100 Days on The Huffington Post

Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry, Teresa Valdez Klein: MSM vs. Digital in 2009: The Times ' Brian Stelter Weighs in on Who Won the Big Stories

2009-12-18T12:26:39Z

On today's Wilshire & Washington, we ask the question: Who's on top, the MSM or Digital Media? Who's leading the discussion, why, and is it a good thing? To help us navigate this tricky landscape, we've got New York Times reporter Brian Stelter with us; Stelter covers television and digital media, and spent over three years as the editor of TVNewser.

We start with the health care debate, and how digital media has been driving a lot of this debate. Without the blogs, would the public option have lasted this long? Probably not. We tackle Obama's First 100 Days™. Remember how CNN covered that "story" and then how they covered Obama's first 200 days as well? They called it news; I call it basic arithmetic. Obviously these stories are moves for higher ratings (isn't CNN behind the Fly Fishing Network at this point?) but did it work? Is it good for us?

We continue our beat-down of CNN with the coverage of the Iranian Election. Digital media was all over that story, yet CNN - which wants to be a "serious" news channel - defended its lack of coverage (remember #cnnfail?) As Stelter notes, cable news needs to be a live stream, and once Iran became a story, CNN should have followed. But isn't it a little unfair to bash CNN? Our standards for them are so high (we don't expect the same from MSNBC or Fox) but when CNN covers silly issues like Michael Jackson's funeral so extensively, it just confuses us.

While digital has had its moments this year, Stelter believes the MSM is still driving the story most of the time, especially with topics like Afghanistan and Iraq, which - because of cost and safety - are impossible for bloggers to really cover. Then again, the major networks didn't even have Kabul bureaus for years, even though we had a war going on in Afghanistan. Good job, guys. This begs the question: Should the MSM actually cover active US warzones? No? Err...

Finally, we discuss a couple of those nutty stories in the past year - balloon boy, the arrest of the Harvard Professor for being black and in his home, what kind of beer Obama is drinking... you know, real stories. With things like these dominating MSM coverage, don't we need a filter for all these non-stories? (I'm told this filter is usually called "editors." Never heard of 'em.) And as we distribute, and redistribute, news and content, shouldn't we ourselves take some responsibility and ask, "Is this news good for us?"

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player:

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.

Peter Henne: From Idealism to Grand Strategy: The Next Challenge for Obama

2009-09-25T12:00:37Z

After the simplistic crusading of Bush and the cautiously incoherent foreign policies of Clinton, President Obama's speech to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday was everything a good progressive could want. An American leader has laid out a worldview that is dedicated to liberal internationalism while also appreciating the world's prevalent conflicts of interest.

What Obama must do now is translate this into a new grand strategy that matches the desire for international engagement with the limits of America's power. Only then can we avoid the fate of myriad ambitious Democratic foreign policies: initial optimism followed by over-extension, public disappointment and Republican electoral victories.

As I have said before, Obama's stirring speeches can overwhelm even the deepest pessimism. In his speech, Obama declared America's interests in nonproliferation, peacekeeping, environmental protection, and economic development. This included pledges of specific actions and a call for the rest of the world to demonstrate their commitment to these ideals.

Yet, this was not based on Bush-esque unilateralism but a recognition that global problems cannot be solved without diplomacy. Moreover, Obama realizes that while we will defend our interests with or without other states' approval, America can act only in concert with others when dealing with global issues. This worldview is not mere cheap talk: these sentiments--progressive ideals, pragmatic engagement, and multilateral efforts--have long been present in Obama's foreign policy views, as seen in his 2007 Foreign Affairs essay.

Such sentiments have rarely been presented as powerfully or coherently. Indeed, we would have to look past Clinton and Carter to LBJ's muscular internationalism. This comparison, however, is telling. LBJ's foreign policy combined idealism and power, but became bogged down in domestic fights, was overextended internationally and led to Republican domination of the national security debate. This was not a product of Vietnam, however. Wilson's presidency followed a similar course, with exuberance over World War I leading to public rejection and the election of Harding; also, while Truman crafted a powerful internationalist foreign policy, discontent with the Korean War ushered in eight years of Republican rule. The idealism of each of these Presidents proved short-lived; the problem, though, was not with the ideas, but their application.

The lesson, then, is that Obama's ideals are not enough. Obama must craft a grand strategy that matches his idealistic ends with appropriate means, and is sustainable in terms of public opinion. This involves both identifying the major threats America faces and developing pragmatic strategies to address them. Fortunately, guidelines for both tasks are available in the speech. The first step involves finding what Charles Kupchan has called "fault lines," or the major divides in international relations that will drive conflict. This could be a state, a coalition of states or even a hostile ideology.

As Obama argued, the primary threats we now face are global: nuclear proliferation, civil strife, environmental degradation, and economic deprivation. The fault lines, then, encompass not discrete rivalries but global divisions and have the potential to break open at any time. Our grand strategy should focus not on a threatening culture or the rise of another state, but on managing these fault lines and avoiding any sudden eruptions of conflict along them.

The means to achieve this end are also present in Obama's speech. Obama stressed the importance of multilateral efforts to solve global problems. He also realizes that Americans are weary of military efforts and hesitant to support further commitments. We must work with other states to deal with these global issues while avoiding over-extension and negative domestic reactions.

Obama's emphasis on cooperative engagement--working with the international community as long as the rest of the world shoulders its portion--can achieve this. Obama should attempt to form a concert of states that will manage global problems in a multilateral manner, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed in a July speech. This would encourage other states to take ownership of these issues, make America's contributions manageable, and ensure the progressive ideals that have been crucial to American identity since its founding are not abandoned.

Despite the short time he has been in office, Obama has already made significant gains in foreign policy. He altered plans for a missile defense system in Europe that was unnecessarily antagonistic towards Russia and recently gained backing from both Russia and China for greater nonproliferation efforts. The trick now is to capitalize on these gains and develop a grand strategy that will be as effective as Truman's, without losing public support in the process.

Bush's 2002 National Security Strategy established a new foreign policy for America, the consequences of which we are still enduring. If Obama continues with the worldview he presented Wednesday, hopefully the 2010 National Security Strategy will be equally significant.

Chris Weigant: Obama's Second Hundred Days

2009-08-06T19:10:14Z

As the Republican Party sinks slowly in the South....

That line has nothing to do, really, with President Barack Obama's second hundred days in office, but, after re-reading three months of my own columns, it was the one thing I wrote which jumped out at me as a good overview of the zeitgeist of the period.

This is really (technically) the third "look back" column I've written on Obama's term in office so far, so if you'd like you can review what I had to say about Obama's first 168 hours in office, or his first 94 days in office. And for historical context, you can review my look back at the first 100 days of Obama's six immediate predecessors in office (Ford/Carter/Reagan in one, HWBush/Clinton/WBush in the other).

But enough of all this shameless plugging of past columns! Let's get on with the show here. The last time I did this, I divided it up into "the good," "the bad," and "the monumentally stupid (media)." This time, I am going to re-use a Dickens quote I mentioned a few weeks ago, the beginning of A Tale Of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

So our look back at Obama's second 100 days will begin with a short overview, and then move on to the categories: "the best of times," "the worst of times," and "the age of (media) foolishness." Since a four-year presidential term has over 1,400 days in it, I may not be able to come up with new catchy metaphors each time, but that is a problem to be solved in the future. And here, we're supposed to be interested in the past, right? So let's get on with it.

Obama's Second 100 Days -- An Overview

I've always been confused why the media goes berserk about rating a president's "first 100 days," but then just stops counting after the first milestone. This, to a statistician, would be known as a "zero dimensional data array" -- one data point, to be exact. If you don't re-test the sample on a regular schedule, how are you supposed to compare it to anything?

So when I wrote about Obama's first hundred days, I marked my calendar so I wouldn't miss his second, which falls tomorrow (at the time this column is published, Obama will have been in office almost exactly 199 days, even though I am aware that everyone else counts differently and would count today as Day 200).

Obama's second hundred days were not as productive as his first, but not by a whole lot. The flurry of activity Obama generated in Washington in his first three months in office was, in wonk-speak, "unsustainable" -- since everyone knew he'd have to slow down eventually. But while Obama has indeed slowed the pace, he is still getting more done in each month than most presidents manage in a good year. Now, of course, he has set his sights on one massive issue, which tends to push everything else off to the side a bit, but if he is successful in his health care reform efforts it will be so big it will go a long way to defining his entire presidency (or, optimistically, his first term).

As I mentioned last time, the "100 days" benchmark was one set by Napoleon himself, which ended with the Battle of Waterloo. I mention this because one Republican was caught in a "Washington gaffe" (speaking the truth inadvertently), saying that Republicans are mobilizing against healthcare reform because they really, really want it to fail and become "Obama's Waterloo."

