THURSDAY,  FEBRUARY 12,  2009

TOMORROW'S CRISIS TODAY, READ ALL ABOUT IT - AT 10:55 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

Some of the nation’s large banks, according to economists and other finance experts, are like dead men walking.

A sober assessment of the growing mountain of losses from bad bets, measured in today’s marketplace, would overwhelm the value of the banks’ assets, they say. The banks, in their view, are insolvent.

COMMENT:  It seems to me that we still don't know enough about this, and yet we're asked to write huge federal checks.  How did all this happen at essentially the same time?  Are there large banks that aren't in trouble?  How did they avoid it?  Is there criminality that should be probed?  These questions, and many more, must be asked if we are to avoid this travesty again.  But no one is asking very much.

SHAME, SHAME, A THOUSAND TIMES SHAME - AT 8:59 P.M. ET:  An item for you language buffs.  The following appeared in The New York Times yesterday:

“We’ll wrap it in plexiglass and put it in someone’s office,” Mr. Marciano said. “It should forever be part of the folklore of the place.”

COMMENT:  I would have been drawn and quartered during my tenure at the old Times for something like that.  It isn't plexiglass.  It's Plexiglas.  A trade name.  Capital letter, proper noun.  The disgrace of it all. 

THE START OF TROUBLE - AT 7:27 P.M. ET:  From The Politico:

Today, radio host Mario Solis Marich asked former President Bill Clinton if it was time for "some type of enforced media accountability."

"Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or we ought to have more balance on the other side," Clinton said, "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous...."

Clinton said that there needs to be either "more balance in the programs or have some opportunity for people to offer countervailing opinions." Clinton added that he didn't support repealing the Fairness Doctrine, an act done under Reagan's FCC.

COMMENT:  Is the former president suggesting that the liberal message has trouble getting through the American media?  Seriously?  Conservative talk radio flourishes because that's what radio audiences have voted for on their radio dials.  The big money didn't create conservative radio, it follows it.  If a liberal talk-show host was as popular as Rush, the money would flow there too.  When I was young, it was liberal hosts who dominated the airwaves, in large measure because many of them, like Barry Gray, were first-class broadcasters.  Let the audience decide.

GREGG OUT - AT 5:44 P.M. ET:  Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, nominated by President Obama to be secretary of commerce, has withdrawn his nomination, citing "irresolvable conflicts" with the administration.  It sounds like a Hollywood divorce.  I wonder who gets the Mercedes.

COMMENT:  At least the man has principles that he wouldn't bend.  He objected, correctly, to the idea that the census be taken out of the Department of Commerce and handled in the White House, a blatantly political move.  He also could not support the stimulus bill.

For Republicans, this is a good thing.  The battle is being joined on a number of key issues.  The party is not, as Margaret Thatcher liked to put it, "going wobbly."

DOW CLOSE - AT 5:25 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed down only seven points, at 7933.

HOW THE DOW? - AT 1:55 P.M. ET:  Well, it's down 152, to 7787.  Remember 8000? 

OH REALLY?

Posted at 12:51 p.m. ET:

A funny thing happened to the Iranian nuclear bomb on the way to being downplayed by some American intelligence officials and the American press.

A new guy became president.

The Los Angles Times reports that, Soviet style, the truth just changed in Washington.  Actually, it's good news for the truth tellers:

Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.

In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran's "development of a nuclear weapon" before correcting himself to refer to its "pursuit" of weapons capability.

Can you imagine press reaction if Dick Cheney had said it?  Can you just imagine?

The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.

As the administration moves toward talks with Iran, Obama appears to be sending a signal that the United States will not be drawn into a debate over Iran's intent.

That's nice.  Where were you last year, pal?

"When you're talking about negotiations in Iran, it is dangerous to appear weak or naive," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund, an anti-proliferation organization based in Washington.

Nice to know that.  This guy was a world-class Bush basher.  But how the party line changes with administrations.

U.S. officials said that although no new evidence had surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 estimate, there was growing consensus that it provided a misleading picture and that the country was poised to reach crucial bomb-making milestones this year.

Isn't that what President Bush and his allies - you know, the imperialist warmongers - were saying all along?

By November, Iran had produced an estimated 1,400 pounds of low-enriched uranium, not nearly enough to fuel a nuclear energy reactor, but perilously close to the quantity needed to make a bomb.

