Seems we have a kerfuffle among journalists and bloggers or whatever about the possibility that the Obama administration "planted" a question.  You can read about it here.  The details don't matter to this post, though. I'm more interested in the mechanics of how we should question the president or any journalistic subject. I've mentioned before that I'm a journalist, so this stuff is of particular interest to me.

Very often when you want to interview somebody their PR people will want to know what you want to ask about.  They'll sometimes ask for a list of questions.  When I was younger this really bothered me but not so much anymore.  I know it sounds wrong, to submit questions in advance but I'll do it under the condition that I'm not expected to adhere to the list, that I can add or subtract questions at any time and that the conversation can go where the conversation goes with everything on the record unless we mutually agree that it's not.

But yes, I'll give an idea of what questions I want to ask.  Why?  Because there's little value in the interview as pop quiz.  Most of the time if people don't know the answer to something they'll say they have to get back to me anyway, so it's no good to me to stump them and while you can catch people not knowing stuff that maybe you think they should know, that's not the stuff great stories are made of.

A presidential presser is different because it's not a one on one conversation and you only get to ask one question.  So why a journalist would want to surprise the president is totally beyond me.

At issue here is that the Obama administration asked a reporter who had been gathering questions from Iranians to pick one and ask one. There's some accusation that Obama's people "planted" a question.  Well, that's not what happened (they asked for a type of question -- one from Iranians, from a reporter they knew had been gathering them, not a specific question) but... what if they'd asked for a specific question?  Would it have been a tragedy?

I generally end my interviews by asking "Is there something I should have asked you by now or that you wish I'd asked?"  I often get the best answer to that.  But I am inviting the subject to interview themselves.  I am asking them to plant a question.  Obviously, we don't want all the questions written by the White House but to have the White House suggest what it would like to discuss is not awful. For one thing, it's very revealing of the administration's priorities and for another thing, it happens anyway so it might as well happen in the open.

The point of an interview is to get information out.  That's not always best done with surprise questions that function to make journalists look clever but often don't reveal useful or important insight.

That writers and bloggers are having the fight detailed in Swampland suggests that everyone's missing the point about what journalists, writers and cultural critics in every medium are trying to do -- we should be trying to bring clarity to a Byzantine system.

I must confess at the start of this that I've been writing critical comments on Amitai Etzioni's posts since he started here.  Some of them were probably immature and stupid.  But I think most of them fairly criticized his view of foreign policy and morality because he, unlike many of us here, believes that "security" is the paramount goal of foreign and even domestic policy, even if it infringes on the rights of individuals.  He would not fit in well with the ACLU.  His ideas are not, and I think he'd admit this, "liberal" in the sense that we value both individual freedom and collective justice without accepting that the two are mutually exclusive.

Once upon a time, and I can't find it because not all of the old TPM archives are Google-able, but I got into it with Etzioni about his unwillingness to answer the many and vociferous objections and debunkings that his posts inspired from TPM readers.  I accused him of lecturing us because what would usually happen was that he'd post and we'd criticize and he'd ignore all criticisms and move on to a new topic that we'd mostly find problematic.  So I made a habit of pointing out in the comments that he was avoiding us.

Etzioni responded with the curious statement that he would not answer criticisms from those who use Internet pseudonymns.  He would only answer people who put their names to their posts, he said.  I, as one of his critics with a funny Internet name, objected.  A debate started.

My objections were that: 1) People really have been fired from their job from posting their opinions online, so it's fair.  Etzioni is a professor and public intellectual, so posting his thoughts, under his name, on the Internet, is a good thing for his livelihood.  Not so much for some one who works for a boss with a "McCain/Palin" bumper sticker. 2) Who cares? We can all be anyone on line anyway.  Amitai doesn't want to talk to destor23.  Fine.  But My handle could easily be Fred Moreno.  Would he answer Fred Moreno?  Because I can use that name.  It wouldn't be my real name either.  So who is he to know?  Also, what if I use my real name and it sounds weird to him?  What if my real name and handle is something like Horatio Chong?  What is his criteria for a real name and how does he know?  Or does he just think that any two words (like Amitai Etzioni) is good enough?  Okay, Amitai... I'm Destor 23.  So man up and answer some questions!