The jury on this, of course, is still out. We may have the answers after Obama's third hundred days, but for now it remains the biggest issue being fought over in the boxing ring of American politics.

But other things happened in the past three months than just the health care fracas. Let's take a look at some of them.

The best of times

(This technically happened in the first hundred days of Obama's term, but since I jumped the gun and wrote an article titled "Obama's First 94 Days" instead, I have to at least mention it here...) Republican Senator Arlen Specter jumps the aisle and declares he's now a Democrat. This will prove crucial later (if Al Franken ever gets seated), since the balance of power in the Senate will now effectively be 60-40 in favor of the Democrats. Sixty, as we all know in the political world of wonkdom, equals "filibuster-proof majority" -- if you can get them all to vote the same way, that is.

Obama continues to address the American people as adults, and from what I can tell, The People appreciate this respect. Of course, there are still those afflicted with Obama Derangement Syndrome, but maybe if we pass health care reform we can do something about that. Ahem.

Obama has been talking less (or at the very least believing less) about "bipartisanship" as he faces one of the most partisan bunch of Republicans Congress has ever seen -- which is saying a lot, I might add. The reality of their brick-wall strategy is finally beginning to sink in to the White House, and we're seeing a lot less of the "invite them over for drinks" sort of buddy-buddy photo-ops which Obama tried in his first 100 days. One wonders if he'll still be going through these sorts of motions in Year Three, or Year Four.

The president was given a political gift at the beginning of his second 100 days in office, when Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced he was stepping down. This allowed Obama a choice for the Supreme Court, and one that shouldn't have been all that contentious, since a liberal was stepping down (to be replaced, everyone fully expected, by another of Souter's ilk). More on this later.

Of course, Obama was attacked for his choice of nominee for the high court before he had even made up his mind. No real surprise there. But picking a Latina for his nominee was an absolutely brilliant (if somewhat expected) move. This was a two-for-one, since she is a woman and also a minority (who both turned out in droves to help Obama get elected). Losing Latino support is like a wood-frame building getting eaten by termites for the Republican Party. Allow me to explain that, so it is not misunderstood. Termites do their destructive work (for the most part) invisibly. And eventually, if untreated, they cause the building to collapse. The termites, in this example, are the racist and anti-immigrant forces within the Republican Party. Who, naturally, demanded that GOP Senators vote against Sotomayor. While I am writing this before the actual vote, it will be interesting indeed to see which Republicans vote for her in the end. Because, long-term, losing all Latino support could turn even Texas a very nice shade of Democratic blue. So, as I said, this was a brilliant move for Obama.

Obama gets a budget blueprint through Congress on schedule. If you don't think this is an astonishing achievement, then you don't know much about how Washington works. Of course, this isn't the actual budget, which consists of about a dozen "appropriations" bills later in the year, but Obama's second 100 days end up fairly positively on this front as well, as the House passes all of these before their August break. The Senate still lags a bit, but manages to pass a few. Passing a budget on time is really BIG news in Washington, but only if you're a real wonk about the ins and outs of the legislative process.

Obama signs a credit card reform bill, which passes the House 357-70, with 105 Republicans voting for it (how's that for bipartisanship?). Although weaker than it could have been, this is the first time in a long long time such legislation has made it into law, so it's a true accomplishment for Obama.

The House passes a cap-and-trade energy bill, but it's future is uncertain over in the Senate.

An important milestone was reached in Iraq, as U.S. troops pull out of the cities on time for the end-of-June deadline. To give credit where credit is due, this was largely laid out by President Bush in the Status Of Forces Agreement signed last year, but the fact that the milestone came and went successfully can be chalked up to President Obama.

Obama had a sticky situation with a huge collection of photos which documented Americans torturing prisoners. He waffled a bit, and then in the end decided to block their release. This didn't earn him any points with his base, but did earn him a lot of points with the CIA and the Pentagon.

Obama managed to get the health care industry heads to a table, for a meeting that was largely a photo op. This meeting is mentioned in the next section, as well, though, I should warn you.

Congress meets Obama's deadline of Memorial Day to pass bills on military procurement and the credit card bill mentioned earlier. These sorts of "deadlines" are always a bit of a political stunt (and gamble, it should be added), but the fact that Congress jumped through this hoop was indeed a feather in Obama's cap.

Hillary Clinton extends some benefits to gay employees at the State Department. But all is not exactly coming up roses for Obama with the gay rights movement, as we'll explore later. But, as a result of the friction between the White House and the gay rights leaders, they all held a sit-down and a photo-op about a week later, which did soothe a few ruffled feathers.

Analog television, or "the way teevee has worked since the dawn of time -- you know, when Regis Philbin first appeared on-screen," died. Every television made before very recently stopped working. But surprisingly, the government's "$40 for a digital converter" program, as well as the extension of the changeover by a few months, made this a fairly smooth transition for all. At least, no overwhelming problems were reported on my television... hmm... wait a minute....

Thankfully, that last item meant no more of the eight hundred million ads on television telling us all analog TV was about to die, which became more annoying than the transition itself.

Obama fulfills a campaign promise and gives a wingding of a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, Egypt. This goes a long way toward changing America's image in both the region, and the world itself. Obama accomplishes this singlehandedly, one of the shining moments for him in his second 100 days.

On a much, much smaller scale, Obama was about as endearing as a politician can get when he -- during a townhall meeting -- wrote a note for a fourth-grade girl, excusing her from class that day, and then personally made sure she got the note.

On health care reform, two committees in the House pass the same bill, and later the third and final committee gets its act together on a separate bill. The Senate gets a bill out of Teddy Kennedy's committee, but lags on Max Baucus' committee. This is not as far as Obama would have hoped to be at this point, but it's a lot farther than Clinton got, so that's something, at least.

Obama, unlike the hotheads in Congress, is a lot more circumspect in his comments on the fiasco surrounding the Iranian "election." This, although not a lot of people saw it at the time, was the correct thing to do.

Obama gives a fairly good press conference on health care reform in June. Light on specifics, though, which we'll talk about in a bit.

Senator Al Franken finally gets seated. This officially sets the Senate at 58 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 40 Republicans. While the Independents caucus reliably with the Democrats, the absence of two Democratic senators for health reasons (Kennedy and Byrd) becomes much more crucial. Both Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and outgoing Senator Norm Coleman (who are both Republicans) do the right thing in the end, and allow Franken to be seated without further delay.

One of the best things Obama has going for him in the later part of his second 100 days is the fact that healthcare reform proponents have been guarding his left flank by running very effective ads in the home districts of recalcitrant Democratic members of Congress, to pressure them on their votes. Obama leaks that he doesn't think it's a good idea, but secretly he's got to be cheering them on.

Obama makes barely a ripple in the news by revitalizing the idea of nuclear arms reduction with the Russians -- something that would have been front-page news for weeks, if not months, not twenty years ago. How times change.

Which brings up a broader point: Obama has done a wonderful job, for the most part, of staying above the "24-hour news cycle" mentality when dealing with the media. Much to the media's consternation, of course. This is indeed a good, good thing.

Obama photo-op damage control (the "beer summit") goes surprisingly well, on all fronts.

Obama's poll numbers, while admittedly post-honeymoon, may indeed be ticking up in the past week or so. Too early to accurately predict whether this will become a new trend or not.

But the crowning achievement on Barack Obama's second 100 days has got to be Sonia Sotomayor becoming our next Supreme Court Justice. Souter stepping down at the beginning of this period was one bookend to Obama's second 100 days, and Sotomayor being confirmed by the full Senate provided the second bookend to this period.

The worst of times

This is running a bit long, so I'm going to adopt a snappier style for these bullet points. Fair warning.

Obama continues to disappoint on national security campaign promises.

In many ways, the Obama Doctrine on national security is a continuation of the Bush Doctrine on the same issues. This is disillusioning to many who strongly supported Obama on the campaign trail and believed him back then.

Obama shows absolutely zero inclination, for instance, to support any sort of "Truth Commission" to look into the Bush administration's misdeeds while in office.

Obama is beginning to appear a bit naive on the whole "bipartisanship" issue. Everyone else knows by now that the Republican Party has staked its future electoral chances on destroying Obama's agenda, but the only one who hasn't seemed to cotton on to this is Obama himself. Of course, it could all still be an act for the cameras, but who knows at this point?

Obama is shying away from issues he said he'd "champion" on the campaign trail. The most public of these boiled over with gay rights supporters during this period, who are beginning to wonder "If not now, when?" about their pet issues. Obama has not shown a lot of progress (or even support, for that matter) on repealing either "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" or the federal Defense Of Marriage Act. And DADT and DOMA are core issues for a lot of gays who believed Obama when he said he'd be their "fierce advocate." The advocacy, to be honest, isn't looking all that fierce. This boiled over at a scheduled gay rights Democratic fundraiser, but Obama does deserve credit for smoothing things over soon afterwards. Not much credit, but some.

