DOWNLOAD (158)

PLAY (232)

You Tube

Steve Kroft visited the set of Reliable Sources to talk about his interview with President Obama on 60 Minutes.

KURTZ: Now, one of the things you asked about that's making some headlines this morning was Vice President Cheney, who was on "STATE OF THE UNION" last Sunday, was asked by John King about Barack Obama's presidency. And Cheney pointed out, the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison, or the plans to close it, I should say, and said that he believes that President Obama is making America less safe.

You asked Barack Obama about that, and the president said, "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under these Cheney philosophy?" Obama said, "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

Were you surprised that he went back at Cheney as hard as he did?

KROFT: I guess I was a little bit surprised. I thought there were going to be two responses. I think that either the first response was going to be, "I don't want to talk about Dick Cheney, it's Dick Cheney," or he was going to tee off on him, which he decided to do very, very aggressively. So I was a little surprised.

I'd like to know when Kurtz is going to ask if anyone was surprised that Vice President Cheney "teed off" on President Obama rather than asking if he deserved the same treatment back. Once Cheney opened his mouth as far as I'm concerned, the gloves were off. The President has a right to defend himself against the likes of Cheney, ex-Vice President or not.

Every "news organization" in town used Cheney's interview as an excuse to repeat his right wing talking points as a lead in to question Democrats with for a week or two straight after he gave that sorry excuse for an interview with Mr. Human Events John King. I would have been disappointed had the President not responded the way he did.

DOWNLOAD (331)

PLAY (364)

You Tube

Erin Burnett states the obvious when it comes to one of the reasons that people in this country are pissed off right now which is the huge disparity between the salaries of those at the top and every day working people. My question is why in the hell are she and Tom Brokaw the ones Gregory brings in to discuss the economy on Meet the Press?

MR. GREGORY: It leads me so perfectly to a question about what happened this week. Why was this week a kind of tipping point? Here's the cover of Newsweek magazine. You've got an angry mob with pitchforks and the headline, "The Thinking Man's Guide to Populist Rage." Editor Jon Meacham writes this: "It was, in a way, overdue. Beginning last September, when the financial sector of the economy collapsed and the markets melted down, a resurgence of American populism seemed inevitable. ... And yet the temper of the time, shaped in large measure by Barack Obama's own coolness, remained calm. ... You might think of the period between September 2008 and March 2009, then, as a kind of economic phony war, the term historians use to describe the months that elapsed between Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 to the broader outrake of--outbreak, rather--of hostilities in late April and early May of 1940. In this analogy, the AIG bonuses that were revealed last week are rather like the battle for France--the point after which nothing would be the same."

Your take, Tom, on what happened this week.

MR. BROKAW: Well, I--my take, I think it's understandable. One of the things that I've been saying is that for a year now, for a full year nothing that the American people have been told about the financial condition of this country has proved to be true. And very good people--Jamie Dimon from JPMorgan Chase said last June, after Bear Stearns collapsed, "Well, we think we've seen the worst for Wall Street now. We still have the housing crisis to go."

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: Well, we hadn't seen the worst from Wall Street. And this AIG bonus thing exploded in everyone's faces. Meanwhile, across the country car dealers are going under as they watch GM get bailouts and GMAC come and clear off their lots of the vehicles that they owe money on. Mom and pop and regional retail stores are closing up or cutting back severely. I know one banker who was dealing with a client who got in some credit card difficulty and, as he said, the day that Citibank got 5 percent money from the government this client, a single mom, had her penalty bumped up 2 points on her credit card late payments. And he said, "How do you explain that?" That would ricochet up and down any Main Street. So there has been this steady building. And I think that not just the administration, but the political culture in Washington has been insufficiently attentive to what's going on on Wall--on Main Street, at the other end of the pipeline. They need to hear from those people, make them feel like they're part of the process and make them understand how we can all go forward and we not just feel your pain, but we hear what you're saying.

MR. GREGORY: And I just feel like, Erin, there's been a, a breaking of contracts. If there was a social contract between American investors and Wall Street, it was, "Look, we don't really get a lot of what you do..."

MR. BROKAW: Yeah, right.

MR. GREGORY: "...but we count on you for the long-term wealth." And all of the sudden that evaporates. And when it comes to government, hey, government's got to be looking out for us, protecting us. That seems not to have happened. It's that loss of faith that I brought up with the leaders in the earlier discussion.

MS. BURNETT: I think you, you put it in a great way when you said it's a breaking of a contract; which does, in a sense, sort of explain why there is such public support for breaking formal legal contracts...

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

MS. BURNETT: ...when people feel they've been so let down, as you're talking about. Because the irony of this is that even though it seems it's about the money when it comes to these bonuses, it really isn't. When you look at the bonuses paid last year, the $18.6 billion number from Wall Street that so shocked people, if you taxed that at the, at the House bill rate, that's only .6 percent of the tax revenue that the United States government took in a year ago. It's an infant--it's incredibly small. So in a sense it really isn't about the money, it's about this broader shift. The average executive in this country of a publicly traded company, not just Wall Street, makes 400 times the average worker. And that has been a dramatic shift over the past two decades. That is something that is causing some of the anger here. In a sense it's been building, and this is the moment where it breaks.

