Mistress and Masters of Ceremonies named for next week tribute dinners

Just got an email from the Presidential Inaugural Committee with this headline:

Presidential Inaugural Committee Announces Bipartisan Leaders to Serve as Mistress and Masters of Ceremonies and Introducers for Bipartisan Dinners

Then, there was this subhead announcing the key players:

Veteran Republican Senators Warner, Hagel and Graham to Play Key Role in Dinners on Eve of Inauguration to Highlight President Elect Obama's Commitment to Renew Bipartisan Cooperation

When I first saw it, I thought "is this a joke?" I mean, among John Warner, Chuck Hagel and Lindsey Graham, it's so obvious to us which one the "mistress" is. Don't ask, and I won't tell.

You actually have to read further into the press release to know that, in fact, one of the dinners does have a "mistress" of ceremonies. Read More......

Is anybody else troubled that a top secret "intelligence" court is leaking information?

I just find it ironic in a banana republic kind of way. Read More......

Rick Santorum is upset that Obama and McCain will join forces

I have to admit, I've been watching "West Wing" again on DVD and the parallels between President-elect Santos and President-elect Obama are pretty uncanny. The campaigns, the campaign slogan, the Republican challengers - all the same. Of course, in West Wing the president is intelligent, effective and president, but that's for another discussion. Anyway, in last night's episode, the President-elect asked his Republic opponent to serve as his VP, and then as his Secretary of State. Fortunately, those two jobs are already taken, but I wouldn't put it past Obama to come up with some grand plan involving John McCain. Now, if he gets the good McCain, the guy who was pro-choice, was relatively pro-gay, and was good on a number of issues of concern to Democrats, then McCain's help could be welcome.

Anyway, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum is very upset that there is a possibility of McCain helping Obama. Check out the issues that Santorum - basically speaking for conservative Republicans who run the GOP - lists as really bad things that Obama and McCain might try to do:

Remember, it was this onetime prisoner of war who led the charge to open diplomatic relations with Vietnam. If that past is prologue, and McCain's legislative record is any guide, he will not just join with Obama but lead the charge in Congress on global warming, immigration "reform," the closing of Guantanamo, federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, and importation of prescription drugs.

1. Global Warming.
2. Immigration.
3. Closing Gitmo.
4. Stem cell research.
5. Permitting the importation of cheap, safe prescription drugs from Canada.

No, we wouldn't want any of that to happen because then more people might live free. And the Republicans wonder why they lost. Read More......

Bush delivers his "Farewell Address"

Finally. Finally. Finally.

And, he's got all his family, staff and friends in the White House for a little pep rally.

I can't promise that I'll capture every word the guy said -- and on some level, it doesn't matter.

It's over. He's done.

In five days, he'll be out of our lives. We'll be dealing with the disasters from his administration for a long, long time.

8:03 PM: And, of course, he leads with September 11th. He's never been the same since then...every morning, he received a briefing on terrorists. Too bad he wasn't paying attention to the briefing on August 6, 2001 when he was warned that terrorists were going to hijack planes.

8:07 PM: This is like one of the speeches circa 2003 when some Americans actually believed Bush.

Our air and water are measurable cleaner? He's delusional. Seriously, this whole speech is delusional.

Tough times, but "the toll would be far worse if we had not acted." Um, we're in tough times because you acted.

8:11 PM: The camera keeps cutting to Cheney who is squirming in his seat. Bob and Liddy Dole are there, too. She's no longer a Senator in part because of Bush.

8:12 PM: Good and evil. Evil is bad.

8:14 PM: Bush invited people to sit in the audience so he could tell their stories just like he does at the State of the Union. I guess it's better for him to talk about other people -- not himself.

8:15 PM: Best words we ever heard from Bush, "for the final time, good night."

Yeah, good night and good riddance.

Finally. Finally. Finally.

UPDATE: Obama wisely didn't listen to Bush. He went out to dinner. From the pool report:

At 8 pm, just as pres bush began his farewell speech peotus obama left blair house for the 30 second drive to equinox restaurant on connecticut and I st.

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New investigation show Mormons spent much, much more on Prop. 8 than has been reported

We keep hearing that the Mormons hate all the attention they've been getting since Prop 8. But, the leaders of the Mormon church made themselves an issue and they are going to be getting all kinds of attention. They decided to become a political operation to defeat Prop. 8. And, they haven't been upfront about all of their involvement.