The credit card reform bill, while it passes on Obama's schedule, leaves oodles of time for the banks to hike everyone's rates before it takes effect. Which they promptly do.

The Republican playbook on healthcare reform from none other than framing guru Frank Luntz is leaked before the whole battle even begins. Sadly, Democrats ignore this en masse even though intrepid bloggers were warning them of the seriousness of the opposition back then (ahem).

Obama's refusal to release the torture photos hurts him with his base.

The healthcare industry leaders photo-op results in a smoke-and-mirrors promise from them, which (mere days later) they publicly back down from.

Obama's White House is more transparent than Bush's -- but that's not saying a lot. It's nowhere near as transparent as Obama promised it would be from the campaign trail, that's for sure.

Obama punts on allowing needle exchange to combat AIDS in budget legislation.

Single-payer supporters are not only the only people not given "a seat at the table" in the healthcare reform debate, Senator Max Baucus actually has some doctors arrested for demanding to be heard by his committee. Not exactly a good thing.

In a setback for Obama, Congress refuses to allow funding for the closing of Guantanamo.

"Senator" Roland Burris (sorry, but the quotes have been earned, I feel, at this point) continues to embarrass the Senate seat that Barack Obama used to hold. At least he won't be running for election next year (that is not a typo, as -- again -- I cannot use the term "re-election" here).

Speaking of Democratic senators who are a "worst of times" for Obama, I have two more words: Max Baucus.

There has been a disturbing reluctance from Obama to take any side in the healthcare reform debate, which is beginning to hurt him. His press conference on the subject made no real news, because Obama didn't offer any (in his words) "bright lines in the sand" on the subject. This is beginning to be seen as a real lack of leadership on the issue, and Obama doesn't even seem aware of this ebbing support. Which, like I said, is disturbing.

Rahm Emanuel has leaked a few things to the media (or been the subject of leaks) which show him to be much more willing to compromise so much that he gives the store away, just to put a bill on Obama's desk to be signed. This bears watching closely in the future.

By refusing to deal with a lot of national security questions -- especially any dealing with his predecessor's term in office -- Obama is going to face a constant "drip drip drip" of these things being slowly made public. This also bears watching in the future.

Obama, in his most recent primetime press conference, says a cop "acted stupidly," which -- even if said cop did indeed act stupidly -- is a bad thing for a president to say to the nation, on quite a few levels.

Obama ends his second hundred days with his approval ratings down. The month of July was particularly bad for him, when his "honeymoon" period definitely ended. Poll-watchers can find further details at my ObamaPollWatch site, which admittedly still needs a lot of work.

The age of (media) foolishness

This is the part of the program where we examine not what was actually important during the past 100 days, but rather what the mainstream media told us was important. There's a definite difference between those two, it should be noted. A chasm the size of the Grand Canyon, actually. So here, in very abbreviated fashion, is what the mainstream media considered crucially important during this time period.

The H1N1 flu's gonna kill everyone, probably by next Tuesday.

Having a robust public health system is absolutely unconnected with that previous item, so please don't try to connect any dots here.

Obama is a socialist.

Empathy in a judge is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, "empathy" itself is probably a bad thing.

Only lefty judges are ever "activist."

Obama is a racist.

Illegal immigrants are gonna kill everyone with the flu, Obama is insane not to immediately shut the border with Mexico.

Pulling troops out of Iraq was Obama's decision (it wasn't, it was the SOFA under Bush).

Pelosi picks fight with CIA, therefore Pelosi is wrong because the CIA would never never lie to anyone, much less Congress. Where do people get these crazy ideas?

What's that? The CIA actually did lie to Congress? Sorry, no time to cover that story.

GOP votes (not) to change name of Democrats to the "Democrat Socialist Party." Lefty bloggers are massively disappointed at losing this prime chance to ridicule Republicans.

"Tea parties" are the most important American political protest, ever, and must be covered wall-to-wall.

Did we mention that the flu's gonna kill everyone?

Obama's a fascist, and will take over all private industry, likely by Christmas.

Robots are the only acceptable nominees for the Supreme Court.

How the heck could ANY "wise Latina woman" EVER do anything better than ANY white man? Tommyrot! The very idea is simply pre-POS-terous! In an unrelated -- totally unrelated -- story, the last minority voter has officially left the Republican Party.

Even though there's been an ongoing gigantic donnybrook of a fight in the RNC, it is always "the Democrats who are divided," as far as the media's concerned. Republicans fighting? Nothing to see here, move along....

The Republicans are all going to vote for healthcare reform if you pay for it by raising middle-class taxes and tax employer health benefits. [Editor's note: this one still makes me laugh out loud.]

Quoting Senator Jeff Sessions' belief that Sotomayor is a racist during her Senate hearing is newsworthy. Mentioning the fact that Sessions was previously turned down for a judgeship -- because of his racist comments on the job -- by the very same committee is not, so please don't bring it up.

Isn't everyone dead yet from the flu? It's coming, so be very afraid.

Obama proves that he would, indeed, kill a fly.

If a female senator demands to be addressed as "Senator," we should all make fun of her for doing so.

A thankful pause, while a Republican politician publicly implodes: Mark Sanford goes to South America. Or nude hiking. Or something.

Another thankful pause, for the gift that just keeps on giving: Sarah Palin!

Michael Jackson was more important than any human being who lived in the 20th century, and deserves news coverage on this scale.

President Obama appears to check out a young girl's rear end -- which is more important than talking about reducing nuclear weapons.

Even though it is a foregone conclusion Sotomayor will be confirmed, media goes crazy looking for drama in Senate hearings.

Obama's going to kill granny. By next Tuesday. And he won't even be using the flu.

Speaking of which, the flu's gonna kill everyone.

We can't let government takeover Medicare!

Obama was born in Kenya. Oh, and the world is flat. And we faked the moon landing. And John F. Kennedy was assassinated by John Lennon. Or something. More "birther" coverage!

The Dow Jones climbing above 9,000 has nothing to do with the economy, which is bad by the way, and will never get better under Obama, and even if it does, it won't be to his credit, so there!

Obama's comment about the Gates arrest was more important than the other 98 percent of the press conference, which was on (yawn) healthcare reform. This just in... Americans think a comedian is the most trustworthy news broadcaster in America. Of course, these two could not possibly be related items, right?

Obama getting together to talk things out with two guys over a beer is the equivalent of a "summit" between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Breathless reports on the brands of beer to be drunk will run on the late news, so stay tuned!

People standing up and yelling at townhall meetings is more newsworthy than the actual issues involved.

Cash for clunkers is a failure because it was too popular.

Oh, and, of course, the flu's going to kill us all, by noon tomorrow.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

Kathleen Wells, J.D.: Congresswoman Maxine Waters Gives President Obama An "A"

2009-05-18T11:51:31Z

Maxine Waters is a member of the United States House of Representatives, serving
California's 35th Congressional District since 1991. As a member of the House
Committee on Financial Services and the Chairwoman of its Subcommittee on
Housing and Community Opportunity, Congresswoman Waters is well positioned to
discuss current economic conditions and solutions to the crisis.

Here is my interview with Congresswoman Waters.

Kathleen Wells: President Obama has recently completed his 100th day in office. Give us your assessment.

Congresswoman Waters: I'll be happy to give you my assessment of President Barack Obama's 100th day in office. I join with most of America in giving him an
"A."

The polls are all showing that Americans not only support him, but believe that he has
done a good job. Most of the pundits, Democrats, Republicans and Independents, are
complimenting him on the way that he is conducting himself since he has been in
office.

And his "A" from me comes because he has done well on the domestic agenda. He
has worked well with Congress. He has signed into law several very important bills,
including the health care bill for children, which covers 11 million children who had
no healthcare insurance. Also, the Lilly Ledbetter Bill, which really speaks to equal
pay for equal work and has been an issue that has plagued us and plagued women for so long.

He also has the courage and the vision to step up to the plate in the middle of an
economic crisis and get signed into law a stimulus package to stimulate jobs and give
support to cities, states and counties. Not only to create jobs, but to help rebuild
our infrastructure. The stimulus package is a 787 billion dollar package that is
designed to make this economy come back to life again. And to grow the economy;
creating jobs and assisting families in many ways, including with education and
health.

And I'm very excited about the energy portion of the package, which will create the new green jobs. That will cause us to do retrofitting and to use alternative sources of energy. All of this is very important work. And I can't say enough about the approach to help to make us a green America and create clean energy jobs.

It is a very exciting time.

When you look at both his domestic and international agenda, you can certainly say
he has been successful on the international front. He has rebuilt confidence in
America. His trip to Europe was absolutely spectacular. Not only do they love him,
they love the new possibilities that he brings.

He stepped up to the plate right away and closed Gitmo and let it be known that he
would not allow prisoners that were in our possession to be treated in a way that the Bush Administration obviously had condoned.

