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U.S. Seeks Expanded Power to Seize Firms — Goal Is to Limit Risk to Broader Economy — The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers …
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Obama Dials Down Wall Street Criticism — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, after months of criticizing Wall Street, has been scrambling to woo top bankers and financiers to back its latest bailout plan. — In recent days, in spite of public furor over huge bonuses paid …
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JustOneMinute, The Opinionator, On Deadline, Washington Post, Gawker, Open Left, Democracy in America and FiveThirtyEight

MUST READ — There's an eye-opening, perhaps eye-popping, article in tomorrow's Journal ("Obama Dials Down Wall Street Criticism"), the gist of which is that over the last three months Obama and his team have learned that they've got to start respecting Wall Street and the big banks if they want to get anything done.


Senate Will Delay Action on Punitive Tax on Bonuses — Jarred by a cool reception from the White House and fears of unintended consequences across the financial world, Senate leaders are likely to delay until late next month legislation to punitively tax bonuses at banks and investment firms that receive federal aid.

Rescue Plan, With Some Fine Print, Dazzles Wall Street
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Wall Street Journal, The Hill, The Note, Philly.com, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Salon, marbury, The New Republic, Gawker and Blogs and Stories

Poll of change: Obama's job approval slipping to ‘50-50’ — + Recent Articles + Recent Blog Entries + Email + Bio — The honeymoon is over, a national poll will signal tomorrow as President Obama's job approval stumbles to about 50 percent over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy.
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China calls for new reserve currency — China's central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund. — In an essay posted on the People's Bank of China's website, Zhou Xiaochuan …
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HOW WOULD HE PRONOUNCE “CASSIOPEIA”? — Everyone knows that Barack Obama is lost without his teleprompter, but his latest blunder, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via the Corner, suggests that the teleprompter may not be enough unless it includes phonetic spellings.
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Go back into hiding, GOP begs Dick Cheney — Congressional Republicans are telling Dick Cheney to go back to his undisclosed location and leave them alone to rebuild the Republican Party without his input. — Displeased with the former vice-president's recent media appearances …

Obama seeks filter-free news — At a time when his Washington honeymoon is turning into a hazing, President Barack Obama and his team are launched on a strategy to sail above the traditional White House press corps by reaching out to liberal commentators, local reporters and ethnic media.
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UPDATED: — President Barack Obama on Tuesday published an editorial in 31 newspapers around the world, from Riyadh to Hong Kong to New Delhi to Chicago, attempting to stake out a strong leadership position at next month's global economic summit in London. — “The United States is ready to lead …
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The Raw Story
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$50 Million in A.I.G. Bonuses to Be Repaid — The New York State attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, said on Monday that he had persuaded nine of the top 10 bonus recipients at the American International Group to give the money back, as the Senate retreated on plans to tax such bonuses.
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Congress isn't feeling much heat from Obama's ‘army’ — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's army of canvassers fanned out across the nation over the weekend to drum up support for his $3.55 trillion budget, but they had no noticeable impact on members of Congress, who on Monday said they were largely unaware of the effort.

O'Reilly Attacks Me As A ‘Villain’ For Highlighting His Rape Comments — As promised, tonight, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly aired his segment alleging that ThinkProgress caused “pain and suffering” to rape victims. Our unspeakable offense was contained in a March 1 blog post …

Bank of America's Bernstein Says Sell Bank Stocks After Rally — Investors should sell bank stocks after they rallied 12 percent today because the Treasury Department's plan to buy toxic assets won't stop profits from dropping, Bank of America Corp.'s Richard Bernstein said.

House bonus bill is buried by the Senate — President Obama and Senate Democrats have buried a bill passed last week by the House that would have heavily taxed executive bonuses at bailed-out firms. — Despite the public outcry over $165 million in bonuses awarded at troubled insurer AIG …


Tammy Bruce Calls The Obamas “Trash In The White House” — Tammy Bruce, guest host for Laura Ingram's radio show, had some harsh words for First Lady Michelle Obama. — Discussing the first lady's visit to a Washington D.C. classroom last week, Bruce incredulously recalled Obama's story …
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Taylor Marsh, Jack & Jill Politics, No More Mister Nice Blog, Multi Medium, MoJo Blog Posts and Oliver Willis


Will Obama Listen to Iran's Bloggers? — Barack Obama extended the olive branch to Iran's leaders last Friday in a videotaped message praising a “great civilization” for “accomplishments” that “have earned the respect of the United States and the world.” The death of Iranian blogger Omid-Reza Mirsayafi …

Townhall: Michelle Obama is a Bitch, Get It? — Burt Perlutsky was a TV writer a long time ago. Then he aged out of it and became a crank. This wasn't one of those major loses like Steinbeck. Now he writes a column for Townhall.com, the popular website owned by a Christian radio network.
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Comments from Left Field

Video: Organizing for America's training program — I've been mulling over this latest entry from Naked Emperor News since yesterday afternoon, when I first saw it. On one hand, organizing for political change is perfectly fine, and I suppose training videos to make organizing more successful make sense.

Culture Shock — What happened when one conservative Web site ventured outside the movement bubble. — Last May, Conor Friedersdorf, a twenty-eight-year-old recent graduate of NYU's Journalism School, decided he was going to save conservative journalism.

Consider This: NPR Achieves Record Ratings — At a time when newspapers, magazines and TV news continue to lose readers and viewers, at least one part of the traditional media has continued to grow robustly: National Public Radio. — The audience for NPR's daily news programs, including …
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NewsBusters.org