What We Learned from the Republicans Last Week

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

The Obama administration’s successful passage of the stimulus package, although not the exact one they wanted, is a significant and telling victory for the new administration as it has been decades since a Democratic president has begun his term with a comparable legislative accomplishment. Although, the stimulus package had its detractors, and its passage was not exactly an easy process, it was a victory for the new administration and should put to rest concerns regarding the ability of this administration to get things done.

Much of the media coverage of the stimulus debate, from the beginning, focused on the problems the new administration faced in passing this major piece of legislation. During the time the bill was being considered and voted upon, two prominent cabinet nominees withdrew their candidacies for the cabinet, the Republicans dragged out old canards about socialism and Democratic spending and pundits tried to argue that the new administration had feet of clay. An implausible narrative that somehow Obama was Jimmy Carter redux, suggesting that Obama did not know how to legislate, began to emerge on conservative media outlets. However, things did not quite work out that way.

Instead, the administration and the new president demonstrated the same focus that made the Obama campaign so successful, and passed their bill. After initial efforts to seek Republican input were rebuffed, the administration rightly understood the Republican attacks to be a distraction and proceeded to round up the votes, including enough Republicans in the senate, to pass the needed legislation, rather than get drawn into a contretemps with essentially powerless congressional Republicans. The Republicans in congress, correspondingly, demonstrated that they, like most other political opponents of the president’s, were unable to move Obama off of his plan or strategy.

Obama’s success not only is a good sign about the focus and competence of this administration, but it forced the Republicans to reveal something of how they will play the admittedly bad hand they have been dealt, or more accurately, have dealt to themselves. In this regard the stimulus debate and legislation drew the Republican Party out a bit. This was the first meaningful reappearance of that party since their big defeat last November. It was not an encouraging showing or a good first step back towards relevance.

The Republican Party misplayed this issue in a number of tactical ways. First, by standing in almost complete unity against the stimulus, the Republicans put themselves in a position where if the economy begins to turn around, they will not be able to claim any credit whatsoever. Some Republican loyalists will undoubtedly assert that the Republican Party acted out of principle, not out of tactics, but the notion that the Republican Party still has any principles on which to stand, particularly with regard to spending policy, should not be taken seriously in the 21st century.

Similarly, some Republican strategists will contend that Obama and the Democratic Party will now take the blame if the economy fails to recover. If I were a Republican strategist, I would not want to stake my party’s future on this notion because it requires two things to happen: the economy not to recover and voters to blame the Democrats for this even though the Democrats are the only party that has tried to do something to help the economy. It is also unlikely that anybody on the Democratic side of the aisle is going to let the American people forget the role of the Republican Party in creating this economic disaster.

The Republicans also showed that while they are able to make noise and even drive the news cycle, they are unable to have an impact on legislation. In the last two weeks, the Republican leadership in congress has shown that they can talk, but we already knew that. They have not yet, however, shown that they can become a partner, or even an obstacle, in policy making. This combined with Republican declarations of success in the middle of last week underscored the perception that the Republicans are more interested in creating problems for Obama than they are in being part of the solution to the dire economic problems facing the country. Overstating expectations, making cookie cutter complaints about a popular president and failing to propose productive solutions for ongoing problems is a recipe for continued irrelevance. This approach also creates almost no incentive for Democrats to join with Republican in opposition to the popular president. In fact, it has the exact opposite effect. The Republican’s carping and attacking only strengthened Democratic Unity.

In the first weeks of his administration, Barack Obama has shown that he and his party are the only ones interested in the real challenges of governance. The Republicans have opted to remove themselves from the process. It is encouraging to see the president confront this challenge, risking his political capital for needed reform and stimulus. The new administration would be wise to build on this success by moving ahead quickly on other important domestic legislation in areas such as healthcare, environmental regulations and education before the Republicans either start trying to have a serious impact on proposed legislation, or find a way to act in a less polarizing way and weaken Democratic resolve and unity.

Lincoln Mitchell

Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics, Columbia University

www.huffingtonpost.com

‘Dirty’ Tar Sands in Canada to Test Obama Green Goals (Update1)

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) — Petroleum extracted from tar sands in Canada may provide the first foreign-policy test for President Barack Obama’s environmental agenda.

U.S. and Canadian conservationists have called on Obama to reject any bid to exempt the oil from proposed climate-protection rules when he visits Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week in Ottawa, his first meeting with a head of government.

The oil is separated from sand and clay with intense heat in a process that releases more greenhouse gases than pumping conventional crude. The total “life-cycle” of emissions released, all the way to filling a car’s tank with gasoline, are 20 percent more, the Rand Corp. research organization of Santa Monica, California, said in a 2008 report.

“Obama’s going to be under heavy pressure from Canada to allow the current importation to continue and to dramatically expand it on energy-security grounds,” said Bill Grant, associate executive director of the Izaac Walton League of America, a conservation group. “And there’s going to be a strong pushback from the environmental community on that.”

Environmentalists increasingly want the entire life-cycle of fuels regulated to stem greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. California, the most populous state, has proposed rules to promote cleaner fuels that would effectively ban tar- sands oil mined in Alberta, according to Gary Mar, minister counselor in Washington for the western Canadian province.

Obama backs slashing emissions of heat-trapping gases to 1990 levels and hasn’t announced a policy on heavy oil from Canada. The new president will have to square his environmental agenda with his call to trim dependence on oil supplies from the Mideast and with the U.S.’s longstanding policy to treat Canada as a commercial and strategic ally.

Largest Trade Partner

Canada is the U.S.’s biggest trading partner with about $600 billion in annual commerce last year. It sells about 60 percent of its tar-sands oil to U.S. refineries. Canadian companies have invested about C$110 billion ($88 billion) in oil-sands developments since 1958.

The U.S. imported about 780,000 barrels a day of tar-sands oil in 2008, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Nexen Inc., owner of the C$6.1 billion Long Lake oil- sands project in Alberta, Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Europe’s largest oil company, and other producers plan to ship about 3.3 million barrels a day by 2020.

“Oil sands are part of the overall supply-demand energy balance in North America,” Canada Environment Minister Jim Prentice said last week in a telephone interview from Calgary. Oil and coal, like solar and hydroelectric power, “are all important to fit into a common approach” on climate regulation.