So he has done a good job and he deserves an "A." And I think it is very important
for all of us to get behind him and help him move [on] the next agenda [item] of comprehensive universal healthcare. And on education, we must ensure that our young people are graduating from high school and going on to college and make sure that the college loans are credible and that families can afford to send their kids to college -- that we are not simply subsidizing the banks in giving these loans.

He inherited a horrible situation with this economic crisis, but he has not flinched.
And his confidence inspires us and helps to generate confidence because we see him
carrying on.

Kathleen Wells: You mentioned the banks and I know that the stress test was recently released and that it is being reported that 10 of the major, large banks require an infusion of additional capital, either by privately raising the funds, converting shares or coming to Congress. Your thoughts?

Congresswoman Waters: If the banks need to come to the Congress for a second
round, it will not be easy. It will not be given easily.

First of all, the banks did not spend the money the way that we thought they would
spend it. They did not loosen up the credit the way it had been envisioned. Some
banks were reported to have even gone out and bought other smaller banks. So, we
have to look at everything, from the compensation of top management -- the bonuses. The way this money has been spent.

If the banks come back to Congress for additional capital, the President is going to have to be able to convince the American public that he has confidence that infusing the banks with more dollars is going to stabilize this economy and avoid a meltdown. So, it's not going to be easy if they come back.

Kathleen Wells: In April, you were in Los Angeles visiting with a few of your constituents who are facing foreclosure. You introduced the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Tell me about the program -- its goal, its purpose.

Congresswoman Waters: As you know, we have faced this horrendous foreclosure disaster in the country where millions of homes have been placed in foreclosure. People are not able to pay their mortgages for many reasons. Because of the economic downturn, many people have lost their jobs or they have had to take part-time jobs. They don't have as much income. Many of the loans that were out there were fraudulent. Many people got coaxed into loans that they could not afford by unscrupulous loan initiators. For all of these reasons, we have these foreclosures across the country.

In some communities, the foreclosures are devastating. Whole communities are being boarded up. When you look at some of the houses that are foreclosed on, they are not up kept by the cities because it's a cost to the city. They create problems for the fire department and the police department because oftentimes they are occupied by gangs or the homeless. The weeds grow up, the animals take them over. It starts to drive down the value of the other homes in the neighborhood. This is what you have: communities that are in decline and homes that are losing value even faster than the homes that are losing value because of the downturn in the housing market.

My bill was designed to try and stabilize these communities. What my bill said is look, city and counties, we are going to give you some money to buy up these houses, to rehabilitate them and put them back on the market. We are going to get you to come up with a program that can not only rehabilitate them, but in some cases, like in Los Angeles, make them more family friendly. There are still homes with two bedrooms and only one bath. In Los Angeles, we are adding baths. Where there is a lot of yard space and acreage, we may be adding another room.

We are putting houses back on the market and putting them back at a price that is affordable. We are putting people into solid mortgages that will be 30 and 40-year mortgages, rather than some of these ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) that caused so many problems for people. That's how they are using the stabilization money.

Kathleen Wells: What can be done to help homeowners who are actually facing foreclosure now?

Congresswoman Waters: We are doing a lot of things. As you know, the President rolled out his plans for loan modification. In that plan, he has a way to help families with getting their loans redone, so that they can afford them.

In the loan modification plan, we get the loan initiator to write down interest rates. And in some cases, they are writing down principles -- stretching them out from re-setting loans or ARMs into 30 or 40-year loans -- which drops these payments, sometimes down 50-percent.

With the refinancing, we are getting FHA (Federal Housing Authority) in some cases to refinance the loan of people who may have a 30-year loan mortgage, but they have a loss of income, don't have as much money coming in and they need to reduce the cost. We are reducing their interest rates and that's causing them to reduce the amount of money that they are paying on their mortgages.

So, we do have plans in operation -- they are beginning to operate. And of course, we have all of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, that have a strong modification program that is in force and they are holding most of the second mortgages on many of these homes. It is beginning to move.

Michael Pollan: Food and Farming in Obama's First 100 Days

2009-05-04T16:50:15Z

That there is anything to report about food and farming in President Obama's first 100 days is striking in itself, considering how many pressing issues he has on his plate. But the president and, perhaps even more, the first lady have said and done some very encouraging things in this area, though there has been one notable misstep.

Tom Vilsack has sounded a welcome new note at the Department of Agriculture, where he has appointed a proven reformer -- Kathleen Merrigan -- as his deputy, and emphasized his commitment to sustainability, local food systems (including urban agriculture); putting nutrition at the heart of the department's nutrition programs (not as obvious as it might sound), and enlisting farmers in the fight against climate change. He has been meeting with the kinds of activists and farmers who in past administrations stood on the steps of the USDA holding protest signs.

The misstep was a half-hearted effort to trim crop subsidies, by limiting direct payments to farmers grossing more than $500,000 a year and redirecting those funds to childhood nutrition programs. This was framed as a contest between "rich farmers" and "hungry children." If so, the hungry children promptly lost. The unfortunate framing united all farmers against reform, especially since even some of the smallest commodity farmers gross a half million a year -- this is capital-intensive agriculture after all. The plan was quietly dropped after the old guard on the House and Senate agriculture committees dismissed it as a non-starter. Obama will have to develop much smarter proposals to reform subsidies, ones that divide the farm bloc rather than unify it.

Perhaps the most encouraging action so far has come from the East Wing, where Michelle Obama has been speaking out about the importance of real, fresh food, home cooking and gardening. By planting an organic garden on the White House lawn, she launched a thousand victory gardens (vegetables seed is suddenly in short supply), gave conniptions to the pesticide industry (which wrote urging her to use some of their "crop protection products" whether she needed them or not), and at a stroke raised the profile and prestige of real food in America.

This article also appears on Greenlight, from NRDC's OnEarth magazine, and was originally included in a Salon feature reviewing President Obama's first 100 days in office.

Andy Worthington: Obama's First 100 Days: A Start On Guantanamo, But Not Enough

2009-05-04T06:35:46Z

Speaking at a press conference to mark his first 100 days in office, Barack Obama made two bold claims about the policies he has already implemented to tackle the Executive overreach of the Bush administration, with regard to detention and interrogation policies in the "War on Terror."

"We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and banning torture without exception," the President said.

Unfortunately, neither claim is strictly true, as I aim to demonstrate in two articles, with particular reference to the three Executive Orders that Barack Obama issued as one of his first acts as President.

In the first order, which is the focus of this article, Obama stipulated that Guantánamo would close within a year, and also established an inter-departmental review of the cases of the remaining prisoners, a requirement to assess whether the prison conformed to the standards required by the Geneva Conventions, and a request for the reviled system of trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo (the "dark side" of the law, as envisaged by Dick Cheney and David Addington) to be halted for four months. The second and third orders will be dealt with in the following article, looking at Obama's progress on "banning torture without exception."

A misleading statement, and too few released prisoners

While Obama is to be credited for issuing these orders, his decision to state, "We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay," rather than, "We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by ordering the closure of Guantánamo by January 20, 2010," is rather too economical with the truth for my liking.

Moreover, while the review established by Obama, which is being "conducted with the full cooperation and participation" of the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Defense, State and Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, got off to a flying start, it has, to date, accomplished very little. Just one prisoner, Binyam Mohamed, has been released, and this, it must be noted, only came about because the story of his "extraordinary rendition" and torture, which was the subject of court cases on both sides of the Atlantic, meant that he was fast-tracked to the top of the list to avoid embarrassment to either government. And beyond Mohamed, only one other prisoner -- the Yemeni doctor, Ayman Batarfi -- has been cleared for release.

The ongoing problems of clearing prisoners and rehousing them

At this rate, of course, it will take decades to close Guantánamo, but last Wednesday, on a visit to Europe, Attorney General Eric Holder stated that, as a result of the administration's ongoing review, around 30 prisoners would soon be ready for release. He added that the Justice Department would be approaching allies about taking specific prisoners "within weeks as opposed to months", but did not explain whether the 30 prisoners he was referring to were new cases examined as part of the review, or whether they included some, or all of the 60 or so prisoners who have already been cleared for release.

About 40 of these men were approved for release after their cases were reviewed by multiple military review boards at Guantánamo, and the rest were ordered to be freed by courts on the U.S. mainland within the last six months, when, after long delays, the lower courts were finally empowered to review the prisoners' claims for habeas corpus, following last June's Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush.

The distinction is important, as it would be distressing to discover that the Obama administration felt the need to revisit decisions already made by the U.S. military, but it would not be entirely surprising if this were the case, because the administration has already caused spikes of discontent in the courts, where certain judges appear to be coming to the conclusion that the administration seems to regard its own review process as more significant than the habeas reviews.

