Obama at the Alfalfa dinner

Excerpt of the President's remarks tonight, they're cute:

I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused.

Now, this hasn't been reported yet, but it was actually Rahm's idea to do the swearing-in ceremony again. Of course, for Rahm, every day is a swearing-in ceremony.

But don't believe what you read. Rahm Emanuel is a real sweetheart.

No, it's true. Every week the guy takes a little time away to give back to the community. Just last week he was at a local school, teaching profanity to poor children.

But these are the kind of negotiations you have to deal with as President. In just the first few weeks, I've had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my Blackberry. I finally agreed to limit the number of people who could email me. It's a very exclusive list. How exclusive?

Everyone look at the person sitting on your left. Now look at the person sitting on your right. None of you have my email address.

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Octuplet mom wants $2m from Oprah, hires agent

I rest my case.

THE single mother of octuplets born in California last week is seeking $2m (£1.37m) from media interviews and commercial sponsorship to help pay the cost of raising the children.

Nadya Suleman, 33, plans a career as a television childcare expert after it emerged last week that she already had six children before giving birth on Monday. She now has 14 below the age of eight...

Her earning power, though, could be diminished by a growing ethical and medical controversy....

US public reaction has been mixed: many have asked how an unemployed single mother can raise 14 children, as her first six have already strained the family budget....

Nadya Suleman, who describes herself as a “professional student” living off education grants and parental money, broke up with her boyfriend before the birth of her first child seven years ago.

Television child care expert? What's she an expert in? She's unmarried, unemployed, has given birth 14 times, and still lives with her parents at the age of 35. Good Lord. What company in their right mind would want this woman as their spokesman? Trojan condoms? Then again, she has all the qualifications to be a war correspondent for Pajamas Media. Read the rest of this post...

Will Obama plan wipe out big banks?

I sure hope so. They're too big to fail yet they're complete failures. The government throws them a life line and they spend $18 billion on bonuses. Scrap the entire damned thing and start over. If the executives are this stupid (and they are) and the shareholders are this stupid, tough luck. Break these banks into smaller pieces and see if bankers can get back to being bankers instead of high roller gamblers and executive socialists.

The creation of a government bad bank to buy toxic assets is necessary, but then the government will need to take control of and restructure major banks to fix the system, one economist at the World Economic Forum in Davos told CNBC.com.

"They have to do a bad bank," Harvard Economics Professor Ken Rogoff said. But "if that's all they do then it's idiotic."

Institutions like Citi and Bank of America will have to go, boards will have to be fired and equity stakeholders will be wiped out, Rogoff said.

The plan could mirror the one Sweden implemented, where all troubled banks were nationalized, their balance sheets were cleaned up and the good parts of the businesses were sold to the private sector.

That solution was "much cleaner," he said.

Sweden’s banks were effectively bankrupt in the early 1990s, but the government pulled off a rapid recovery that actually helped taxpayers make money in the long run.

The government placed banks with troubled assets into a so-called bad bank, where they could be held and then sold when market and economic conditions improved.

In the meantime, it used taxpayer money to provide enough capital to allow banks to resume normal lending, but wiped shareholders out in the process.

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Falwell refused to help women in the rain

I was reading the latest newsletter from the son of dead religious right bigot Jerry Falwell, and it was talking about the ongoing Ted Haggard fiasco, and Falwell's son wrote the following:

My dad stated from the pulpit on more than one occasion that if he saw a lady from the church standing without an umbrella in a driving rain, he would not pick her up. Dad also never met alone with a woman in his office. He lived in this manner because he did not want to: (1) risk anyone seeing him with another woman, even if he was just doing a good deed by giving her a lift, or (2) risk placing himself in harm’s way in terms of personal temptation. Every pastor should live this way and work always to preserve his testimony at all costs.

I'm trying to imagine, in my mind's eye, how this would be virtuous in an old-world, grampa kind of way. But it doesn't sound virtuous. It sounds like virtue turned creepy. You wouldn't stop and help a woman because someone might think you're having an affair (yes, better to worry about your image than actually help another human being in need), and worse (and weirder), you'd be tempted to hit on the damsel in distress. Huh? How about if you drove by and found her beaten on the road, would you stop then? Or would you still be tempted to "do" her?

Again, I get the "good guy" notion underlying this story. Though it is indicative of why religious right bigots are so fearful of gays and other - it appears the thumpers have some rather extreme "temptation" issue of their own, and may be acting out against their own uncontrollable, and rather distasteful, urges when they strike out at gays. This is a perfect example of how the religious right's "good" intentions are filtered through such a hyper-religious filter that they're twisted into kooky, and scary, results. Some days the victim of their good intentions is a poor woman standing on the road in the pouring ray. On another, it's a gay man who simply wants a chance at the American dream. Read the rest of this post...

