. unions; but lately the line has been blurred to include praise from the GOP and criticism from the liberals. Whatever. The point is not to pick a side or complain about injustice. Instead, it's to get all giddy about a night sure to produce drama and intrigue.

Between the bank plan roll out and Cheney bashing, Special Olympic gaffe and a painstakingly long vetting process, there's enough fodder to last a 16-episode story arc. Couple that with a press corp jockeying for airspace and you have what's shaping out to be a dynamic hour of television that bests anything else out there (except for Eastbound and Down, of course).

Geithner's Plan

Geithner's WSJ op-ed piece on his plan to rescue banks can be found here

Obama's Economic Team

Stolen from spanking fresh NY Mag cover story. It's a doozy.

"With their budget, they have laid out a vision that, as former Labor secretary Robert Reich puts it, “reverses and repudiates the economic philosophy that has dominated America since 1981.” Obamanomics isn’t merely the end of Reaganomics, in other words. It’s the end of Rubinomics, too."

The plan:

First, the government would create public-private partnerships, in which a handful of hedge funds and private-equity groups, backed with taxpayer dollars and guaranteed against big losses, would buy up the toxic assets from the banks. Once the banks’ balance sheets were cleaned up, the government would inject the necessary capital into those banks to keep them solvent until private investors stepped in to fund the newly healthy banks. At the same time, the government is administering the so-called stress tests to determine which of the nineteen biggest banks are dangerously undercapitalized and will require injections of government dough (in exchange for preferred stock) to stay afloat if the economy worsens.

Oooops

Just to prove I'm not helplessly Probama, there was one pretty bad misstep in big O's sit down with Leno tonight. Leno asked Obama if he gutted the White House bowling alley in favor of a basketball court. Obama's response:

"No, no. I have been practicing . . . I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something."

I'm pretty sure that by the time I wake up, the Special Olympics committee will demand some sort of apology and CNN's Rick Sanchez will ask everyone to share their thoughts on Facebook and Twitter. Then the New York Post will put together some graphic of Obama superimposed onto a wheelchair with a basketball in his hand. Then PETA will swoop in over the First Family's pick for a dog because it came from some detestable breeder. Thank god I will miss all of this with hours and hours of basketball this weekend.

INSTANT UPDATE: Yup, its already everywhere, including a lead story on POLITICO.

UPDATE 2: Gawker has it too, along with a clip of Keith Olbermann discussing it with Craig Ferguson (although Gawker calls him Colin Ferguson. Inside joke?)

this is going to be real annoying.

Commander and Chucklehead

(via POLITICO)

Who Throws A Shoe?

It's all the rage:

A shoe was recently hurled at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while he was in the city of Urmia, an Iranian Web site has reported.

Urmia News, the Iranian site, reported that Ahmadinejad was in a car en route to an election rally when the shoe was thrown. Ahmadinejad was traveling to a local stadium where he was meant to deliver a speech ahead of upcoming presidential elections.

NY Times Obama Interview

"As he pressed forward with ambitious plans at home to rewrite the tax code, expand health care coverage and curb climate change, Mr. Obama dismissed criticism from conservatives that he was driving the country toward socialism.

After the interview, which took place as the president was flying home from Ohio, he called reporters from the Oval Office to assert that his actions have been “entirely consistent with free-market principles” and to point out that large-scale government intervention in the markets and expansion of social welfare programs began under President George W. Bush:

President Obama: Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement - the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks through these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can't say the same."