Mutiny in the courts

Just three weeks ago, AFP reported that two habeas judges had made a rare public row of their impatience with government prosecutors. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, appalled by a government lawyer who "repeatedly missed deadlines" in the cases of four Kuwaiti prisoners, wrote that his "compliance was not optional," and added that the court had "serious concern about counsel's ability to read and comprehend its orders," and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan was equally outraged by government lawyers' "repeated" delays in providing unclassified exculpatory material to the defense in the case of a Yemeni prisoner. Judge Sullivan said, "To hide -- and I don't use that word loosely -- to hide relevant and exculpatory evidence from counsel and from the court under any circumstance ... is fundamentally unjust, outrageous and will not be tolerated." Threatening to sanction the government, he added, "How can this court have any confidence whatsoever in the U.S. government to comply with its obligation and to be truthful to the court?"

Speaking to AFP, David Cynamon, a lawyer for the Kuwaitis, stated his belief that the government was "trying to delay these cases until the review team can make decisions without pressure," and another lawyer said, "The Obama administration would probably prefer that some cases stop for a while." These were worrying comments, although there seems little reason to doubt them, but an additional assertion by the second lawyer, that "the habeas lawyers have represented these men for four or five years and are not content to wait any longer," was particularly relevant, because, after the long struggles it took to secure legal rights for the prisoners in Boumediene, and to rein in the Executive over the course of seven years, it was unsurprising that both judges and lawyers would be perturbed to find themselves apparently overridden by the Executive again.

Focus on the Uighurs

These are not the only troubles. When it comes to the prisoners who have already been cleared for release, it has long been known that the majority of these men face enormous problems, because they are from countries including Algeria, China, Libya, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, and there are fears that they will face torture if they are repatriated (as prohibited in the UN Convention Against Torture). However, as I reported in March, six Saudis have been cleared since before Obama came to power, and yet they still languish at Guantánamo, despite a long-established rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia that has seen the successful return and reeducation of the majority of Guantánamo's Saudi prisoners.

In addition, the administration has dragged its heels over the Uighurs, Muslims from China's Xinjiang province, who comprise 17 of the 23 prisoners whose release was ordered after their habeas reviews, but who are still held in Guantánamo. (To date, just three men have been released since being cleared by the courts).

The release of the Uighurs into the United States was ordered last October by District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina, in a ruling that was notable for his assertion that, because the government had accepted that it had no case against them, their continued detention was "unconstitutional," and that, because no other country could be found that was prepared to enrage China by accepting them, they should be accepted onto the U.S. mainland. Shamefully, the Bush administration appealed, and the new government did nothing in response when, on February 18, a notoriously Conservative appeals court reversed Urbina's principled ruling.

This impasse, too, may soon be coming to an end, if reports last week are to be believed. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration was preparing to admit into the United States as many as seven of the Uighurs, even though the decision "is not final and faces challenges from within the government," in particular from the Department of Homeland Security. As the Times also explained, however, administration officials "believe that settling some of them in American communities will set an example, helping to persuade other nations to accept Guantánamo detainees too." This is undoubtedly correct, as European countries, still shocked by the brusqueness with which Bush officials -- and even the President himself -- demanded that they help out, while refusing to do anything themselves, need positive encouragement to help clear up what is widely regarded as America's mess.

To his credit, Eric Holder noted this in a speech during his European visit, when he stated, "I know that Europe did not open Guantánamo and that in fact, a great many on this continent opposed it, but as we turn the page to a new beginning, it is incumbent on us all to embrace new solutions, free from the rancor and rhetoric that divided us in the past." However, it still remains the case, as I have been explaining since Obama came to power, that accepting the Uighurs into the U.S. would be the most effective way to break this particular deadlock.

A sleight of hand on detention policies, and further concerns in court

Even if the Uighurs' resettlement goes ahead, this is still not the end of the Obama administration's problems with Guantánamo. In March, in a court filing that introduced the "current, novel type of armed conflict" as a replacement for the Bush administration's "War on Terror," the government also dropped the use of the term "enemy combatant," but, crucially, maintained a similar definition for the now nameless prisoners to the one invented by its predecessors. Whereas Bush had insisted that he could hold people outside the law who were "part of, or supporting, Taliban or al-Qaeda forces or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," the new administration kept this definition largely intact, but added that individuals who supported al-Qaeda or the Taliban were "detainable only if the support was substantial."

As I wrote at the time, this supposed change was actually worthless, as a close inspection of the government's assertions revealed that it proposed to detain someone who never even "attempted to commit any act of depredation or entered the theatre or zone of active military operations" and may only have stayed in a house associated with those who did engage in militancy. It was, moreover, noticeable that the government's whole approach perpetuated the Bush administration's myth that it was justifiable to equate the Taliban with al-Qaeda, even though one was a government (however reviled) and the other was a small group of terrorists.

In a response filed shortly after the government announced its sleight of hand, lawyers for some of the Guantánamo prisoners argued, as SCOTUSblog described it, that the new government was "still asserting too much authority. The President, they contended, is engaging in 'impermissible law-making' by the Executive branch, intruding on Congress's powers."

Last week, the habeas cases took another turn, when Judge Reggie B. Walton largely supported the government's position, but warned that he was laying down some inviolable "limiting principles." As SCOTUSblog again explained, he "rejected arguments by detainees' lawyers that only an individual who was taking part in active hostilities against the U.S. at the time of capture could be detained," although he said he had some "distaste for the government's reliance on the term 'support' at all," and also made it clear that he was only prepared to accept the terms "substantially supported" and "part of" if they were "interpreted to encompass only individuals who were members of the enemy organization's armed forces, as that term is intended under the laws of war, at the time of their capture."

Expanding on his chosen definition, Judge Walton also stated, "Only persons who receive and execute orders from the enemy's command structure" could be held as members of enemy armed forces, adding, "The key question is whether an individual receives and executes orders from the enemy force's combat apparatus ... The individual must have some sort of 'structured' role in the 'hierarchy' of the enemy force." This, he stated, could include those who "provided housing, feeding or transporting 'al-Qaeda fighters,' such as a cook who was a part of the armed forces but was temporarily assigned only a non-combat role," but he averred that it did not include "civilians who may have some tangential connections to such organizations," adding that "[s]ympathizers, propagandists, and financiers" who had "no involvement" with the command structure, even if they were "members of the enemy organization in an abstract sense," could not be held unless they took "a direct part in hostilities."

This was sufficiently different from the views of other judges -- for example, Judge Richard Leon, who "has been using a detention definition that gives the government more authority than the Obama administration now claims" -- for SCOTUSblog to note, "Sooner or later, the Supreme Court may have to sort it all out."

Nearly a year after Boumediene, this wrangling is doing nothing to address the Supreme Court's concern that "the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody," but from my point of view the main problem is not with the courts' attempts to work out where the lines should be drawn, but with the Obama administration's close adherence to its predecessor's rationale, which does not bode well for the outcome of Obama's review, and makes me wonder if other disturbing developments are in store.

Certainly, there have been other disappointments. In February, the Pentagon's review of conditions at Guantánamo concluded that they met the standards required by the Geneva Conventions, even though, at the time, a hunger strike was raging and at least 20 percent of the prison's population was being brutally force-fed, and beaten if they resisted; and the initial expectation that the Military Commissions would not be resuscitated at the end of the four-month review period is now looking a shade more dubious at least.

Will the Military Commissions be revived?

Also in February, I complained that the Pentagon, under defense secretary Robert Gates (still, unnervingly, the same man employed by George W. Bush), retained other Bush officials in worryingly high places (Susan Crawford, for example, a protégée of Dick Cheney and a close friend of David Addington, who oversees the Military Commissions), and a week after Obama took office the Commissions' recently appointed chief judge, Army Col. James M. Pohl, refused to suspend the arraignment of the Saudi prisoner Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, until it was called off by Crawford. In what appeared to be a snub to the new President, Col. Pohl stated that "he found the prosecutors' arguments, including the assertion that the Obama administration needed time to review its options, to 'be an unpersuasive basis to delay the arraignment.'"

After this, the Commissions went quiet, but on Wednesday Col. Patrick Parrish, the judge in the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was just 15 years old when he was seized, half-dead, after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, notified his lawyers that pre-trial hearings would recommence on June 1, unless he was notified to the contrary by the government. This means that Col. Parrish is either being somewhat provocative, or that he expects the administration to press ahead with the trials after the four-month freeze expires (as the New York Times suggested in a worrying article on Saturday, in which senior officials, speaking anonymously, said that "administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts"), but either way it is a troubling development for those who hoped that the administration would shut down the Commissions without hesitation, would resist all calls to reinstate them, amend them or set up another novel and untried system, and would, instead, move the prisoners regarded as genuinely dangerous to the mainland to face trials in federal court.