American News Project has found evidence that the involvement of the Mormon church was far more extensive than the leaders of the church have suggested -- or reported under California law:

Activists claim that money from the Mormon Church was the deciding factor in passing Proposition 8 in California - banning gay marriage. The church claims to have only spent a few thousand dollars on the campaign, but ANP has uncovered evidence that may expose a gaping hole in that claim.

A very gaping hole on the record. Watch the video:


The Mormons have an obligation to be honest about what they did in Prop. 8. Not because it's moral, but because it's the law.

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Obama secures a victory in the Senate on use of the next $350 billion in TARP funds

A win for Obama:

The Senate voted narrowly today to permit President-elect Barack Obama to spend another $350 billion to stabilize the fragile U.S. financial system.

On a vote of 52 to 42, the Senate defeated a resolution that would have blocked the second half of the money from a $700 billion financial rescue program from flowing to the U.S. Treasury Department.

The vote was a victory for Obama, who made personal appeals to deeply skeptical lawmakers in recent days to try to rally support. Obama's economic team says the money is urgently needed, along with a massive spending package, to restore health to financial markets and the slumping economy.

The Senate's defeat of the resolution to disapprove the funds means the money will be available to Obama about a week after he takes office Tuesday.

Obama has to do a better job with these funds than Bush did. He better.

UPDATE: The effort to prevent Obama from using the funds, S.J. Res 5, was sponsored by...Senator David Vitter (R-LA). Yes, David Vitter from the D.C. Madam scandal. It seems like Vitter is becoming the titular head of the Senate Republicans.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Joe is being nice. Vitter is in fact the conservative Republican family values Senator who cheated on wife by having sex, repeatedly, with a paid hooker. Well, in all fairness, that's not totally accurate. Vitter committed adultery with numerous paid hookers. The Republicans truly have no shame when it comes to picking their leaders. Read More......

Reports indicate all passengers survive after jet crashes into Hudson River

I've spent the past 45 minutes or so watching the breaking news coverage of the US Airways jet that crash landed in the Hudson River. Apparently, the jet hit a flock of birds:

A US Airways plane that took off Thursday at 3:26 p.m. from La Guardia Airport landed in the Hudson River five minutes later, where it remains mostly submerged. Ferries and other boats converged to help with a rescue effort, as the plane drifted south in the water. Initial reports from police and people at the scene suggest that many of the people on the plane appeared to have escaped.

The plane, US Airways flight 1549, took off from LaGuardia Airport at 3:26 p.m. was bound for Charlotte, N.C. and had 148 passengers and 5 crew members. The plane may have hit a flock of birds, according to a Federal Aviation Administration. report, and then descended. The pilot tried to return to the airport when the plane fell into the Hudson.

CNN just learned from the FAA that everyone survived. And, they're starting to talk to survivors.

MSNBC has live streaming coverage.

The plane is now floating down the Hudson River. Read More......

Vulnerable GOP House members did an S-CHIP flip

What a difference an election makes. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the S-CHIP bill by a wide margin of 289 - 139. George Bush repeatedly vetoed similar legislation. President Obama will sign it.

But, the biggest surprise wasn't that the bill passed. It was some of the newfound supporters of S-CHIP from the GOP caucus. Via House Race Hotline's post titled, "Scare The S-CHIP Out of You?":

Just a week into the new Congress, we already have an idea of who's vulnerable in '10 (or at least those who think they're vulnerable), thanks to last p.m.'s S-CHIP vote that passed overwhelmingly.

-- The biggest "aye" surprise came from Thad McCotter (R-MI 11). Yes, that's the same McCotter who heads the conservative GOP Study Cmte and who blogged during the '07 S-CHIP vote that GOPers should battle Dems on the bill, and if they didn't, the party would "not only lose the next election. It will lose its soul." So what changed? In '08, McCotter took just 51% against a Dem who raised just $29K. And he sits in a CD that Pres-elect Obama surely won.

-- But McCotter's not the only GOPer with a change of heart. FL's Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-18), Lincoln (R-21) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25) and Don Young (R-AK AL) all voted for the package after surviving tough '08 battles. They failed to vote for S-CHIP in '07.

The GOP never had a soul to lose anyway. But, it's funny how quickly those vulnerable Republicans have jumped from the Bush ship. Read More......

Louisiana Senator David "DC Madam" Vitter was the only No vote on Hillary's appointment

Class act, that Senator Vitter from Louisiana.

Via Think Progress, Vitter was the only vote against Hillary Clinton's nomination in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today.

