From The Times ...

President-elect Barack Obama is riding a powerful wave of optimism into the White House, with Americans confident he can turn the economy around but prepared to give him years to deal with the crush of problems he faces starting Tuesday, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

While hopes for the new president are extraordinarily high, the poll found, expectations for what Mr. Obama will actually be able to accomplish appear to have been tempered by the scale of the nation's problems at home and abroad.

The findings suggest that Mr. Obama has achieved some success with his effort, which began with his victory speech in Chicago in November, to gird Americans for a slow economic recovery and difficult years ahead after a campaign that generated striking enthusiasm and high hopes for change.

Late Update: As TPM Reader SG points out there's also this very striking passage ...

By contrast, 79 percent were optimistic about the next four years under Mr. Obama, a level of good will for a new chief executive that exceeds that measured for any of the past five incoming presidents. And it cuts across party lines: 58 percent of the respondents who said they voted for Mr. Obama's opponent in the general election, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said they were optimistic about the country in an Obama administration.

Maybe time to start looking again at what the Swedes did (warning: long PDF) during their banking crisis in the early 1990s.

Late Update: For more on what I'm talking about and for a possible look just over the horizon, look at this piece in tomorrow's Post.

Going into the next several celebratory days, I want to put out a call for brief notes explaining what the inauguration means to you. That covers a lot of ground, but intentionally so. You can answer the question in whatever way you like. Obviously we will not be able to publish all of them. But we'll try to publish a range of different ones over the next few days.

Please try to keep them as brief and concise as possible. Not because there's anything inherently wrong with going long. But we'll want to publish as many as possible. And if they run too long that will be difficult.

If you're interested, send us your thoughts at the comments email linked at the upper right with the subject heading "My Take."

It's cool how if you cut apart a big unprofitable company all the new little parts become profitable.

Barack Obama declares that this election should only be the beginning of more change to come, and simultaneously transforms his presidential campaign into a new political organization to help him accomplish just that. That and other political news in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.

From TPM Reader RV ...

As a former Navy guy, I know something about ship handling, and I've got to say that the actions of the captains and crews of the rescue boats, particularly the three large ferries that started pulling up alongside the ditched plane within 3-4 minutes of the landing were totally superb! It is not easy to take large craft like these, racing across the water and get them to slow down enough to ease up alongside a large bobbing object in the water without actually hitting it. A collision between any of those boats and the plane might have tragically sent all concerned quickly to the bottom of the Hudson. Watching these ships pulling gently up, lowering the forward ramps then quickly and calmly embarking the stranded passengers and crew was most impressive for this old sailor!

I don't want to shortchange Captain Sullenberger and the crew of the plane for performing this miracle, but we also need to be aware of and grateful to those first responders that sealed the deal by pulling everyone off the plane safely!

This video apparently comes from a Coast Guard surveillance camera. It's a static scene until just after 2 minutes into the video when the plane, apparently just having touched down, comes into the field of view as a splash line from the left. A few moments later the camera zooms in and you can see the first moments of the passengers coming out of the plane.

TPM Reader JM gives some more perspective on yesterday's events ...

I'm a pilot (though not an air transport pilot), and like you, I was amazed by yesterday's events. Capt. Sullenburger's feat is more than just impressive - I'd say he puts his pants on more than one leg at a time. I'm not aware of any commercial ditchings that didn't involve fatalities, but:

1 - Many ditchings are more last minute than this one, and consequently much rougher. Sullenburger had the presence of mind to plan to ditch early, as soon as he realized that making it to Teterboro would be a stretch (remember that you only get one chance to make a "dead stick" landing, and Teterboro is surrounded by buildings). This early decision was HUGE.

2 - The Hudson, yesterday at 4:00 PM, was about as good a ditching spot as you could get (except for being cold). It was flat calm, and it's long, wide, and straight, which makes it much easier to bring the plane down gently, which is the only way to have a chance at not tearing the plane apart on impact (the reason that smaller planes ditch successfully more often is that they fly much slower - the A320 is about to stall when the plane I fly is approaching its top speed).

3 - As you know, it's also surrounded by docks and rich with rescue craft and ferries, and their prompt arrival at the crash site was also essential to saving everyone.

Sullenburger will be a hero to all pilots for this feat, and he should - he's got ice water in his veins and is one hell of a pilot. Amazing story.

As I noted below, if you look at the map of the flight, it's clear that the pilot decided very early that the Hudson was the place to put the plane down. And that snap decision may have been the one that saved everyone's life. I also remember thinking yesterday that the water looked very smooth, much less wavy than I frequently see it when I walk along the river park. And that was probably critical too.

Pentagon inspector general finds no wrongdoing by DOD in catering to, briefing, and generally coddling retired officers who became TV talking heads.

Late Update: Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH) calls the IG report a "whitewash" and a "nice parting gift to the Bush White House from the Pentagon."

Assuming that it's true that there's never been a planned ditching of a commercial jetliner where all the passengers survived, I asked in my earlier post whether there's even been one that didn't have a catastrophic result. I've been reading over the pointers and impromptu research from readers on this question, and the answer seems to turn a series of qualifiers and definitions.

For instance, here is a list on Wikipedia of survival rates in cases where planes were intentionally ditched or landed in water. The examples run the gamut. But the gist is that while there are a couple cases of 100% survival, those were with planes that were much smaller and carried far fewer people. A Russian passenger plane was ditched in the Neva River in 1963. And everyone survived. But the plane had only a third the number of passengers as yesterday USAir flight had. A plane went down in the water in Java in 2002 after an engine flameout during a hail storm. In that case, one flight attendant died -- out of 66 people aboard the plane.

Most of the ditchings seem to end something like how this one did in 1970 in the caribbean -- with a substantial number of people surviving, but a lot of fatalities too.