The dark specter of preventive detention

According to Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff, "no more than a dozen or two of the detainees" held in Guantánamo ever had any worthwhile intelligence. Wilkerson's statement, included in a column he wrote in March, was particularly significant, as it should indicate that no more than two dozen prisoners should face a trial, and that the rest -- though many were low-level fighters for the Taliban -- should be released.

However, within hours of President Obama's 100 Days speech, in a genuinely disturbing development that mirrors what Robert Gates's former masters used to say with monotonous regularity, the defense secretary announced to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee that the question was "still open" as to what the government should do with "the 50 to 100 [prisoners] -- probably in that ballpark -- who we cannot release and cannot try."

Back in Bush's day, these same men were sometimes referred to as those who were "too dangerous to release but not guilty enough to prosecute" -- essentially because the supposed evidence against them was extracted through the use of torture or coercion. Regardless of how they are described, however, the notion that there is now an acceptable "third way" between the guilty and not guilty verdicts delivered in a courtroom is almost incredibly disturbing, not only because, yet again, it attempts to exert Executive authority over the courts' ongoing habeas reviews, but also because it will undoubtedly play into the hands of those lawyers -- including Neal Katyal, a law professor who helped overthrow the first incarnation of the Military Commissions in June 2006 (in the case of Salim Hamdan) -- who have recently taken positions in the government (Katyal is the principal deputy Solicitor General) and are advocating for a system of preventive detention to be established.

Just think about it: These are men against whom the information that purports to be evidence was often gathered by extremely dubious or downright illegal means, including the use of torture. It cannot therefore be used in a U.S. court, although real evidence -- such as the kind based on detective work or non-coercive interrogations -- can. And yet, because of a suspicion that, if they were to be released, these men would at some point in the future commit an offence, we are told, by those advocating a system of preventive detention, that they should be imprisoned forever on the basis of secret evidence.

As Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, explained in March, "A regime of preventive detention would be perilous for the liberty of U.S. citizens and others. It would enable the U.S. government to detain individuals for an indeterminate period based on predictions about the danger they might pose in the future, rather than on provable crimes that they had actually committed."

You can draw whichever dystopian conclusion you wish, so long as it's one of the following:

That's the same as Guantánamo.

You can't imprison people, based on evidence that can't be tested, for what they may or may not do in the future.

Who will be next? The poor? Political protestors? You and me?

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.

Arianna Huffington: Sunday Roundup

2009-05-02T23:59:56Z

There was much to celebrate this week, as we marked the remarkable achievements of Obama's first 100 days. A high point: Michelle Obama sending a resounding message about making service a regular part of our lives by volunteering at a food bank, even though we are months away from Thanksgiving. On the other hand, there was the depressing, banking-industry-led Senate defeat of a measure offering relief to America's struggling homeowners. Coming up: Thursday's announcement of the results of the bank stress tests. Early indications are that at least some of the banks are going to need another infusion of capital. With apologies to Justice Scalia, "Fleeting expletive" no! It's time for Americans to draw the line in the sand and say that if bankers are not going to side with us when we need help, we're not going to side with them when they do.

Frank Rich: Enough With The 100 Days Already

2009-05-02T21:47:15Z

BELIEVE it or not, there are Americans who have a "very negative" opinion of Barack Obama (13 percent, in the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll). Some are even angry at him (10 percent, New York Times/CBS News). As the First 100 Days hoopla started to jump the shark last week, I tried, as an experiment in empathy, to see the world through their eyes.

Huff Radio: KCRW's Left Right & Center: Souter, Specter and Swine Flu

2009-05-02T14:11:07Z

Well, if there's news containing an "s" word, it's likely included in our latest show -- a lively round up of lots of news. Souter leaves SCOTUS -- are the issues in replacing him only going to be gender and liberalism? How about age -- should this be a lifetime appointment?

On Specter: Tony thinks this means more procedural votes work in favor of the Democrats, and that Pennsylvania is still a 5-point Democratic state, although the burbs and the blue collars have switched their party allegiances. Bob and Arianna say this solidifies the GOP's rank as minority party. Whatever happened to Reagan's big tent?

And Matt says the bugaboo about taxes is intellectually dishonest, with the boomers set to retire, taxes must rise to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Then a discourse on banking, hedge funds, pensions and bondholders on the eve of stress test results.

Finally, credit cards and bankruptcy. While Arianna contends that the bankers own the Senate, Tony contends creditor nations are stable, debtor nations are chaotic... and cheers the bankers on.

Andy Borowitz: Borowitz Report Live: The Podcast

2009-05-01T23:28:06Z

On Thursday at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, I reviewed President Obama's first one hundred days in office. The Y has kindly made the podcast of the show available to Huffington Post readers. Listen to it here.

Obama's State Secrets Position: Selling Out Or Clever Ploy?

2009-05-01T15:39:28Z

Yesterday, I posted an item that criticized President Barack Obama for failing to take the sorts of actions that matched his answer to Time's Michael Scherer's state secrets question Wednesday night. In fact, he's taken the opposite action by expanding on Bush policies he termed "overbroad" and failing to discern genuine security concerns from false ones. Plenty of readers disagreed with my bottom line, that Obama's answer was not geniune. I hold to my analysis! But, emailer Ron Carey challenged my contentions in a thoughtful and engaging way, so I figured, why not air a reasoned countering opinion? Here goes:

Obama has stated more than a few times that the Bush era secrecy claims were outrageous - States Secrets were never meant to be used in this manner. Obama is a constitutional scholar and knows full well the ramifications of a sovereign immunity claim. His stated position is a polar opposite from this claim, so how can his administration make this patently ridiculous argument?

If Obama was only interested in making sure that these claims weren't available under his watch, he'd simply not use them. I think he has a longer-term view of the situation. He saw what Bush got away with. I think he wants to make sure future administrations don't have this club in their bag when he's gone. So how can he do this?

Well, he could go to Congress and demand legislation that disallows this use, but the Dems in Congress are spineless and he'd wind up with a half-a-loaf compromise that wouldn't have any teeth.

Or, wait a minute, he already has a number of these cases traveling through the court system now. What if he just let them proceed? The courts would dismiss the Bush secrecy claims for sure, and he'd have a precedent that future administrations would need to deal with if they wanted to repeat the same mistakes.

But what if the court rules in favor of the secrecy claims? That would screw the pooch but good... Hmmm... Well, we'll have to make sure that doesn't happen. How? Let's just take Bush's secrecy claims to their preposterous conclusion. We'll make them so outrageous, no court in the land could possibly uphold them. We get our precedent for future administrations and avoid the nonsense that comes with legislating this out of existance.

I've made this case to a number of people from both sides of the political spectrum. I have been roundly ridiculed for the hypothesis. Other progressives called it "11th dimensional chess" - don't ask me, I don't know what that means. They considered it crazy. But is it, really? I mean, it isn't even regular chess. It isn't even complicated. Other bloggers, including one ex-constitutional lawyer I know, thought it was crazy to think that Obama's administration might present a case disingenuously to serve an ulterior motive. He didn't seem to think that lawyers do that kind of thing.

But they do it every day. Every time a lawyer blames someone else for the crime his client is accused of, he's forwarding a case he doesn't really believe to serve his end goal. So, are we to believe that Obama is incapable of such a move? Or are we supposed to be so cynical, so skeptical, that we just automatically assume the worst of our elected officials?

I like to think that I'm not reflexively "assuming the worst of anyone," just judging the merits of actions already taken. If we all can accept that, though, I think this matter would make for some lively debate in the comments, so I invite people to chew on the matter.

FYI: I tried to clarify for Ron, by the way, what the reference to "11th dimensional chess" meant. It is, I believe, a Star Trek reference! The crew of the Enterprise was often depicted playing a chess-like game that was three dimensions, and the idea was, "Damn, lookit how crazy ADVANCED those dudes are, playing SUPER SPACE CHESS!" And so, whenever you argue that Obama is playing some political jujitsu, you hear someone saying, "OH yeah, eleventh-dimensional chess."

I can't wait to see what J.J. Abrams does with that!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

Jim Selman: The 100-Day Nonsense: Too Much Opinion, Not Enough News

2009-05-01T12:26:06Z

I admit I am not a fan of television in general and the broadcast news media in particular. However, I found myself spending some time in bed this week after some minor surgery and cruising the tube for something to watch. I was amazed at how many channels are now dedicated to around-the-clock news. I landed on CNN and was 'blitzed' with a super fancy build-up to "The Presidential Scorecard: The First 100 Days". This is obviously choreographed by the same people who can make war sound like a college football game and almost anything ordinary sound significant -- unfortunately so much so that it is hard to distinguish what really is significant.

With today's technology, we can all 'vote' on whatever the media is commenting on and have our opinions added to the tally. This is, of course, just the latest in the media's attempt to engage viewers in a never-ending commentary about whatever is going on. I think this phenomenon is further evidence of our becoming a spectator society.

