Presidential Hopeful ...

[I Do (But I Dont)]

Berlusconi had said on Thursday that Obama, who will be the first African-American US president, was "handsome, young and also suntanned". Berlusconi responded [to critics] by calling them "imbeciles" with no sense of humor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szH-Z9mClwE

[pome]

To the last 3 posters: would you really care for him?

[P e r i c l e s]

Berlusconi had said on Thursday that Obama, who will be the first African-American US president, was "handsome, young and also suntanned". Italy's left-wing opposition parties accused Berlusconi of bringing discredit on the nation with the quip. "He forgets that his statements cast doubt on the image of our country in the world," said Dario Franceschini, member of parliament for the center-left Democratic Party. Berlusconi responded by calling them "imbeciles" with no sense of humor.

He should have apologized straight away. The best theory is that he can no longer control himself.  His words were loaded with dangerous ambiguity.

pome, it's not that simple. Although an old fart, Berlusconi is still a statesman - his word counts! I tend to believe his critics, the Italian leftists, were right to denounce him right away! His comments create a dangerous precedent - I mean, if he's allowed to get away with trying to damage Obama's reputation, who's gonna be next? God itself?

[N o a h]

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

Only the second meaning of "diva" would be in line with what you say. Remember: the first meaning is "a principal female singer in an opera or concert organization"

Sarah Palin's memoirs?

Speculation is mounting that the Alaska Governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee is closing in on a deal that could net her $7 million to tell her story. Reuters reports that Palin is in high demand: "Every publisher and a lot of literary agents have been going after her,' said Jeff Kleinman, an agent at Folio Literary Management. The price tag would place Palin in pretty exclusive company. Few other prominent politicians have inked such lucrative deals. At the top of the, ah, shelf: Former President Bill Clinton's "My Life" in 2004. Clinton's advance was over $10 million (AP puts the figure at $15 million), and he delivered with record-breaking sales. Fueled by a public eager for lurid details about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, first-day sales of "My Life" topped 400,000 copies, a record for nonfiction that shattered the previous record held by none other than Hillary Clinton. But the former first lady still did okay. She netted an $8 million advance to pen her 2003 memoir, "Living History" -- falling just shy of the standing record at the time for a nonfiction advance ($8.5 million for Pope John Paul II in 1994).

What about President Bush? He recently told CNN he wants to write a book: "I want people to know what it's like to make some of the decisions I had to make. What was the moment like. I've had one of these presidencies where I had to make some tough calls." Maybe so, but as President Bush prepares to leave office with history-making low approval ratings and an economy in crisis, some in the publishing biz told AP that now is not the best time: "'If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage,' says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton's million-selling 'My Life.'" It's a different story for First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian who has also expressed interest in writing a memoir that, according to the AP, could fetch an advance rivaling Hillary Clinton's.

[P a d a m]

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, left, and Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, wave to the crowd after Obama's acceptance speech at his election night party at Grant Park in Chicago, Tuesday night, Nov. 4, 2008.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-081028-obama-all-pg,0,6564040.photogallery
Barack Obama's ascendance

It is not surprising that Obama cancelled the firework display planned to accompany his victory speech. The message is clear: 'The victory is yours. But when you've finished celebrating, dancing and crying, return to your homes and be quiet. Thanks to you, the business of government is ours and we will take it from here. We'll let you know how it goes.

P.S. Please don't take popular sovereignty too literally'.

[DrLazarus]

If President Bush writes a book, who's going to read it to him?

[miska]

It is not surprising that Obama cancelled the firework display planned to accompany his victory speech. The message is clear: 'The victory is yours. But when you've finished celebrating, dancing and crying, return to your homes and be quiet. Thanks to you, the business of government is ours and we will take it from here. We'll let you know how it goes.

P.S. Please don't take popular sovereignty too literally'.

Interesting observation, Padam!

[teafairn]

Sarah Palin's memoirs?

Speculation is mounting that the Alaska Governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee is closing in on a deal that could net her $7 million to tell her story. Reuters reports that Palin is in high demand: "Every publisher and a lot of literary agents have been going after her,' said Jeff Kleinman, an agent at Folio Literary Management. The price tag would place Palin in pretty exclusive company. Few other prominent politicians have inked such lucrative deals. At the top of the, ah, shelf: Former President Bill Clinton's "My Life" in 2004. Clinton's advance was over $10 million (AP puts the figure at $15 million), and he delivered with record-breaking sales. Fueled by a public eager for lurid details about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, first-day sales of "My Life" topped 400,000 copies, a record for nonfiction that shattered the previous record held by none other than Hillary Clinton. But the former first lady still did okay. She netted an $8 million advance to pen her 2003 memoir, "Living History" -- falling just shy of the standing record at the time for a nonfiction advance ($8.5 million for Pope John Paul II in 1994).