Really Erin? Aren't we the observant one? I don't know about everyone else but in my world where I have to go work one of those things called...you know...a job, and not one surrounded by inside the beltway and Wall Street talking heads, this is not something new. People have actually been pissed off about the over the top executive pay in the United States for a long time. I'm so glad you finally bothered to notice. You finally put enough of them out of their homes and guess what? They're going to start beating down someone's door because on top of being pissed off, they now also have nothing more to lose.

Erin Burnett's been too busy talking about how great it is for a company's stock when they lay a bunch of their workers off or snuggling up to the Wall Street CEO's that got us into this mess to have taken much notice before the villagers were marching with pitchforks in the streets. Now she's going to share her vast wisdom on populist outrage with us.

DOWNLOAD (458)

PLAY (698)

President Barack Obama told CBS' Steve Kroft that he "fundamentally disagreed" with former Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the new terrorism policies were putting the country at risk.

OBAMA: I fundamentally disagree with Dick Cheney. Not surprisingly. You know, I think that Vice President Cheney has been at the head of a movement whose notion is somehow that we can't reconcile our core values, our constitution, our belief that we don't torture, with our national security interests. I think he's drawing the wrong lesson from history. The facts don't bear him out. I think he is... that attitude, that philosophy has done incredible damage to our image and position in the world. I mean, the fact of the matter is, after all these years, how many convictions actually came out of Guantanamo? How many... how many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment, which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world.

KROFT: Some of it being organized by a few people who were released from Guantanamo.

OBAMA: Well, there is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting rough who are truly dangerous individuals that we've got to make sure are not a threat to us, who are folks that we just swept up. The whole premise of Guantanamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that, somehow, the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists. I fundamentally disagree with that. Now, do these folks deserve miranda rights? Do they deserve to be treated like a shoplifter down the block? Of course not.

KROFT: What do you do with those people?

OBAMA: Well, I think we're going to have to figure out a mechanism to make sure that they are not released and do us harm, but do so in a way that is consistent with both our traditions, sense of due process, international law. But this... this is the legacy that's been left behind and, you know, i'm surprised that the vice president is eager to defend a legacy that was unsustainable. Let's assume that we didn't change these practices. How... how long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until, you know, the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that's really going to make us safer? I... I don't know a lot of thoughtful thinkers, liberal or conservative, who think that was the right approach.

Who knew that Paul Krugman would become a YouTube darling?

DOWNLOAD (355)

PLAY (283)

h/t David

From Face the Nation March 22, 2009.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told CBS News’ Harry Smith on Face The Nation Sunday that the executive branch ought to use its leverage as a majority shareholder in AIG to sue the company for its wrongful use of retention bonuses.

Retention bonuses are to a great extent extortion, Frank argued. “I think there was an element, frankly, with some — not all of them — of almost extortion, where they said, 'We know what you need to know and we will quit if you don’t bribe us,'” Frank said.

He argued that there is a large pool of very talented people who have lost their jobs in the financial crisis and that AIG could replace the bonus recipients (some of whom are responsible for creating the firm's now-toxic assets) rather than bribe them with retention bonuses.

Rough transcript to follow.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (286)

PLAY (222)

Christine Romer, head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told Fox's Chris Wallace that she was confident that the economy would begin to grow again in the next year.

WALLLACE: In 15 seconds, how confident are you that if we sat down here a year from today, and it's a date, that you'll be able to say, you know what, our policies have worked?

ROMER: Incredibly confident. I -- I truly believe that's why we're taking them. We absolutely think that they are going to do the job for the American economy and so I'm happy to see you a year from now.

WALLACE: And that a year from now we'll see the signs.

ROMER: We will -- I feel very confident we'll be seeing the signs that the economy is -- has turned around and is growing again. Of course, it will take time before we're really back to normal, but I think we will absolutely see signs that everything is working.

DOWNLOAD (906)

PLAY (2402)

The spectacularly stupid and offensive Fox News show Red Eye with host Greg Gutfeld (above) sunk to new depths this week by belittling a neighbor and ally in the so-called war on terrorism. Although Canada opted out of involvement in Iraq, they have been in Afghanistan since 2002. Originally slated to leave in 2009, the Canadian government has extended the Afghan mission to 2011. At least one of the guests claimed he didn't know Canadian forces were in Afghanistan, which is typical of the expertise on the show. Certainly, conservative radio host Monica Crowley wasn't out of place.

An ill-considered and ill-timed bit of idiocy it was too, as yesterday four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight wounded near Kandahar.

Master Cpl. Scott Francis Vernelli (28), Cpl. Tyler Crooks (24), Trooper Jack Bouthillier (20) and Trooper Corey Joseph Hayes (22) were killed Friday in two roadside bomb blasts in Kandahar province. Eight Canadian soldiers were also wounded. (Department of National Defence)

If you have the stomach for it you can view a clip of the aftermath of the explosion, here.