Of course, there's a lot of talk in the air about...talks.  Always talks.  There's a problem, however:

But experts said Iran was now close enough to nuclear weapons capability that it may be less susceptible to international pressure.

"They've made more progress in the last five years than in the previous 10," Cirincione said.

Scare tactics?  Scare tactics, anyone?  When BUSH (!!) said things like this, he was accused of fear mongering.  That was then, this is Obama.

February 12, 2009.      Permalink          

DOW NOW - AT 12:20 P.M. ET:  The Dow is down 119, to 7820.

HYPOCRISY DEFINED - AT 11:42 A.M. ET:  From AP:

LONDON (AP) -- A Dutch lawmaker barred from Britain because of his anti-Islamic views said Thursday he had been detained at London's Heathrow Airport and would be returned home.

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders told The Associated Press he would be returned to the Netherlands imminently.

COMMENT:  This is vile.  No matter what one may think of Wilders's views, Britain permits Muslim marchers and demonstrators to make the most disgusting anti-Christian and anti-Semitic comments, and rarely does anything about it.  We cannot have free speech only for some, and call it free.  I'll be going to a meeting with Wilders in a few weeks, and will report.  His case is becoming a major international scandal. 

DOW DOWN - AT 9:57 A.M. ET:  The Dow is down 196.  Hang on to your seatbelts.  It's going to be a bumpy night.  (What movie is that from?)

TAKE THREE - AT 8:27 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:

First impressions can be lasting ones. But in the case of Timothy Geithner, the White House is hoping its new treasury secretary will get a second chance.

Although his public debut was panned by the markets and members of Congress, Geithner remains one of the most critical administration players helping President Barack Obama jump-start the ever-worsening economy...

...Now, after a shaky first public appearance, the new administration is assessing what went wrong and what it can do better the next time.

COMMENT:   A second chance?  Does anyone remember Geithner's tax problems?  That was way, way back - about two weeks ago.  What about a third chance?  How many do you get in Chicago-politics-on-the-Potomac?

MESSY MURTHA - AT 8:23 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are “concerned” by a widening criminal probe that may involve Rep. John P. Murtha, but sources close to the leadership say there’s no move afoot to force him out as chairman of the powerful Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

“We are watching to see what happens,” said a senior House Democratic aide. “At this point, there is nothing for us to do. There is not a clear indication yet that Mr. Murtha has done anything wrong or that the Justice Department is targeting him in any way, so there is no reason to take any action.”

The new worries about Murtha come in the wake of news of a November raid of the PMA Group, a lobbying firm with close ties to the veteran Pennsylvania Democrat.

COMMENT:  What high ethical standards, what change we can believe in.  Gee, let's wait for the Justice Department to target the guy before we take any action.  Why upset the system?  Does the president have an opinion? 

SOME PROGRESS ON TERROR - AT 8:14 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan acknowledged for the first time in public on Thursday that parts of the murderous Mumbai terror attacks were planned on its soil and said six new suspects were being held, including “the main operator.”

Rehman Malik, the senior security official in the Interior Ministry, said the attackers had set sail from southern Pakistan to Mumbai, where they used inflatable boats whose engines had been purchased in the southern Pakistani port of Karachi.

COMMENT:  A positive step, but a word of caution:  The acknowledgment comes just as Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is arriving in Kabul.  The statement could be serious, or just more window dressing.  Stand by.

MORE "EXECUTIVE" GENIUSES - AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  From the Washington Post:

It's hard enough to lose a job. But for a growing proportion of U.S. workers, the troubles really set in when they apply for unemployment benefits.

More than a quarter of people applying for such claims have their rights to the benefit challenged as employers increasingly act to block payouts to former workers.

The proportion of claims disputed by former employers and state agencies has reached record levels in recent years, according to the Labor Department numbers tallied by the Urban Institute.

COMMENT:  Horribly cruel, stupid, and self-defeating.  There are legitimate reasons to deny unemployment-insurance claims, but this appears to be part of a "business decision" by some companies, whose required contributions to unemployment insurance funds are based on how much is paid out to their former employees.  This is the kind of thing - punishing whole families - that will create still more backlash against the free-enterprise system, something we don't need right now.  Responsible business organizations should immediately condemn strategies like this.  Urgent Agenda is a pro-free-enterprise site, which requires that we hold executives to high standards.  Sadly, a disturbing number these days aren't making the cut.

BRACE YOURSELVES - AT 7:40 A.M. ET: 

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks in Europe and Asia slipped and U.S. index futures fell as companies from Electricite de France SA to Diageo Plc posted disappointing results and investors speculated U.S. measures won’t revive the global economy.

COMMENT:  Our stimuli and bailout-i are getting a black eye from around the globe.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ABE - AT 7:34 A.M. ET:  Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.  Scott Johnson has some wonderful stuff at Power Line.

COMMENT:  I'd love to find out just how much our high-school and college students know about Lincoln.  Have they ever read the Gettysburg Address?  The Second Inaugural?  What are they taught about our country?  Don't ask, don't tell.

WEDNESDAY,  FEBRUARY 11,  2009

PRIORITIES? - AT 9:54 P.M. ET:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With thousands of fraud investigations under way, the FBI is considering shifting agents away from counterterrorism work to help sort through the wreckage of the financial meltdown.

FBI Deputy Director John Pistole told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that the bureau may reassign some of the positions that were reallocated to anti-terrorism work after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Such a move would be a further sign of the government breaking with the Bush administration's priorities, which pledged to assign every available resource to averting another terrorist attack.

COMMENT:  Feel safer?  With all the hundreds of billions they're spending on the "stimulus" package, you'd think they'd find some funds to increase the size of the FBI, hire and train more agents, and do both terror and fraud investigations.  Why should we have to choose?  We all know why.  Look who's in charge.

BUT THEY WON'T SPEAK FRENCH - AT 8:37 P.M. ET: 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is planning to travel to Syria next week, where he will meet with President Bashar Assad.

The trip, confirmed by a spokesman for the Massachusetts Democrat, comes as President Barack Obama looks for a way to repair the U.S. image abroad and engage regimes hostile to U.S. policies.

COMMENT:  Ordinarily, I'd say I'd want to be a fly on the wall during that meeting, but a fly on the wall would die of boredom.

WILL THEY EVER UNDERSTAND? - AT 7:29 P.M. ET:  From The Washington Times:

House Republicans are challenging Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the massive stimulus spending bill contains no pet projects after uncovering in the bill more than $30 million for wetlands conservation in her San Francisco Bay area district, including work she previously championed to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse.

COMMENT:  What is it with these right-wing, capitalist warmongers?  Don't they understand anything?  Where would this country be without the salt marsh harvest mouse?   Why, just yesterday I was reading Abraham Lincoln's tribute to that patriotic creature.  Much better than the Gettysburg Address.  I guess we'll have to put up with these Republicans until the new order arrives and the Fairness Doctrine gets rid of their mouthpieces.

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 7:08 P.M. ET:  From Michael Gerson at The Washington Post, who worries that President Obama's much-touted idea of pragmatism is devoid of any guiding principles:

It is still early in the Obama era. But it is already evident that pragmatism without a guiding vision or a fighting faith can become little more than the service of insistent political interests.

COMMENT:  Absolutely true.  President Bush was savaged by the "intellectual" classes for being too much of an idealist.  But we can use some of those ideals right now.

CHILL WIND FROM THE NORTH - AT 6:19 P.M. ET:  From Canada's National Post:

The Ontario Human Rights Commission is calling for Parliament to force all Canadian magazines, newspapers and "media services" Web sites to join a national press council with the power to adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination.

Chilling already.  Now, this is what it's really about:

The media's freedom of expression comes with a duty to "address issues of hate expression, and [media] should do so either voluntarily through provincial press councils, or through statutory creation of a national press council with compulsory membership," the report reads.

Translated into English:  "Hate," these days, is often a code word.  This is about complaints by radical Muslim groups who want to shut down any criticism of what they do.  They've tried this in Canada before, targeting writers like Mark Steyn.  How long before this kind of thing drifts down here?  Look at "speech codes" on college campuses for the answer.  Many of our students are being taught that suppression of free speech is just fine in pursuit of a "better" society.  Brrr. 

SENSITIVITY, AND TASTELESSNESS - AT 5:58 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested on Tuesday that he was open to allowing the media to photograph the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers as their bodies and remains are returned to the United States.

"If the needs of the families can be met and the privacy concerns can be addressed, the more honor we can accord these fallen heroes, the better," Mr. Gates told reporters.

COMMENT:  This whole issue infuriates me.  Let us use common sense here.  The people who are so insistent on vulgarizing our sacred war dead by photographing their coffins aren't interested in "freedom of the press," or "the people's right to know."  Our people know that men and women are killed in war.  They know what a coffin looks like.  They are sensitive to the loss felt by each family.  No, these insistent shutterbugs have another agenda - to demoralize the country, to teach Americans a "lesson" about the cost of Iraq, to advance their own political point of view.  They are tasteless.  This isn't about "honoring sacrifice."  It's about demeaning it.

MORE ORNAMENTS TO FREE ENTERPRISE - AT 5:45 P.M. ET: 

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Merrill Lynch & Co.’s top four bonus recipients received a combined $121 million just before the firm was acquired by Bank of America Corp., according to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

In all, Merrill “secretly and prematurely” awarded $3.6 billion in bonuses, with Bank of America’s “apparent complicity,” Cuomo said in a Feb. 10 letter to Representative Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Committee on Financial Services. The letter was made public today as chief executives from the eight largest U.S. banks face off against lawmakers at a committee hearing in Washington.

COMMENT:  If we slip into socialism in this country, part of the blame will lie with "executives" like this, who are providing all the excuses the leftists brigades need.  Lenin said that the capitalist West would sell Communist Russia the rope with which it would then hang the West.  These guys are among the top rope salesmen.

HOW THE DOW? - AT 5:28 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed up an anemic 51 points, to 7939, hardly a 21-gun salute to the stimulus package, and a shadow of the almost 400-point decline yesterday.

BULLETIN AT 3:43 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators announced Wednesday afternoon that they had reached agreement on a $789 billion economic stimulus bill, clearing the way for final action and President Obama’s signature.

COMMENT:  This bill is thousands of pages, and weighs pounds and pounds.  How did they go through all those items so fast?  They didn't, at least not carefully, which may be the real story here, and the ultimate tragedy. 

KATHLEEN COMING HOME - AT 3:22 P.M. ET:  Kathleen Parker, who wrongly went after Sarah Palin during the late election campaign, now is partially redeemed by writing a perceptive column on President Obama and his deficiencies.  Consider this:

Absent is maturity -- that grown-up quality of leadership that is palpable when the real deal enters a room. There's a reason why elders are respected. They have something the rest of us don't have -- yet -- because we haven't lived long enough. We haven't made the really tough decisions, the ones that are often unpopular.

And...

Obama's lack of authority over the stimulus package has underscored the value of political experience and toughness -- and given weakened Republicans the leverage they needed to launch an aggressive attack.

Well worth the read.

JINDAL RISING - AT 3:20 P.M. ET: 

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will get another prominent GOP role later this month when he delivers the national Republican response to President Barack Obama's first speech to Congress.

Obama plans to speak to a joint session of the House and Senate on Feb. 24 about the problems facing the nation. The speech will be similar to a State of the Union address.

Jindal will give the Republican response in a nationally televised address from Baton Rouge immediately after Obama's speech, U.S. House and Senate Republican leaders announced Wednesday.

COMMENT:  Great.  Jindal is a terrific, dynamic guy.  Obama's speeches as president have been dull and draggy.  Jindal, a problem solver, can show a contrast.  Selecting him shows solid strategy.

HILLARY?

Posted at 11:10 a.m. ET

We've asked the question before:  Why would Hillary Clinton give up a probable lifetime seat in the U.S. Senate to become a Cabinet officer for a man who defeated her and wants to neutralize her as a political threat? 

Reader Jim Birdsall alerts us to the fact that Dick Morris has been asking the same question.  Morris writes a devastating column explaining Hillary's plight:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is finding that her job description is dissolving under her feet, leaving her with only a vestige of the power she must have thought she acquired when she signed on to be President Obama’s chief Cabinet officer.

This is what's happened since she took the job:

Vice President Biden has moved vigorously to stake out foreign policy as his turf...

...Richard Holbrooke, the former Balkan negotiator and U.N. ambassador, has been named special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He insisted on direct access to the president, a privilege he was denied during much of the Clinton years...

...Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine), negotiator of the Irish Peace Accords, was appointed to be the administration’s point man on Arab-Israeli negotiations...

...Samantha Power, Obama’s former campaign aide, who once called Hillary a “monster,” has been appointed to the National Security Council (NSC) as director of “multilateral affairs"...

...Gen. James L. Jones, Obama’s new national security adviser, has announced an expansion of the membership and role of the NSC...

...Susan Rice, Obama’s new United Nations ambassador, insisted upon and got Cabinet rank for her portfolio...

Where does this leave Madame Secretary?

While sympathy for Mrs. Clinton is outside the normal fare of these columns, one cannot help but feel that she is surrounded by people who are, at best, strangers and, at worst, enemies.

Yeah, you do get the feeling.  For Hillary, though, that's the normal condition.

Hillary’s essential problem is that she is an outsider in the current mix. She was the adversary in the campaign, and Rice and Powers — at the very least — know it well, having helped to run the campaign that dethroned her. Can they — and she — be devoid of bitterness or at least of normal human trepidation? Not very likely.

And the reality:

The power of the secretary of State flows directly from the president. But Hillary does not have the inside track with Obama.

Finally...

So what is Hillary’s mandate? Of what is she secretary of State? If you take the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan out of the equation, what is left? One would have to assume that the old North Korea hands in the government would monopolize that theater of action. What, precisely, is it that Hillary is to do? The question lingers.

And for this she gave up a Senate seat?

Yes, she did.  And we can almost envision the day she'll see it in her interest to resign, possibly in protest over a policy, possibly because Obama will fail and she won't want to be linked to the failure.  Don't count her out.  That mistake has been made before.

February 11, 2009.      Permalink          

REMEMBER THESE GUYS? - AT 10:26 A.M. ET: 

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea has been moving missile equipment to a launch pad in a further indication the country is taking steps toward test firing a long-range missile, a news report said Wednesday.

The report came the same day that North Korea announced it had replaced its two top military officials and amid heightened tension between the Koreas. Pyongyang said late last month it would scrap all peace accords with Seoul and has periodically warned of war on the divided peninsula.

COMMENT:  This comes at a time when there's doubt about whether Obama will continue our missile-defense program.  Doubt is not good.  It creates a vacuum.  The North Koreans will be more than happy to fill it. 

MORE CHEER FROM THE MONEY MEN - AT 9:53 A.M. ET: 

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund, said the global economy faces a “second wave” of turmoil unless governments adopt larger spending plans.

“The economic setback is still in its early stages,” Koyo Ozeki, head of Asia-Pacific credit research at Pimco’s Tokyo office, wrote in a report published today on the company’s Web site. “Any further decline in housing prices could accelerate the downturn, intensifying the pernicious feedback loop and possibly leading to a second wave in the financial crisis in the next six to 12 months.”

COMMENT:  We've had this warning before.  There seems to be a stoicism on the part of most Americans, possibly stemming from the fact that The One is in power, with the audacity of hope floating around, and the fact that most people haven't been hit that hard and, as of now, that directly.  Clearly, that can change.  If the stimulus and bailout plans start to fail, there could be a bitter backlash, accompanied by an accusatory atmosphere.

DOW NOW - AT 9:40 A.M. ET:  The Dow opened up 75, for no apparent reason.

IN THE TANK JOURNALISM?  NAH. - AT 9:11 A.M. ET:  There's over the top, then there's over the cliff.   Put Vogue magazine and The Washington Post together, and that cliff is coming up pretty fast.  Vogue will feature Michelle Obama on its March cover, and the Post has a story about that story.  The Vogue cover reads:

MICHELLE OBAMA
The First Lady the World's Been Waiting For

Really?

The world?  The whole world?  They've been waiting for Michelle Obama in Finland?  Is the waiting over in New Zealand?  How about Honduras?  Did Vogue do a poll there?  As we've said in this space before, whenever they tell you that "the world" is doing something, run in the other direction.

It doesn't end there.  The Post's story on the story gushes with gush.  Get this.  Really savor it:

She is wearing a magenta dress by Jason Wu, who designed her inaugural ball gown. Her hand rests under her chin. Her left hand is folded beneath her.

Behind her, soft light streams between curtains. It is the pose of America's sweetheart.

