Cable pundits fret: He's walking and chewing gum! He's doing too much!!
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 10 months ago
Haiku for the Obama Administration (#135):
Liddy, the burglar! The President must respond: What did he know? When . . .
grandma
· 10 months ago
Good morning....
It seems the media doesn't accord Obama the respect that it gave to Bush...who didn't deserve any respect. They walked on eggshells around the Bush administration....knowing they were being lied to.
BuryMeKnot
· 10 months ago
I think the "ugly edge" is because the press realizes they've been fooled. Obama was going to bring a new kind of politics to Washington -- open, honest, responsive to people's needs.
Instead, it's bogged down in this bonus scandal.
- Democrats wrote the stimulus bill, rammed it UNREAD through Congress, and it has a exemption that allows AIG execs to keep their bonuses
- Senator Chris Dodd was #1 recipient of AIG campaign contributions.
- Barack Obama was #2 recipient.
In other words, "same old same old" ....
We're screwed.
AdrianBrowne
· 10 months ago
Chris Dodd: That's the #1 Talking Point on the Republican blogs too!
BuryMeKnot
· 10 months ago
Is it false?
tlsintx
· 10 months ago
oh, i'm sure lotsa people have their fingers in the AIG pie, but the media isn't mad because Obama has "fooled" them, they're mad because they have more fingers in the pie
AdrianBrowne
· 10 months ago
Decide for yourself. The story originated at FoxNews:
Go to opensecrets.org, and you will find that Dodd received $103K from AIG in 2008. I researched this yesterday when John had the post about Rangel, who received $9K from AIG. AIG is considered a "heavy hitter" amongst all politicians over at Open Secrets and generally has split its contributions between both parties. You can get the figures yourself. I didn't get anything myself from Fux News, which I never watch.
AdrianBrowne
· 10 months ago
Thanks. I knew that as soon as the Democrats gained power that they'd be the ones getting caught up in corruption scandals. It's not like they're "above" it.
grandma
· 10 months ago
via TPM:
Bush said that he doesn't know what he will do in the long term but that he will write a book that will ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United States as president.
He said it will be fun to write and that "it's going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make."
"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said.
Oh yes...Bush will finally tell us exactly what happened.....and anyone would believe him because......?
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 10 months ago
"Authoritarian voice" (he meant "authoritative").
In vino veritas, even with dry drunks.
Indigo
· 10 months ago
With all due respect, I think he meant "authoritarian" in the papal sense of absolutist and free of accountability.
KarenMrsLloydRichards
· 10 months ago
Good point; I should know by now how futile it is to interpret rationally anything the berserk chimp ever "says."
SCLiberal
· 10 months ago
Why is Obama pushing for private insurers to pay for war wounded? The leader of the nation's largest veterans organization says he is "deeply disappointed and concerned" after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases. ------------------------------------ This sounds like something the Bush regime would do. This tells me that there is no effort at all to do away with the health insurance industry and that we will continue to have to pay for the imposition of someone else between us and our doctors. I can't adequately express my frustration and disgust.
BuryMeKnot
· 10 months ago
Not only that.
White House also said it won't expand the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plan to include all Americans. Apparently, Federal employees were concerned that their premiums wold go up if it included other Americans.
In other words, one health care plan for them (the govt) and one for the rest of us.
AdrianBrowne
· 10 months ago
What would you like to see happen with health care?
Thank you, Adrian. I knew there had to be, as Paul Harvey said, "the rest of the story."
Gridlock
· 10 months ago
Uh.. why is nobody talking about this on here?
"WASHINGTON – Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Why the sudden furor, just weeks after Barack Obama's team paid out $30 billion in additional aid to the company? So far, the administration has been unable to match its actions to Obama's tough rhetoric on executive compensation. And Congress has been unable or unwilling to restrict bonuses for bailout recipients, despite some lawmakers' repeated efforts to do so.
The situation has the White House and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the defensive. The administration was caught off guard Tuesday trying to explain why Geithner had waited until last Wednesday to call AIG chief executive Edward M. Liddy and demand that the bonus payments be restructured.
Neither Obama nor Geithner learned of the impending bonus payments until last week, senior administration officials told The Associated Press late Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity about internal discussions."
Neither Obama nor Geithner learned of the impending bonus payments until last week, senior administration officials told The Associated Press late Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity about internal discussions."
-----
This seems like a key point.
Why is it buried in the fourth paragraph?
I think you just made Joe's point.