At the time, and this is where I wish I could find the darned conversation on Google... Etzioni actually agreed that people  have good practical reasons for using Internet handles.  And yet he's never taken the next step and engaged the readers who would like to debate him.

Now in his most recent post, which I also found objectionable, he said he would respond only to comments from people who would use their real names.  I'd like him to explain how he can know if somebody uses a handle that sounds like a real name is really using a real name, if he's given up his previous position where he agreed here that Internet handle usage is  appropriate and, finally... why is he so willing to espouse his ideas here but so afraid to defend them?

I think the mistake happened early.  I understand why it happened.  But it was a mistake.  We need to back up.  We started this debate about the millions of uninsured.  How do we get the uninsured covered.  This was an error.

The problem isn't the uninsured.  The problem is that the insured are paying too much and getting too little in return.  We should be offering public healthcare that's cheaper and more generous than what insurance companies provide.  The message always should have been, and this is an honest message that for profit health insurance is a giant rip-off.

Here's how I see it: If we get health reform that gave insurance to every uninsured American but leaves the rest of us with exactly the same coverage we have now, we'll have failed.  I want, at least a public option.  If it's not as good as what I get now, I won't take it.  If it's better, I will.  But we are really far from that at this point.  It looks as if healthcare reform will leave the majority of us right where we started.

I know this sounds a bit ungracious -- covering the uninsured would be a definite accomplishment but it's nowhere near enough.  Everybody in America needs a better deal, not just those who have been left out.

The health plan that our senators and congressional reps get to use is cheap (average premiums of $120 a month) and very effective (just ask Ted Kennedy) and has a role for private insurers (participants can choose from 300 providers, organized by unions and associations that represent the insured rather than HMOs but they still use private insurance).

Why can't we all just have that?

Because I'll tell you, we don't see Ted Kennedy's insurer saying "oh, he has a serious condition now, let's cut his coverage" the way we see that happen to normal people.

Maybe it's not exactly the federal plan that should be offered to everyone.  I'd prefer single payer. But we can't have a situation where our elected representatives get better, cheaper, more generous healthcare than the rest of us. So long as our congressional reps have such great coverage, nobody in America should be uninsured.  And if private industry can't treat us as well as it treats our representatives in Washington, then we don't have much need for private industry.

Wow everyone, check this out...

A funny post by our friend "The Insolent Braggart" here at TPMCafe has so freaked out a global warming denier that he sent out the following press release last night.  What follows is the verbatim press release and I am seriously not making this up.

Release:

Marc Morano: Morano served for three years as a senior advisor, speechwriter, and climate researcher for U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as he also managed the award-winning communication operations of the GOP side. Morano, who has spent years researching climate change, environmental, and energy issues, traveled to Greenland in 2007 to investigate global warming claims. As Senate staff, Morano also attended the United Nation's climate eco-conferences held in Kenya, Indonesia, and Poland in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Morano authored and compiled the 2007 groundbreaking report of 400-plus dissenting scientists and the follow-up 2009 report of 700-plus scientists dissenting from man-made global warming fears. Morano has held both White House and Capitol Hill Press credentials and a former member of the Society of Professional Journalists. He has attended and reported on numerous international eco-conferences as well as the 2002 UN-sponsored Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Prior to joining the Senate, Morano worked for well over a decade as an investigative journalist, documentary maker, radio talk show host and national television correspondent. In 2000, his investigative television documentary "Amazon Rainforest: Clear-Cutting the Myths" created an international firestorm. His reporting has made international news, including appearances and coverage on CNN, Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, Lou Dobbs and Hannity & Colmes, BBC TV, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, US Weekly Magazine, web links from the Drudge Report, the entertainment show Extra TV, and Politically Incorrect w/ Bill Maher. 