It is?  This is the way a sweetheart poses?  I did not know that.

And then:

Even if you take race off the table, there is an awe of how this new administration can bring energy to the conversation around how beauty can intersect with power. And how power can be beauty.

The reporter who wrote this story needs restraining devices.  They're available in those little stores that feature crutches in the window and neon signs saying, "We take Medicare."

AN AFGHAN GREETING - AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Attackers firing automatic rifles and wearing explosive vests stormed the Justice Ministry in central Kabul on Wednesday while others burst into another government building in the north of the city, triggering chaos as ministry workers fled, witnesses said.

Coming on the eve of a scheduled visit by Richard C. Holbrooke, President Obama’s newly appointed special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the attacks displayed the apparent ease with which Taliban insurgents who control much of the Afghan countryside can also breach the defenses of the heavily-fortified capital.

COMMENT:  This will be hotter than Iraq very soon.  Ambassador Holbrooke has gotten his reception. The key figure here, of course, is President Obama.  Will he have the fortitude of President Bush, or devise a way to get out, without any real gain for us?

A FLOP IN FULL - AT 8:20 A.M. ET:  Cue the organ music: 

"Will blond-haired Kirsten, from the sweet, conservative towns north of New York, be able to survive in the cold, heartless precincts of the big city, as she fights for the career that is the stuff of dreams?"

Organ music down.  Commercial:  Ivory Soap.

And that's what it's become here in New York - a soap opera starring Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, recently appointed by Governor David Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton.  Gillibrand, presumably a moderate, hails from outside the holy city of New York, and, in New York Democratic politics, that's a sin in itself.  Now she's run into the establishment's buzz saw.  The New York Post reports the depressing result: 

Gillibrand, formerly a single-term centrist congresswoman from a Republican-leaning Upstate district, is running as fast as possible from every position that used to separate her from the state's Democratic elite:

* On immigration, she'd been a vocal opponent of "any proposal" that would have given amnesty to illegal aliens - until a group of Hispanic Dems threatened to torpedo her re-election hopes. Now she conveniently backs a "path to citizenship" for illegals.

* The same goes for gay marriage, which she campaigned against in 2006 but now says she supports.

* Meanwhile, though she continues to insist she supports "hunters' rights," Gillibrand - formerly an aggressive Second Amendment supporter - apologized yesterday for not being "a leader" in fighting gun violence.

COMMENT:  That's simply the reality here.  She's got to run in 2010 for the remainder of Clinton's term.  She'll probably face a primary challenge.  No dissent is permitted, and there is no respect for any position from outside the New York City orbit.  Also, the Kennedy family wants to erase Gillibrand because she got the Senate appointment that Caroline had wanted.  I'd give Kirsten no better than a 50-50 shot at political survival. 

BAD REVIEWS - AT 7:43 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:

The Obama administration’s revamped program to fix the nation’s ailing financial markets was met with harsh criticism Tuesday, as the stock market tumbled and lawmakers complained that it lacked details and missed essential targets.

The generally negative response to the new plan unveiled by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner means the White House will clearly have to invest more time, energy and political capital into explaining the package and selling it to Congress.

COMMENT:   How many months has the Obama team had since the election to get things right?  I think it's three.  Oh, and Tim, while you're patching this program, make a note to get your taxes in.

ISRAEL RESULTS - AT 7:18 A.M. ET:  Results of the Israel election were inconclusive.  The centrist Kadima Party, headed by centrist Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, edged out the rightist Likud, headed by former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.  However, rightist parties, considered as a bloc, did slightly better than leftist and centrist parties.  President Shimon Peres will consult with the parties and will choose either Livni or Netanyahu to try to form a coalition government.  His heart is probably with Livni, but practical politics and raw numbers may favor Netanyahu.

COMMENT:  Neither Livni nor Netanyahu are bargains.  Livni is considered something of a lightweight.  Netanyahu is a heavy-handed heavyweight, ambitious and obnoxious.  When he was prime minister he had a poor relationship with President Clinton, whose wife is now our secretary of state.  His hard-line policies, while they may well be correct, and are often brilliantly stated, can give ammunition to some of the anti-Israel hangers-on in the Obama administration, like Samantha Power.  On the other hand, Livni would be quicker to give in to the "negotiations above all" crowd.  Bumpy road ahead.