Looks like the GOP Senators have decided to let the client of the DC Madam be their conscience this year. That's fitting.

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Suprise! (or not). The stimulus won't be all that bipartisan after all

Guess what? Republican Senators aren't going to support Obama's stimulus. Wow. No one could have predicted that.

The majority of the GOP Senators were never ever going to support Obama's stimulus package -- no matter what he gave them in it. They are obstructionists and desperately want Obama's presidency to fail, even if that means the nation fails. Let's just hope the Obama team learned something from this experience. He has huge Democratic margins in the House and Senate. Work with them for the American people:

Obama's stimulus package is on track to pass before the Presidents Day recess in mid-February. But it is increasingly doubtful that he will pick up the 80 Senate votes he had hoped to win in the first major legislative test of his presidency. Instead, the bill is likely to pass on the strength of the Democrats' majority.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Wednesday that prospects for bipartisanship in the stimulus debate rapidly were eroding.

"The air is coming out of that balloon," Thune said. "To attract Republicans, they lose Democrats. It is a very difficult needle to thread. They are discovering that the goal [of an 80-vote majority] is unrealistic. He got so much push-back from his own people."

House Republican leaders have set up a working group to draft their own stimulus proposal focusing on permanent, across-the-board tax relief. And the Republican Study Committee, a group of about 100 conservative House Republicans, unveiled a bill Wednesday that contains a series of tax cuts, including reducing all personal income tax rates by 5% and cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.

The staffer on the Obama team leaked the idea that Obama could get 80 votes in the Senate on the stimulus package should learn to keep his or her mouth shut.

There is strength in those Democratic majorities. A lot of people worked very hard to secure that margin. Make it work.

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GOP wants Florida Governor Charlie Crist to run for Senate

Charlie Crist for Senate? He's being heavily recruited:

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) on Wednesday said efforts are ongoing to persuade Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) to run for his state’s open Senate seat.

“We’re going to continue to visit. It’s very early in the game, but recruitment is important and the ability to be competitive on the financial front is very important too. We’re working on both of those fronts,” Cornyn told The Hill.

Few Florida politicians can match Crist’s popularity and fundraising potential. The governor, a centrist who would be up for reelection in 2010, has denied any interest in running for the seat being vacated by Sen. Mel Martinez (R), but Cornyn, who has spoken to the governor about the race, suggested Crist may be open to persuasion.

Crist has also been heavily recruited to be a practicing heterosexual. Crist did get married last year, after all. Read More......

Geithner confirmation expected, tax experts say his tax mistake is common

GOP doesn't appear that upset:

Several key Finance Committee Republicans have already voiced strong support for Geithner, saying that Obama needs to have his full economic team in place quickly in order to deal with the ongoing financial crisis facing the country.

“I think he’s a very fine man,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah). “I’m not one who holds mistakes against people. And, I believe, having chatted with him personally about this, it was an error and a mistake that human beings can make.”

Another Finance Committee member, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), said that the information about Geithner was “troubling and concerning” and that it was “critical” that members of the committee meet with him before his hearing to ask him about it. But, Snowe said, “Based on that review and his answers to our questions, I believe the process should move forward and that these regrettable issues ultimately should not preclude support for his nomination at this time of monumental challenges for our economy.”

Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) joked that Geithner “was just cruising along with the traffic — he may have broken the speed limit, but he wasn’t weaving in and out of lanes, he wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t endangering anybody.”

And tax experts says Geithner's mistake is a common one, and not unexpected:

Should the U.S. treasury secretary know how to do his own taxes?

Maybe not, say payroll lawyers, accountants and tax professors, who consider Timothy Geithner’s failure to pay four years of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes to be a fairly common mistake — even for a top economist chosen to run the Treasury Department, including the Internal Revenue Service.

“This is a very discrete issue,” said Michael Lloyd, an employment tax lawyer at Miller & Chevalier. “If you’re not a payroll tax lawyer, you’re not immersed in this, you are probably not getting it at first blush.”

Read More......

Still strong public support for Obama

Americans are hungry for change. And, they're on board with their new president (for now). After the Blago debacle and a few other issues, I imagine the pundits were thinking Obama's numbers would start to drop. But, that hasn't happened according to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll

In the poll, 71 percent say they approve of the way Obama is handling his transition — a number virtually unchanged from last month’s survey.

Also, 66 percent view Obama positively, versus just 14 percent who see him in a negative light. And while 55 percent say they like Obama personally and approve of most of his policies, an additional 22 percent say they like him personally but disapprove of his policies.

