Once Again its A.I.G., Bank Of America, Gitmo, Xe Xe

Maureen Dowd
Kathleen Parker
Dana Millbank
Edward Liddy CEO A.I.G.

"I'm not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence." -- Former President Bush, quoted by the Associated Press, saying he wants President Obama to succeed.

From the Political Wire: In an interesting op-ed, former RNC spokesman Alex Conant concludes that "much of the conventional wisdom about Obama is wrong."

He lists the five biggest misconceptions:

Obama is bold. "Actually, he is overly cautious."

Obama is a great communicator. "Cut away the soaring rhetoric in his speeches, and the resulting policy statements are often vague, lawyerly and confusing."

Obamaland is a team of rivals. "His closest advisers — those who actually shape his thinking, strategy and policies — are loyal and, by all accounts, like-minded. Obama does try to bring political foes into the fold when it’s convenient, but his team is primarily made up of political friends. "

Obama is smooth. "Despite being deliberate, Obama is surprisingly gaffe-prone."

Obama has a good relationship with the media. "Working with the hundreds of reporters who covered the Obama campaign last year, I was struck by how many of them would quietly complain about Obama's borderline disdain for the press."

The hotseat today belongs to Edward Liddy, the CEO of A.I.G., who seems pretty passive-agressive about the uproar over the bonuses paid to the Financial Products Unit. Today he is  going to be roasted before Congress. TPM, reports on further rip off by the former head of that Financial Products Unit: "Over the last couple weeks we learned that after Joseph Cassano, head of AIG Financial Products, got a $1 million a month consulting contract after being canned for destroying the company. He was eventually completely, finally fired last fall after AIG exploded and the government had to take it over.

Michael Daly, at the NY Daily News, has put together the numbers. And as AIGFP was collapsing into hundreds of billion dollars of losses that the US taxpayer had to pick up, he managed to walk away with a cool $315 million." The really fun quotes will be available after the hearing, it should be a lot of fun, maybe someone will tape it and sell it on ebay...The more information that comes out the more sick and twisted the tail. Time to bring back Henry Paulson to personally thank him for his sharp oversight...

On the other hand, The Charlotte Observer reports that Bank Of America will probably be able to pay back its $20 billion in TARP money by the end of 2010: "Ken Lewis also said he expects his Charlotte-based bank to be profitable this year “absent some unexpected meltdown” and to pass the government's stress test. He also said he'd like for the bank to make $30 billion in a year before he exits.

When the Treasury created TARP in October, it decreed that banks had to hold onto their funds for at least three years, or raise replacement capital. A last-minute provision inserted in the stimulus bill last month deleted the requirement about replacement capital, making it easier for banks to pay back the money more quickly. A number of smaller banks have already filed notice with the Treasury Department about plans to pay back the investment. Asked whether the bank has been unfairly criticized for anything in recent months, he said: “I would need some time to compile a list.”

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was on Colin Powell's staff when he was Secretary of State, makes the case that: "There are several dimensions to the debate over the U.S. prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the media have largely missed and, thus, of which the American people are almost completely unaware. For that matter, few within the government who were not directly involved are aware either.

The first of these is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the U.S. operations there.

The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

The third basically unknown dimension is how hard Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage labored to ameliorate the GITMO situation from almost day one."

Jeremy Scahill reports in the Huffington Post that Blackwater Security, now named Xe, has another contract with our goverment in Iraq. He quotes the State Department: "State Department spokesman Noel Clay told the Washington Times the contract modification involves aviation services. "The place of performance is Iraq, but it is totally different than the Baghdad one that expires in May," he said. Sloan called the State Department's explanation of the Feb. 2 deal a "parsing of words" and said "they should just be straight with us." Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrell declined to comment on the status of the company's work in Iraq or the Feb. 2 contract modification. She said the company was aware that the State Department had indicated that it did not plan to renew its contracts in Iraq but that Xe officials had not received specific information about leaving the country. "We're following their direction," she said. Sometimes the more things change the more they remain the same...

Late night jokes:

"You all ready for March madness? But enough about A.I.G.'s big bonuses." --Jay Leno

"Well, you've probably heard of this. The insurance company A.I.G. has done it again. They announced they're giving their executives another $165 million in bonuses. So they bankrupt the company, took $170 billion of our dollars, and they're giving out bonuses. You know the main thing they want to reward their people for? Convincing the Treasury Department to give out $170 billion to a failing company so they can give out bonuses for a job well done. It's very well thought out." --Jay Leno

"Here's the best part. They don't have to account for any of this. Now it turns out they gave $35 billion -- not million -- $35 billion of our money to bail out European banks. See, this is how a global economy works. Our hard earned tax dollars are used to bail out German banks for making bad investments in American companies that shut down because their Japanese owners moved the whole thing to India, China and Mexico. You follow?" --Jay Leno

"Boy, you thought St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. Let's send him down to Wall Street. That's what we should do." --Jay Leno

"And some sad news. Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin's daughter, has broken up with babydaddy Levi Johnston. I was stunned when I heard. I mean, really, if two kids without a decent education and no jobs and a baby can't make it, what hope is there for the rest of us?" --Jay Leno

"No, Levi told a friend, 'I should have spent more time picking a mate,' which is the same thing John McCain said about Sarah Palin." --Jay Leno

"The U.S. Justice department said they will no longer use the term “enemy combatant” when talking about detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The new name will be 'guys who make you nervous when they're on your flight.' --Jay Leno

"There are legitimate moral and ethical concerns over the use of embryonic stem cells. Fetus farms, and then you know, there's going to be fetus farm subsidies. But they're never going to the little family fetus farms, it's going to be the agri-fetus farms. All the hippy elitists will be like, I want free range fetuses." --Jon Stewart (Watch video clip)