So, for weeks and weeks and weeks, the White House has been inundated with a clarion call from the media: “Why have you not fixed the economy yet? You better explain it soon! Oh My God, look at the Dow Jones! It falls, because of you, and your lack of a solution.” So, President Barack Obama went on the Tonight Show, and did an interview with 60 Minutes, and will do another news conference tonight. These appearances will help Obama advance an explanation of his bank bailout program, and offer reporters a chance to publicly question the president. One would think that this would be a good thing. But NO! God, no! Doesn’t Obama realize that he’s risking over-exposure, with all the explaining and answering questions and being a public figure? How dare he?
That’s the recent message that’s been advancing through the press. After Obama appeared on a rival network’s late night show, CBS’s Chris Wragge was given to wonderment: “The Obama blitz, the President’s appearing everywhere, but is his media tour taking attention away from his message?” Because clearly, the last thing a “message” needs is a series of sessions that allows it to be clearly elucidated!
Here’s the President of the United States speaking with school kids, to our Astronauts.
Obama reached out by sending an Op-Ed to 30 newspapers worldwide, asking for a coherent response to the global financial crisis.
Overexposed?
He’s doing his job.
I guess we were so numbed by the last guy’s inability to stay awake past 10 pm, that we’re exhausted by Obama’s energy.
Leave Obama alone, he’ll surprise his critics by actually getting things done…
Cocaine and martinis On Wall Street? Nothing new there. Masters of the Universe admitting they have an alcohol problem? Not so common.
Experts say more and more people in finance are seeking treatment for addiction as the global economic crisis sinks its teeth into a high-stakes industry where confidence is the name of the game and nobody wants to admit to a weakness.
Do you know what this means?
The underlying problem, work-related stress, has imploded enough for good people (which Wall Streeters are, 99.9% of them) to get help.
“You’re supposed to be a master of the universe, you’re supposed to be on top of everything,” said one financial services executive who began alcohol rehab in August.
“There’s not a lot of sensitivity training or meetings where you sit around and ask how everyone is feeling,” said the Connecticut executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “No one walks around saying ‘I feel your pain.’”
Lawyers, stock brokers, people we as a culture put into adversarial roles, they are now asking for help from the long-term numbing they have needed and used in order to do their jobs.
Harris Stratyner, a psychologist with Caron Treatment Centers, a leading non-profit addiction treatment foundation with offices in Manhattan, said stars of the financial world were by nature more prone to risky and extreme behavior… Stratyner said mental illness and addiction, which often occur together, cost the United States $171 billion a year in lost workplace productivity.
This is a very hopeful step.
Now lets deal with the sick cycle carousel that leads to addiction.
Its not as easy as blaming everyone on Wall Street for the current global economic meltdown.
We’re all to blame, from the top execs who gleefully took tens of millions of dollars of annual salary, to the regular american citizen who spent many times their annual income on things they do not need…
Lets cut Wall Street’s insane highs and lows, regulate it back to health. If Wall Streeters can admit they have a problem, so should the rest of us.
It sounds like she’s been injured. Badly. Body blows.
Angelina Jolie, who has provided a safe childhood for numerous kids thru her charity work, who has a life partner who shares her values, who makes millions of dollars acting in movies…
AOL thinks she’s suffering BODY BLOWS, because AOL thinks other women have better bikini bodies.
PFFFFTTTT.
I’d rather be Angelina Jolie than the goofy copywriter who came up with this stretch, the two are not connected!
And aren’t you dying to hear which mom walked her kids, in her UGGs? Not.
This is made-up news, because someone at AOL can’t find a way to be relevant.
Don’t belittle Jolie’s presence in refugee camps by using her name to show bikinis…
but I wanted to point out this time that the Canadians are doing two things right that FOX is not noticing:
they aren’t going to keep up a war that they cannot afford, which means they will be stronger than us because their equipment will actually WORK and they won’t be trillions of dollars in debt.
they honor their dead. they have ‘Repatriation Ceremonies’ for their dead soldiers where the family gets honored by the government for their sacrifice. DO WE DO THAT? No, under GWB, we hid the dead bodies. We even sent out DEAR JOHN DOE letters to our dead soldier’s families… which I found out about by reading an Aussie Blog, www.rubenerdshow.com.
The government was incensed by a recent talk-show segment on the American conservative cable network that poked fun at Canada and the Canadian military.
A group of pundits took turns trashing Canada and its reliability as an ally in fighting terrorism last week as four more Canadian soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay requested an apology just before leaving for Canadian Forces Base Trenton, where he was to attend a repatriation ceremony with the families of the latest soldiers killed.