24 Years of Supplies

Oil sands hold the equivalent of 173 billion barrels, enough to supply the U.S. for 24 years. Only Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has more reserves.

“We want American policy makers to know that our oil is the largest supply in the world outside the control of OPEC,” Mar, who represents Alberta in the U.S. capital, said in an interview. “This can go a long way to breathing life into the president’s desire to reduce reliance on oil that comes from less-friendly parts of the world.”

Energy and the environment are on the agenda for the Feb. 19 meeting, said Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas. He declined to comment on the prospect of rules that could affect oil exports.

‘A Better Job Environmentally’

“To be frank on the oil sands, we’ve got to do a better job environmentally,” Harper told a Calgary radio station on Jan. 13. “At the same time, the development of these things is pretty important, in our judgment, to North American energy security. So I think there’s balance to be seen there.”

Wishart Robson, climate-change adviser to Nexen’s chief executive, Marvin Romanow, said the U.S. can spend far less to help clean up oil-sands processing than it does to secure supplies from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members. The government of Alberta has pledged $2 billion to develop systems to capture and store carbon-dioxide emissions from processing oil sands.

“It’s in our mutual interest to bring this on,” Robson said in an interview. “Is there a way that we can share those costs for the benefit of both countries?”

‘Dirty, Dangerous’

Obama campaigned on a promise to wean the U.S. off “dirty, dwindling and dangerously expensive” oil. As president he supports a national rule to encourage cleaner motor fuels. The former Illinois senator hasn’t said whether he favors the California pollution-control model, which could shut out oil imports from Alberta, or regulations such as those being debated in Minnesota that would continue oil sands imports.

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt declined to comment.

“Canada is extremely concerned that California would set the course to national and possibly international low carbon fuel policies,” Scotty Greenwood, executive director of the Washington-based Canadian American Business Council, said in an interview.

Prentice said the neighbors should work together to develop systems to trap and bury underground the carbon-dioxide emissions from oil-sands development. That would help “transition from a high-carbon present to a low-carbon future while avoiding a disruptive and dislocative period,” Prentice said on Jan. 20.

Mining, Heating Earth

Oil sands are deposits of bitumen, a heavy, viscous crude that must be upgraded before it can be used by refiners. Higher carbon emissions come mainly from the energy needed to separate the oil from the sand and clay it is bound up with. The tar is extracted either by mining or heating the earth and pumping it out.

“We don’t want the U.S. to do anything to support expansion of tar sands,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of the Canada program at the environmental advocate Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. “More than that, we want to see life-cycle analysis of the greenhouse-gas emission of fuels so you’re not encouraging fuels that have higher emissions.”

Oil-sands mines along the Athabasca River near Fort McMurray, Alberta, are as large as 80 meters (262 feet) deep and have claimed almost 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) of forest. They have created bitumen and clay-laden ponds with oily sheens of grays and green hues that have killed scores of birds.

‘Cheap Fuel’

“You want low carbon emissions but you want cheap fuel,” Ryan Todd, an analyst for Deutsche Bank AG in New York, said in an interview. Strict regulations “would obviously be incredibly damaging to Canada’s oil and gas sector and very disruptive to global oil markets.”

Producers also face market challenges. Oil prices must return to $85 to $100 a barrel for them to turn a profit, Todd said.

No matter how reliable Canada may be as a U.S. supplier, it won’t make up for the environmental costs of producing tar sands oil, Casey-Lefkowitz said.

“Harper may hope to get special protections for tar sands emissions,” Casey-Lefkowitz said. “We’re not sure that you can ever make tar sands extraction environmentally sustainable.”

By Jim Efstathiou Jr.

www.bloomberg.com

Obama plans to put heat on lenders over foreclosures

Posted by Irati on under Articles, News | Be the First to Comment

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce the flood of home foreclosures will include a mix of government inducements and new pressure on lenders to reduce monthly payments for borrowers at risk of losing their houses, according to people familiar with the administration’s thinking.

The plan, to be announced Wednesday, is expected to include government subsidies for reducing a borrower’s interest rate, which a lender would have to match. But administration officials also plan to put heat on lenders that do not move aggressively enough.

What kind of pressure Obama would bring to bear remains unclear. One possibility is a stepped-up effort to have Congress pass legislation that would give bankruptcy judges new power to restructure mortgages. That change, sometimes described as a mortgage “cram-down,” would increase the bargaining power of borrowers in negotiating new terms with their lenders. The banking industry has opposed it, warning investors would stop financing mortgages if they knew that a judge could change the terms at a later date.

But Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress support the change, and Democratic lawmakers had already been planning to attach such a measure to a catch-all spending bill that Congress will soon have to pass to keep the government running.

Administration officials declined to say Monday exactly what carrots and sticks they intend to invoke. But Obama’s top advisers are keenly aware that a long series of voluntary loan-modification programs, championed by the Bush administration, made no dent in the flood of foreclosures that began in 2007.

The new plan to subsidize lower interest rates for distressed homeowners would involve the government and the lender each contributing matching amounts to reduce a person’s monthly payment, possibly by several hundred dollars a month.

Supporters contend that the measure would be comparatively simple to execute and less expensive than many other options. Obama’s top advisers have vowed to spend at least $50 billion on helping homeowners keep their houses, and they have the authority to tap the remaining $350 billion in the Treasury Department’s financial industry bailout fund.

But officials cautioned that subsidies for lower interest rates would not in themselves help many of the most troubled homeowners, because lenders were still likely to view many of those borrowers as bad risks and refuse to restructure their loans.

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS New York Times

www.chron.com

Valley Homeowners Eye Obama’s Plan

Posted by Irati on under News | Be the First to Comment

MESA, Ariz. — Hours from now President Barack Obama will arrive in Phoenix with a plan to fix the foreclosure crisis.

Obama chose Arizona to announce his new plan because it’s one of the hardest hit areas by foreclosures.In neighborhoods across the Valley, foreclosure signs line the streets. Sometimes it’s right next door, or in the case of Samantha Thompson, it’s hanging in her front yard.”It’s devastating this was a dream,” said Samantha Thompson. “It’s just been a nightmare.”

