barack-obama

Officially: Hillary Clinton To Back That Perky Behind Of Hers Into Secretary Of State Office

Richard Lawson · 11/30/08 01:54PM

So what's been rumored for a week or two now has finally been confirmed. Junior Senator from New York Hillary Clinton will be Barack Obama's Secretary of State, the Madeline to his Bill, the Frederick Frelinghuysen to his Chester A. Arthur. There will be a press conference tomorrow morning declaring the whole thing official, in which the former warring enemies will smile for the cameras and say kind things, while Hillary does succession counts in her head. She'll be the third lady in the past 12 years to hold the position, which is funny because: women, secretaries, ha ha, etc. Let's ask Pareene or Ryan to explain all this later, shall we?

Don't Worry, People Still Hate America!

Richard Lawson · 11/28/08 03:51PM

We had a fun couple weeks there, congratulating ourselves for Barack Obama's historic, Liberals Save America presidential win, accepting other countries' "we're so proud of you" head nods and whatnot. It seemed like the country was back on track for a second, ready to head out into the world beloved for our bold and inspirational choice. Except, um, as it turns out, it doesn't really matter what the World thinks of us. A small, active faction of folks still hate us intensely and it doesn't matter that European people like US tourists again. Things like the current Mumbai crisis still wretchedly play out on big stages the belie their small, insidious roots.

Barbara Walters Tries, Fails To Sell Her Dog to the Obamas

Kyle Buchanan · 11/26/08 05:10PM

Clearly, the most pressing aspect of President-elect Barack Obama's transition is what kind of freaking puppy he will be getting his daughters Malia and Sasha — and everyone's weighing in with their opinion. Frequent watchers of The View know that Barbara Walters is borderline obsessive about imploring the Obamas to adopt a pooch similar to her Havanese dog Cha Cha (short for "Cha Cha Cha," natch), so when it was announced that Walters would be interviewing the couple for a special to air this week, we immediately combed through the transcript to see if she would take the opportunity to push Cha Cha on them once more.

Terrorists Disgusted by Media Liberal Bias

Pareene · 11/26/08 03:01PM

Time contributor and (decidedly former) constructor of DC press corps conventional wisdom Mark Halperin told a forum recently that the pro-Obama bias displayed by the media this campaign season was "disgusting." "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage," he added. You know who agrees with him? Al-Qaeda! Earlier this month, al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri invoked Malcolm X and called our president-elect a "house negro." Apparently, the international press did not take this criticism seriously, and al-Zawahiri was roundly mocked for tryna start shit. Al-Qaeda message boards are dismayed!

Obama Defense: Insiders Haven't Been Inside In Years!

Pareene · 11/26/08 01:37PM

People criticize President-Elect Hopey Hussein McGee for promising "change" and then appointing "people with experience in Washington." At his press conference today, he was asked about all the grizzled white dudes from Washington he keeps hiring to fix the economy. As he points out, new Economic Recovery Advisory Board head Paul Volcker hasn't been anywhere near Washington in years, and board staffer Austin Goolsbee has never been to Washington, ever. Then there is an implied joke about Austin's "fresh face" or something, which gets a chuckle from the crowd, thus fulfilling Obama's "one moment of levity per press conference" mandate. A new tone!

Obama Appoints Tall Man to Save Economy

Pareene · 11/26/08 11:17AM

Hey, Barry Obama had his third press conference in three days. This one was about introducing his Economic Recovery Advisement Board, headed by Paul Volcker, founding member of the Trilateral Commission and former Fed Chair under Carter and Reagan. He's very tall which is reassuring in these dark times. Volcker is also not a Clintonite! He is a Carterite. Reassuring, right? "Help is on the way," Obama said during his presser. That was John Kerry's campaign slogan so we're doomed. Obama also said he'd go shopping this Friday, but neglected to urge Americans to continue spending beyond their means on useless consumer goods, which proves he's a terrible leader. [HuffPo, Photo: AP]

Obama Clinging To Forbidden Blackberry

Ryan Tate · 11/26/08 02:43AM

The president-elect is surely familiar with the stages of grief from that time he recently "quit" sweet, luscious cigarettes, forever. Sad, then, that several weeks after he was elected, Barack Obama is still in the "bargaining" stage about losing his Blackberry, which presidents aren't allowed to have, because then the laws would work as they are intended to and the public would know what they're up to. Barbara Walters recently asked Obama about losing the email device, and he laughed to hide the tears (next grief stage: "depression"), and said he's in talks to keep his precious 'berry:

Stop Obama Communist Terror With Magazine Subscription

Ryan Tate · 11/25/08 09:19PM

Sure, Barack Obama is saving the in-the-tank liberal media by lending his image to various tchotchkes, but did you know the president-elect is also going to reinvigorate the conservative media? Fox News expects to goose its ratings capitalizing on right-wing outrage, and conservative journal National Review is one step ahead: It's already running ads saying that if you sign up for a subscription now, you can stop the godless Democratic pinkos from raising your taxes next year. Staff are deserting the magazine right and left, but apparently it is still confident it can single-handedly foil the Democratic Congress! Watch the hilarious ad, seen on Fox News, after the jump.

