My sincere hope is that the left takes him to the woodshed for this stuff, in so doing alerting him to who in his inner circle is running him amok. My guess is that the President's fondness for show pieces like Jones and Gates, and their no doubt impressive expertise and smarts, has blinded him to their ultimate wrong-headedness. He's also probably concerned about losing the hearts and minds of the Great and Serious Establishmentarians, the lifers in the national security apparatus et al, and his beloved Obamicons (his political instincts probably tell him that if he takes the high road and there's an attack, irrespective of the relationship between the two or lack thereof, he'll be in trouble). He's certainly way too concerned about being liked to realize as yet that the cost of pandering and rudderless compromise is abject failure.

IMO, he should be consulting Hillary amongst others, not sidelining her as he appears to be. He should also be consulting his Vice President, though it appears he's decided his colorful and often counterproductive antics define him more than his intellect or experience. Both of these are smart and possess the right instincts in the main.

So far, I'm significantly alarmed by Obama's performance, which is a shame considering I'm as culpable as any man-in-the-street in his being President, being that I backed him from the beginning, donated and the rest of it. Then again, Feingold didn't run and it's all relative...

Oh, that's brilliant Elephantman. Once more into the breach. Perhaps you didn't notice the part in Greenwald's post where he demonstrates that 43 did do these things? What a clueless crank you must be.

...that managed to get White House press clearance and called on to ask a question while actual journalists were exiled to siberia. Or the ludicrously staged town halls, or the troops whose questions were effing scripted for them.

This is truthiness on steroids. Bush and Cheney were running around in their last days basically spewing totally falsified nonsense and reporters were just writing it down leaving Maddow and Olbermann to their own partisan befuddlement. There's really no sense that truth or fact even exists any more. The fog is thickening.

The best blog update I have ever read.

If there was ever a place for liberals to make a stand with this administration, it is now. Which is why I was so disappointed to see Maddow give Obama so much favorable coverage over the stimulus last night, and not covering this development at all. She probably could get a White House spokesperson on the air if she wanted, and grill him or her to kingdom come. I really wish she had (and hope she still will).

Even TPM, while noting this, has focused on the rescue and stimulus developments. This is true pay no attention to the man behind the curtain stuff. If liberals have any cards to play with this administration to speak of, now's the time.

As for my own position, I've supported Obama from the primaries, although even then I noted I would've supported Feingold if he'd have run. I didn't expect remotely dramatic change. I fancy myself a realist, and yes, a pragmatist, (this is not a bad word just because political hacks have perverted it, btw), but this type of thing- as opposed to full blown investigation/prosecution of Bush administration law breaking, or true reform of the necrotic lesion on our nation's soul that is our political establishment, or major overhaul of some of our eternally misbegotten policies, e.g. Defense spending, the Arab-Israeli conflict, gun control- I did think this was actually the type of change we could rightfully expect, even God forbid 'believe in'. So it's difficult to overstate how extremely disappointing this is. Extremely extremely disappointing.

It's a rough day. What do you want to bet that item didn't make it on the network news...

Tim Geitner is not mega-rich. Far from it. And the transfer of wealth over the last 30 years has not been so much deliberate, as accretive of a number of decisions, if representative of who's been running the show. The mechanism, btw, by which this has happened is very ill understood- namely credit inflation buttressed by the subsidy of US blue collar labor's international competition- which accounts for some of the prodigious ignorance that marrs the state of the debate. It furthermore accounts for the high-handed tone that invariably accompanies any lecture against the Evils of Protectionism™. It is hardly the picture of fraud that most people on the left, (and some on the right), conjure in their minds when they express their outrage over the current state of affairs.

Other than these quibbles though, I largely agree with Ms. Walsh. Both Obama and the citizenry is better off to see the back of Tom Daschle. Were that we could've seen the back of Geitner and Summers with them....