Then there are cases of unintentional water landings. You'd think those would not go as well as the intentional ones. But there was a 1968 case in which a Japan Airlines plane miscalculated where the runway was and came down in the water about two and one-half miles short of the runway at San Franciso International. There were 96 passengers aboard. And all survived. You can actually see a picture of the crashed plane here (.pdf), which looks surprisingly similar to yesterday's incident. But again, this is seen as being in a different category since the plane was not in distress. The pilot just misjudged where the runway was.

I'll post with more examples if they come in.

Late Update: Apples and oranges. This incident in Sweden in 1991 was different from the ditchings we've discussed. But in some respects it's quite similar. MD-81 takes off with 122 passengers and seven crew, quickly develops problems in one engine and then a similar failure in the other. At this point they're at 3000 feet with no power. They try to get back to the airport for an emergency landing. But they come out of the cloud cover and 600 feet and decide to put down in a clearing in the forest. The plane breaks into three pieces and two passengers were seriously injured. But no fatalities. The cause of the engine failures was determined to be overnight ice on the wings which had entered the engines.

Is Obama's relationship with Google too close?

Will Google use its immense, and growing, power wisely?

This and more in our latest book club on New York Times columnist Randy Stross' Planet Google.

Like many of you I'm sure, when I heard yesterday that a USAir jet had crashed into the Hudson River, I steeled myself for a horrible story. So when the first images came up on our bank of TV screens here at TPM, a quizzical look came over my face as I saw an apparently fully intact jet liner gently bobbing on the surface of the water. And with people more or less calmly emerging from the plane, apparently uninjured.

Now, as I've told you before, I'm a recovering aerophobe. And recovery is a very relative thing. So every time I've boarded a plane over the years and gotten that speech about how, after the plane goes down in the ocean, we'll grab our flotation seat cushions, walk down the aisle and hop into the inflatable boats, it's always been with a mix of terror and gallows incredulity that I've thought to myself: "Right."

So when I saw this amazing turn of events, I started thinking: Has anyone ever pulled something like this off before?

Last night on the local news, a reporter said this was the first time in the history of American aviation that a pilot (presumably of a large commercial craft) has ditched a plane in the water and escaped any fatalities. And this article in today's Journal similarly suggests this is an extremely rare feat.

Writes J. Lynn Lunsford ...

Although commercial jetliners are equipped with life vests and inflatable slides, there have been few successful attempts at water landings during the jet age. Indeed, even though pilots go through the motions of learning to ditch a plane in water, the generally held belief is that such landings would almost certainly result in fatalities.

But I'm curious. Set aside no fatalities. Has a commercial jet ever been ditched in the water and not been a mass fatality event? Not a rhetorical question. Does anyone know the history on this?

As a separate matter. You may have heard that in addition to being a demonstrably impressive pilot, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, the man piloting the plane yesterday, has a resume that makes him a legitimate air safety expert. (Talk about good luck matching the bad luck of a double bird strike!) He even played some part in developing the Crew Resource Management training for his airline that most experts say has played a real part in the improvement in commercial air safety over the last decade and one half. And he's worked a number of NTSB crash investigations. (CRM, in very broad terms, is a leadership and collaboration training program that helps pilots and co-pilots make the right decisions in the seconds or minutes that make the difference between close calls and catastrophes.)

And one other little detail that adds to the drama, at least for me. The jet's engines didn't go out over the water. They went out over the Bronx. And there's not a lot of open land around here. There was some brief discussion with the air traffic controller of trying to land at Teterboro Airport across the river in New Jersey. But Sullenberger apparently made the snap decision that that was not a viable option. And after managing to get over the skyscrapers in Manhattan and only a few hundred feet above the George Washington Bridge, he maneuvered the plane over the Hudson and down onto the water, having decided that that was the best option, from the very short list of choices that remained.

Late Update: In the spirit of everything is out there on the web, here's a Jet flight blog that has a plotted map with the exact course of the USAir Flight. Amazing to look at, and appears to contradict what I'd read about the plane going over the Empire State building or any of the big Manhattan skyscrapers. If this map is right the plane was never over lower Manhattan and appeared to get out over the Hudson around the 130s or above in Harlem. At that point he was flying at around 1200 feet. Looking at the map with my very untrained eye, it looks like the pilot made a deliberate decision to use the Hudson as a runway just after the initial accident over the Bronx.

From our Reader who's watching this closely ...

The stimulus bill gives the Secretary of the Energy Department the power to guarantee about $100 billion of loans to alternative energy projects. While this pales in comparison to guarantees given to many banks, and definitely in comparison to the $7.5 trillion of debt guaranteed by Treasury, FDIC and the Fed over last year, still this ability to get alternative energy investing across the valley of death now faced by the sector is hugely important as a green job creation mechanism and a major step toward energy independence and climate change abatement. Hat's off to Chris Van Hollen and Ed Markey and other members of Congress --- if the Energy Secretary has the freedom to administer the guarantees in a commercially reasonable way.

Last month I spent a lot of time marshaling arguments and expert opinions suggesting that the president actually lacked the power to revoke a pardon, as he did in the case of New York real estate developer Isaac Toussie. But as Steven Aftergood reports, a new Congressional Research Service report concludes that President Bush probably did have the power to revoke the pardon since it had yet to be 'executed'. Again, past DOJ pardon attorney have said there's no real 'execution' of anything that the Pardon Attorney does. And it's worth noting that the CRS has no legal standing. But that's their take.

We're in the final 100 hours of the Bush era, but we're not out of the woods yet. Before its time is up, the Administration is still trying to open up new areas to offshore drilling, and they're trying to bury a Pentagon inspector general report on the military's TV pundits program with a 4 p.m. Friday afternoon release. Then there are the last-minute pardons expected sometime between now and noon Tuesday.

I remember back during the dot.com bubble they had a few websites with really snarky titles that chronicled each company that bit the dust.

It's sort of similar now. Only these are real companies.