Justice Department to open criminal probe in peanut case

What a difference a few days makes. The Bush FDA never had an interest in protecting Americans. Whatever business wanted, business received. Those days of ignoring problems and relying on business to self regulate appear to be over.

The FDA reported this week that federal inspectors who visited the plant since the salmonella outbreak found roaches, mold, signs of a leaking roof and numerous other sanitation problems.

Federal officials now say the plant had a salmonella problem dating back at least to June 2007. Peanut Corp. was under no obligation to tell the FDA it was making peanut butter at the Georgia plant, the FDA said Friday.

Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's food safety center, said the Justice Department will investigate possible criminal violations by the Peanut Corp. plant.

The company shipped products that initially tested positive for salmonella after retesting and getting a negative result. The FDA's investigations branch will assist in the probe.

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Creepy update on mother of 6 who then chose to have octuplets

I told you there was something not-quite-right about this story. Reader Raine sent me the following update from CBS:

CBS News has learned that the family of the octuplets born this week outside Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy and abandoned a home a little over a year-and-a-half ago.

Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman says the mother is in her mid-thirties and lives with her parents.

There's been no mention of the octuplets' father, Kauffman observes.

The grandfather, she adds, is apparently going to head back to his native Iraq to earn money for the growing family. He told CBS News he's a former Iraqi military man....

On The Early Show Friday, the scientific director of an Atlanta-area fertility clinic blasted whichever clinic did the implantations, saying he's "stunned."

....in fact, it's really a bit of a medical disaster."

"Had she walked into a fertility clinic and said, 'Listen, I've got other children, the oldest seven, the youngest two,' co-anchor Julie Chen asked Tucker, "is there any ethical responsibility on the clinic's part to say, 'I'm not going to treat you,' or, 'You know what? This is not a good idea?" '

"Suffice to say," Tucker responded, "I've been in this business for 25 years now. And it's pretty much standard practice in all clinics to have some form of psychological evaluation of the patient. Also, their sociological circumstances. And I'm stunned, actually, that a clinic would proceed to treat a patient in this circumstance and then even to get to perhaps the transfer of embryos and ponder the transfer in, I believe, the lady's mid-30s, a 35-year-old -- she should be receiving two embryos, maximum, as a transfer into her uterus to have had eight transferred is somewhat -- is extremely irresponsible."

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Obama on the recovery package, a new plan for the financial system and the "arrogance and greed" of Wall Street firms

No surprise that Obama talked the economy and the recovery package today. But, he all addressed Wall Street. He didn't quite call them "a bunch of idiots" like Claire McCaskill did, but some of that sentiment is there:

Last year Congress passed a plan to rescue the financial system. While the package helped avoid a financial collapse, many are frustrated by the results -- and rightfully so. Too often taxpayer dollars have been spent without transparency or accountability. Banks have been extended a hand, but homeowners, students, and small businesses that need loans have been left to fend on their own.

And adding to this outrage, we learned this week that even as they petitioned for taxpayer assistance, Wall Street firms shamefully paid out nearly $20 billion in bonuses for 2008. While I'm committed to doing what it takes to maintain the flow of credit, the American people will not excuse or tolerate such arrogance and greed. The road to recovery demands that we all act responsibly, from Main Street to Washington to Wall Street.

Soon my Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, will announce a new strategy for reviving our financial system that gets credit flowing to businesses and families. We'll help lower mortgage costs and extend loans to small businesses so they can create jobs. We'll ensure that CEOs are not draining funds that should be advancing our recovery. And we will insist on unprecedented transparency, rigorous oversight, and clear accountability -- so taxpayers know how their money is being spent and whether it is achieving results.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning, everyone.

Check out the poem of the week, The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm, by Wallace Stevens. Very nice read about reading. Nice pace to start the weekend.

And, then, to get yourself riled up, watch Senator Claire McCaskill's speech about the "idiots" on Wall Street, which she delivered on the Senate floor yesterday. John posted about it last night -- and it's worth a watch:
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Banksters call Obama a socialist

Oh the irony. There's socialism, no doubt, but it's socialism for the high income earners on Wall Street. What other industry can be rescued from total failure and still pay out $18 BILLION in bonus money? Look in the mirror, Wall Street.

Nonetheless, it was rather remarkable on Friday how many white shirts denied getting a bonus altogether when they were asked. Indeed, if the data obtained by reporters in the district was any measure, there is no telling where that $18 billion really went.

What can be told, however, is that President Obama is substantially less popular on Wall Street this week than he was last week. Words like “outrageous,” “shameful” and “the height of irresponsibility” — especially when applied to a man’s paycheck — tend not to make you many friends.

