[bumped - BarbinMD]

Barack Obama has only been President for a little more than a week and a half, but he's already fallen victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a guerrilla war in Iraq, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against Rush Limbaugh when the economy is on the line!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...

Rendition will remain part of the government's ammunition in its counter-terrorism arsenal, according to the Los Angeles Times. The program, which consists of abducting suspects from foreign countries and transferring them to other countries, began under the Clinton administration. It was originally developed and run from 1996 onward by now-retired CIA operative Michael Scheuer. The program, Scheuer said in 2005, included moving prisoners extralegally to countries without adequate human rights protections. It was greatly expanded after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Greg Miller writes:

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
^{The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.}

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street. ...

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard. ...

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said.

Let's face it ... given a choice of watching the Super Bowl with either Barack Obama or Joe Biden, most of us would pick Barack (sorry, Joe). But what if your choice was based on who the other guests were? Below are the lawmakers that will watch the Arizona Cardinals take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in either the White House with the President, or at the Naval Observatory with the Vice President ... which group would you rather party with?

Group A:

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA)
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Congressman Artur Davis (D-AL)
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA)
Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA)
Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ)
Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
Congressman Paul Hodes (D-NH)
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC)
Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA)
Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI)

Group B:

Sen. Max Baucus
Sen. Tom Carper
Sen. Kent Conrad
Sen. John Kerry
Sen. Bill Nelson
Sen. Chuck Schumer
Rep. Robert Brady
Rep. Jim Clyburn
Rep. Steny Hoyer
Rep. John Larson

Check below the fold to see which location you picked.

And of course, leave your prediction in the comments. I say, Steelers by 10.

As I read the NY Times story about Tom Daschle's tax problem, and a diary or two about maybe it should have been Howard Dean at HHS, a few thoughts occurred to me, whether I wanted them to or not.

First of all, this Tom Daschle tax problem is a big deal, and not just because everyone has to pay taxes. You have to wonder whether and how Daschle was vetted. This wasn't an outside entity coming in with a probe (a la Bill Richardson). So, if this is a 'late hit', you have to wonder about what Tom Daschle was thinking. When did he tell them? After all, in this post-partisan, post-ethical world, it doesn't look very good for a key Cabinet member to be doing this:

President Obama’s pick for health and human services secretary, Tom Daschle, failed to pay more than $128,000 in taxes, partly for free use of a car and driver that had been provided to him by a prominent businessman and Democratic fund-raiser, administration officials said Friday.

It also doesn't look great to be making errors of this magnitude over lobbying ties consultant work:

The car and driver were not Mr. Daschle’s only problems. The Finance Committee said he failed to report consulting income of $83,333 on his 2007 tax return and overstated the deductions to which he was entitled for charitable contributions from 2005 to 2007. In his amended tax returns, he reduced the deductions by $14,963.

Under his consulting arrangement with InterMedia, the report said, Mr. Daschle received $1 million a year, or $83,333 a month. The payment to Mr. Daschle for May 2007 was omitted from the annual statement of income sent to him by InterMedia. Ms. Backus said the omission resulted from "a clerical error by InterMedia."

This may not derail Daschle's nomination, but I'd guess it's too early to simply pronounce that.

At the same time, from an organizational point of view, it'd be a shame to lose Daschle. The same things that make Daschle so valuable are the things that make another name that surfaces, at least here on Daily Kos, so unlikely, and that's Howard Dean. Even if Daschle shoots himself in some part of his anatomy, that doesn’t make Dean next on the list. Dean would not be an ideal HHS head. It’s a sprawling agency with huge administrative duties. Dean's an ex-gov and that’s far more important than his MD, which is nearly irrelevant, but HHS, with CDC and NIH, is a lot more complex than running VT. Huge dollar outlays need to be directed to programs such as vaccine R&D to prepare for the next generation of biomedical advancement. This means close cooperation with industry while simultaneously being responsible for oversight. That's a fine line to walk for anyone.

And before we hear too much about the VT health plan in regard to Dean, the architect of the 2006 Health Care Affordability Act wasn’t Dean, it was a guy named Ken Thorpe, now an academic at Emory. In addition right now, the health care agenda requires someone with excellent knowledge of congressional (esp. Senate) perks and workings. Daschle is to serve not only as HHS head, but as the point person for health reform, and the Senate is the place where health reform goes to die.

In addition to that, HHS needs someone who is really good at political infighting – as good as Robert Gates at Defense (and Janet Napolitano at DHS), because that's who HHS has to fight for money and influence. Mike Chertoff seemed to outmaneuver Mike Leavitt way too often, and as a result HHS prepped for bioterror more than natural disaster, for example. Add that to the "not prepared for Katrina" list of things that cannot be allowed to repeat itself. I don't know how long the list is of policy wonks who are also good political infighters, get along with Congress, and who have the same vision on health reform as Obama, but that list can't be infinitely long.

And you just know something unexpected in addition, like the food safety/salmonella issue, will come up and require major amounts of HHS attention along with CDC's.

For those reasons, Tom Daschle would be an ideal choice for HHS, at least as far as experience,but that's only if he survives this and gets past committee (his errors, particularly regarding the lobbyist blurring, are going to raise tough questions.) And for those same reasons, another wonk with similar policy credentials to Daschle's would need to be a second choice. I'm sure Obama doesn't want to be thinking about second choices, but really, Tom Daschle should not have put the President in this position.

This evening's Rescue Rangers are a synthetic cubist, jlms qkw, HansScholl, Got a Grip, vcmvo2, and shayera, with watercarrier4diogenes at the Editor's desk, wondering why his traditional media counterparts have so much trouble with the concept of 'truth'.

• Professor Smartass explains that Prosecuting Bush administration not politics, but matter of national security. (a synthetic cubist)
• While the answer is sadly "Yes," BigAlinWashSt asks the crucial question regarding torture in Do we really have to tell them it doesn't work? (jlms qkw)
• A republican's corrupt shenanigans are exposed and the crowd turns on him in a very Blago-esque tale when davidkc explains why the FL GOP House Speaker Steps Down; FL House in "Chaos". (Got a Grip)
• bonddad gives a technical but compelling summary of the data that shows Why the Stimulus is Needed, and why tax cuts won't help much as the economy spirals downward. (HansScholl)
• In Food Democracy Now: 10 Ideas for a Sustainable Future, Hardhat Democrat discusses how to reform the way we grow and eat food. (a synthetic cubist)
• In I Want To Talk A Little About Health care, webranding shares one shocking story of the health care insurance industry. (a synthetic cubist)
• Crashing Vor viciously attacks (snark) Tom Ridge's coloring book in Suggested Change: Ditch the All-Temp Terror Label. (jlms qkw)
• Badabing commends one of our progressive senators in Senator McCaskill, 'They' Are On the Planet of Getting Away With It... (a synthetic cubist)
• bored reports on the competition for Rahm Emanuel's former House seat in IL-05 Primary Roundup Week 1. (jlms qkw)
• In The Things My Father Feared, Killer of Sacred Cows pays a touching tribute to a man with integrity. (vcmvo2)
• leftyparent shares the experience of raising a child whose path to learning requires unconventional thinking in Unschooling Instead of High Schooling. (Got a Grip)

jotter has today's High Impact Diaries: January 30, 2009, while carolita has Top Comments 1-31-09 – Fire and Ice Edition.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread (even if you're the author! Here's where that's actually appreciated). And, of course, since it's an open thread, PLAY NICE, OK? 8^)

Well, not really.

The Washington Post columnist isn't quite ready to replace GOP Sen. James Inhofe's communications director Marc Morano, but comes close in his January 29, 2009 column, editorializing Gore's speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the day before.

Let's start with the title:

With Al Due Respect, We're Doomed

The lawmakers gazed in awe at the figure before them. The Goracle had seen the future, and he had come to tell them about it.

What the Goracle saw in the future was not good: temperature changes that "would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the Earth -- and this is within this century, if we don't change."

[snip]

Once Al Gore was a mere vice president, but now he is a Nobel laureate and climate-change prophet.