“He has gotten his honeymoon before he has taken his vows of office,” says Hart, the Democratic pollster.

Yet Hart also points to a few issues where Obama seems to have “narrow running room.” For example, 52 percent say they’re concerned that Obama will go too far in providing financial aid and loans to corporations that are facing bankruptcy; 49 percent are concerned that he will make the health-care system large and too bureaucratic; and another 49 percent are concerned that he will raise taxes.

No doubt, Obama has his work cut out for him. Read More......

It's an $850 billion stimulus package

Looks like the Hill Democrats and the Obama team have put together the stimulus package. There are still $300 billion in tax cuts, although not the same tax cuts initially suggested. The Washington Post has the early details and we should see something more formal later today:

Congressional Democrats are putting the final touches on an economic stimulus package worth almost $850 billion, hoping to have the details ready in time for President-elect Barack Obama to promote it during a trip to Ohio tomorrow aimed at building public support for the recovery plan.

With its cost estimate almost tripling since shortly after Obama's November election victory, the stimulus package is expected to include at least $300 billion in tax cuts and nearly $550 billion in domestic spending, making the price tag of his first major legislative initiative almost equal to the annual cost of funding all federal agencies.

Democrats vowed to support the broad outlines of Obama's initial ideas, but they continued to alter the details of the plan. Support continued to slip for his tax-relief proposals for businesses -- which were initially intended to appeal to Republicans -- and preliminary spending plans showed that more than half of the new domestic spending would go to the states to provide budget relief for health, labor and education services.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Five more days. I am excited about the new president. I am. But, in some ways, it's even more significant that the Bush reign is over. I think I've been angry for eight years. At least I've been able to channel some of that anger by writing on AMERICAblog. But, it's been a long eight years.

I'm looking forward to watching the motorcade with Obama and Bush leave the White House on the way to the Capitol. That means Bush is out of our lives. We still have a lot to do to recover, but he's never going back to the Oval Office.

Five days.... Read More......

China overtakes Germany to become third largest economy

Will the trend continue and China's growth will make it number one or is this the peak before the bubble bursts? I think there is trouble ahead but then again, everyone is in the same stormy economy right now. If China can make it through this recession relatively unscathed and rebound quickly they could easily march on to the top spot, but it still sounds like a long shot.

China has overtaken Germany to become the world's third-largest economy earlier than expected, after estimates for the country's gross domestic product were revised higher.

The National Bureau of Statistics of China reported this morning it now believes the Chinese economy grew by 13% in 2007, up from an earlier estimate of 11.9% and China's highest annual growth rate since 1993.

Applying the revision to previous calculations carried out by the World Bank shows that China's gross national income reached $3.218 trillion in 2007 compared with $3.197tn for Germany.

Economists were already confident that China overtook Germany during 2008, but it now seems that the change occurred in a year earlier. China took fourth place from Britain in 2005, and now has Japan and the US in its sights.

China's rapid economic growth began to tail off last year, as the manufacturing powerhouse felt the impact of the woes sweeping the global economy. GDP growth fell to 9% in the third quarter of 2008, down from 10.1% in the second quarter and the fifth straight quarter of slowing growth.

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European banks drag down regional stock markets

This is what the Obama administration is probably going to face for the US markets as well as the banks once again reach out for assistance because of poor policy. What infuriates me is that when they consolidated and grew to this "too big to fail" size, everyone made a lot of money. The deal makers pulled in massive amounts as did the executive teams who now had even greater sums to work with for their bonus pools. None of that has been reclaimed and they continue to live well beyond their means yet even now they're handled much too gently by Congress.

The question now is in light of the Wednesday banking woes in Europe and Citi's ongoing problems, who will be next? CNBC has already kicked around UBS rumors but I doubt anyone will be immune to this newest round of misery.

Deutsche Bank tumbled 9 percent after saying it has racked up a loss of about 4.8 billion euros ($6.4 billion) in the final three months of 2008 alone, blaming troubled markets.

HSBC tumbled 8.5 percent after Morgan Stanley analysts said the bank is likely to halve its dividend and may need to raise up to $30 billion in a rights issue.

"Our detailed study of HSBC's capital and asset quality position reinforces our belief that it will have to halve the dividend and raise major capital in 2009," Morgan Stanley analysts Anil Agarwal and Michael Helsby said in a note.

Other leading European banks also took a beating, with Societe Generale down 7.2 percent and Credit Suisse down 6.5 percent.

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