I've been keeping you updated on the rash of major newspaper bankruptcies and other papers that are slated to cease publication altogether in weeks or months. But as TPM Reader JS notes the situation is more complicated and in some ways more promising than papers just not being able to make money any more. A lot of these papers that are in trouble are still profitable on an operating basis. They're just leveraged with crazy amounts of debt and/or run by people who insist on making a annual profit margin that was just never sustainable ...

I just wanted to comment on this (and other) newspaper bankruptcies. I have done a significant amount of strategic planning and management consulting work with major metro newspapers over the past 10 years and saw much of this coming via scenario-based planning in the late 90's.

The problems are well documented by now - classified advertising (the most profitable part of the old print model) is done much better and much more cheaply online, young (and not so young) readers prefer the immediacy of the online channel, core display advertising clients have consolidated (fewer department stores, cellular providers, etc.). Meanwhile, advertising revenues always fall in a down economy (and this is a very down economy).

But, most of these businesses are still fine on an operating basis (i.e., they make money before interest and taxes). Having gone public (seemed like a good idea at the time given the 20% margins, etc.) and subsequently having been leveraged to the hilt, they are getting killed on debt-service as well as in the public equity markets (which prices assets based on future growth potential). For goodness sakes, every single operating entity owned by the now bankrupt Tribune Company is making money - but, Sam Zell (and John Madigan before him) loaded the company up with so much debt, there is no way out other than a bankruptcy judge.

The current owners (particularly the Sam Zell's and private equity firms of the world) don't give a hoot for the public trust aspect of the major metros that they own - unlike the families that started and ran these papers for generations. If they lose all their equity and the bond holders take big hair cuts (I'm talking buzz cut...), that strikes me as a fair and equitable outcome for people who never believed in the missions of the entities they owned.

So, these bankruptcies may in the medium to long run be good for journalism (in the traditional sense). Assuming the new owners emerge from bankruptcy with limited debt, the papers have many positive attributes upon which to earn a reasonable profit while building new sources of revenue. They have an unparalleled local focus and understanding, they are the most efficient vehicle for several categories of advertising, and they have significant advertising sales forces that can be re-focused on lines of business that can sustain the papers over the long haul. This is particularly true if the surviving owners are people who believe in the public trust mission of their papers and news-oriented web channels.

A Reader comments on the green energy provisions in the stimulus bill ...

The range of subsidies for energy in stimulus bill is very impressive. It is noteworthy that there is a grant program for alternatives. Grants to start up businesses are very rare. Tax policy usually returns tax payments or creates deductions and credits against taxes. To send checks to people is quite extraordinary for Congress. So this is a sign of awareness that wind and solar need real cash, given that they are start up projects where there haven't been taxes paid in the past. Giving them a transferable tax credit, one that they can sell to others, is not effective for the special bad reason that there is no appetite for buying tax credits just now, since folks don't have profits and have plenty of losses from their own businesses and portfolios.

It is also good that loan guarantees appear in the proposal. But the big question is this: can the energy secretary guarantee $8b of loans or does the provision mean that he can guarantee approximately $100b as long as he doesn't actually spend (that is, lose) more than $8 b.

Whackjob Iowa Rep. Steve King (R) complains that Obama gets to use "Hussein" while taking the oath of office, but the name is off-limits to critics. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Minneapolis Star Tribune, (aka the Strib) the paper that's been doing such amazing work on the Minnesota senate recount, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Just out from USAToday ...

Americans are as down as they've been in decades about the state of the country and its polarized politics, even as they express soaring confidence that Barack Obama will be able to turn things around.

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds stratospheric expectations for the incoming president that his own supporters acknowledge may be unrealistic. A majority of those surveyed say Obama will be able to achieve every one of 10 major campaign promises, from doubling the production of alternative energy to ensuring that all children have health insurance coverage.

Seven in 10 predict the nation will be better off when Obama's term ends in four years.

TPM Reader DF on the prez's valedictory ...

Watching this speech reminds me of when I listened to my high school principal speak for the first time after I graduated. He still sounded crazy but no longer scared me.

It's nice to know that after 8 years, two unwinnable wars, and a devastating recession, at least one man is feeling unhesitatingly good. And if the poll numbers are low... well, as Dick Cheney told Jim Lehrer last night: there are more important things than being loved.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

One of the few disagreeable aspects of the Obama campaign and victory for us was that the campaign snatched away the guy who used to do small graphic design projects for us. And now I hear they have the temerity to keep him for the White House. Maybe we need a graphic design bailout now? Anyway, assuming that doesn't happen, we need a graphic designer for a small but fast turnaround project. We'd much prefer the person to be in NYC, but I guess -- the internet being what it is -- we could work with someone remotely. If you're interested, shoot us an email. Again, very small project. But we need a quick turnaround on it. So if you're the one for the job, shoot us an email.

Boston Globe to cut 50 newsroom jobs.

Only a mile or so west of TPM HQ a US Air jet has crashed into the Hudson River. We're watching video of the plane. And -- thankfully -- it looks more like a crash landing than a crash, because the plane appears to be fully or nearly intact floating on the water. Passengers are being taken off the plane by boats.

We'll bring you more shortly.

...

The plane took off at 3:26 PM from LaGuardia. So even now as I write only 22 minutes ago.

4:16 PM ... Fox is reporting that NYC police now say that all passengers have been successfully evacuated from the plane.

4:34 PM ... The FAA is now issuing a preliminary report that the agency believes all passengers and crew were able to safely evacuate the plane.

Turns out BofA needs a lot of help to swallow Merrill Lynch. The Treasury is set to guarantee between $100 to $200 billion.

Guess we need another TARP.

Former chief of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under Gov. Ted Strickland (D-OH) arrested for running hooker rating website.

Not clear whether holding the $10 a ticket hooker raffle was also part of the charges.

Who better to explain the "new Washington" to you than Mark Penn and Karen Hughes?

Burris sworn in.

A Reader writes in ...

From the WashPost homepage comes a vivid illustration of the opportunities and challenges facing the new administration:

"Adviser's Plan Would Alter Financial System: A top Obama adviser proposes measures that would dramatically expand government control over the free market in the United States."