Contact Tricia at 910-270-8966 or casting33@aol.com.

'Execute' Skeptics! Shock Call To Action: 'At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers' -- 'Shouldn't we start punishing them now?'

June 08, 2009 - By Marc Morano - Climate Depot

A public appeal has been issued by an influential U.S. website asking: "At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers." The appeal appeared on Talking Points Memo, an often cited website that helps set the agenda for the political Left in the U.S. The anonymous posting, dated June 2, 2009, referred to dissenters of man-made global warming fears as "greedy bastards" who use "bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool" to "distort data."

The Talking Points Memo article continues: "So when the right wing fucktards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?"

The article also claims the "vast majority" of scientists agree that man-made warming "can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth."

The full text of the Talking Points Memo is reproduced below:

(Note: The entry is posted under the anonymous byline "The Insolent Braggart")

At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers

June 2, 2009, 9:42PM

What is so frustrating about these fools is that they are the politicians and greedy bastards who don't want a cut in their profits who use bogus science or the lowest scientists in the gene pool who will distort data for a few bucks. The vast majority of the scientific minds in the World agree and understand it's a very serious problem that can do an untold amount of damage to life on Earth.

So when the right wing fucktards have caused it to be too late to fix the problem, and we start seeing the devastating consequences and we start seeing end of the World type events - how will we punish those responsible. It will be too late. So shouldn't we start punishing them now?

#

Climate Depot Editor's Note:

The Talking Points Memo appeal to execute skeptics is not unique. As the science behind man-made global warming fears utterly collapses, many of the biggest promoters of the theory and environmental activists are growing increasingly desperate. Looming Question: If the promoters of man-made climate fears truly believed the "debate is over" and the science is "settled", why is there such a strong impulse to shut down debate and threaten those who disagree?

Small sampling of threats, intimidation and censorship:

NASA's James Hansen has called for trials of climate skeptics in 2008 for "high crimes against humanity." Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at skeptics of 2007 declaring "This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors" In 2009, RFK, Jr. also called coal companies "criminal enterprises" and declared CEO's 'should be in jail... for all of eternity."

In 2006, the eco-magazine Grist called for Nuremberg-Style trials for skeptics. In 2008, Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki called for government leaders skeptical of global warming to be thrown "into jail." In 2007, The Weather Channel's climate expert called for withholding certification of skeptical meteorologists.

A 2008 report found that 'climate blasphemy' is replacing traditional religious blasphemy. In addition, a July 2007 Senate report detailed how skeptical scientists have faced threats and intimidation.

In 2007, then EPA Chief Vowed to Probe E-mail Threatening to 'Destroy' Career of Climate Skeptic and dissenters of warming fears have been called 'Climate Criminals' who are committing 'Terracide' (killing of Planet Earth) (July 25, 2007) In addition, in May 2009, Climate Depot Was Banned in Louisiana! See: State official sought to 'shut down' climate skeptic's testimony at hearing.

Below are many more examples of the threats, name calling and intimidation skeptics have faced in recent times.

November 12, 2007: UN official warns ignoring warming would be 'criminally irresponsible' Excerpt: The U.N.'s top climate official warned policymakers and scientists trying to hammer out a landmark report on climate change that ignoring the urgency of global warming would be "criminally irresponsible." Yvo de Boer's comments came at the opening of a weeklong conference that will complete a concise guide on the state of global warming and what can be done to stop the Earth from overheating.