DOWNLOAD (88)

PLAY (241)

Mayor Mike Bloomberg told NBC's David Gregory that Secretary Geithner was "absolutely" the right person to head the Treasury. "Tim Geithner is the guy I would want there. He's smart. He is a work-a-holic. He's been there. He's been part of the financial system for a long time. He understands how things work, markets work, how people react," said Bloomberg.

Gregory posed the question to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "You said you supported Secretary Geithner. You still have confidence in him?" The governor simply answered, "Yes."

DOWNLOAD (484)

PLAY (624)

DOWNLOAD (447)

PLAY (429)

You Tube (entire segment)

Rachel Maddow reminds all of us just what got us to where we are in the first place with this financial crisis. Deregulation.

For anyone who would care enough to know (and be completely disgusted with) just how big of a mess we're actually in, go read Matt Taibbi's latest article for Rolling Stone: "The Big Takeover: The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution".

Maddow: There would be no outrage about AIG's bonuses if AIG hadn't needed bailing out, right? I mean sure people get mad at fat cats with high salaries when everyone else is broke. But it's the fact that this company was using our money, taxpayers money to pay those bonuses that caused the entire country to grind our teeth down their nub ends to rage at these guys.

So there would be no outrage about AIG turning taxpayer bailout dollars into executive bonuses if there hadn't been a bailout. AIG wouldn't have needed bailing out if it weren't too big to fail, too integral to all these other parts of the financial industries. AIG wouldn't have become too big to fail if they hadn't become a big hybrid complicated uber-financial everything company that made all sorts of arcane financially engineered moves that got them squirreled into every kind of financial related business that you can think of.

AIG wouldn't have become a big hybrid complicated uber-financial everything company if there hadn't been, and this is key, deregulation of Wall Street that allowed firms to get like that. And massive deregulation of Wall Street wouldn't have happened without the rise of a political movement that preached that regulation was inherntly evil and deregulation was inherently wise and virtuous and would make everyone rich and it would be free well behaved puppies for every family.

Do you want an example of how this deregulation thing worked? You can totally use this at the high school dance or a bar or whatever to try to impress someone. Somebody starts complaining about the bailout. Complaining about AIG. You tell them actually the real villain here is Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Just say it with total confidence. Watch. You will get dates.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOAD (459)

PLAY (695)

This week thank goodness Bill Maher went back to his regular format of bringing all of the guests in together unlike last week's stinker of a show. Thank you Bill. The panel of Andrew Ross Sorkin, Kerry Washington, Bernie Sanders and Keith Olbermann discussed the hatred and outright craziness that's coming out of the likes of Glenn Beck and others on the right and the danger of whipping up some of the fringe elements of our society with their rhetoric.

Maher: Listening to people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck these days, I cannot figure out whether these right wingers are more dangerous when they're in power or when they're out of power, because when they're out of power, you know their paranoid, their paranoia goes off the charts. This Glenn Beck guy, I wouldn't even give him the time of day except he's a big star now on Fox and a lot of people believe, and he's talking about FEMA concentration camps.

Olbermann: Yeah...

Maher: He says we are headed toward socialism, totalitarianism...

Olbermann: Yeah...

Maher:...beyond your wildest imagination, but apparently not beyond his wildest imagination.

Washington: Right, right.

Sorkin: Did you see what he said about that? He said I can't prove these FEMA concentration camps, but let me tell you about them anyway.

Washington: Yeah, yeah.

Sorkin: You'd think it would be the opposite.

Olbermann: Can I quote Madeleine Albright?

Maher: Please.

Olbermann: He's nuts.

Maher: You know I would never be the person who says that you have to watch what you say because some borderline nut...no really...I'm not for that. No, no, that's an argument that's given a lot. You can't say this because a borderline might take it and then do this. I'm sorry but that's the price of living in a free speech country and I do want to live in one because I make my living at it. Okay. But you know I must say Tim McVeigh in 1995 if you recall, this was the same kind of talking that made him blow up that building.

Olbermann: The guy who walked into the church in Tennessee said in his statement to the police that he did this because he could not shoot the liberals who were on the lists from Bernie Goldberg, and Bernie Goldberg has proceeded to come out with another list of liberals and this time I'm on the list so this is even more vivid in my mind now. So yeah you're absolutely right about that. I think what you're seeing with, I mean I have been accused occasionally of sort of bordering on Howard Beale. Hey I got nothing on this guy for Howard Beale.

This is, you know in the last major economic crisis of this nation we spewed forth Father Coughlin. Well this is Father Coughlin with a crew cut. This is Father Coughlin on TV. This is, he's, who knows what he's going to say next week because if we can't understand what he's saying now he also has that same threshold. He doesn't know what he's saying now. It just sounds great. It's wonderful. It is a manic depressive high.

They go on to discuss how irresponsible Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are and just how much of what comes out of their mouths some of these right wing yappers even believe, and how much is them just being willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder.