Breaking: AIG Employs Real People With Thoughts and Feelings

An AIG employee offers his resignation.

Ch-Ch-Change We Can Believe In

Get your limited edition Chia Obama here.

Full Court Press

Lately The Politico is not one of my favorite political websites. In the last few months since the election its taken a sharp right turn. But Mike Allen has a really interesting behind the scenes look today at the planning that goes in to preparing questions for presidential press conferences.

Give it a read. A morsel:

The president’s answers were notably long at his last press conference. Although reporters have been told to expect crisper ones this time, Henry pointed out that the long ones can be smart strategy.

“He can get his message out by hitting five or six points instead of just one or two,” Henry said. “But also, the longer the answer, the more people kind of forget the question, and it can take the sting off. At that first news conference, there were some answers where I was thinking, ‘What did that guy ask again?’”

44 Turns Up The Volume On His Megaphone

If you need yet more dramatic proof that our new president is the antithesis of our old president, check out this op-ed by 44 published in 30 newspapers around the world today.

Where Dubya was stubborn, myopic, and unable to understand how multilateral cooperation on issues of global concern was beneficial, Obama is a true statesman, talking directly to the citizens of the world about how the global economic crisis cannot be fixed by one nation's solutions. In advance of the meeting of the Group of 20 this week, he insists that they must "embrace a common framework" to stop the global decline.

Although I laud the president's efforts here, one can't help but wonder if his concern over China's talk of replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency had something to do with penning the piece.

Raising Cane

An interesting piece from the NY Times about sugar's revival, and how it has nothing to with nutritional value.

Pat Crawford of the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California, Berkeley, remembers when sugar was such a loaded word that cereal makers changed the name of products like Sugar Pops to Corn Pops.

Even though overall consumption of caloric sweeteners is starting to drop, Dr. Crawford says an empty calorie is still an empty calorie. And it does not matter whether people think sugar is somehow “retro,” a word used to promote new, sugar-based versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew called Throwback.

“If people really want to go back to where we were, that means not putting sugar in everything,” she said. “It means keeping it to desserts.”

Amen

Battle Royale

Last night far right columnist Anne Coulter and far left comedian Bill Maher met for a debate. I'm of the opinion that neither one does the cause of liberalism/conservatism much good, but they are an intriguing pair of souls so I found this little review at Politico quite interesting.

The White House Briefing Room Seat Conspiracy

Let's see if this one grows legs.

Yesterday Sean Quinn at 538 posted a terrific piece breaking down the game of musical chairs that seats the members of the White House Press Corps in Robert Gibb's briefing room. He looks at seats that may become vulnerable in future months and also at the apparent "process" by which each news organization is seated. He also provided this handy seating chart for those interested in who has the ability nowadays to ask the big questions of our government.


Today, Al Giordano gets in on the action,
calling for more access for "new media" journos and looking at who exactly is on the 9-member WHCA who sets the seating charts and what they have to gain in making those assignments. Money quote from AG:

The obviously better solution would be to assign seats on a rotating basis, assuring that all media, big and small, corporate and independent, get regular shots at being able to ask questions from the front rows. The public would certainly get a wider range of issues and matters attended to that way.