Surfing channels, I found that all the programs now have panels of folks who give their opinion about whatever item the anchor throws at them. The idea is to maintain some pretense of journalistic objectivity by including both a liberal and a conservative on the panel. Here's how it works. The media focuses on an arbitrary, artificial and mostly hyped-up 'event', like 'the first hundred days' and plans 'in-depth coverage'. So a couple of weeks before the 100th day, extensive promotions begin with the kind of flair you'd expect for the Second Coming.

Then the reporters start polling officialdom for anyone who has an opinion about what has been accomplished since the election. There is nothing wrong with the questions, but at some point we begin to lose sight of the distinction between opinion and news. Now on the 'big day' (whatever it may be), the newscast comes to a head with a 'SPECIAL PROGRAM'. In the case of the 100th day campaign, they even had a presidential press conference to underscore the importance of the scorecard. Now the panel of folks is allowed to 'grade' the President's speech, in addition to what has been accomplished by him and his administration.

Opinion is now officially being packaged as news.

All of this would be merely vacuous nonsense and boring except for the fact that when there is so much of it and it is the same from one program to the next, it begins to turn us into spectators and dull our capacity to discriminate. For example, running the government is not at all like a high school examination. Most issues are far too complex to boil down to a single grade. 'Averaging' a few thousand opinions into a single 'scientific' number is meaningless. Besides, any system of grading requires some acknowledged and recognized standard for performance (of which, to my knowledge, there is none yet legislated).

There is a big difference between being informed and watching others comment on something. When we participate in these kinds of 'opinion shows', we are falling into a trap of believing that polls reflect reality -- and if Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan was correct, the medium is the message.

Stephen Colbert, Jonathan Alter Discuss Obama's "First Fourteen Mondays" (VIDEO)

2009-05-01T11:20:37Z

Stephen Colbert suitably lampooned the media's obsession with the First 100 Days by examining the Obama administration through the lens of the "First 14 Mondays," which Colbert called "the latest in totally random ways to judge a presidency." Joining Colbert was Jonathan Alter, who helped Colbert make an "arbitrary comparison to another American president," in this case, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, because FDR had set the "gold standard for first fourteen Mondays, in that on his fourteenth Monday, he took America off the gold standard." Also, because Alter wrote The Defining Moment, a book about FDR, but that gold standard thing was a pretty good line.

Alter was well-informed and ready to go along with the First Fourteen Mondays conceit, noting that FDR had himself a good panic attack in the Oval Office on his first Monday, mere moments after becoming the first President to defy area traffic regulations. Sort of a mixed bag!

Alter suggested that while Obama had not accomplished as much as FDR, he was nevertheless "in FDR's league." "As a socialist," went Colbert's riposte.

[WATCH.]

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Obama's First 14 Mondays - Jonathan Alter

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

First 100 Days

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Joan Garry: Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Blow It

2009-05-01T08:53:06Z

Unlike his predecessor, Barack Obama does not see himself as the "Decider." He is at heart a community organizer. And in these first one hundred days, Americans have seen the tenets of community organizing in action. The President has reminded us time and again that we are all in this together, that each of us has a voice and a responsibility. He is also demonstrating that decision-making is a process.

In 1993, we saw what happens when the process is wrong. Nobody wins. Bill Clinton signed "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) into law that year and since then, over 13,000 gay and lesbian members of our Armed Services have lost. Lost their jobs, their careers, their dignity.

And so here we are, 16 years later. The gay community has a friend in the White House again and it looks like we are going to get another turn at bat.

We absolutely must win this time.

Now I am not a patient person when it comes to equality. I spent nearly a decade running a gay rights organization. I spent much of last year raising money for the Obama campaign because I am impatient. I needed to do what I could to ensure the election of someone I know stands with us.

Aubrey Sarvis, the Executive Director of Servicemembers' Legal Defense Network (SLDN), is impatient, too. He illustrated his impatience this week with a full -page open letter to the President in a Capitol Hill publication calling on him to incorporate the repeal of DADT into the Defense budget he brings to the Pentagon next week.

In his letter, he indicates that this is the "logical" opportunity to be done with it.

Logical? Not from where this fellow impatient activist sits.

1) 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is a law. To change it, you need to vote. And you have to be ready for that vote. My point of view -- shared by many closer to the Hill than I -- is that we are not ready. We need sixty Senate votes. We don't have them yet. We can and will get them.

The logical next step? A detailed plan to go out and get them.

2) Injecting the DADT hot potato (regardless of the overwhelming public support -- over 75%) into a Defense budget discussion will turn us from civil rights priority to a distraction. And it could be the red meat some are looking for to undermine a President who by all accounts has had a very good 100 days.

3) The enforcement of DADT has cost the United States hundreds of millions of dollars since 1993 and the idea of ensuring that the budget does not include funding for its enforcement is an interesting angle. But not funding the ability to enforce a law is radically different from repealing the law. The law must go.

4) Mr. Sarvis doesn't trust Mr. Obama's commitment to the LGBT community. A dose of cynicism is healthy. We've been thrown under the bus by politicians time and again. Democrats are all too aware that our issues are the best weapon the conservatives have to fire up their base. Politicians tread carefully with us and President Obama is no exception.

And yet, a look at these first 100 days offers some tangible evidence that we can begin to trust. The Philadelphia Gay News, whose editor was not drinking the Obama Kool Aid during primary season, compiled a very impressive 100 day LGBT scorecard. Worth a read.

Perhaps the pinnacle of these first 100 days was the passage of Hate Crimes Legislation in the House with a Senate vote as early as next week. I want that victory -- long overdue -- much too late to save so many -- to be savored and honored. I don't want that victory blurred by an aggressive push on DADT that we simply may not be ready for.

At a fundraiser a year before Election Day, Candidate (and organizer) Obama encouraged us to be impatient with him. We will. We must.

But I'm looking for "constructive impatience." And if we have learned anything as a community, it is that our fight for equality demands all hands on deck. Gay hands, straight hands, Presidential hands, Congressional hands and citizen hands.

We can't lose sight of our part in all this. And "our part" does not mean simply demanding that the President do his.

On so many issues of importance to the LGBT community, the president has some heavy lifting to do. But make no mistake. So do we.

"Daily Show" On Coverage Of Obama: Fox News Stocking Up On Holy Water And Garlic (VIDEO)

2009-05-01T08:28:25Z

Jon Stewart looked at the coverage of Obama's 100th day speech last night, showing Sean Hannity's terrifying opening montage and saying "apparently Fox is stocking up on holy water and garlic."

Stewart didn't just go after Fox, but MSNBC as well, mocking their effusive love for the president, and offering other glowing comparisons that Chris Matthews may use in the future. He noted that "MSNBC [went] with love tinged with disappointment, Fox [went] with fear tinged with contempt," leaving the field wide open for CNN. Unfortunately they dropped the ball "officially becoming prisoners of their own technology."

WATCH:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Obama 101

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

Download Last Night's Daily Show Episode FREE on iTunes!

Bruce Nilles: 100 Days of Coal

2009-04-30T18:27:00Z

As everyone talks about the Obama Administration's first 100 days, I thought I'd join the conversation and give a status report on what they've done to end the use of coal and the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining.

The steps taken so far on coal-fired power plants are definitely putting the U.S. on the right track toward clean energy:

EPA Opposes Big Stone II Coal Plant in South Dakota: On January 23, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overturned approval of this proposed coal-fired power plant. EPA's decision came after the state failed to require state-of-the-art pollution controls for the coal plant - controls that would address harmful soot, smog and global warming pollution. This decision showed that EPA is back to enforcing long-standing legal requirements fairly and consistently nationwide and that they're concerned about pollution and global warming.

A Major Step Toward Regulating CO2 From Coal Plants: On February 17, President Obama's EPA took the first step toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. EPA, under the new leadership of Administrator Lisa Jackson, granted a petition from the Sierra Club and other groups calling for reconsideration of a memo issued by former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson which sought to prohibit controls on global warming pollution from coal plants.

EPA Calls Global Warming Pollution a Threat
On April 17, EPA issued a finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases represent a significant threat to public health and welfare. EPA now has both the authority and the obligation to regulate global warming pollution. After this announcement, to continue supporting President Obama's great strides toward a clean energy economy, Sierra Club announced its new Big Picture Campaign. The grassroots effort will generate public comments and support for the numerous administrative findings, rules and regulations expected over the coming months and years.

Reevaluating New Source Review Rules: The Obama Administration is signaling clearly this week that it will no longer be business-as-usual for coal-fired power plants. On April 27, EPA announced that it will review three regulations related to power plant emissions. The most important part of these three New Source Review rules is the one saying power plants cannot ignore fine particle/soot anymore. The Bush Administration rule had allowed new plants to avoid any evaluation of fine particle/soot impacts.