The article itself details a report from a Group of 30 panel chaired by Paul Volcker, not from the Transition. It does, indeed, call for a thorough regulatory overhaul, including limiting the size of banks so they won't be too big to fail. But the entire point of the report is that we presently do not have a functioning free market. Insisting upon transparency, accountability, and oversight is the necessary precondition for restoring the health of the free market.

I expect this kind of distortion from AEI and Cato. But the panicked press reaction to this proposal helps explain why Obama seems so intent on retaining the capacity to communicate directly with the public. Even with the financial world teetering on the brink, the prospect of Change is deeply frightening to its denizens. This is going to get interesting.

DOJer John Tanner sends letter of apology to African American head of Civil Rights Commission for calling her "black and bitter."

Holder says he'll review decision not to charge Bradley Schlozman for lying to congress.

Can Obama possibly save his embattled nominees who are virtually guaranteed to be confirmed notwithstanding a lot of media hyperventilating? We take a look at the high stakes drama.

Shorter Sen. Specter: It's not just me saying you're not qualified. It's the media quoting me saying you're not qualified!

Bank of America has been the go-to institution to mop up the carnage from a lot of the rest of the banking center. Remember, they 'bought' Merrill Lynch, with a lot of government help, rather than letting in swirl down the drain like Lehman Brothers. Today its stock has dropped 25% because BofA has now discovered that losses at Merrill (which it only finally bought on January 1st) were much worse than they'd realized. And they need to go back to the Treasury for a big new infusion of money.

Bob Reich on what we should be using the second half of the TARP money on.

It's hard to say anything good about the financial sector bailout. We're devoting a lot of our very limited reporting resources to muckraking it -- both the policy decisions behind it and the implementation of it. But in looking into it (and a lot of the legwork has been done by TPMmuckraker's Zack Roth) I've realized that in a lot of the discussion of this, people are actually exaggerating how bad it is. This isn't news for people deep into the details. But a lot of the discussion I've seen assumes that the $350 billion dollars of bailout money already used has been 'spent', as in gone, not getting it back or that it's been lent out on such bad terms that we're unlikely to get any of it back.

But that's not quite right. Most of the $350 billion has bought preferred stock in banks. The rate of interest Paulson got wasn't nearly as good as several European governments got (5% vs. 10%), not good enough for the risk involved. And a good deal of the money bought not preferred stock but warrants, where the possibility of a return is much less certain, although the upside is arguably higher too. All that said, though, this money has been spent buying what can be legitimately seen as assets, on which we're likely to get our money back, so long as the institutions themselves do not go bankrupt. (Yes, that last point is a major caveat. But if all of our major banking institutions go under we've got even bigger problems.)

There are still lots of problems with oversight, the lack of strings attached and any governing theory of what we're trying to accomplish. But on this one point a lot of the discussion seems off the mark.

Late Update: TPM Reader TR is not so sanguine ...

I think the thing that's missing in your reporting is that all the major banks (B of A, wells, Citi) are already insolvent and that without the TARP they would have to declare bankruptcy. The press won't touch the subject, nor will individual Congresspeople for fear of being accused of triggering a panic (see Schumer's vilification for calling out IndyMac). The whole purpose of TARP is to keep the banks going a little while longer in the desperate hope that the 'market' will turn and their worthless assets will magically regain value. It's a looting/con game of literally historic proportions run by the people who created the mess and have absolutely no clue how to fix it. The major assumption being that there is a fix and that the banks will never, ever have to face the losses that they incurred while generating massive fees, bonuses, and salaries along the way.

Dahlia Lithwick and Phillipe Sands on why Bob Woodward's interview with Susan Crawford changes everything we know about torture.

Not the actual bill, but a summary of the key points of the legislation was just released. We'll have details shortly.

And here it is.

We've been joking around the office for the last few weeks about how soon it would be before pundits decided it was time to be "counter-intuitive" and start "reassessing" the Bush legacy.

Just got in this email from Congressional Quarterly touting a column titled "History May See Lincoln-Like Greatness in Bush":

"CQ Politics guest columnist Richard Connor proposes a contrasting viewpoint to the prevailing popular opinion of the Bush legacy."

And so it begins ...

One more for the road: Bush gives his farewell address to the nation this evening. Will the nation care? That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

An immensely depressing article in the Times about how the Gaza war has marginalized and enfeebled the Palestinian Authority (essentially Fatah), even where it runs things in the West Bank.

Worth taking a moment to see this slide show of photographs of the key members of Obama's team, photographed by Nadav Kander for the New York Times.

I guess it made for 36 hours of good headlines. But as was pretty obvious when this story broke, Geithner's going to sail right through. If even Grassley's saying nice things, it's just hard to get up much drama on this one.

I noticed that today's Gallup numbers had President Bush inching a speck up to a 34% approval, the highest he's had in about a year. But what really strikes me is the internals. Democrats and Independents still live in one country while Republicans live in another one entirely. Approval among Dems is at 6%; among Independents 28%; among Republicans, 75%.

Different worlds. And even without Bush it's where the country is, what Obama faces.

Feds promise billions more to Bank of America to help close their purchase of Merrill Lynch.

Coming out tonight ...

In an exit interview with PBS's Jim Lehrer on the NewsHour airing tonight, Vice President Cheney repeats claims that Saddam Hussein worked with al-Qaeda. Asked if he made any mistakes in his eight years as V.P., Cheney only mentions underestimating the psychological harm Saddam had done to his own people. He said his administration bore no blame for the economic problem and the terror threat was inherited because of the poor handling by previous presidents.

And he shrugged off a statement today by a key figure, who used to work under him, calling the handling of one terror suspect out-and-out "torture."

Gannett is going to put most of its U.S. employees on a one-week unpaid furlough during the first quarter to cut costs.

A TPMCafe Reader/Blogger brought this up. And I've been wondering about it too. In The Politico yesterday Roger Simon asked whether the differing fates (in terms of senate aspirations) of Roland Burris and Caroline Kennedy proves that "the race card trumps the gender card in U.S. politics."