“I think President Obama painted everyone with a broad stroke,” said Brian McCaffrey, 55, a Wall Street lawyer who was on his way to see a client. “The way we pay our taxes is bonuses. The only way that we’ll get any of our bailout money back is from taxes on bonuses. I think bonuses should be looked at on a case by case basis, or you turn into a socialist.”

That, indeed, was a recurring equation: Broad strokes + bonuses = socialist.

“It’s a very slippery slope to go down,” said another insurance broker as he waited to be seated for lunch at Cipriani Downtown. “A blanket statement like that borders on” — you guessed it — “socialism.”

A slippery slope, indeed. Why do average Americans need to fund their lifestyle on Wall Street? Read the rest of this post...

The old voice of the GOP is really the new voice

Every time there's another gun rampage, the right wing loonies roll out "guns for everyone" as the solution. I've been re-watching some of the old All in the Family episodes on YouTube lately and can't believe how much the GOP still sounds like Archie Bunker even now. Some things never change. Read the rest of this post...

China's Olympic stadium sits empty

As I said, these games are a waste of money. Paint chipping half a year after the games? A shopping mall in the works for some unknown future date? Many of the Athens buildings have fallen into disrepair as well as they sit unused. Can't the world do something better with money besides building a complex that is used for a couple of weeks?

The area around Beijing’s massive Bird’s Nest stadium will be turned into a shopping and entertainment complex in three to five years, a state news agency said Friday.

Officially known as Beijing National Stadium, the showpiece of the Beijing Olympics has fallen into disuse since the end of the games. Paint is already peeling in some areas, and the only visitors these days are tourists who pay about $7 to walk on the stadium floor and browse a pricey souvenir shop.

Plans call for the $450 million stadium to anchor a complex of shops and entertainment outlets in three to five years, Xinhua News Agency reported, citing operator Citic Group. The company will continue to develop tourism as a major draw for the Bird’s Nest, while seeking sports and entertainment events.

The only confirmed event at the 91,000-seat stadium this year is Puccini’s opera “Turandot,” set for Aug. 8—the one-year anniversary of the Olympics’ opening ceremony. The stadium has no permanent tenant after Beijing’s top soccer club, Guo’an, backed out of a deal to play there.

Details about the development plans were not available. A person who answered the phone at Citic Group on Friday said offices were closed for the Chinese New Year holiday.

A symbol of China’s rising power and confidence, the stadium, whose nickname described its lattice of exterior steel beams, may never recoup its hefty construction cost, particularly amid a global economic slump. Maintenance of the structure alone costs about $8.8 million annually, making it difficult to turn a profit, Xinhua said.

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City of Lucca, Italy to ban "ethnic" foods

Fantastic. Hopefully they make sure to get rid of Tuscan foods like potatoes, tomatoes and green beans because if there's one thing I hate, it's that doggone junk that's indigenous to America spoiling Italian classics. If they so much as touch a pumpkin, there's going to be trouble. Hopefully Lucca doesn't use olives or olive oil since they originated in Greece. And turkey or cod? Never should either show up since they comes from the Americas. Since lemons originated in east Asia I'm sure they won't see the kitchen in Lucca, thankfully. Anyone who uses those foreign products ought to be thrown in jail for life.

Maybe someone can work on India and Southeast Asia who wrongly use chilies from America for their curry and soups and everything else. Don't they know it's wrong, that we aren't supposed to include any fusion in food? More cultural exclusion is the direction of the world so let's get with it folks.

Lucca is the new Freedom Fry.

If you are craving a kebab, tandoori chicken or Peking duck you may go hungry in the small Tuscan city of Lucca, which has just barred new ethnic restaurants from opening in its historic medieval center.

Officials say new rules passed last week by Lucca's conservative administration aim to protect local specialties from the rising popularity of "different" cuisines. The measure also bans fast food restaurants and hopes to reduce littering within the city's ancient walls, a magnet for tourists.

"By ethnic cuisine we mean a different cuisine," city spokesman Massimo Di Grazia said Thursday. "That means no new kebabs, Thai or Lebanese restaurants."

Di Grazia said ethnic restaurants opened before the measure was passed could stay in business.

The move has sparked accusations of gastronomic racism from opposition politicians and criticism from Italian chefs, who say modern cuisine relies on fusion, the combination of ingredients used in different food traditions.

"It's a discriminatory ban," center-left councilman Alessandro Tambellini told the Corriere della Sera daily. "It's a sign of closure toward different cultures."

"There is no dish on the face of the Earth that doesn't come from mixing techniques, products and tastes from cultures that have met and mingled over time," said Vittorio Castellani, a TV chef and cookbook author.

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