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Thompson, who ironically worked in the mortgage industry, got laid off her job in August. Knowing the industry, the Tempe homeowner started calling her bank.”We called the mortgage company and tried to work with them and to get something,” she said. “They wouldn’t even talk to us.”Now in foreclosure, Thompson is trying to do a short sale to save her credit. She said she hopes President Obama’s plan can finally end this foreclosure nightmare.”I feel it’s too late for my situation, but I feel there are families out there.”Mothers like Blanca Rodriguez also on the brink of losing her home. Rodriguez also could lose the $68,000 she sank into her dream. “I invest my money in order to get a better future for my daughter,” she said.Rodriguez’s husband lost his job in October. She also tried to work with her bank, but said they wouldn’t even accept a partial payment. “They told me my house is already in foreclosure,” she said.Under Obama’s plan, he’s expected to offer “hefty incentive payments” to encourage the lending industry to lower mortgage rates or reduce the total principal amount owed by borrowers.It’s expected to be less costly than having the government buy up the bad loans. Also under Obama’s plan — possible help for people who are not yet in default, but have a high debt to income ratio.Organizations like the Valley Interfaith Project said it’s going to take federal legislation to help people like Rodriguez and Thompson.”A real solution where families can reduce the principal on what’s owed on the home,” said Connie Andersen of the Valley Interfaith Project.Andersen said her organization is offering assistance to people who have found themselves victims in the mortgage crisis. The organization can be reached at 602-248-0607.Obama plans to deliver his speech Wednesday morning at Dobson High School in Mesa.

Jennifer Parks
Reporter, KPHO.com

Harry Reid’s Train to Nowhere

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

A quick trip around Hannity’s America…

Reid’s Railway

We know that most lawmakers did not read the spending bill before they voted on it and it appears that Barack Obama didn’t either. Despite the president’s continued claims that there are no earmarks in the bill, Politico.com is reporting that $8 billion have been allocated for high-speed rail grants to select states.

This news was welcomed by Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who has lobbied for a Las Vegas to Los Angeles railway for years. A spokesman from Harry Reid’s office, however, denied this was an earmark, saying the funds are for competitive grants that would be awarded by the transportation secretary. He went on to say that “the proposed Los Angeles-Las Vegas rail project would be eligible to receive funds.”

So in Senator Reid’s defense, he’s right, it’s not an earmark yet. The money has only been earmarked for an earmark.

Stimulating Talk

In other pork related news, the president used his address before the Business Council Friday morning as an opportunity to praise — believe it or not — the elegant process through which he and his counterparts have gone to pass the massive spending bill.

For his abuse of the English language, President Obama gets tonight’s Liberal Translation treatment:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Not everybody has shared the same view of how we should move forward, and at times our discussions have been contentious.

LIBERAL TRANSLATION: It all started when I said the Republicans were peddling “false theories” and “phony arguments.”

OBAMA: But that’s a good thing from my perspective. Diverse viewpoints are the lifeblood of our democracy and debating these viewpoints is how we learn from each other’s perspective and refine our approaches.

LIBERAL TRANSLATION: Since my whole “era of bipartisanship” didn’t work out so well, I think this has a nice ring to it.

OBAMA: But as we meet, Congress is now poised to act. It’s passed the House, it’s passed the Senate.

LIBERAL TRANSLATION: Thank goodness none of them had time to read it!

OBAMA: We expect a vote on the final version today, and one of the reasons we’ve come so far is because so many of you have recognized the urgency and necessity of taking action.

LIBERAL TRANSLATION: That, and I’ve talked the economy down so much you’d do anything to make me stop!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Congratulations, President Obama, on passing such a great bill, and in such a truly bipartisan fashion.

The New Left

Can changing offices change your values? That’s what some are asking New York’s newest senator, Kirsten Gillibrand.

As a member of the House, she was known as a conservative Democrat, representing a largely Republican district in upstate New York. Now that she’s taken over the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, the junior senator is indicating she’s had a change of heart on some key issues.

The New York Times reports the new Gillibrand now opposes penalizing sanctuary cities that fail to enforce immigration laws — a direct contradiction of her voting record in the House. And Powerlineblog.com notes Gillibrand’s about face on gun control: She now says she would be in favor of introducing new gun control legislation in the Senate. A surprising development for somebody with a 100 percent voting record and an A+ lifetime rating with the NRA.

Oh how quickly people can change. There must be something in the drinking water in her new Senate office.

Problem Solved?

A potential benefit of the economic recession: The Wall Street Journal reports that illegal immigrants who have jumped the U.S. border in unprecedented numbers over the past several years are turning back around. That’s right, the scarcity of jobs in the U.S. is causing illegal immigrants who have been especially hard hit by the economic downturn to head back to their homeland.

Not only that, these immigrants are registering their children, many of whom were born in the United States and who are therefore U.S. citizens, for Mexican citizenship. The Mexican Consulate received 12,000 more applications from Mexicans registering their American-born children for citizenship over a six-month period last year than over the same period the year before.

Hey, if we can’t get our own government to enforce the law, at least some illegal aliens are taking care of the problem for us.

— Watch “Hannity” weekdays at 9 p.m. ET on FOX News Channel

By Sean Hannity

www.foxnews.com

The Eye of the Storm

Posted by Irati on February 16, 2009 under Articles | Be the First to Comment

CHICAGO — Barack Obama senses that he’s in the middle of a hurricane whose gale-force winds could blow history his way.

He doesn’t mind acknowledging that he is learning as he goes, and he is not bitter about how little help he is getting from Republicans. But he will never again let bipartisanship become the defining test of his success.

And, yes, he is aware that the passage of his stimulus package, though a big deal three weeks into a presidency, is only a prelude to the “really tough” part. The next step, “getting credit flowing again” and averting “potential catastrophe in the banking system,” may make the stimulus fight look like a friendly warm-up game.

The president offered his thoughts to a group of columnists whom he invited to accompany him Friday on Air Force One during his first visit home since he became president. He made his way west as his stimulus was nearing final passage in Congress, and to describe him as at ease would be merely to repeat one of the reigning cliches of his short presidency.

More striking was his sense that fate has handed him opportunities few presidents ever get and that his test will be whether he makes good use of his chance to bend history at one of its “inflection points.”

“Leadership at those moments can help determine which direction that wave of change goes,” he said. “I think it’s very hard . . . for any single individual or politician to unleash historical momentum on its own. But I think when that historical wave is there, I think you can help guide it.”