September 29. 2007: VA State Climatologist skeptical of global warming loses job after clash with Governor: 'I was told that I could not speak in public' Excerpt: Michaels has argued that the climate is becoming warmer but that the consequences will not be as dire as others have predicted. Gov. Kaine had warned. Michaels not to use his official title in discussing his views. "I resigned as Virginia state climatologist because I was told that I could not speak in public on my area of expertise, global warming, as state climatologist," Michaels said in a statement this week provided by the libertarian Cato Institute, where he has been a fellow since 1992. "It was impossible to maintain academic freedom with this speech restriction." (LINK)

Skeptical State Climatologist in Oregon has title threatened by Governor (February 8, 2007) Excerpt: "[State Climatologist George Taylor] does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change...So the [Oregon] governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint. In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title from Taylor.

Skeptical State Climatologist in Delaware silenced by Governor (May 2, 2007) Excerpt: Legates is a state climatologist in Delaware, and he teaches at the university. He`s not part of the mythical climate consensus. In fact, Legates believes that we oversimplify climate by just blaming greenhouse gases. One day he received a letter from the governor, saying his views do not concur with those of the administration, so if he wants to speak out, it must be as an individual, not as a state climatologist. So essentially, you can have the title of state climatologist unless he`s talking about his views on climate?

October 28, 2008: License to dissent: 'Internet should be nationalized as a public utility' to combat global warming skepticism - Australian Herald Sun - Excerpt: British journalism lecturer and warming alarmist Alex Lockwood says my blog is a menace to the planet. Skeptical bloggers like me need bringing into line, and Lockwood tells a journalism seminar of some options: There is clearly a need for research into the ways in which climate skepticism online is free to contest scientific fact. But there is enough here already to put forward some of the ideas in circulation. One of the founders of the Internet Vint Cerf, and lead for Google's Internet for Everyone project, made a recent suggestion that the Internet should be nationalized as a public utility. As tech policy blogger Jim Harper argues, "giving power over the Internet to well-heeled interests and self-interested politicians" is, and I quote, "a bad idea." Or in the UK every new online publication could be required to register with the recently announced Internet watchdog...

November 5, 2008: UK Scientist: 'BBC SHUNNED ME FOR DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE' - UK Daily Express

Excerpt: FOR YEARS David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV. A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm. Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists. His crime? Bellamy says he doesn't believe in man-made global warming. Here he reveals why - and the price he has paid for not toeing the orthodox line on climate change.

U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global warming fears (May 10, 2007)

Excerpt: UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland declared "it's completely immoral, even, to question" the UN's scientific "consensus."

Former US Vice President Al Gore compared global warming skeptics to people who 'believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona' (June 20, 2006)

Gore Refuses to Hear Skeptical Global Warming Views (Video)

UK environment secretary David Miliband said 'those who deny [climate change] are the flat-Earthers of the twenty-first century' (October 6, 2006)

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics (January 17, 2007) Excerpt: The Weather Channel's most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

Contact Tricia at 910-270-8966 or casting33@aol.com.

I'm starting to tire of the Israel posts around here.  There's like six of them up now and half a dozen featured bloggers who pretty much only post on Israeli/Palestinian issues.  I understand, it's a big important story and with Obama in the White House we have unique opportunities right now but... it's a bit overkill, guys!

TPM's featured posters only have two healthcare items up right now.  There's nothing on broader economic policy.  Those issues will affect many more Americans and will mean a lot more to our electoral successes as liberals than I/P issues ever will.

The Israel stuff is now so absurdly over the top that we have the Mondoweiss guys, who seem to post as often as most people blink, writing posts about Huffpo not publishing their posts! Mondo guys, seriously, given how often you post here, how do you possible have time to blog at Huffpo?

The thing is, all this constant Israel talk just... overstates the importance of Israel as a political issue. I think Obama's on the right track and it's too bad he has to deal with Netanyahu and it should certainly be addressed here at the Cafe but lets get a sense of perspective here -- there's a lot more to American politics than Israel.  Its really interesting how many of the featured posters here tend to write and write often about Israel and little else while, if you look at the reader posts, you'll find that the topic isn't brought up nearly so frequently.

Let's have a little more variety, okay?