“It’s crass, it’s insensitive, it’s in fact disgusting, given the timing,” Mr. MacKay told CTV News.
“There should be an apology — to the families in particular, and to the Canadian Forces and to Canada generally — given the sacrifice and the commitment that we’ve demonstrated in Afghanistan.”
SERIOUSLY, in Canada, crowds of HUNDREDS gather to honor their returning war dead.
Wake up, FOX, you are not patriots.
I’d make the easy cracks about the loser guys sitting around with hair gel and the requisite blond, but that’s not hte point. The point is, as long as these guys have an audience and FOX pays them, we are BEHIND Canada in our abilities and competence, and in our so-called ‘American Values’.
Drone War’s Rules: Shoot First, Ask Permission Later
UMMMMMM. HMMMM. Does anybody look at these things before they get sent off? I doubt it…
Anywhooooooooooooo, back to the topic. US sending drones into Pakistan, WITHOUT the authorization of the sovereign (in charge of itself with rights to its future) state of Pakistan…
Before August, the CIA had to ask for Islamabad’s OK before launching any attack. The approvals often took “a day or more, sometimes causing the agency to lose track of the target,” the L.A. Times reports. But when Pakistani president and Bush administration ally Pervez Musharraf was forced to resign in August, Bush quickly approved “new rules: Rather than requiring Pakistan’s permission to order a Predator strike, the agency was allowed to shoot first.”
Are we still wondering why other countries hate us, when we send our drones in to attack, without permission? We’re not ‘at war’ with Pakistan. If Pakistan did the same to us, all hell would break loose.
This is Obama’s Katrina Moment. Is he going to power thru and bitch-slap banks into bankruptcy where they belong, protecting the United States of America from a recession beyond belief? Will he provide the transparency and leadership for which he was elected?
President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.
This is a defining moment for his presidency, and how he responds will determine the trajectory of his term. He needs to deal with the excesses within the financial industry with the same toughness and conviction that President Ronald Reagan brought to bear during the air traffic controllers’ strike. To date, he is sorely wanting.
We are not interested in the level of outrage the administration is feeling, but in the effectiveness of its response. So far, it has come across as hapless and completely ineffectual. This Obama voter would like to be spared the speeches and the posturing on the Sunday morning shows — action is what is needed.
Frank Rich wrote an opinion piece in response:
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: “President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived.”
This ‘corporation is a person‘ thing has got to STOP. People are persons, banks are not persons. Washington Mutual’s holding company is suing federal regulators for billions of dollars, saying the firesale of the bank’s assets to JPMorgan Chase violated its rights. People sadly do not have the billions of dollars needed to hire lawyers to protect themselves in court, only corporations with their lobbyists and phalanx of paid hacks do.
The movie ‘The Corporation’ shows a business man saying ‘Everyone makes mistakes, I can’t be held PERSONALLY LIABLE’… Baron Thurlow said, “Corporations have no soul to save, no body to incarcerate”.
So, this is how convoluted WAMU’s B.S. claim is:
WAMU, the parent company, had its banking arm, WAMU, sold out from under it to J.P. Morgan, at the beginning of our awareness of the banking industry’s financial fiasco.
WAMU, the parent company, seeks the return of $4 billion of trust preferred securities it said were wrongfully transferred to the banking unit, and said it may be entitled to as much as $3 billion of tax refunds. It also seeks damages of $177.1 million related to unpaid loans made to the banking unit.
Seriously.
After damaging the US and global financial markets with its crazy investment products, which it richly profited off of for years, it now wants you to believe that it has as much right to your tax dollars as you do.
Oh, scrap that, we already know you have NO right to your tax dollars…
Seattle-based Washington Mutual failed after mortgage losses soared, and following a 10-day bank run when customers withdrew $16.7 billion of deposits. It had about $307 billion of assets, and remains by far the largest U.S. lender to fail.
For those of you who believe in the almighty power of markets, the market has spoken. WAMU’s parent lost, because of the markets. We should not have to ‘float’ them with $6.5 BILLION DOLLARS.
And, to add insult to injury, CNBC Host Mark Haines states that you need Wall Streeters to get their millions in bonuses (even though they ran America into the ground), because:
It’s just like when the Allies were victorious over Nazi Germany in World War II, when we occupied the country, we left a lot of Nazis in place because they were the ones who made the trains run on time and the bureaucracy function properly, etc. And it was distasteful, but you needed them. And in fact, our experience in Iraq kind of demonstrates the wisdom of that, because in Iraq we replaced the Baathist bureaucrats and the result was chaos. Not to compare Wall Street to Iraq or Nazi Germany, but the point is you need people who know what they’re doing.
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in 