Forget the science. It's a religion! It's magic. We are all under the power of "The Goracle":

The Goracle's powers seem to come from his ability to scare the bejesus out of people. "We must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization," he said. And: "This is the most serious challenge the world has ever faced." And: It "could completely end human civilization, and it is rushing at us with such speed and force."

The Morano/Inhofe "press blog" is full of the same blather. There is a running theme: "Al Gore Is Trying To Scare Us!"

Look out, Mr. Morano. Mr. Milbank is carefully polishing his skills as a Gore basher; if he adds a bit of climate change denial, he's ready to go.

Of course, if there isn't an opening in the Inhofe office, there's always Glenn Beck's show.

As rumors heat up that New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg will be appointed Secretary of Commerce, speculation about his replacement is going into overdrive.

In a comment here, Elwood Dowd lays out the possible categories:

1. A leading Dem who will run as incumbent in 2010. Meaning, Rep Hodes or Shea Porter.

2. A surprise Dem who will run as an incumbent in 2010. Marchand, Katrina Swett, Jay Buckey (all ran for Senate last time until Shaheen entered the race). Or, a yet darker horse: State Sen. Molly Kelly, for example.

3. A Dem who will immediately rule out running in 2010: that is, a "seat warmer." There aren't too many options here. I've suggested former Agriculture Commissioner Steve Taylor (who may not want it). Perhaps a retired college professor?

4. A moderate/liberal Republican who will immediately rule out running in 2010. I like former Gov. Walter Peterson for that, but he's 86. Warren Rudman's name comes up but he has ruled it out.

5. A Republican who would run in 2010.

Options five and two are extremely unlikely, option one only slightly less so. Three and four -- the appointment of a placeholder from either party -- are most likely, and speculation is centering around option four, a moderate/liberal Republican who will rule out running in 2010.

New Hampshire's Concord Monitor lays out some possibilities. Aside from Hodes and Shea-Porter, who are typically mentioned first but judged unlikely:

New Hampshire's bench of former Democrats in Congress who could come out of retirement consists of two: Former senator John Durkin and former representative Dick Swett, whose wife, Katrina, has also aspired to office. (She briefly ran for Senate in 2008 before dropping out when now-Sen. Jeanne Shaheen got in the race and has banked nearly $1 million).

Dick Swett (obligatory pause to contemplate one of the worst politician names ever) seems unlikely given that his wife has had more visible political ambitions in recent years. Durkin was a not-quite-one-term senator in the late 1970s and last ran for office in 1990.

The Republican placeholders most often mentioned are former senator Warren Rudman and former governor Walter Peterson. Rudman has taken his name out of the running, while Peterson, at 86, would be old even for the Senate.

Two more names are in circulation:

Franklin Pierce Law Center Dean John Hutson, a former Republican who endorsed Obama and spoke at the Democratic National Convention, declined to say if he would want the job. "I'm honored and surprised that my name is mentioned," he said in an e-mail. "I have the utmost respect for Senator Gregg and will quote him by saying I have no comment."

In recent years, Hutson has accumulated a strong record of objection to Bush administration policies on detainees and torture. Last summer, at the DNC, he said he had left the Republican party:

Because the Republican Party I once knew has become something different, something I no longer recognize. The "Grand Old Party" is no longer grand. It's just old. The same old, failed policies. The same, old Washington culture. Instead of new ideas and innovation, they offer trillion-dollar tax breaks for the very rich at the expense of the middle class, a deficit out of control and a government unable to help its most vulnerable citizens after Hurricane Katrina.

Instead of inspiring the world with the power of American ideals, they offer war as a first resort, an overstretched military, justification for torture, and trampling of civil liberties. From the invasion of Iraq to the devastation of Katrina, I see arrogance abroad and incompetence at home. And I simply cannot tolerate, and America simply can't afford, more of the same.

Another name mentioned by the Monitor is that of Liz Hager, a former longtime state representative who lost her Republican primary after a group of conservatives joined together to campaign against her. Hager is "proudly pro-choice, proudly pro-government," but her votes on labor issues are mixed. She voted, for instance, against a bill prohibiting employers from requiring employees to attend religious or political meetings. On the other hand, she voted to kill "right to work" legislation.

Hager is paraphrased but not directly quoted implying she would not run in 2010; in any case, her ability to survive a Republican primary would be in question.

Politico mentions the names of Bonnie Newman, Gregg's former Chief of Staff who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, and former Rep. Charlie Bass.

All of this speculation is pointless, of course, if Gregg isn't appointed to Commerce. But it's important to understand that with Lynch making the appointment, an equal focus on Republican possibilities is very much in order. It just better not be anyone who would for one moment consider running in 2010.

Jibber jabber.

Update by kos: I bet Howard Dean isn't a tax cheat...

No wonder Republicans have been slaughtered in the last two elections ... this is how they spend their weekends:

Republican Mitt Romney, a potential candidate for the White House in 2012, accused President Barack Obama on Friday of answering to the "most extreme wing of the abortion lobby." Even if the administration "will say nothing on behalf of the child waiting to be born, we must take the side of life," the former Massachusetts governor told House Republicans at a weekend retreat, according to his prepared remarks.

Comedy. Is the GOP looking to someone who couldn't even beat John McCain, for inspiration on how to get their mojo back, or are they really that stupid?

The appointment of Leon Panetta to CIA is looking better and better all the time. But the problems at that agency, legion as they are, just scratch the surface of the issues of the ills the entire intelligence structure in this country is suffering.

Writing at Huffington Post, Eric Anderson (a national security consultant, former senior intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and formerly a senior intelligence analyst for the Multi National Forces-Iraq in Baghdad and at the U.S. Pacific Command) provides an overview that exposes the root of the problem.

Bloat and redundancy have turned the intelligence community into a full-time "make-work" program for approximately 70,000 federal employees and over 30,000 contractors. Why do we employ so many people to cull through so few secrets?

Consider the following. A recent RAND survey of intelligence analysts found many analysts were uncertain about their mission and how to deal with a National Intelligence Priorities Framework that identifies 150 key targets, countries or issues. How does one identify a top priority when confronted with a list of 150? Further, RAND discovered the analysts felt caught in a maelstrom of demand for current reporting (analysis of events in the last 24 hours), buffeted by continuing investigations and reforms, and perhaps most troubling, largely ignorant of their counterparts at other agencies.

The establishment of the Director of National Intelligence with a staff of over 1,700, has done little to remedy these problems. In fact, it is sorely tempting to conclude the DNI is little more than another layer of bureaucracy in a veritable sea of managers. The number of intelligence analysts--including contractors--with the highest level of security clearances can be estimated at approximately 30,000 and for each productive intelligence professional, there are at least three support or managerial staffers.

That's a significant support ratio, particularly when you figure most intelligence analysts are college graduates or highly-evaluated military personnel. Do we really need all that supervision? What are we getting from all this overhead? Certainly not efficiency.

Just to put a topper on Andserson's complaints, this week brought two highly embarrassing new scandals, and apparently nearly suffered a third. Panetta and Blair have a massive job ahead of them, and it goes beyond issues of morale and personnel.

Despite the highly touted "no attacks since 9/11" spouted by Bush apologists (all conveniently ignoring that whole anthrax thing), the intelligence community can't be making us safer. How could it be when analysts don't know their mission? How could it possibly be working effiienctly when it is indiscriminately collecting data, including financial records of tens of thousands of Americans. How could they possibly winnow through all this mountain of data in any kind of efficient way?

Instead of smart, targeted intelligence, we get things like this:

For the first time Sunday, federal behavior-detection officers will team with local police to use a controversial technique on people heading to a major event [the Super Bowl], the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says. The officers usually work in airports.

A flagged person gets a casual interview from an officer who determines if he or she should be formally questioned or arrested.

No word on if they'll make people take off their shoes before entering Raymond James Stadium.

Coming up on Sunday Kos ....

• brownsox learned a lesson about "bipartisanship" on Stimulus Day, and he wants to share it with us. In a second essay, he will offer a parting salute to deposed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
• DemFromCT will complete his interview with the reveres from ScienceBlog’s Effect Measure, and discusses a number of hot topic public health issues in Flu And You, Part IV.
• mcjoan will offer some advice on the stimulus bill to Democratic senators.
• georgia10 will look at the relationship between names and political power.

Saying that the economic picture will "get worse before it gets better," President Obama used his weekly address to urge the swift passage of his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, which will be taken up in the Senate this week.

Americans know that our economic recovery will take years -- not months.  But they will have little patience if we allow politics to get in the way of action, and our economy continues to slide.  That's why I am calling on the Senate to pass this plan, so that we can put people back to work and begin the long, hard work of lifting our economy out of this crisis.  No one bill, no matter how comprehensive, can cure what ails our economy.  So just as we jumpstart job creation, we must also ensure that markets are stable, credit is flowing, and families can stay in their homes.

While saying that the road to recovery will be long, Obama vows to continue working with both parties, because, "we simply cannot afford the same old gridlock and partisan posturing in Washington."

Listen to the address here.

Complete transcript below the fold.

At Davos, the masters of the universe are gathering and assigning blame for the economic meltdown:

One Davos regular, Washington-based Carlyle Group’s managing director David Rubenstein, said he thinks a key issue at this year’s gathering is "who is at fault." Yet Rubenstein, who was saying at Davos two years ago that the outlook for leveraged buyouts was "very robust," says responsibility shouldn’t be tied only to him or his industry.

"There are six billion people on the face of the earth, and probably about five billion participated in what went on," Rubenstein said in an interview. "Everybody participated in some way or shape or form."

Ah, responsibility ... accountability ... how very, very quaint.

Michael Barone used to be a respected political analyst once upon a time. As editor of the Almanac of American Politics and a ubiquitous presence inside the Beltway, his was a prime shaper of narratives. But over the last decade and a half, Barone's sharp lurch to the right has slowly destroyed his credibility, as Mark Schmitt ably documents in this terrific takedown.

DC being what it is, though, Barone still gets listened to - which means he's still a worthy target of our derision. Thankfully, he makes the task very, very easy. Dave Weigel has helpfully dug up a true Barone gem from just four years ago - and I really do mean gem. Almost every sentence in the piece was either wrong when it was written or quickly became wrong soon after. To give you a sense, here's the sentence Weigel pulled his quote from:

[T]he 2004 presidential election results tell us that Republicans are in even stronger shape than their 55-45 and 232-203 Senate and House margins suggest.

When you see a line like that, you just have to click the link because you know the whole piece is going to be awesome. And it is. The piece just gets better and better. The next graf:

Start with the Senate. George W. Bush carried 31 states that elect 62 senators. There are nine Republican senators from Kerry states and 16 Democratic senators from Bush states. Many of these are from states that were close in the presidential election. But there are 11 Democrats and only three Republicans from states where their presidential nominee got less than 47 percent of the vote. There are more Democrats with political incentives to vote with Bush than there are Republicans with incentives to vote against him.

Didn't quite work out that way, did it?

As for the House, we now know which presidential candidate carried each of the 435 congressional districts, thanks to Polidata, which crunched the numbers for National Journal and the Almanac of American Politics (of which I am co-author). These numbers surprised even some political pros. Bush carried 255 districts and John Kerry only 180. In all, 41 Democrats represent Bush districts and 18 Republicans represent Kerry districts. Eliminating the districts where the House member's presidential candidate won 47 percent or more, we find only five Republicans in strong Kerry districts but 30 Democrats in strong Bush districts.

What a disaster that turned out to be for Dems! But here's the real money shot:

The implications? In the long run, Republicans are well positioned to increase their numbers in both the Senate and the House. Some Democrats hold seats because of personal popularity or moderate voting records. But when they retire, Republicans may well succeed them. In the short run, very few Republicans run great political risks by supporting Bush. Significantly more Democrats run great political risks by opposing him. Obstruction doesn't work well for Democrats in Bush seats: Just ask former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. And at the moment, on Social Security, as Democrats Stan Greenberg and James Carville wrote last month, "Voters are looking for reform, change and new ideas, but Democrats seem stuck in concrete."