This is based on a comment I just left on a Paul Rieckhoff post that's a little buried and this has to be said, and it has to be said on Memorial Day... first off... I have never served in the military, will never serve in the military and don't have the guts to die for some one else's cause.  That out of the way...

Can we ban the phrase "died for our freedom?"  Because I can't think of a post WWII military death that qualifies.  Nobody fought for my freedom in Iraq, either time.  Or Viet Nam.  Or Korea.  Or Panama.  Or Grenada.  Nobody rigged elections in Nicaragua for my freedom or yours.  Even Afghanistan, which I do believe is a just war, has nothing to do with anyone's freedom.  Maybe in his fever dreams, Osama bin Laden imagines subjecting us all to sharia law but even if we let him attack us without response for years that will never happen.

I've been alive since 1975 and in that time we have never fought a war for "our freedom."  We've never even fought a war that we had to fight -- they've all been wars of choice.  So this Memorial Day I will not give thanks to people who "sacrificed their lives for our freedoms" because that's not what happened.  I'll apologize to people who sacrificed their lives for the ambitions of elite decision makers who need to be brought down a peg or two instead.  Because that's the truth of it all and that's what we're really memorializing.

As TPM has even point out, banks are now reporting sudden profits based on their trading activities.  But don't believe for a minute that these profits come from the skills of the traders or that the traders are, in the end, worth the princely sums they demand in compensation.

One thing that's very hard to do, in money management and trading, is to separate skill from luck or, more appropriately, skill from market conditions in which it's almost impossible to do wrong.  "Everyone is a genius in a bull market," the saying goes because in a bull market, most stocks are going up.  You either have to be very bad or very unlucky to constantly pick the losers.

The current situation with the banks is far easier than trading stocks in a bull market.  All these bank traders have to do is put the banks capital to work profitably.  The banks are getting free capital from the government and near-free capital from the Federal Reserve.  So the cost of capital is nothing.  The trade you do to make money is very simple: buy anything. If you use free money to buy a Treasury bond, bam... you make 3%.  Use it to buy a junk bond and, sure, you take some risk that you'll lose money it cost you nothing to obtain and will cost nothing to replace, but if the loan performs (as the vast majority do), you make 15-20%

Now, lets say your banks had to borrow its money at some actujal rate of interest, even 1-5% -- the trade becomes more difficult.  Your junk bond stops paying, you lose your money and have to spend 1-5% to get it.  Now you're in the hole and need a bigger win to make the money back.  That's a hard trade.

What's happening at the banks now is a  no-lose trade.  There's no skill. Anyone can do it.  Take free money, buy anything. Wait.

Jane Harman is rightly outraged to have learned that her conversations regarding a matter of national security were intercepted by intelligence agencies without her knowledge.  While I believe Nancy Pelosi when she says that anything picked up in the Harman wiretap had nothing to do with committee assignments or anything of the sort, I also sympathize with representative Harman who definitely has her suspicions.

I mean, if you found out that the government had been spying on you, wouldn't you start to suspect that things in life that didn't quite go your way were engineered against you by powers that you have no control over and that you didn't even know are acting against you?  Paranoia, the representative has learned, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

Or maybe, as Woody Allen once said, Representative Harman suffers from the opposite of paranoia.  She lives under the insane delusion that people like her. Harman's outrage rings false in light of her previous support for Bush's domestic wiretapping program.  Though she eventually turned against the program, when the political tides did, she was an early supporter and she lobbied The New York Times not to tell us what was going on.

Harman is now outraged because she was caught on tape.  She doesn't care how many other innocents might have had their privacy violated by the government.  She wants the tapes of her to be released, if they exist.  But she hasn't come out and said that all of us should have the same rights that she claims for herself -- we should also be allowed to demand that the government tell us if our conversations have ever been intercepted or recorded but we should be allowed to know what, when, why and to get copies.  We should probably also have the right to sue the government and to collect damages if a court finds that the government acted illegally.