Experts Agree: Treasury Pick Geithner Either Worst or Best Ever

Pareene · 11/25/08 01:19PM

Tim Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, is the next United States Treasury Secretary. That job is suddenly more important than all the other cabinet positions, because the economy is cratering. Is he a good pick, because he's knowledgeable and not a banker and will think big? Or is he a terrible pick because he's a Rubinite and killed Lehman and the whole recession is all his fault? No one knows but many will speculate wildly. A number of Wall Street types—speaking to Times DealBook columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin on the condition of anonymity because the recession is actually their fault—say Geithner is baaaaad. Banking industry experts agree!

Barack Obama's Secret Identity Revealed: Boring Yuppie

Pareene · 11/24/08 03:21PM

With the campaign artifice gone and the need to desperately see yourself reflected in Barack Obama a bit less urgent, we can examine the man we've elected. Recent news updates on his church-going and his kids school-going are troubling to those on the left and right who painted the candidate into an ideological corner. What if Barack Obama's not actually a secret rabid campus radical Marxist? Maybe he's not an aggrieved radical! Maybe Bill Ayers was just some guy from the neighborhood! What if Barack Obama is actually a mild-mannered upwardly mobile college professor from an upper-middle class neighborhood with fairly standard-issue yuppie family values? Then no one's happy! Let's examine the crucial flip-flops! Church! Obama more or less admitted in his book that his selection of the Trinity Church was done more out of a conscious, intellectual desire to commit to a community and a religious philosophy than it was some sort of profound religious awakening—he'd always been "a Christian," but he had to select a particular church to join a community of Christians. You know, he goes for the spirituality and community, not because he's one of those Jesus Freaks. When he was then forced to leave the church, he seems to have taken it in stride, switching his routine to more gym workouts instead of worship. Now Obama is being courted by churches in DC. The last couple presidents had to make big shows of attending church the first couple weeks they spent in office, though of course the Clintons and both Bush's had scarcely been church folk before or since taking office. Obama, on the other hand, actually regularly attended church, with his family, for years! Because they led a normal life in a community of people who attended church! And the traditionally black church they attended was actually affiliated with the incredibly mainstream United Church of Christ! Security concerns do tend to preclude weekly church attendance by a president, but we imagine they'll occasionally attend services at some boring mainstream Protestant church near the White House. School! Barack Obama opposes school voucher programs because, obviously, he believes we should work on fixing our public schools instead of encouraging gifted children to abandon the public schools in even greater numbers. But, you know, he's a well-off guy with two young girls who is moving to Washington, DC, a miserable and impoverished city with some of the worst schools in the country, so his daughters will be attending Chelsea Clinton's alma mater, Sidwell Friends. Sidwell is the most prestigious of all the famous Washington private schools, of course—and it beat out the more liberal hippy-dippy Georgetown Day, the first integrated school in Washington, with a curriculum "wrapped around issues of diversity and justice." Yes, but Sidwell is a little more academically rigorous, and elite. They're not like the Carters, sending their poor kid to a public school to make some kind of political point. Jeez! Politics! Barack Obama reversed himself to varying degrees on FISA, Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the Bush tax cuts. Some of his appointees, like new Attorney General Eric Holder and, hey, Hillary Clinton, are further to the right than he claimed to be on controversial issues (the drug war and Iraq, respectively). But those things pale in comparison to the lifestyle-y authenticity self-identification bullshit that politics is really based on. Barack Obama—he's just like us, if you're a constitutional law professor married to a lawyer.

Obama Needs Help Justifying Massive Auto Industry Bailout

Pareene · 11/24/08 02:37PM

Barack Obama totally wanted to give the auto makers billions of dollars, but, you know, when they showed up in DC and stepped off their fancy private jets and addressed congress, the representatives of the Big Three forgot to bring any sort of plan. How much money did they need and what were they going to do with it and how would they become solvent and restructure to become competitive again? They dont know! The president-elect knows he should probably not let the nation lose 2 million jobs in one fell swoop (unlike the sitting president) but, you know, they're not giving him much to work with here. Leading the Free World is already like one of those SNL sketches that doesn't need to be ten whole minutes long. Now we totally feel bad we made him be president.