I started to put various chortle-worthy parts of this paragraph in boldface but I had stop because the whole thing was becoming a mess of HTML tags. In any event, we should be quite glad that the Republicans listened to Barone and the Dems ignored Carville. (To show you how stupidly off-base the concern trolling was over Democrats' "position" on Social Security in 2005, read this article and enjoy a laugh.)

Sadly, as I said at the outset, some people still take this bungler seriously. But fortunately, it's fewer every year. And so I bring Barone's column to you and the world as a public service - a reminder that if you aren't busy tuning him out, at the very least, believe the opposite of whatever he says.

SusanG's had a piece earlier about how Wall Street regards capping bonuses as socialism. And it is. But so's the bailout.

But I just had to comment on this quote from the NYT article she was writing about:

"On Main Street, ‘bonus’ sounds like a gift," he said. "But it’s part of the compensation structure of Wall Street. Say I’m a banker and I created $30 million. I should get a part of that."

So, say you're a banker and you flushed $30 million down the toilet, which is the actual scenario we're looking at. When can we expect you to pay a part of that back?

Well, this is just dandy:

Financial regulators should consider revoking bonus pay for executives of failing institutions needing government help, said a watchdog panel for the government's $700-billion financial bailout on Thursday.

Executives might be motivated to avoid excessively risky behavior if faced with the prospect of losing their bonuses, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report.

This is oversight? This brain trust got together and wrote a report that says, gosh, maybe we could threaten to revoke bonuses for failure? Clearly, we need better watchdogs. Or at the very least, we need to buy them a dictionary so they can look up the definition of "bonus."

And now we read that the Obama administration:

... is likely to refrain from imposing tougher restrictions on executive compensation ... [because] Officials are concerned that harsh limits could discourage some firms from asking for aid.

This is completely at odds with the message in Obama's weekly address, so the administration needs to either shoot this story down fast, or explain why they're worried that Wall Street won't take billions of our dollars if we don't beg them to nicely enough.

At this point in time, it seems that Claire McCaskill is the only thinking person on Capitol Hill.

• Democracy!
• Oy.
• Freaks.
• Bipartisanship!
• Hallelujah!
• Victory!
• Anti-Blagojevich.
• Exclusionary.
• Whew!
• Nuts.

The Washington Post this morning ran a story that claims President Obama is leaning toward abandoning the idea of putting limits on executive pay for firms we the people bail out:

The administration is likely to refrain from imposing tougher restrictions on executive compensation at most firms receiving government aid but instead retain looser requirements initially included in the Treasury's $700 billion rescue program, a source familiar with the deliberations said. Officials are concerned that harsh limits could discourage some firms from asking for aid.

Dean Baker over at The American Prospect hammers (rightly so) the Post for its reliance on anonymous "officials" as sources for the story and the fact that the article is so swathed in euphemism that you miss the pertinent fact that most of the large banks are, basically, bankrupt. But beyond that issue, he asks a couple of questions that have been haunting this whole process and are in dire need of logical explanation:

Who cares if some banks don't participate in getting handouts? Citibank, Bank of America, and many other major banks have no choice. They will go bankrupt without assistance. If some banks actually can get by without the government's assistance, why would we want to force it on them?

If their toxic assets have really frozen lending, although not actually jeopardized their solvency, then the shareholders would have a great lawsuit against any bank executive who refused to act in the interest of the shareholders in order to preserve their own high pay. Such instances would presumably be rare, but could nonetheless provide a great source of free entertainment to a nation suffering through a severe downturn.

Indeed. BarbinMD asked the same question back in the fall when this whole fiasco began: Are we seriously bribing CEO's to take our money? Why are we the people trying to "sell" these losers on "borrowing" from us? Bonuses, at least out here in the real world, are rewards for creating prosperous, vital businesses, not sinecures for greedy shits who get caught peddling useless crap loans that crash the global economy.

Limiting executive compensation seems the very least that should be required to secure funding from we the people. Don't like it? Don't take the loan. Seems pretty freaking simple.