But I hear nothing of the sort from Harman.   Now that it turns out that she's been wiretapped, she wants to demand justice, but only for herself.  Her recordings and the circumstances around them, must be revealed so that she can rebut them.  Well, I agree.  She should get to know why her rights were violated and she's due some recourse.  As soon as all of the other victims of the government's domestic spying programs get the same opportunity.

What do you say, Harman?  Does everyone tapped deserve the same treatment you want for yourself, or do you think you're just better than everyone else?

I hope my new avatar took tonight because I said in another thread that when Quinn is back, I'd replace my Nature Boy Ric Flair pic!

And so I found a very cool Flair. Whoooo!

And uploaded it...

But things take time.

Whooo!

Hope my new Flair is on this thread for Quinn to see!

Whooooo!

Thanks to Desidero, I went over to Andrew Sullivan's blog and read a screed by an ER doctor complaining about how Americans drive up the cost of healthcare by acting badly at the hospital. You can find Desidero's post here and the Sullivan post here.

Let's take on some of our ER Doctor's complaints:

1) Patients come to seek medical help after "two days of the sniffles" or "back pain they haven't even tried to treat with Tylenol."

Sorry but suck it up, Doc.  Everybody has different tolerance for pain or discomfort and you have to treat people according to their tolerances.  You'd be just as likely to complain, by the way, if people put off going to the doctor and needed more extensive and expensive treatments because thier conditions worsened.  It happens.

2) Patients demand attention in the Er (and, apparently sandwiches)  while you're trying to deliver emergency services.

Okay, that sucks. But people who go to the ER are not going because it's a fun place to be.  They are in pain and discomfort and so ill-mannered or irrational behavior is to be expected. I'm sympathetic to our doctor here but also to the patients.

3) The patients *gasp* demand certain tests and treatments that they might have heard about, sometimes from TV medical shows!

Yes, but we also live in a time of unprecedented access to information and we never hear about the instances where a patient's demands might have saved their lives.  Just saying that our ER doctor is giving us a pretty biased selection of anecdotes where patients demand the unnecessary and the doctor either ultimately gives in (and is proven right in the end) or the patient is fooled by the doctor into believing that a more mundane treatment is actually a sophisticated one.   There's another side to this, though: it pays to know your own body and something about your own needs.  Doctors are not infallible and the cheapest tests and treatments aren't necessarily the best.  So, again, suck it up, Doc.

4) He complains that patients who don't get what they want will sometimes write angry letters to the hospital review board.

And how often do these review boards actually side with the patient?  What's the usual outcome of such complaints?  And is it really bad that patients who feel they have been inadequately treated have some recourse?

5)  He keeps on saying that patients who go to the ER feel they are owed something for their "time." 

As if they aren't ultimately paying for their services through insurance premiums, taxes and direct billing after the fact.  It's not their "time" these people want compensation for it's the money that they pay.

I understand that our ER doctor is frustrated here and I know it's a hard job (am good friends with an ER nurse) but I really disagree with the notion that American patients are somehow "entitled," that they shouldn't have a voice in their health and care or that they ultimately get more than what they pay for  every two weeks in their insurance premiums (be definition they don't -- the insurance industry is profitable and that means, on average they collect more in premiums than people will ever use up in services).

* Sorry for the pretentious headline.

So we had a bit of a dust-up in a Jonathan Taplin thread this week that, after an interjection by MJ Rosenberg, wound up spanning two of Taplin's threads.

Taplin's initial point was that Obama enjoys deservedly strong report from Democrats, independents and even a lot of Republicans.  Quibble with the president over the details, says Taplin, but at least recognize that even people who disagree with the guy have faith in his abilities.  And also, stop calling Taplin "Obama's Butt Boy" because it seems to irk him.