Asked if this were one of those moments, he replied, flatly, “yes.” That may make the situation “scary sometimes,” but it should also “make people determined and excited.” Maybe that explains his good mood.

Yet Obama’s purpose on Friday was not to play at being a philosopher of history but to stress his devotion to FDR-style pragmatism. “We will do what works,” he said, reprising his administration’s theme song. That “will require re-evaluation” and “some experimentation — if that doesn’t work then you do something else.”

What clearly didn’t work well was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s effort last week to lay out the administration’s bank rescue plan. Obama offered no apologies. He argued that Geithner will keep working on an approach “over the next weeks, months, probably through the end of the year” because there is no “painless, quick fix here.”

Obama is clear that he doesn’t want to follow Japan’s slow-moving bank rescue model from the 1990s, which “sort of papered things over, never really bit the bullet.”

He’s not ready to go down Sweden’s road of temporarily nationalizing the banks. “You can make a good argument for the Swedish model, except for this fact: They only had a handful of banks,” he said. “We’ve got thousands of banks. The scale, the magnitude of what we’re dealing with is much bigger.”

Yet on the continuum of Japan to Sweden, Obama is clearly closer to Sweden, and he pointedly refused to rule out the Swedish approach. “I think what you can say is I will not allow our financial system to collapse,” he said.

There are many such balancing acts in Obama’s world. He knows he has to spend a lot of money now but insists he wants to “chip away at our enormous long-term budget deficit.” He wants to get the “ball rolling” on health-care reform because, while it “may cost money on the front end,” it can “save enormous money on the back end.”

And where might Republicans fit into all this? Obama still thinks he’ll win their support someday on some issues. Because the stimulus envisioned a large government role in rescuing the economy, he said, it may have “exaggerated” the partisan divide because it played on “the core differences between Democrats and Republicans.”

But he is aware that some Republicans think they can gain “political advantage” if they can “enforce conformity” within their ranks and thus “invigorate” their base.

He declined to judge whether this strategy will work for the Republicans, but President Obama 2.0, the version slightly chastened since Inauguration Day, did not mind explaining how their approach has affected him.

“You know, I am an eternal optimist,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I’m a sap.”

Maybe that mysterious calm people talk about reflects the temperament of a man who can live with his mistakes as long as he doesn’t repeat them.

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
postchat@aol.com
E.J. Dionne has more on his interview with Obama on PostPartisan.
www.washingtonpost.com

US-BUSINESS Summary

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

GM, UAW talks resume as deadline looms

DETROIT (Reuters) - Talks between General Motors Corp and the United Auto Workers resumed on Sunday, just two days before a deadline for the struggling automaker to submit a new restructuring plan to the U.S. government. Union negotiators in Detroit walked away from the bargaining table on Friday over differences with GM over the central issue of how to fund retiree health-care costs.

Obama drops “car czar” idea

CHICAGO (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has decided to form a government task force to oversee the restructuring of the struggling U.S. auto industry instead of naming a “car czar” with sweeping powers, a senior administration official said on Sunday. Obama, who last week won congressional approval of a massive economic stimulus program, is appointing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as his “designee” for overseeing auto bailout loans and as co-head of the new high-level panel along with White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, the official said.

Investors anxious for clarity on bank plan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - With Wall Street veering close to the November bear market lows, the market is likely to be awash with caution next week as investors look for clarity on how the government plans to shore up banks, housing and the economy. As a dismal earnings season winds down, analysts will also be taking stock of the damage and reevaluating expectations for the year as companies have cut or withdrawn their outlooks and announced massive layoffs.

White House dampens stimulus expectations

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- President Barack Obama’s aides warned Americans on Sunday not to expect instant miracles from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill he will sign this week, but said it would help eventually. Obama is due to sign the bill passed last week by Congress in Denver on Tuesday. It was the first major legislative victory of his young presidency, which could rise or fall with its success or failure.

Japan economy in biggest dive since 1974

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s economy shrank in the last quarter by its most since the first oil crisis in 1974, hit by an unprecedented slump in exports, which is likely to lead to more calls for extra stimulus. Japan has not suffered much directly from the bursting of bubbles in U.S. credit and housing markets, but its heavy dependence on exports and persistently soft domestic consumption has led to a sharper contraction than other major economies.

Johnson & Johnson atop Barron’s best companies list

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Healthcare and consumer giant Johnson & Johnson sits atop an annual list of global corporations held in highest esteem for the second year in a row, while General Electric Co has slipped well below the top five spot it held in past years. The list, in its fifth year, is compiled by weekly financial newspaper Barron’s, based on money managers view of the world’s 100-largest corporations.

Stanford curtails financing amid probe: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Texas billionaire Allen Stanford’s offshore bank, which is under federal investigation, recently curtailed financing commitments to two small firms, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Saturday, citing regulatory filings. Stanford International Bank Ltd. of Antigua failed to provide $16 million in funding to a telecommunications firm in Florida and an Alabama health-care company said it could not complete a $62 million merger when funding fell through.

Deere in the crosshairs as recession hits farmers

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Before the first biker ever tattooed a Harley-Davidson logo on his arm, before Apple ever inspired the first MacHead to swear she would never — ever — marry a Windows user, Deere & Co was creating one of the enduring corporate cults. For 172 years now, the company’s products — with their leaping deer logo and distinctive green and yellow iron — have stirred something like love in the farmer’s breast. Generations have come to count on Deere’s plows, planters, tractors and harvesters to make their jobs a little easier.

Sony Ericsson unveils 2 phones, video service

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson <6758.T> on Sunday unveiled an 8 megapixel camera phone and unlimited movie download service for mobile phones. The firm also said it would bring to the market in the second half of the year a 12 megapixel camera phone model codenamed “Idou.”

Nokia’s Ollila sees recession lasting 2-3 years

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The global economic downturn will last some two to three years, and top mobile-phone maker Nokia may cut more jobs if conditions worsen, Board Chairman Jorma Ollila said on Sunday. Nokia on Wednesday said it would cut production at its Salo plant in Finland as demand for cell phones has dropped, and close a research site in the Finnish town of Jyvaskyla. It said 410 jobs in the company would go.

Reuters
www.washingtonpost.com

Obama drops by University of Chicago campus

Posted by Irati on under News | Be the First to Comment

CHICAGO (AP) — President Barack Obama dropped by the University of Chicago campus Sunday for two hours of basketball with friends.