What about President Bush? He recently told CNN he wants to write a book: "I want people to know what it's like to make some of the decisions I had to make. What was the moment like. I've had one of these presidencies where I had to make some tough calls." Maybe so, but as President Bush prepares to leave office with history-making low approval ratings and an economy in crisis, some in the publishing biz told AP that now is not the best time: "'If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage,' says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf, which in 2004 released Bill Clinton's million-selling 'My Life.'" It's a different story for First Lady Laura Bush, a former librarian who has also expressed interest in writing a memoir that, according to the AP, could fetch an advance rivaling Hillary Clinton's.

I tend to believe that she needs to go and stay home for a while. If she wants a future in national politics, her No. 1 job is doing a good job as governor.

[m e t a n o i a]

The economic plan announced Saturday by President-Elect Barack Obama, with the goal of "saving or creating" 2.5 million jobs in 2009 and 2010, is a measure that has already been outstripped by events. The deepening crisis of American and world capitalism could destroy that many US jobs in the next 6-9 months alone. The collapse of the auto industry itself would wipe out 2.5 million to 3 million jobs according to most estimates, canceling out the entirety of Obama's plan, even if it were to be enacted quickly and in full by the incoming Democratic-controlled Congress. The broader recession, well under way, is expected to increase the ranks of the unemployed by a million or more by next spring. Obama announced his jobs plan in a brief radio speech on Saturday morning, excerpts of which were also posted on YouTube.

Weekend press reports also indicated that the economic stimulus plan to be introduced in January will be much larger than the $61 billion proposed by congressional Democrats this fall, or the $178 billion Obama called for during the final weeks of his election campaign. Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, appearing on the CBS program "Face the Nation," embraced the suggestion that the stimulus package could be as high as $700 billion, including tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, infrastructure spending, expanded unemployment benefits and tax credits for business. This extreme escalation in the price tag is a response to the expanding scale of the financial crisis and its impact on the wider economy.

The extreme fragility of the financial system was underscored in the extraordinary comments of former Treasury Secretary James Baker, who called for Obama to meet with Bush in the White House and agree on short-term measures to prop up the banking system over the 60 days leading up to the inauguration. Otherwise, he warned, "this thing is even, believe it or not, going to get worse." Baker continued: "I agree 100% we can only have one president at a time, but nothing would do more to create confidence and eliminate the fear and anxiety that's out there, particularly in financial markets, than to see the incoming president and outgoing president get together on some sort of a proposal or program -- over the short-term, I'm not talking about the mid-term or long-term correction of the economy, but something that would do a little more to make sure that our banks don't continue to slide down and would stabilize our financial system, which is critical."

Obama scheduled a press conference Monday to announce his choices for the top economic positions in the new administration. The leading figures will be Timothy Geithner, current president of the New York Federal Reserve, for treasury secretary and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers as top economic policy coordinator at the White House. Both men are longtime fiscal crisis managers for American capitalism, going back to the Mexican peso crisis of 1995-96 and the Asian crisis of 1997-98. Geithner has been one of the three top officials handling the current Wall Street meltdown, working hand-in-hand with the current treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Summers is reportedly Obama's choice to replace Bernanke when his term expires later in 2009. The right-wing character of these personnel decisions has been widely noted in the media. The primary concern, however, will be the defense of the financial system — i.e., the accumulated wealth of the financial aristocracy, embodied in the giant banks, hedge funds and other huge financial institutions, whose parasitic and speculative operations precipitated the current crisis.

[Tic-Tac-Toe]

[...] the stimulus package could be as high as $700 billion, including tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, infrastructure spending, expanded unemployment benefits and tax credits for business. This extreme escalation in the price tag is a response to the expanding scale of the financial crisis and its impact on the wider economy.

[...]

One economist who's not pleased with the way the bailout of Citigroup is structured is Nobel Prize winner, and Princeton economics professor, Paul Krugman. Krugman acknowledged that the bailout was necessary, but wrote on his blog that the structure of this bailout is an 'outrage':

A bailout was necessary -- but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more.

But is the government bailout of Citigroup well-structured, and are taxpayers getting a fair deal here? Krugman, author of "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008" (Norton), says on first read, no. "Most of the people who have looked at it, the small hours of this morning, have said this is a lot of taxpayer risk in return for not much," Krugman told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez. "It looks like a very sweet deal for Citigroup management, very sweet deal for Citigroup shareholders, to the extent they have anything left -- not very good for the taxpayer. This was not good." With other bailouts seemingly having done nothing to boost consumer confidence, Rodriguez asked, why do it if it is not well-structured? "Well, you know, things could be worse, you know? That's been the moral of this crisis: things can always be worse,' Krugman said, "and they have been getting worse."