MJ chimed in to defend Obama's tactical approach to changing the system (radicals accomplish nothing, says MJ, Obama is in the mold of a smarter progressive like King) and he also pointed out, based on his own experiences in the civil rights movement, that a lot of Obama's critics or, as he calls them "the indifferent to Obama" crowd don't understand cultural  signifigance of Obama's presidency.

But it all gets down to who gets to call themselves a liberal, progressive or whatever.  Taplin claims he's more progressive than his critics.  Rosenberg just doesn't have much use for what he calls a "radical left" and then, somehow it all devolved into a discussion about angry Hillary Clinton supporters who won't get on the train and are out to sabotage the president (a charge lobbed at everyone from Nobel laureate Paul Krugman to TPM poster dijamo).

I think we need to examine who Obama's critics are, why they are actually allies of the president and why some charges lobbed at Obama's critics are just stupid.

Charge One: Obama's critics are angry Hillary Supporters.  Evidence: Paul Krugman supported Hillary and criticized Obama during the primaries.  The primary arguments at TPKMCafe were rather... erm... heated. Why This Makes No Sense: Hillary's not even mad at Obama.  She works for him! Besides, the policy differences between Clinton and Obama were never that dramatic.  You don't see a lot of people arguing that President Hillary would have dealth differently with Wall St because it's a silly argument: Larry Summers would still be involved and we all know that.

Besides, Hillary's millions turned out in droves for Obama in November.  What more do they have to prove?

Charge Two: Obama's critics are radical leftists. Evidence: They want a fuller, faster withdrawal from Iraq, they don't want to increase our military presence in Afghanistan, they think the stimulus package should have been focused on Main St. and not Wall St. they want universal healthcare as a priority despite the recession, want the Pentagon budget axed and they want Obama's Department of Justice to stop using Bush era legal tactics and the "state secrets" doctrine to stop civil libertarians from using the courts to uncover the secrets behind the domestic surveillance programs.

Uh... do people here really look at those priorities and say "Helplessly radical?"  I might buy that some of that is unattainable but some of Obama's will -- he could direct the justice department to stop making "state secrets" arguments in court, he just doesn't want to or doesn't think that's the right approach. But that doesn't make his critics radical.  It just means they disagree with the president.

Charge Three: Obama's critics are impatient. Evidence: It's not even 4 months yet! I have a lot of sympathy for this but I think it's fair for Obama's critics to warn the rest of you that 4 months is a short time for the president but a rather long-time given that we're headed into midterm elections in 2010. If we come out of the recession the Democrats could add to their majorities in the next cycle but that's no guaranty right now.  If we lose our majority or one of the houses, these first four months will look, in retrospect, more crucial than they might seem now.

Charge Four: Obama's critics want Obama to fail. We're better than that.  The only person who wants Obama to fail is eating hot dogs and Oxycontins right now.

Charge Five: Obama's critics are uncompromising idealists who don't realize that politics is the art of the possible and are willing to sacrifice the good in pursuit of the perfect.  Come on, it's just people voicing their opinions on the Internet. But there's a real danger in this line of thinking: what if some of people around here who like to talk about "the possible" are underestimating what is actually possible?

As MJ says, this is a historic presidency.  There's a poetry to it that makes it especially important, poignant and, in the long run, effective. So lets dream big and lets speak up. Maybe Obama's critics are just pointing out that more is possible than some of you think.

Maybe, we really are all on the same side.

The Financial accounting Standards Board caved to pressure by the banks and has loosened mark to market standards for banks reporting capital for regulatory purposes.  Though these banks are still leveraged institutions who might have too sell assets unwillingly in order to meet their debt obligations, they no longer have to confront the reality of the current market place for the complicated mortgage and asset backed securities on their balance sheets.

At the same time, Timothy Geithner has launched his Public/Private Investment Partnerships as an attempt to create a new buyer's market for these securities.  The deal is: the government gives private investors a non-recourse loan worth 93% of the auction price of these securities.  The government then buys an equal amount of securities alongside a private buyer like PIMCO or Blackstone.  Since we're giving the private investors free money to play with, the hope is that the investors will be willng to pay higher prices for the assets.