The Administration is also continuing the Clinton-era national initiative to stop illegal pollution from coal-fired power plants. Already it has filed suits against the Big Cajun 2 coal-fired power plant in Louisiana, and the Jeffrey Energy Center in Kansas to hold the plants accountable for operating without modern pollution controls to limit soot and smog, which can worsen asthma, increase the risk of respiratory illness and heart attack and even lead to premature death. Both coal plants failed to upgrade their pollution controls when they upgraded the rest of their facilities as required under the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act.

While these are positive moves toward clean energy, they certainly don't mean coal is out of the picture yet - and especially not mountaintop removal coal mining.

To be clear, the Obama Administration has not yet filled leadership positions in key agencies nor enacted all the rule changes that would end this destructive practice. But there have been some good steps forward in the first 100 days:

First Setback for Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining: On March 24, 2009, EPA exercised its authority under the Clean Water Act to object to several mountaintop removal coal mining permit applications, halting these projects until changes are made to minimize their environmental impacts. In the announcement, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stated that she has "directed the agency to review other mining permit requests. EPA will use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment."

If the Obama Administration continues to use the best science in evaluating the impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining, then the days of destruction are numbered.

Stopping a VA Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Operation: On April 8, EPA requested that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers revoke the permit for A&G Coal's massive Ison Rock Ridge mountaintop removal coal mine in Southwest Virginia. By intervening to stop new devastation, President Obama's EPA did something that the Bush Administration failed to do.

Then just this week, the EPA intervened to take over review of a permit for a massive mountaintop removal coal mine in Pike County, Kentucky. Once again, EPA Administrator Jackson seems to be fulfilling her promise of using sound science and working to protect the environment.

But with the explosives and bulldozers standing by, it will take tough enforcement and more rule changes and legislation to end mountaintop removal coal mining completely. Although the EPA has said it is reviewing hundreds of new permits, the agency has stated that the vast majority of mining permits will likely still be approved.

Serious steps to end mountaintop removal coal mining would support clean energy solutions in Appalachia and create good, green jobs in America. Already close to 2,000 miles of streams have been contaminated or destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining, and communities throughout the Appalachian region suffer daily from contaminated drinking water, increased flooding, and a decimated landscape. At least another 200 miles of streams could be destroyed if the Obama administration - and the White House Council on Environmental Quality specifically - does not act in the next 60 days to end it.

Beyond ending mountaintop removal coal mining, there are many other steps that must be taken to switch to clean energy and away from coal. Coal burning only occurs because of loopholes the industry has at every stage of its lifecycle - from mining it, to burning it and disposing of its ash.

President Obama is systematically closing these loopholes and establishing a level playing field for clean energy, and we look forward to continuing our work with his administration to end coal power and bring the U.S. into a clean energy future.

Obama's State Secrets Answer Defies Credulity

2009-04-30T17:45:47Z

At last night's 100 Days In Office press conference, President Barack Obama was asked a smart question from Time Magazine's Michael Scherer, on his policy on state secrets, and whether it would ever come to resemble something that could be considered a reform of Bush White House policy. Here's what Obama said, in response:

OBAMA: I actually think that the state secret doctrine should be modified. I think right now it's overbroad. But keep in mind what happens, is we come in to office. We're in for a week, and suddenly we've got a court filing that's coming up. And so we don't have the time to effectively think through, what exactly should an overarching reform of that doctrine take? We've got to respond to the immediate case in front of us. There -- I think it is appropriate to say that there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety. But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it's not such a blunt instrument.

Obama went on to suggest that Eric Holder was busy as a bee, deeply considering the policy.

So, Obama agrees that the doctrine "should be modified," and that "right now it's overbroad." This implies that he hasn't yet gotten around to modifying it. Oh, but he has! And what's more, he's made it even more "overbroad." Allow Sarabeth from 1115.org to explain:

For example, in Jewel v. NSA, the Obama Justice Department didn't just repeat "essentially the same (state secrets privilege) arguments made by the Bush administration three years ago", it actually exceeded the Bush administration's claims:

But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

And this didn't happen one week into the Obama presidency, it happened about two-and-a-half months after he took office.

Yes, and it happened more than once. So this idea that the administration's just been too busy, and they need a little breather so that they can sit down and really delve into the matter, and it's just unfortunate that they had to respond to a court filing so soon into their tenure, just doesn't wash. They took their breather, made a carefully considered decision, and breathed more life into a bad Bush policy.

To take it further, let's dig into another part of Obama's answer, that "there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety." That may be the case. I'm worried, however, that the Obama administration can't discern the difference! Let's recall earlier this month, Obama was handed a case that I called "a giftwrapped, politically safe, un-frack-upable opportunity that Obama still managed to get entirely wrong." Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent reported:

The Obama administration could have just let this one go.

U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates' April 2 ruling that three detainees -- two from Yemen, one from Tunisia, all held by the U.S. military at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan without charge for more than six years -- have a right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts was crafted narrowly on purpose. The Obama administration did not have to appeal it and open itself up to the charge that it was making the same arguments that the Bush administration did -- that prisoners in the war on terror can be held indefinitely with no constitutional rights whatsoever.

Yet on Friday, the Obama Justice Department did just that, filing documents with the federal court indicating that it plans to appeal the judge's ruling, because allowing these three men to challenge their detention would "impose serious practical burdens on, and potential harm to, the Government and its efforts to prosecute the war in Afghanistan."

So, if Obama doesn't believe these powers should be wielded like a "blunt instrument," he should maybe stop doing so!

Naturally, having put this marker down in front of Michael Scherer, Obama now invites the evaluation of the press -- should they be interested in seeing what comes of his promise to reform this matter. But as a pure measure of Obama's deeds thus far, there wasn't an ounce of genuineness in his answer last night.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Kate Clinton: My Report Card

2009-04-30T13:14:57Z

In the spirit of self-criticism, I share with you my assessment of my own First 100 Days of Obama.

First, you know the MSM* is in a heap of trouble when they have to hype Barack Obama's first one hundred days in office as if it were a new national, international, and intergalactic holiday. Wolf Blitzer re-assembled the BPTOT* pantloads. John King stroked his board. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talked some shit with Jon Stewart. Despite the party-poo-pooing, Gathering Storm meteorologists at FOX, the 100 Days celebration might still fire up the civic imagination. I see in the future special costumes, greeting/report cards, gifts, firework displays, parades, and special foods. Ixnay on the orkpay.

Ironically, midst all the news of the Swine Flu, came the news bomb that Republican Senator Arlen Specter was switching to the Democratic side. The news threw a wrench in some of the MSM's planned coverage. They had an obituary in the can for Arlen, but not a switchuary. While I applaud the new tradition of giving a Republican-turned-Democrat as a 100-Day gift, I will never forgive the senator from Pennsylvania for his questioning of Anita Hill. He remains Sen. Arlen Sphincter to me.

Otherwise, on my own personal F100DoO* Report Card, under the "Effort" column, I have given myself a strong B. For the last three months I have tried to adopt the Obama Way into my daily life. I'm trying to be hopeful. I listen carefully to my friends for signs of work worry or money distress. I tried to get my building to donate food to the local food pantry. I did not leave a nasty note for the tenant who donated a dusty, bloated can of mandarin orange sections.

Good thing Barack Obama is so calm. He can't seem to catch a break: the wars, the economy, swine flu and now a Supreme Court nomination fight. And that right there is another remnant of the Bushthink I'm working to root out. Hey, it's an eight year old habit; it's a slow recovery. Bush always seemed put out by governing. It so interrupted his daily two-hour workouts. Obama seems to welcome challenge.

I am making progress. Sometimes awful-izing is now actually my second thought, i.e. "Those bastard banksters are at it again." When I think Obama is trying to do too much, I chide myself for sounding like the rest of the tired old white coots of my generation. They're just jealous. After Meghan McCain told Dick Cheney to put a sock in it, I had two nice thoughts about John McCain. I have stopped watching TV news, except for Rachel Maddow, duh, so I can spend more time on my homework.

While I've made progress, under the "Areas for Improvement" I've got three personal goals for next semester:

Torture is torture. I recommit myself to vaccinating with truth every chickenshit avian flu sufferer who describes torture as "a mistake".

War is war. I recommit myself to speaking loudly for pacifism. I want the troops out of Iraq and brought directly home with no stopovers in the historic quagmire that is Afghanistan.

Hetero-supremacy is hetero-supremacy. I recommit myself to challenging hetero-supremacist, bibliocratic, don't-ask-don't-tell denial of life.

With my 100-day chip securely in my jeans pocket, I'm off to the next 100 days. The Obama Way is not Pass/Fail. Change happens one day at a time. But who's counting?

____________________

*Glossary for Twitterers:
MSM - mainstream media, also men who have sex with men
BPTOT - Best Political Team on Television, CNN
F100DoO - First One Hundred Days of Obama