Gridlock
· 10 months ago
"AIG's plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored. A November SEC filing by the company details more than $469 million in "retention payments" to keep prized employees.
Around the same time, Congress and Obama's team were passing up an opportunity to put in place strict laws to revoke bonuses from recipients of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments."
clicking the linky linky helps
Older_Wiser
· 10 months ago
Put more sunlight on stimulus money, people. This morning I'm furious about a local story talking about $3.5M in stimulus money being used to pay off extortion to Bruton Smith, billionaire owner of Lowe's Motor Speedway, a nearby shopping mall, and a newly erected dragstrip (among other enterprises) just behind it. A road accessing both (perfectly adequate for years and only recently improved for the new dragstrip) is being "moved" and widened.
Smith is presently extorting $80M from the taxpayers of Cabarrus County, whose commissioners are just so beholden to him.
Meanwhile, the state highway through this county is deteriorating at a rapid pace; a 2 lane state hwy which I've been told over and over the state has no plans to resurface. It's horrible, and I'm really pissed about how this stimulus money might just be channeled in a political way by the locals. I shot off an email to the NCDOT this am.
fat karl
· 10 months ago
I think we just lost the election. There is a new gang of 15 started by Bayh. They now run the country.
The msm is angry because there corp masters are under attack in a very very profound way. AIG, the banks, Wall street and corp class is finally being exposed by there actions, by Jon Stewart, to those outside the Beltway and Manhattan. The mystique and business altar is in tatters and by extension the republicans who do and have done there bidding for decades. The polar political shift is underway...conservative and pro business ideology is once again been proven to be corrupt and untenable. Remember the msm have nice big fat tv contracts....there world is in flux..so they are pissed at the Obama WH because unlike the Clinton democrats or the GOP they will get NO lifeline ,. NO reestablishment of the status quo...ya know why because Obama is not stupid...he understands that the American people will no longer eat what they are fed blindly nor accept bullshit lies from corp America or politicians...we all have Reaganomics hangovers and want let it happen again.....its over and the msm at ABC, NBC etc just are having a real problem with that change but no matter what Morning Joe, John King , Fox and the rest puts out there we ain't buying it anymore ...the numbers may come down for a couple days for Obama but all the man has to do is do a press conference and a national address and they will go back up.....after a couple rounds of that the msm and the GOP right wing hacks may get it and there irrelevancy will weigh them down to nothing.
Indigo
· 10 months ago
The media as we know it is a retail outlet source for air time, sold to the highest bidders. You can get as much news from the local street corner freebie "Thrifty Nickle" without the ideological hype paid for by the highest bidders.
HereinDC
· 10 months ago
"Jon Stewart, who appears on a network called the "Comedy Central," has upstaged them. Lots of ego in the traditional media. Big, big egos. "
I watch a lot of news on tv and especially politics....
I swear I haven't seen Tucker Carlson more than once in the last 5 months...
and ALL OF A SUDDEN he pops up talking about John Stewart?
You know the repigs are in desperate shape when they have to bring out Tucker Carlson out of moth balls to talk.
Yes, traditional media is pissed
Ruthless Gravity
· 10 months ago
You can help by continuing to do your jobs better.
The sooner we get out from under the thumb of the Corporate Media, the better off this country will be.
DCinDC
· 10 months ago
Officials: Obama administration to reverse Bush stance on gay rights at UN
Tonight the Vermont Legislature has an open panel on "marriage equality" & will be voting on it tomorrow.
However this morning, on our office fax here at UVM, we received a hateful fax from some group in Utah called "americaforever". It's some Mormon hate-group butting into Vermont politics. I called them at 801-508-5380 & emailed them at info@americaforever.com & told them to STAY OUT OF VERMONT!
I've lodge a complaint with the University administration & notified our campus LGBTQ group of this as well.
I wanted to let everyone know that the long tentacles of the Mormons are trying to reach all the way to progressive Vermont now!
Ruthless Gravity
· 10 months ago
Guess they figure if they can win in California, they can win anywhere.
kladinvt
· 10 months ago
Well they're not going to win in Vermont. Mercifully, we have the largest percentage of citizens who do not identify with any church. "Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent “Nones,” leading all other states by a full 9 points."
SCLiberal
· 10 months ago
That's why I'd give anything to move to Vermont. *sigh*
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 10 months ago
I checked out their web site at http://www.americaforever.com/ and it was too freaky for words!!! I emailed them and told them to stay out of Vermont, too.
kladinvt
· 10 months ago
Thanks! Hopefully we can keep them holed up in Utah!