But doesn't it actually prove that you're in a much stronger position to get seated in the senate if the governor of your state appoints you to the senate (like Burris) than if he or she doesn't (like Kennedy)?

What am I missing? The Senate Dems caved because they ended up having no legal argument. I'm not sure how Caroline Kennedy is in any worse position than I am since we're both New York state residents who've yet to be appointed to the senate by Gov. Paterson.

A recent Justice Department report found that John Tanner, the former head of DOJ's voting-rights section, told a colleague he liked his coffee "Mary Frances Berry style -- black and bitter." Berry, an African-American, was at the time the chair of the US Commission on Civil Rights, which works to protect voting rights.

This is hardly the only piece of evidence that Tanner -- who it it appears is still on the DOJ payroll, and still working on voting issues -- might not be the best person to be safeguarding Americans' right to vote.

See Tanner's record in all its glory:

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Late Update: We refer in the video to Tanner's support for a Georgia voter ID law that an appeals court later likened to a Jim Crow era poll tax. But we should have mentioned that the US Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law.

Late Late Update: In fact, the US Supreme Court has not ruled on the Georgia law. A district court at first rejected it, then upheld it after it had been modified so that voters could obtain an ID for free. That decision is currently being appealed.

Republicans make Sen. Vitter (R-Bordello) point man on opposing TARP 2.0 bailout funds.

bin Laden no longer for negotiations over Gaza. Calls for outright jihad.

The Geithner nomination seems to be basically still on track -- housekeeper and tax issues notwithstanding. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Real change almost always comes in the face of crisis. So if you believe that Global Warming is real and that sometime soon will have to be confronted in a big way ... and if you believe that our reliance on oil is not only an environmental threat but a threat to our economic security and national security as well ... and if you believe that we need to start manufacturing things that people in other countries want to buy, when else do you expect real change to come on these issues -- a real start on the big changes -- if not now?

It's a lot to expect early in an administration. But look through a couple centuries of our history and you'll see that there are just no examples of administrations that started small and did big things in year 2 or 4 or 6. That doesn't happen. Look at Roosevelt, Johnson, Reagan, presidents pack their biggest punch on day one. And even though many big things can happen in subsequent years, the presidencies are almost always defined at the beginning. Later triumphs and reforms grow from the changed political terrain created at the outset.

A lot I've written over the last few weeks that's been critical of what seems to me like a too little ambitious approach from Obama. But I base that on a belief that the current economic crisis is just the immediate hole we find ourselves in, perhaps the immediate manifestation of these other deep and critical challenges I noted above -- all tied to unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, financialization of the US economy and decline of US manufacturing. I don't think we have much time to spare.

You've likely heard some brief mention of Marcus Schrenker, a penny-ante Bernie Madoff, who tried for the spectacular getaway as his life of scheming and defrauding began to crumble around him. With defrauded investors coming from one side and state investigators closing in on the other, Schrenker hatched the idea of faking his own death in a plane crash.

Flying from Indiana to Florida, he radioed in a distress call from his single engine plane, telling air traffic controllers a cockpit window had imploded leaving him bleeding profusely. He then donned his parachuted and jumped out of the plane at roughly 2500 ft. (Just jumping out of ten story building and being done with it is so passe.) Waiting for him not far from his landing zone was a motorcycle he'd prepositioned in the Alabama pine barrens.

The plan hit a fatal flaw when the military jets scrambled to intercept Schrenker's plane noticed that there was no one flying it and that the door to the cockpit was open.

After a few days on the run, officers from the Gadsden County Sheriff's office caught Schrenker tonight.

Republicans roll out new plan to revive the economy by destroying Social Security ...

Mr. Obama has told Republicans he is open to suggestions, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said his conference would urge Mr. Obama to consider a two-year suspension of payroll taxes to benefit individuals and corporations.

Mr. McConnell said Senate Republicans were intensely interested in the idea, which was presented at their own weekly lunch by Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was President Bush's top economic adviser from 2001 to 2002, and John H. Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

From a pool report ...

The PEOTUS departed Hay-Adams at 6:17 p.m. and at arrived at 6:34 p.m. at No. 9 Grafton St., Chevy Chase (right off the circle). Thanks to the good work of Hans Nichols (of Bloomberg and "Daily Show" fame), Montgomery County property tax records showed this is the home of conservative columnist George Will (valued at $1.9 million, according to the 2008 levy).

We're still awaiting confirmation that this is indeed Will's house from the transition, but your pool is satisfied with the documentation.

Your pool has been told it's a dinner party.

And, thanks to an enterprising photographer, a shot through a window showed op-ed stalwarts William Kristol and David Brooks are also part of this unlikely gathering of tight, right suits.

Transition mouthpiece Tommy Vietor was also spied inside the manse.

From TPM Reader D(K) ...

Doesn't it seem a little odd that when you have a ball player (Roger Clemens) who lies to Congress about steroid use in baseball, the U.S. Attorney for DC convenes a grand jury to consider a perjury indictment, but when an official of the Justice Department (Bradley Schlozman) lies to Congress about trying to politicize the civil service within DOJ, the U.S. Attorney fo DC passes on further investigation or prosecution? Which really seems like the more significant problem for the country?

When suspicion was cast on the recently impeached Governor of Illinois, he remained optimistic about his prospects. "I don't believe there's any cloud that hangs over me, I think there's nothing but sunshine hanging over me," he said. Over the past 5 weeks, and through his own impeachment hearing, he's remained not only positive, but downright poetic. View the one man train wreck that is Rod Blagojevich.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Following the news that the DOJ IG found that arch-bamboozler Bradley Schlozman lied to Congress about his actions while serving at DOJ, a number of readers have written to say: Okay, fine, so he's not being prosecuted. But isn't there even some movement to disbar the guy since he's back out practicing law?

Well, we called up the state official who handles this stuff in the state of Kansas where the Schloz is now practicing and where he holds his law license. That's the disciplinary administrator for the State of Kansas, Stanton Hazlett. And he says that at least as of today no one has filed any complaints with them regarding Schlozman's conduct and apparently perjurious behavior.

Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner may have a "nanny" problem -- although in this case it's a housekeeper, the WSJ reports. A separate and unrelated unpaid taxes issue, too, though I can't tell if that's peculiar to his having worked at the IMF. In any event, members of the Senate Finance Committee are meeting in Chairman Baucus' office this afternoon to "air" the issue.

Seems like Sen. Schumer (D) looks pretty business as usual on the major green/infrastructure front, while Sen. Kerry (D), also on the Finance Committee, may be inclined to be more bold.

On another front, we noted yesterday that Sen. Levin (D) had gotten the TARP office at Treasury (the people running the bailout) to release the contracts governing the investment of the TARP money. In other words, these contracts contain the terms on which the money was given to the banks -- and which would tell us a lot about whether it was given on terms that hold any real hope of every getting the money back.

But it turns out that Levin apparently had to agree not to release the documents to the public.

Late Update: Turns out there's a bit of a mystery here. An unnamed Levin aide told the Times that they did not plan to make the contracts public. But when we talked to Levin earlier today, it seemed to be the first he'd heard of the idea of not releasing the documents publicly -- he seemed to assume that they would be releasing them publicly. So we're still trying to figure out just what's up with that.

It's a Bernie Madoff meets D.B. Cooper moment:

The Indiana investment advisor being hunted by federal authorities two days after he jumped out of a plane and disappeared has been charged with two counts of securities violations.

Marcus Schrenker, 38, now faces two counts of acting as an investment advisor after his license expired on Dec. 31, according to documents provided by Indiana Secretary of State's Office spokesman Jim Gavin.

Gavin told ABCNews.com that a Hamilton County Superior Court judge froze Marcus Schrenker's assets and those of his wife late yesterday. Schrenker parachuted out of his company-owned plane over Alabama Sunday while the plane continued flying on autopilot before crashing into Florida swampland two hours later.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in DC explains to TPMmuckraker who looked at the Schlozman case and when prosecution was declined.

Schlozman lands at private firm.

From a footnote to the IG's report on the politicization of the Civil Rights Division at DOJ:

In that incident in August 2004, Voting Section Chief John Tanner sent an e-mail to Schlozman asking Schlozman to bring coffee for him to a meeting both were scheduled to attend. Schlozman replied asking Tanner how he liked his coffee. Tanner's response was, "Mary Frances Berry style - black and bitter." Berry is an African-American who was the Chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights from November 1993 until late 2004. Schlozman forwarded the e-mail chain to several Department officials (including Principal DAAG Bradshaw) but not Acosta, with the comment, "Y'all will appreciate Tanner's response."

Tanner, whose disastrous tenure in the Voting Section we chronicled extensively at TPMmuckraker, was canned not long after claiming that voter ID laws have a disproportionate impact on the elderly and therefore could not have an adverse impact on minority voters: "Minorities don't become elderly the way white people do: They die first."

The big talk up the Hill at the moment is whether some energy tax rebates will be refundable or not. Really thin gruel. An interesting fight between the senate Democrats and the incoming administration. But perhaps best characterized as somewhere between a drop in the bucket and 7/8 drop in the bucket in terms of major investments in new green technologies that could lay the groundwork for future economic growth, real progress on global warming and real progress shifting our reliance from the toxic encumbrance of oil.

Meanwhile, though, there are some kernels of more ambitious ideas. Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) and Zach Wamp (R-TN) sent a letter to the president-elect Obama about so-called 'Green Banks', specifically something called the National Clean Energy Lending Authority. The idea is a government chartered authority which would be empowered and funded to do a certain amount of lending to green projects but also, and perhaps more significantly, issue government guarantees that would make it easier and cheaper for green projects to get funded in the private sector.

As the two write in their letter, "The current financial crisis has not only thrown us into recession, it has significantly derailed or killed off virtually every alternative energy project in the pipeline making renewable energy yet another victim of the economic fallout."

Schlozman lawyer: DOJ inspector general guilty of "extraordinary bias and lack of ethical and legal standards."

Longtime reader checking in on latest Schlozman findings:

So Justice managed to interview more than 120 people, review 200,000 e-mails, and sift through mountains of documents in less than a year, but it took six full months for someone at the DC US Attorney's Office to decide not to prosecute?

This decision stinks in three ways:

(1) No one is taking responsibility for it. We know who didn't make the decision, but not who did. That's more than a little unusual - there's generally a rush to identify the impeccably credentialed career prosecutor who made the decision, to avert charges of political bias.

(2) It was announced less than two weeks before the new administration takes office. Sitting on the report for this long prevented electoral embarrassment; releasing it now prevents the new administration from cleaning house.

(3) As best I can tell, no one consulted Congress. The IG found that Schlozman had lied to Congress. That finding ought to have been reported to the relevant committees, which would then have been able to refer the matter to the DC USA for prosecution. Instead, the USA's office reached its own decision, and then authorized the release of the findings. If Congress refers it back to the USA, it would now have to overturn its own previous decision. That short-circuits the process and undermines Congressional authority.

I hope you've got a call in to Senate Judiciary - Pat Leahy is usually good for a nicely outraged quote, and I imagine Kennedy is none too pleased. But really, I'm curious about what they'll do. The man sat there and lied to them, which is a crime - are they going to press for prosecution?

Our reporter Zack Roth is on a conference call with Leahy now regarding the Holder nomination. We're going to try to get a question in on Schlozman.

We now know, thanks to the Justice Department's inspector general, that Bradley Scholzman's June 2007 testimony to Congress was one big lie. Here are some of the highlights of that testimony which we posted at the time.

If you just watch one clip, make it this exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of my all-time faves:

Late Update: Leahy reacts to the IG's report: "It should come as no surprise that the result, and of course the intent, of this political makeover of the Civil Rights Division has been a dismal civil rights enforcement record."