Obama, who’s spending a long weekend in his hometown, headed out Sunday to indoor basketball courts where he has played before. Aides did not say who played hoops with the president.

After the game, Obama stopped at his barber’s apartment for a quick haircut.

Obama and his family plan to return to Washington on Monday.

Associated Press

Karzai to send team to US terror review

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

Washington has agreed to a request from the Afghan government to take part in its overhaul of policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, as US president Barack Obama seeks a way out of the growing violence that has hit the two key US allies.

The move looked like a thawing of relations between Washington and Kabul, following the visit of US special envoy Richard Holbrooke. Obama’s presidency had so far been marked by a distancing of relations with Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, who was backed by the Bush administration and who has been accused of running a weak and corrupt state.

Karzai said he was “very, very thankful that President Obama has accepted the proposal of Afghanistan joining a strategic review of the war against terrorism”.

Holbrooke said at a press conference with Karzai that he carried a personal message from President Obama, “a message of support for the people of Afghanistan and the democratically elected government.”

With presidential elections due in August, many have speculated Washington will favour an alternative candidate to Karzai. Obama has so far not telephoned him as he has other allied leaders.

A separate agreement was also hailed by Karzai, which will see more Afghan army input into operations by international forces. It signifies an attempt to reduce civilian casualties and night-time raids.

Holbrooke also went to Pakistan on his “listening” trip of the region, where Islamabad too successfully pressed for inclusion in Washington’s review. The new policy has to be in place by April, in time for a Nato summit where the US will try to convince European nations to contribute more troops to Afghanistan.

The Pakistani government will send a convoy to Washington next month, while its powerful army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, will make a separate trip. Islamabad believes that the Karzai regime is close to its arch-enemy India and it will be pressing Washington for more Pakistan-friendly government in Afghanistan.

Obama is concerned about the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and the Taliban and al-Qaeda “safe havens” across the border in Pakistan. Ex-CIA officer Bruce Riedel has been appointed to head the review of policy towards the two nations.

Saeed Shah in Islamabad
www.guardian.co.uk

Afghanistan’s Karzai hits out at U.S. critics

Posted by Irati on under News | Be the First to Comment

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at mounting U.S. criticism on Sunday, saying he expected “better judgment” from the Obama administration.

In the latest show of strain between the allies in a seven-year war against Islamist militants, Karzai told CNN President Barack Obama’s description of the Kabul government as “very detached” from its people reflected the new U.S. government’s immaturity.

“Perhaps it’s because the administration has not yet put itself together,” he told CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” program.

“I hope as they settle down, and as they learn more, we’ll see better judgment.”

U.S. policy on Afghanistan is under review as Obama contemplates almost doubling the number of U.S. troops there to around 60,000.

At the same time, U.S. criticism of Karzai has grown as the Taliban insurgency steadily gains ground more than seven years after U.S.-led forces toppled the hardline Islamist Afghan government.

Despite Obama’s comments, Karzai said he admired the U.S. leader. “I can certainly engage with him very, very very positively,” he said.

Karzai repeated his criticism that the U.S.-led military campaign against Taliban and al Qaeda militants had brought civilian casualties, arrests and home searches that were undermining confidence of Afghans.

Whenever he criticized U.S. practices in Afghanistan — for example, of aerial spraying of poppy fields or torture allegations — this was followed by reports of high-level corruption in his government, including an accusation that his brother was involved in the narcotics trade, Karzai said.

“Whenever there was a disagreement, this kept repeating,” he said, without directly addressing the accusations.

“My conclusion is that, yes, this was part of a political pressure tactic, unfortunately.”

Recent U.S. newspaper articles highlighting a growing rift between Washington and Karzai showed “there’s a lot of misinformation and, indeed, at times disinformation from parts of the Western press against me,” Karzai said.

(Reporting by Paul Eckert, editing by Alan Elsner)
www.reuters.com

For Obama, governing isn’t campaigning

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

For the most part, your can chalk up his shaky debut to the difference between campaigning and governing.

Barack Obama made running for president look easy. As a candidate, he was famously steady and cool, and his campaign team was a marvel of internal harmony. “No drama Obama,” they called him.

Fixing a broken economy is turning out to require some drama. To win his stimulus plan, Obama had to turn white-hot and warn that the alternative was “catastrophe.” Backstage at the White House, there has been confusion and even discord, evidence that Team Obama might be populated by mortals after all.

The stimulus plan was a real victory that gave Obama, after relatively brief congressional brawling, most of what he wanted in the first place. But Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s rollout of a financial rescue plan that wasn’t ready for prime time was a real setback — a self-inflicted wound that exposed apparent conflict inside the administration.

Obama and Geithner made a rookie mistake: They billed the Treasury secretary’s speech as a “comprehensive plan” when the most important piece wasn’t ready. They over-promised and under-delivered.

Administration officials apparently felt pressure from the global credit markets to say where they were heading. But they would have done themselves a favor if they had described Geithner’s speech as an interim report, not a comprehensive plan.

Geithner’s brutal candor — “We will have to try things we never tried before. We will make mistakes” — didn’t reassure a nervous market either.

Most intriguing for Obama-watchers, the half-finished plan forced signs of internal discord to the surface. Before the speech, the New York Times reported that the Treasury secretary had fought off pressure from Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, for tougher conditions on financial institutions.

After the speech, Axelrod’s defense of Geithner was less than ringing. “Wall Street was hoping for a complete answer to some really complex and expensive problems, and what Secretary Geithner laid out didn’t meet those expectations,” he said, accurately. Others in the administration privately agreed that the rollout turned a proposal that should have been a public hit (it includes big increases in help with mortgages and consumer loans) into an unforced error. That kind of internal tension was almost invisible before Jan. 20.

Take the short view — the last two weeks — and the Obama presidency has clearly run into turbulence. “Some may call it amateur hour,” Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, acknowledged with a sardonic smile last week.

Take a longer view, though, and the new administration has accomplished quite a bit in less than a month: a stimulus bill that genuinely qualifies as “unprecedented,” a half-plan for fixing the nation’s credit markets, and first steps in a dozen other areas. Most of the troubles probably can be attributed to the struggle to learn the difference between campaigning and governing, a challenge that has bedeviled every governor and senator who ever won the presidency.

Emanuel, who survived six years as a top aide in the often-chaotic Clinton White House, waved aside the stumbles in a Thursday session with reporters, calling the stimulus plan he negotiated “the most major, comprehensive legislation relating to economic activity ever.”

But Emanuel also was candid about the administration’s room for improvement, at least on some counts. The president and his aides talked too confidently, at first, about the prospects of bringing Republicans on board, he said. “There’s an insatiable appetite for the notion of bipartisanship here, and we allowed that to get ahead of ourselves,” he said.

And he acknowledged the problems with Geithner’s speech. “There was clearly a reaction by investors,” he said, but added that the real measure will be whether the Treasury now succeeds in fixing the credit markets.

On the whole, he pronounced himself more than satisfied with the accomplishments of Obama’s first four weeks. “The president has always indicated there will be days when there are setbacks, days when there will be disappointments, but as long as we’re moving forward, those will be bright days,” Emanuel said. “Let’s be honest: Will the economic recovery or Judd Gregg be a bigger discussion point a week from now?”

New presidents and their staffs always hit unexpected obstacles in their first months. Some former Obama campaign aides are still marveling at how different governing is from campaigning.

But the administration’s ranks also include people who have seen presidents come and go, and who (if they were paying attention) learned lessons from what they saw. The Clinton White House demonstrated that a presidency can survive very bad days if it stays focused on its central goals. The Bush White House showed that denying your mistakes is not always good politics. Obama’s White House appears to be trying, amid turbulence, to apply both of those lessons.

By DOYLE McMANUS
doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com
www.latimes.com

Stimulus signing, foreclosure aid on Obama agenda

Posted by Irati on under Articles, News | Be the First to Comment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Keeping the economy front and center, President Barack Obama heads west this week to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill and tackle the home mortgage foreclosure crisis. The direct appeals for public support follow scant GOP backing in Congress for his agenda and increasing partisan bickering.

Passage of the stimulus measure — unprecedented in its cost — was a major triumph for Obama as he struggles lift the country from a financial nosedive unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In this photograph provided by “Meet the Press,” White House adviser David Axelrod appears on “Meet the Press’” Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009, at the NBC studios in Washington. (AP Photo/Meet The Press, Alex Wong)

Top aides said Sunday the skyrocketing unemployment rate would fall once the money begins to flow. But they also said the economy will continue its downward spiral in the short term.

“I think it’s safe to say that things have not yet bottomed out,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “They are probably going to get worse before they improve. But this is a big step forward toward making that improvement and putting people back to work.”

The stimulus package, which passed with no GOP support in the House and three Republican votes in the Senate, aims to save or create as many as 3.5 million jobs through massive government investment while boosting consumer spending through modest tax cuts.

The president’s determination to sign the stimulus bill into law in Denver on Tuesday suggests Obama will continue taking his economic message to the American people, who are giving him high marks for handling the crisis. The symbolism is obvious for Colorado, where a growing green-energy industry will draw major benefits from the stimulus.

“He is determined to keep in touch with the American people who sent him here to do this job,” senior adviser David Axelrod said.

Gibbs said the president had taken “unprecedented” steps in a bipartisan effort to include Republicans in the legislative process. But Sen. John McCain was highly critical, declaring the stimulus would create what he called “generational theft” — huge federal deficits for years to come.

McCain, who lost the presidential race to Obama, said the Democrat had backtracked on promises of bipartisanship and was off to a bad start. “Let’s start over now and sit down together,” McCain said.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., put it more bluntly: “If this is going to be bipartisanship, the country’s screwed.”

With the stimulus victory in hand, Obama planned to shift to the housing crisis with an announcement Wednesday in Phoenix about reversing that sector’s collapse.

Late last summer, Americans began feeling the pinch of the recession and left the housing market in huge numbers. That coincided with a sharp increase defaults on home mortgages, a devastating combination that triggered the financial crisis. Lending froze as banks and investment houses realized they were holding trillions of dollars in bad assets.

Under an emergency $700 billion bailout program passed late last year, the Bush administration used half to forestall a financial collapse. But the flow of credit did not ease and use of the money was criticized because it was poorly administered and overseen.

Obama is now working to leverage the second portion of the bailout money into a program that could result in $2 trillion in government and private sector cash infusions to help banks and investment houses clear away “toxic” holdings and thereby spur lending.

As part of the next steps on the bailout, Obama was expected to offer help homeowners on the brink of foreclosure. Details have not been disclosed, but the nature of the crisis suggested mortgage loans would have to be revalued downward along with interest rates.

“We obviously have a major problem: problems with foreclosure, problems with people living on the edge and problems with home values around the country just plummeting, which is affecting family, family finances everywhere,” Axelrod said. “We want to do something that will address all of those things.”

On another troubled front, Axelrod said any plan to shore up the auto industry will require sacrifice by all involved, from auto workers and industry executives to shareholders and creditors.

General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC are expected to submit plans to the government by Tuesday, the deadline for showing how they can repay billions in loans and become viable in spite of a drop in auto sales not seen for a generation.

“We need an auto industry in this country. There are millions of lives, livelihoods that depend on it,” Axelrod said. “We have a real interest in seeing the auto industry survive, but it’s going to require a major restructuring of the auto industry.”

Also Sunday:

_Gibbs said the administration wants to revise restrictions on executive compensation in the stimulus package even after it becomes law. The administration would seek to “strike the right balance” on the compensation question by discussing changes with House and Senate members, the spokesman said. Already Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic aide Lawrence Summers failed to stop the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., from adding stricter limits on bankers’ bonuses.

_Obama soon will issue an executive order lifting a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, Axelrod said. Under President George W. Bush, federal money for research on human embryonic stems cells was limited to those stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001. Stem cells can revitalize diseased or debilitated human tissue.

_Axelrod defended Geithner, heavily criticized for offering scant details last week in outlining the administration’s financial rescue plan. His performance led to a big Dow Jones sell-off. “We want to do this in a thoughtful way. He announced a strategy. He will unveil the tactics to support that strategy in the coming weeks. And we believe that he has the right approach.”

_Axelrod sought to play down the about-face by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who abruptly withdrew as Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department after saying the fit wasn’t right with this Democratic president. “I don’t think that that ultimately is a reflection on the administration. It’s a reflection on Sen. Gregg’s change of heart,” he said.