Sound like real bunco artists, too. [Well, hell, that site doesn't work, but if you go to the home site, you can probably find it. Seems this is a Brazilian family whose patriarch moved here in 1975, don't know if they're Mormon or not, but there are number in different states. Could account for the spelling errors, etc.]
DCinDC
· 10 months ago
The Frank Bill, HR 384 passed the House on Jan 22 and it waiting for Republican support in the Senate. Much tougher and far more comprehensive.
Tell your Senator to support it or get voted out of office!
ShirleyGoodnessanMercy
· 10 months ago
I've noticed some front page articles in the Washington Post lately that were clearly geared to twist facts to make Obama look bad. The authors the articles were FEMALE, too. I was a bit shocked.
Older_Wiser
· 10 months ago
Believe it or not, women are more conservative in many ways than men.
Older_Wiser
· 10 months ago
Hearing on AIG in room 2128, Rayburn Bldg, at 10 am...Liddy to appear later.
Who there Tex! Yes there are big ego's in the media. Of course there are, but that has a lot more to do with the fact that that anchors and reporters are hired in part for their looks as well as their abilities. That will be a part of our news landscape as long as news divisions are financially linked to the corporations that run them, and those corporations judge their worth by a profit standard. That's show business. But I suspect that any perceived anger directed at the Obama administration might have as much to do with access than Jon Stewart. The Obama Administration has in my opinion, been very good at setting the agenda. They are wonky in a Clintonesque way and frankly I don't think the WH Press Corps is up to speed just yet. The White House beat can be a very boring job. Reporters are subjugated to simply reporting on what Obama has done today. They wait at their desks for WH statements, deal with non-stop requests for live shots and considering the number of chainsaws this administration is juggling, those requests I'm sure are fairly constant. And after dealing with a lame duck Bush Administration, the Press Corps is probably just struggling to keep up. They can't be as well-informed as Obama's people (not because they're not smart but because there's so much going on they can't educate themselves to the point of being able to ask penetrating insightful questions), they certainly can't embark on any enterprise reporting (investigative reporting) and so they're left to attend a daily WH briefing, and try and get Gibbs to slip up. And he's very good for a noob. So, wouldn't you be angry too, it's not justifiable and it's no excuse, but it's hard to be in TV news right now in DC, I know a lot of unemployed journalists... and I mean journalists, not candy-coated news readers. It's tough out there man, fear breeds frustration, breeds doing something stupid, like trying to catch Gibbs with a gotcha question.
My apologies if someone else has already suggested this, but if the government really can't find a legal way to get back the hundreds of millions paid out in bonuses to AIG executives last week, why not perform audits (or financial body cavity searches, if you will) on each and every one of them? I bet they'd be able to recoup an awful lot of the money that way!
Steve_in_CNJ
· 10 months ago
AIG's Liddy: "we have to continue managing our business as a business — taking account of the cold realities of competition for customers, for revenues and for employees."
Then why haven't all the derivatives geniuses been fired?
All Comments
Cable pundits fret:
He's walking and chewing gum!
He's doing too much!!
Liddy, the burglar!
The President must respond:
What did he know? When . . .
It seems the media doesn't accord Obama the respect that it gave to Bush...who didn't deserve any respect.
They walked on eggshells around the Bush administration....knowing they were being lied to.
Instead, it's bogged down in this bonus scandal.
- Democrats wrote the stimulus bill, rammed it UNREAD through Congress, and it has a exemption that allows AIG execs to keep their bonuses
- Senator Chris Dodd was #1 recipient of AIG campaign contributions.
- Barack Obama was #2 recipient.
In other words, "same old same old" ....
We're screwed.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/indust...
Bush said that he doesn't know what he will do in the long term but that he will write a book that will ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United States as president.
He said it will be fun to write and that "it's going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make."
"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/03/b...
Oh yes...Bush will finally tell us exactly what happened.....and anyone would believe him because......?
In vino veritas, even with dry drunks.
The leader of the nation's largest veterans organization says he is "deeply disappointed and concerned" after a meeting with President Obama today to discuss a proposal to force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. The Obama administration recently revealed a plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in such cases.
------------------------------------
This sounds like something the Bush regime would do.
This tells me that there is no effort at all to do away with the health insurance industry and that we will continue to have to pay for the imposition of someone else between us and our doctors. I can't adequately express my frustration and disgust.
White House also said it won't expand the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) plan to include all Americans. Apparently, Federal employees were concerned that their premiums wold go up if it included other Americans.