Bradley Schlozman had an acronym for the type of conservative Republicans he wanted to slot into career positions at the Justice Department: "RTAs," or right-thinking Americans.

Late Update: In a similar vein, Schlozman called career attorneys in the Voting Rights Section "mold spores" and in an email wrote, "My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs rights out of the section."

From the DOJ IG report (.pdf) on Schlozman (my emphasis):

Another example is an e-mail dated January 6, 2004, from Schlozman to an attorney hired by Schlozman in the Civil Rights Division. Shortly after being hired, the attorney sent an e-mail to Schlozman expressing his happiness in the Special Litigation Section, noting that his "office is even next to a Federalist Society member." Schlozman replied, "Just between you and me, we hired another member of 'the team' yesterday. And still another ideological comrade will be starting in one month. So we are making progress."

Of course, Schlozman subsequently testified to Congress that he did not take political affiliation into account when hiring career lawyers at DOJ.

The long-awaited inspector general report on the politicization of the Bush DOJ Civil Rights Division has been released, and our old friend Bradley Schlozman is firmly in the cross-hairs:

The evidence in our investigation showed that Schlozman, first as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General and subsequently as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General, considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys and in other personnel actions affecting career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division. In doing so, he violated federal law - the Civil Service Reform Act - and Department policy that prohibit discrimination in federal employment based on political and ideological affiliations, and committed misconduct. The evidence also showed that Division managers failed to exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices. Moreover, Schlozman made false statements about whether he considered political and ideological affiliations when he gave sworn testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and in his written responses to supplemental questions from the Committee.

Schlozman is no longer employed by the Department and, therefore, is not subject to disciplinary action by the Department. We recommend, however, that, if criminal prosecution is declined these findings be considered if Schlozman seeks federal employment in the future. We believe that his violations of the merit system principles set forth in the Civil Service Reform Act, federal regulations, and Department policy, and his subsequent false statements to Congress render him unsuitable for federal service.

Interestingly, the report is dated July 2, 2008, but was only released today. I'm speculating here, but I suspect that's because the findings were referred to DOJ for possible prosecution of Schlozman. We're trying to nail down now whether that explains the delay in releasing the report - and whether that means DOJ has declined to prosecute Schlozman for lying to Congress.

Late Update: Indeed, DOJ did decline to prosecute Scholzman. From the report:

We referred the findings from our investigation to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia in March 2008. We completed this written report of investigation in July 2008.

The U.S. Attorney's Office informed us on January 9, 2009, of its decision to decline prosecution of Schlozman. The Interim U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, was recused from the matter and the decision.

We are now releasing our July 2008 report of investigation.

To close the loop on yesterday's post, here's how the request for the second TARP installment came down, according to Bloomberg:

The action on TARP came after Bush, during what he said would be his last news conference before leaving office, told reporters he hadn't gotten a request from Obama concerning release of the funds. "I told him that, if he felt he needed the $350 billion, I would ask for it," Bush said.

The news conference ended at 10:04 a.m. yesterday. White House press secretary Dana Perino said the call from Obama making the request came at 10:25 a.m. The letter from Summers was released two hours later.

Hillary Clinton's confirmation hearing starts at 9:30 a.m. ET with her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Who's in charge of TARP and spending your $700 billion? Not a pretty picture. But we thought you might want to know.

The level of transparency is so bad with the TARP program (and most of the rest of the what the Treasury is doing), that sometimes a new big new piece of information will get pried loose and it's something that I hadn't even realized wasn't available already. As a case in point, Sen. Levin (D-MI) just put out a press release announcing that the Treasury has agreed to release the contracts for the massive amounts of TARP money the Treasury gave invested in banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, et al.

He'd been threatening a subpoena but they've now agreed to cough them up.

From Levin's press release ...

"The Department of Treasury assured me today that there will be no need to serve a subpoena, because they will provide the documents I have requested, beginning tomorrow," said Levin. "It should not have taken two months and a subpoena threat, but I -- along with Senator Susan Collins who supports obtaining these documents -- look forward to receiving the documents this week."

The Treasury Department has agreed to provide copies of the TARP contracts issued to ten companies: AIG, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street Corporation, and Wells Fargo.

It's astonishing to me that there'd even be a question about releasing this stuff.

Late Update: Two further points. BailoutSleuth has information on the related issue of the contracts the Treasury has with the firms who are administering the TARP money. A big deal in itself, though obviously the amount public money in play is an order of magnitude smaller. Also, the AIG was not part of TARP proper, but a one-off deal the Treasury put together before the TARP-spawning Wall Street Gotterdammerung.

Can we put Sen.-designate Burris in charge of devising strategy against the senate Republicans?

RNC Chair candidate Ken Blackwell says that if he had homosexual urges he could and would restrain them. If he did, that is. And he doesn't.

In his last Presidential press conference this morning, W bid the Washington Press Corp farewell. In his own words: "Could things have been done better? Absolutely. Absolutely." Thanks for the memories, Bushy!

Burris to be seated as Illinois senator.

Burris's lawyers just finished a closed door meeting with the Secretary of the Senate.

A shocking development.

From the AP ...

The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month's parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country's Supreme Court.

The ruling, made by the body that oversees the elections, reflected the heightened tensions between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority caused by Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Arabs have held a series of demonstrations against the offensive.

Knesset spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country's Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel's right to exist. Arab lawmakers have traveled to countries listed among Israel's staunchest enemies, including Lebanon and Syria. The 37-member committee is composed of representatives from Israel's major political parties. The measure was proposed by two ultranationalist parties but received widespread support.

The decision does not affect Arab lawmakers in predominantly Jewish parties or the country's communist party, which has a mixed list of Arab and Jewish candidates. Roughly one-fifth of Israel's 7 million citizens are Arabs. Israeli Arabs enjoy full citizenship rights, but have suffered from discrimination and poverty for decades.