The hope is that investors and the government will pay prices that are high enough that the banks can sell at a slight mark-up to current prices but that aren't so high that the buyers overpay and take a bath.  Since the private investors only put up 7% of the capital, they don't have much to worry about.  But the Treasury risks losing much more if it overpays -- the loan made to the pirvate investor plus the equal investment made by Treasury.  Overpayment can mean a bloodbath for the taxpayer.

Now back to mark to market -- free from the realities of the market place, bankers can now hire auditors to develop sophisticated models for what these securities might be worth in fantasy land. This frees the banks up to hold out for higher auction prices from Geithner's partnerships.

The Treasury plan was always meant to inflate these asset prices a bit.  But ending mark to market will inflate them as well.  Put the two together and one of two things will happen: Banks will simply hang onto the securities, happily mark them to fantasy and then "shockingly" fail when reality intrudes or they will use this leeway to demand ever higher prices from Geithner and his pals, causing the partnerships to overpay and once again leaving the taxpayer with the bag.

Sucks.

President Obama said this morning that the United States didn't "choose" to fight the war in Afghanistan.  I think we did.  It may have been the right choice.  I certainly thought so at the time.  But it was a choice.  No choice means no other reasonable options.  We had another reasonable option though.  We could have said, "We weren't attacked by Afghanistan, we were attacked by crminals operating under Afghanistan's protection."  Then we might have had a different response.  No matter, the choice was made.

And we're making choices now.

In the face of all our problems at home I'm having a tough time getting behind more money and more troops going to Afghanistan.  I was surprised this morning when Obama said that 2008 was the deadliest of the war for US soldiers.  I have to admit, when I supported the war back in 2001 I never thought it would lead to an occupation going into its 8th year.

Where's the exit strategy?

Beyond that, and probably more important -- we can't fix our economy if we continue to allow our military to dominate our budgets.  We can't trim military spending while leaving a huge force in Iraq and calling it a withdrawal and by increasing our military exposure to Afghanistan.  It's time to bring troops home and declare ourselves at peace with the rest of the world.  Our economy needs a peace dividend.   This occupation just isn't vital to our interests.

So, Geithner has announced the next phase of the bailout plan -- the FDIC will partner with hedge funds, private equity funds, pension plans and other large institutional investors to buy loan securities off of the banks.  Hopefully, they'll do this at prices that will allow the government and its partners to make money over time while not forcing the banks to take excessive writedowns now.

The plan could work but its problematic at best and it focuses on helping the wrong people - institutional investors rather than ordinary citizens.

It's inevitable that if anyone makes money at this, they're going to be politically well connected and we're going to have to discuss some uncomfortable relationships among members of the Obama administration.  For example, Larry Summers was a partner at hedge fund giant DE Shaw Group and so we have to ask ourselves whether or not it's appropriate for Shaw funds to participate in this.

The beauty of the Geithner plan is that if the private interests win, the Treasury wins too.  But the public only wins in the abstract.   At best, if you're covered by a pension fund that participates you get some benefit.  But if this is really a great deal for private investors, shouldn't there be some sort of mutual fund set up so that smaller investors can participate directly?  Heck, if this is really going to work, maybe the government should agree to use positive returns to pay out a dividend to every citizen?

It's stunning to me that in the wake of AIG I'm now being asked to help well connected hedge funds get a good deal on mortgage backed securities.  I'm also concerned that if these mortgage backeds really do represent some reasonable future return that the hedge funds would have bought them already or will eventually buy them without public financing and guarantees against losses.

We are, yet again, subsidizing private sector profits  with little regard for the public interest. It's going to be interesting following the money on this one.  My guess is that some funds will make a lot of money while the public will do okay. A few well connected hedge fund managers and financiers will get a lot more out of this than the rest of us will and they will never even deign to thank us for the yachts we'll be buying for them.