Gibbs was on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” Axelrod appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday.” McCain was on CNN and Graham on ABC’s “This Week.”
On the Net:
* White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

By STEVEN R. HURST
Associated Press

Obama targets housing fix after stimulus victory

Posted by Irati on under Articles, News | Be the First to Comment

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President Barack Obama will head west this week bidding to arrest America’s epidemic of home foreclosures after his gargantuan economic stimulus plan finally cleared Congress.

Barack Obama

Aides to the president — who Saturday called the 787-billion-dollar package of investment and tax cuts “a major milestone on our road to recovery” — said he would outline his housing plan in Phoenix, Arizona on Wednesday.

The day before, in Denver, Colorado, Obama will sign the stimulus package into law, setting the seal on the first major legislative triumph of his young presidency.

“I think it’s safe to say that things have not yet bottomed out,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told CNN Sunday.

But US states will start getting the stimulus money “relatively quickly,” he said, “so they don’t have to lay off police officers or firefighters or teachers” and can begin to create jobs in alternative energy.

Meanwhile Gibbs, underlining that Obama will have signed an ambitious economic bill within just four weeks of taking office, denied that the president’s promise of bipartisanship had taken a hit.

“He’s going to continue to reach out to Republicans, and he’s hopeful that Republicans will start to reach back,” he said on CBS television.

But Republicans, chafing already at the largest package of government spending in US history, signaled more fights ahead as Obama prepared to take on the stricken housing and financial markets.

Senator Lindsey Graham cited estimates that half a trillion dollars could be needed to fix the property sector, whose tailspin from boom to bust has crippled much of Wall Street and ignited the broader economic crisis.

After the first round of a banking bailout and now the stimulus bill, “it makes it harder for everybody here to go back to the public and say, ‘Please give us more money, because we seem irresponsible’,” he said on ABC News.

Senator John McCain, Obama’s vanquished rival for the presidency, said on CNN: “These are the worst, most difficult challenges, foreign and domestic, perhaps we have faced certainly in our lifetimes.

“So let’s start over now and sit down together.”

However, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said Republican complaints smacked of hypocrisy.

“For eight years when we were doubling the national debt, I didn’t hear many of these people moralizing about spending,” he said on NBC, noting that barely any Republicans opposed former president George W. Bush’s Iraq war expenditure.

Obama’s stimulus package won just enough support from Republican senators to clear the Senate late Friday after a party-line vote in the House of Representatives.

In his weekly radio address Saturday, Obama said the bill will “lay a new foundation for our lasting economic growth” by saving or creating more than 3.5 million jobs and enacting investments for the long haul.

Next up is the housing market after officials said Friday that two US banks — JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — and mortgage finance giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had imposed moratoriums on home foreclosures.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner last week unveiled a plan that could use as much as 2.5 trillion dollars to aid banks, unfreeze consumer credit markets and stem the home mortgage crisis.

But with nearly 10,000 families a day reportedly losing their homes, only a sketchy public-private investment fund was cited under Geithner’s plan to buy up troubled mortgage-backed securities held by the banks.

And with just 50 billion dollars so far devoted by Geithner for foreclosure relief, many believe Obama will have to come back to Congress for more funds after this week’s announcement in the home repossession blackspot of Phoenix.

“I don’t think it will be enough,” Democrat Barney Frank, who chairs the House committee on financial services, told CBS.

But he added his belief that Obama has “a good set of plans coming forward to begin to reduce foreclosures.”

Making his debut on the world stage, Geithner Saturday briefed fellow G7 finance ministers on his recovery strategy at emergency talks in Rome, and called for global coordination to prevent new crises.

Agence France-Presse

Gibbs: Stimulus Is Step Toward Recovery

Posted by Irati on February 15, 2009 under Articles, News | Be the First to Comment

WASHINGTON — White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said he thinks “it’s safe to say” the economy hasn’t bottomed out yet. But he predicted the $787 billion stimulus measure that the president plans to sign on Tuesday will put the country on the road to recovery.

Mr. Gibbs said the bill, which President Barack Obama plans to sign on Tuesday, will be a big step forward in improving the economic situation and putting people back to work.

Mr. Gibbs said Mr. Obama is focused on pushing the money out of Washington and into the economy quickly.

He said Mr. Obama reached out in unprecedented way to Republicans in Congress and will continue to seek bipartisan support despite winning almost no opposition backing for the massive stimulus measure. Mr. Gibbs spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Sen. John McCain, meanwhile, said Mr. Obama failed to include Republicans in writing the big economic stimulus bill. 

Also appearing on “State of the Union,” the Arizona Republican said the measure will create what he calls “generational theft” — huge federal deficits for years to come.

Mr. McCain, who lost the presidential race to Obama, said the president is backtracking on promises of bipartisanship.

Mr. McCain acknowledged that Republicans excluded Democrats when the GOP held power on Capitol Hill. But he said Obama had promised to work differently.

Mr. Obama planned to sign the economic stimulus bill in Denver on Tuesday.

The Denver Museum of Nature & Science told patrons it would be the site of the signing.

Last week, Mr. Obama hit four states in four days to talk up the plan. Mr. Obama and his family are spending the President’s Day weekend in their hometown of Chicago.

On Saturday Mr. Obama celebrated the newly passed bill as a “major milestone on our road to recovery.” The bill passed Friday.

Speaking in his weekly radio and Internet address, Mr. Obama said, “I will sign this legislation into law shortly, and we’ll begin making the immediate investments necessary to put people back to work doing the work America needs done.”

At the same time, he cautioned, “This historic step won’t be the end of what we do to turn our economy around, but rather the beginning. The problems that led us into this crisis are deep and widespread, and our response must be equal to the task.”

Associated Press

online.wsj.com

‘Pashtunistan’ holds key to Obama mission

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

The mountainous borderlands where Afghanistan meets Pakistan have been described as a Grand Central Station for Islamic terrorists, a place where militants come and go and the Taliban trains its fighters. Now Barack Obama has made solving the ‘Af-Pak’ question a top priority. But could the battle to tame the Pashtun heartland become his Vietnam?