The Disappointments Pile Up for Steve Rattner

cityfile · 11/24/08 12:35PM

More trouble seems to be brewing for Steve Rattner, the mega-financier who runs Quadrangle Capital and the man responsible for managing Michael Bloomberg's vast fortune. Last week the firm announced plans to shut down a $500 million hedge fund focused on media investments after the value of the fund declined and investors started demanding their money back. Now comes word that Quadrangle's magazine holdings are in trouble. In 2007, Quadrangle paid $250 million for Alpha Media, the company that publishes Maxim and Blender, and lured Jann Wenner's former right-hand, Kent Brownridge, to run the company. Brownridge departed Alpha in August amid rumors the publishing company was in trouble. Today the Journal reports that the company really is in deep trouble, having fallen behind on its debt payments to Steve Feinberg's Cerberus Capital. Rattner may ultimately be forced to hand over Alpha to the company's creditors. But that's not the only disappointing news that has landed at Rattner's feet in recent weeks.

Robert Rubin Proteges Tapped to Fix Rubin's Mess

Pareene · 11/24/08 11:43AM

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is basically one of the most respected men in the entire Democratic Party. The Citigroup "Senior Counselor" (he joined Citigroup as temporary chair after legislation he shepherded through congress allowed Citigroup's creation, natch) has close ties to just about every other Democratic economic policy guru with influence, and he's especially close to just about all of President-elect Barack Obama's proposed economy-fixing team. Of course, until about a year ago, there'd never been a bad word written about Rubin in the press, but the guy should probably be exiled to an island somewhere and forced to think about what he's done to our fine nation. What did Rubin do in the Clinton White House? He and Alan Greenspan joined forces to swing the Democratic Party's economic policies so far to the right that the terms of the debate never recovered. Now, economic leftism is Eisenhower Republicanism and the right-wing's economic policy is basically to hand over as much Treasury money and tax cuts as possible to the wealthy and occasionally force some underfunded mandates through congress because why not? Rubin encouraged Clinton to pass NAFTA before tackling health care, to this day he shudders at the idea of demanding worker protection before passing more free trade pacts, and then, for his final act before returning to the private sector, he resisted calls for the regulation of derivatives and strongly encouraged the repeal the Glass-Stengall act, thus leading directly to our current economic crisis. Of course he is still the Democratic party's most respected and powerful economic thinker. Then he left to join Citigroup, and we all know how well that went. So Barack Obama's economic policy team is probably made up of long-time free-market critics like James K. Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz, right? Hah.

Obama Crap Making Insane Millions For Media

Ryan Tate · 11/24/08 12:28AM

Amid pandemic media bloodletting and global financial meltdown, it's nice to finally find a silver lining: All those silly Barack Obama trinkets are making insane amounts of money for media companies and providing precious little stimulus to the economy. The Times estimated roughly $200 million sold so far, including more than $15 million in commemorative issues and books from People and Time, somewhere around $1.5 million for the online store set up by the New york Times Company and $700,000 for the Los Angeles Times. Commemorative plates and coins, meanwhile have become ubiquitous enough that Lewis Black ranted about them on the Daily Show (clip after the jump). The downside?

Obama Equals Churchill In Ominous YouTube Address

Alex Carnevale · 11/22/08 04:55PM

When the president-elect announced that he'd be making a weekly YouTube addresses, we prepared ourselves for the dulcet tones of Barack's voice soothing us through America's economic crisis. In today's address, Obama channels all the gravitas he can muster as he lectures us on "the survival of the American dream." Talk of "our darkest hour" echoes Winston Churchill, conveniently the only politician who Obama hasn't yet been compared to. In any case, he promises an apocalyptic "new beginning" on January 20th. Click for the clip and promise not to get scared.

Obama Selects Money-Fixer

Pareene · 11/21/08 05:46PM

Barack Obama's Treasury Secretary pick made the stocks jump! We're all saved! Drudge calls New York Fed President Tim Geithner "The Man Who Can Save Economy?" (Family Love Geithner!) Geithner worked, obviously, at the Treasury Department that helped create this mess, in the Bob Rubin and Larry Summers days. His background is solid "didn't foresee this in retrospect obvious problem" economist, what with his IMF and Group of Thirty stints, just like everyone else considered for the job. Woman-hater Larry Summers will still probably do something in an Obama administration. Meanwhile comical New Mexico governor Bill Richardson will be our Commerce Secretary, because he's clearly bored in New Mexico. Hillary Clinton is still dithering about her job offer, and Obama will apparently finally announce that whole thing after Thanksgiving.