In other words, one health care plan for them (the govt) and one for the rest of us.
http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/nf09/nfmar09/nf031...
"WASHINGTON – Cue the outrage. For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back.
Why the sudden furor, just weeks after Barack Obama's team paid out $30 billion in additional aid to the company? So far, the administration has been unable to match its actions to Obama's tough rhetoric on executive compensation. And Congress has been unable or unwilling to restrict bonuses for bailout recipients, despite some lawmakers' repeated efforts to do so.
The situation has the White House and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the defensive. The administration was caught off guard Tuesday trying to explain why Geithner had waited until last Wednesday to call AIG chief executive Edward M. Liddy and demand that the bonus payments be restructured.
Neither Obama nor Geithner learned of the impending bonus payments until last week, senior administration officials told The Associated Press late Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity about internal discussions."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090318/ap_on_go_pr...
-----
This seems like a key point.
Why is it buried in the fourth paragraph?
I think you just made Joe's point.
Around the same time, Congress and Obama's team were passing up an opportunity to put in place strict laws to revoke bonuses from recipients of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments."
clicking the linky linky helps
Smith is presently extorting $80M from the taxpayers of Cabarrus County, whose commissioners are just so beholden to him.
Meanwhile, the state highway through this county is deteriorating at a rapid pace; a 2 lane state hwy which I've been told over and over the state has no plans to resurface. It's horrible, and I'm really pissed about how this stimulus money might just be channeled in a political way by the locals. I shot off an email to the NCDOT this am.
http://bayh.senate.gov/contact/email/
I watch a lot of news on tv and especially politics....
I swear I haven't seen Tucker Carlson more than once in the last 5 months...
and ALL OF A SUDDEN he pops up talking about John Stewart?
You know the repigs are in desperate shape when they have to bring out Tucker Carlson out of moth balls to talk.
Yes, traditional media is pissed
The sooner we get out from under the thumb of the Corporate Media, the better off this country will be.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns...
However this morning, on our office fax here at UVM, we received a hateful fax from some group in Utah called "americaforever". It's some Mormon hate-group butting into Vermont politics. I called them at 801-508-5380 & emailed them at info@americaforever.com & told them to STAY OUT OF VERMONT!
I've lodge a complaint with the University administration & notified our campus LGBTQ group of this as well.
I wanted to let everyone know that the long tentacles of the Mormons are trying to reach all the way to progressive Vermont now!
"Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent “Nones,” leading all other states by a full 9 points."
and it was too freaky for words!!! I emailed them and told them
to stay out of Vermont, too.
Sound like real bunco artists, too. [Well, hell, that site doesn't work, but if you go to the home site, you can probably find it. Seems this is a Brazilian family whose patriarch moved here in 1975, don't know if they're Mormon or not, but there are number in different states. Could account for the spelling errors, etc.]
Tell your Senator to support it or get voted out of office!
http://mediamatters.org/items/200903180001
Yes there are big ego's in the media. Of course there are, but that has a lot more to do with the fact that that anchors and reporters are hired in part for their looks as well as their abilities. That will be a part of our news landscape as long as news divisions are financially linked to the corporations that run them, and those corporations judge their worth by a profit standard. That's show business.
But I suspect that any perceived anger directed at the Obama administration might have as much to do with access than Jon Stewart. The Obama Administration has in my opinion, been very good at setting the agenda. They are wonky in a Clintonesque way and frankly I don't think the WH Press Corps is up to speed just yet.
The White House beat can be a very boring job. Reporters are subjugated to simply reporting on what Obama has done today. They wait at their desks for WH statements, deal with non-stop requests for live shots and considering the number of chainsaws this administration is juggling, those requests I'm sure are fairly constant.
And after dealing with a lame duck Bush Administration, the Press Corps is probably just struggling to keep up. They can't be as well-informed as Obama's people (not because they're not smart but because there's so much going on they can't educate themselves to the point of being able to ask penetrating insightful questions), they certainly can't embark on any enterprise reporting (investigative reporting) and so they're left to attend a daily WH briefing, and try and get Gibbs to slip up. And he's very good for a noob.
So, wouldn't you be angry too, it's not justifiable and it's no excuse, but it's hard to be in TV news right now in DC, I know a lot of unemployed journalists... and I mean journalists, not candy-coated news readers.
It's tough out there man, fear breeds frustration, breeds doing something stupid, like trying to catch Gibbs with a gotcha question.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090318/ap_on_go_pr...
Then why haven't all the derivatives geniuses been fired?