Congress strengthens executive pay limits

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

CHICAGO (AP) — President Barack Obama’s economic team tried to keep Democratic allies negotiating the stimulus bill from limiting paychecks for executives at banks in need of a bailout. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and economic aide Lawrence Summers failed.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, inserted strict rules into the $787 billion economic stimulus package over the White House’s objections. Dodd’s limits on bankers’ bonuses are significantly more aggressive than those sought by Obama or Geithner in recent days, with much fanfare.

Dodd, D-Conn., said the restrictions — an executive making $1 million a year in salary could receive only $500,000 in bonus money, for example — are necessary if Obama plans to ask Congress for more money to save the financial sector.

“It will never happen as long as the public perceives that there are people getting rich,” Dodd said in an interview. “Save their pay or save capitalism.”

That tone among Democrats flavored much of the discussion about how to write the stimulus bill, which the president planned to sign on Tuesday in Denver. Despite direct appeals from Geithner, Summers and White House officials, Democrats didn’t budge, according to administration officials.

The Obama administration’s proposed restrictions applied only to banks that receive “exceptional assistance” from the government. It set a $500,000 cap on pay for top executives and limited bonuses or additional compensation to restricted stock that could only be claimed after the firm had paid the government back.

The stimulus bill, however, sets executive bonus limits on all banks that receive infusions from the government’s $700 billion financial rescue fund. The number of executives affected depends on the amount of government assistance they receive. But as a rule, top executives will be prohibited from getting bonuses or incentives except as restricted stock that vests only after bailout funds are repaid and that is no greater than one-third of the executive’s annual compensation.

The prohibition would not apply to bonuses that are spelled out in an executive’s contract signed before Feb. 11, 2009.

At banks that received $25 million or less, the bonus restriction would apply only to the highest paid executives. At banks that receive $500 million or more, all senior executives and at least 20 of the next most highly compensated employees would fall under the bonus limits.

The White House claimed partial victory in this area. Officials also said that it would be up to Geithner to implement the bill and cautioned that the administration might be able to work out a deal with leaders on the Hill to modify some of the rules later.

The original bill said all banks receiving bailout money could give no bonuses to their top 25 employees. The White House worried that would dissuade smaller banks from taking — or keeping for long — the bailout money, which would slow their lending rates.

Administration officials also said they were worried Dodd’s plan would still allow multimillion dollar paychecks, just not structured as bonuses. The Obama plan would cap the entire compensation at $500,000 — with anything above that coming from restricted stock. Dodd’s plan provides no limit to base salary pay, which typically is relatively small but supplemented with gigantic bonuses.

Even so, the final bill was far stricter than the White House wanted.

“As he has already expressed, the president shares a deep concern about excessive executive compensation at financial firms that are receiving extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers,” spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday.

White House officials took credit for influencing other parts of Congress’ plan, including shareholder say on pay and a requirement for companies to disclose luxury expenditures, administration officials said.

Negotiators had removed a $400,000 pay cap included in an earlier draft. The Congressional Budget Office said it would cost some $11 billion in lost tax revenues by 2019.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington and Martin Crutsinger in Rome contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Obama ushers in more informal White House style

Posted by Irati on under Articles | Be the First to Comment

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Less than a month in office, President Barack Obama has ushered in a more informal White House culture that contrasts sharply with that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

From his dress to his schedule, Obama has introduced a more informal decorum. He receives his daily intelligence and economic briefings after 9:00 am, hours later than Bush. He is also known to sometimes burn the midnight oil, a sharp difference with his notoriously early-to-bed predecessor.

US President Barack Obama

Obama’s “laid-back style is a sharp contrast to President Bush. He is more laid back in appearance, more 24-7 in his work code,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

One of the first photographs released by the Obama White House shows the new commander-in-chief sitting in the Oval Office in shirtsleeves, casual attire that would have amounted to apostasy under Bush.

“There should be a dress code of respect,” Bush’s first White House chief of staff Andrew Card told Inside Edition, a syndicated television newsmagazine. “I wish that he would wear a suit and tie.”

“We?re wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited,” senior Obama adviser David Axelrod shot back in an interview with The Washington Post.

Even Bush was found to have sometimes let go of his reputedly strict suit-and-tie dress code.

Presidential casual dress does have a long tradition, with presidents ranging from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton at times kicking back and removing their jackets for important business.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day weekend with his family, Obama on Friday returned for the first time since his inauguration to his Chicago home, a far more urban setting than Bush’s isolated Texas ranch.

During his eight-year presidency, Bush spent all or part of about 490 days in Crawford, Texas and some 487 days at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, according to CBS News.

Don’t expect the same from Obama, who has kept up a frenetic schedule. The White House said he would make domestic trips once a week.

Reportedly chafing at his White House confinement, the new president turned to support outside the capital beltway to take his message directly to “Main Street,” traveling to Indiana, Florida, Virginia and Illinois this week. Next week, he is scheduled to head to Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona.

“He’s a bit of a restless soul,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has acknowledged. “His idea of a crazy day is to take a long walk … in solitude and isolation.”

Well-traveled and having grown up in Indonesia and Hawaii, Obama will likely overturn Bush’s tradition of flash visits abroad, spending more time speaking with foreign leaders and traveling to their cities’ sites.

“President Obama’s new style is more accessible and open than what we have seen in the past administration … This is a style that will help him during a period of great economic hardship,” said Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

“During crises, people want a leader with whom they can relate and who they believe understands their pain. His style will be a tremendous plus for him in the early days of his presidency.”

At Obama’s first press conference Monday, the atmosphere had lost much of the tension that became part and parcel of Bush’s interaction with the media.

In an unruly twist Bush would likely never have accepted, a reporter for Israel’s Channel 2 television shouted: “A question for Israel, Mr. President!” while holding up a sign that read “Israel.”

Quickly settling into his new digs, Obama has already hosted regular cocktail hours and other gatherings for political friends and foes.

And if you want a spot in the White House parking lot, don’t fret with Obama — there are still open spaces by mid-morning. Up until just a month ago, the presidential parking lot was often full before dawn.

“Bush was more formal and less open. He criticized staff members who came into the Oval Office without a coat and tie. His formal personal style isolated him from ordinary folks and eventually created a big gulf between him and voters,” West said.

Legend has it Bush once locked Colin Powell out of the Cabinet Room when the former secretary of state arrived late.

Agence France-Presse