...

Pordes, the parliament spokesman, said the last party to be banned was the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach Party, a list from the 1980s that advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.

Late Update: It's worth noting that the Israeli Supreme Court tends to be considerably more sane on these issues. So there's some hope that they may overrule this.

Later Update: I thought I'd add a few more thoughts and details on this development, especially for those who aren't that familiar with Israel's internal politics. First, Israel has fairly expansive laws for banning political parties. As the article notes, the last one banned was a radical Jewish party that advocated expelling Israel's Arab population. It's also true that many Israeli-Arabs vote for the big mainstream zionist parties or non-Zionist parties that have both Arab and Jewish voters, like the Communist party. So this is not banning Arabs from voting but outlawing the two main Arab political parties. But with all that said, this still strikes me as an ugly, defining watershed for Israeli democracy. I'll be curious to see more details on what the reasoning or, more likely, what the rationales were behind this decision.

Looking for Silver Linings Update: As this article notes, there's a history of political stunts like this, which have been subsequently overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. So it seems like there's a very good chance this won't stand. Still, not sure that makes it much better.

A Justice Department lawyer working on the side as a statistician for Fox Sports improperly arranged for the U.S. Marshall's service to provide escorts for Fox broadcasters Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, and Troy Aikman so they could get through post-game traffic, a DOJ inspector general's report has found.

During his press conference just a little while ago, President Bush said Obama hadn't yet asked for him to request the second installment of the TARP money. But apparently Obama has now asked and Bush has already agreed. That didn't take long.

James Fallows captures Bush at his last press conference this morning:

The self-awareness I mentioned was purely on a personal level. Even though he defended his tax cuts and his other policies and even the execution of the Katrina response, everything in his posture, expression, and body language -- even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results -- indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well.

It is true, he can hardly express himself in anything resembling sentences. But he displayed none of the little moue of pride when he got out a tricky name or a big word, a tic very familiar from his past speeches.

But I guess I am more churlish than Fallows, because this definitely does not apply to me:

Nonetheless: I think even people who oppose the Bush Administrations policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance -- rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years.

We'll have a highlight reel of the presser a little later.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) cries foul on the Smithsonian's captioned description of the new Bush portrait in the National Portrait Gallery: "the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

A new administration begins in 8 days, but how different will it be from the old administration when it comes to issues like waterboarding, Guantanamo Bay, and general standards of justice? It's Obama v. Bush & Cheney in today's Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Another GOP-held Senate seat opens up in 2010: Voinovich in Ohio won't seek re-election. That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

From The Politico ...

President-elect Barack Obama tried Sunday to shore up support in Congress for his ambitious economic policies, with his top advisers offering concessions on his economic-stimulus proposal and preparing to detail conditions for how the incoming administration will spend the second half of the $700 billion financial rescue package. Emerging from a two-hour meeting in the Capitol with Obama advisers Lawrence Summers and Jason Furman, Senate Democrats praised the President-elect's team for agreeing to make changes to its stimulus proposal based off of concerns senators raised last week at a meeting with the president-elect's senior aides.

The Obama team told about 35 Senate Democrats gathered at Sunday's meeting that it would grow the size of an energy-tax incentive package and modify proposed tax credits for individuals and for businesses that hire new employees, according to meeting attendees. Also, with lawmakers raising concerns that the first half of the $700 billion of the financial rescue law was badly mismanaged, Obama's team signaled it would lay out precisely how it would spend the second half of that package, which Congress is expected to consider as soon as this week.

"It's very clear they've listened, they've heard and that they're moving to respond," said Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, who questioned previously whether the tax credits in the stimulus package were enough to encourage new jobs. "It was very, very healthy. They're not defensive, not arguing back, they're listening, they're attempting to hear and they're responding."

From TPM Reader AJ ...

One of the most difficult dynamics in legislating is the seemingly never ending critique that the good is not perfect. That argument is in constant use and is far too often an excuse to make the bad worse or not at all. As the debate heats up on the Recovery Plan, folks need to step back and get real pragmatic. As necessary as such a plan is, it is still a dangerous gamble and a deep mortgage on the future earnings of the polity, including some of whom are yet to be born.

I love Paul Krugman, but I would be much more interested in his suggestions and prescriptions than I am in his critiques (and yours too for that matter). The Recovery Plan has to thread a fine needle and deal with a bunch of conditions set in place by the Bush Administration. The Bush deficit predicted to be 1.2 Trillion this year. The Fed investment in monetary policy of almost 2 Trillion so far, the TARP use of 350 Billion with marginal or no results and a population that is largely untutored on the whys and wherefores of the economics of what went wrong and what we can realistically do to recover. Add to that the need to re-direct an already ailing economy, deal with entitlements and restructure and re-equip a fatigued military. The list goes on, schools, infrastructure, etc.

It's time for everyone with creditable and cogent suggestions to get down in the weeds and start talking specifics. How can we spend 1 Trillion plus in a timely manner that INVESTS in the national economy and not just temporarily stimulates it. How can we come to a national consensus on what to do and when.

In my mind this economic breakdown is as dangerous and impactful as the events of 9/11 and requires a united national response just as that event did. The task of the PE is to try to forge that national consensus and plan at a time when there is ever increasing skepticism over "bailouts" in general and big ones in particular.

It's time to, at the very least, couple your critique with constructive suggestions. I know that the role of the press is to point out the apparent and hidden factors and to raise awareness. But you (and Krugman) have an opportunity to add positive and creative input to the mix. Input that is sorely needed. If you don't know, then find someone who you believe does and bring their point of view forward.

Anyone paying attention, by now, knows how difficult and daunting the task. And those paying attention are also aware of the complexity and intricacy of the terrain. It's time for the chattering classes to add light and not just heat. Educate us, inform us, but also help us to see the solutions, not just the problem.

Obama's response as to whether he'll investigate the Bush Administration on torture and other issues: "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." That and other news in today's Election Central Sunday Roundup.