:: Geithner confirmed as Treasury Secretary. From HUFFPOST:
WASHINGTON — The Senate has confirmed New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner to be President Barack Obama's secretary of the treasury.
The 60-34 vote puts Geithner at the helm of Obama's plan to rescue the economy from the worst financial crisis in three generations.
Obama and others supporting Geithner's nomination said the nation couldn't afford to wait for Obama to search for another nominee to run the Treasury Department.
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:: The US to engage in diplomacy with Iran. From HUFFPOST:
United Nations — President Barack Obama's administration will engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran, the newly installed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.
Not since before the 1979 Iranian revolution are U.S. officials believed to have conducted wide-ranging direct diplomacy with Iranian officials. But U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice warned that Iran must meet U.N. Security Council demands to suspend uranium enrichment before any talks on its nuclear program.
AP photo.
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:: Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman weighs in on the GOP obstruction of the stimulus plan. From the Int. Herald Tribune (NYT global), bolding is mine:
As the debate over President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: Many of the plan's opponents aren't arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don't want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don't want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.
But the obvious cheap shots don't pose as much danger to the Obama administration's efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don't know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major anti-stimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.
In other words, like I said earlier, the GOP is once again playing obstructionist political games with our lives because the are worried that they will not be electable in 2010 and 2012. Meanwhile, the economy gets worse.
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:: Last week, Obama froze the salaries of his top White House staff. Congress, recognizing the political peril in a pay hike, are feeling compelled to follow Obama's lead and block their own automatic pay hikes. We will keep you updated on this. From POLITICO:
With the country in economic turmoil, 80 House members have already signed on as co-sponsors for a variety of bills that would prevent automatic congressional pay hikes or at least require a roll-call vote before they take effect. In the Senate, Louisiana Republican David Vitter has introduced his own legislation. He doesn’t have any co-sponsors yet, but Obama’s pay freeze — coupled with what’s likely to be a $1 trillion federal deficit — could put pressure on other members to get in line quickly.
AP photo.
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:: Obama policy at odds with Defense Secretary Gates re nukes and proliferation. From TIME:
But Obama doesn't buy that logic. Shortly after taking the oath of office on Tuesday, he turned what had been a campaign promise into an official presidential commitment: The new Administration "will stop the development of new nuclear weapons," the White House declared flatly on its website, with no equivocation, asterisks or caveats.
Getty image.
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:: Obama to issue presidential memorandum today which will direct federal regulators to take swift action on applications by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards. From NYT:
The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions would be one of the most emphatic actions Mr. Obama could take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy.
Mr. Obama’s presidential memorandum will order the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s past rejection of the California application. While it stops short of flatly ordering the Bush decision reversed, the agency’s regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.
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:: William Kristol writes his last column for the New York Times. Was Kristol's contract terminated by the NYT? I think so. From HUFFPOST:
It's the end of an era, folks. Specifically, the end of the era where the New York Times offers column space to error-prone neo-conservative Sarah Palin booster Bill Kristol.
NYT photo
UPDATE - 4:33PM - Ha ha. Neocon Obstructionist Kristol's contract with the NYT was not renewed because he is sloppy, and/or untalented. From The Daily Beast:
The problems that emerged were more fundamental. Kristol’s writing wasn’t compelling or even very careful. He either lacked a talent for solid opinion journalism or wasn’t putting his heart into it. A give-away came in the form of four corrections the newspaper was forced to run over factual mistakes in the columns, creating an impression that they were rushed out without due diligence or attention to factual claims
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:: January 26 on Media Matters: 
- O'Reilly baselessly characterized bank that received TARP loan as "Barney Frank's bank"
- Dobbs attacks "partisan bunch of hacks" Media Matters with falsehood
- Wash. Times uncritically repeated GOP suggestion that Obama's stimulus does not have "fast-acting tax relief"
- Wash. Post asserted CBO "report" analyzed "the majority of money" in Dems' stimulus plan, but CBO document posted by Huffington Post indicates otherwise
- Wash. Times' Lambro misrepresented Furman's '08 statement about stimulus
- On Hannity, Rove falsely asserted that Army Field Manual prohibits good cop-bad cop interrogations
- Hannity supports his claim that Obama is "an ideologue" with falsehood
