President Obama held an online forum last night organized by You Tube and Google+. Readers submitted questions via You Tube and text. They also voted on the questions submitted by others. Obama took questions from five people via You Tube.

Those were five lucky people: According to the White House' YouTube channel, almost 230,000 people submitted 133,183 questions, and 1.6 million people gave those questions an up or down vote.

Here's how it worked: [More...}

Leon Pannetta outlined the new Pentagon cuts today. Fewer troops, increased use of drones, and a bigger role for Secret Ops.

US special forces that were previously committed to Iraq will now be used around the globe, Mr Panetta said.

...Mr Panetta said there would be funding for a floating base that would serve special operations forces as well as drone units.

President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address tonight. It's theme is Economic Unfairness . (Update: Transcript here.)

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” he will continue. “Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

He'll remind us once again that in his view, this is not a Republican or a Democratic issue, but a U.S. issue. I hated that line in his 2008 campaign (no red states or blue states) and I doubt I'll like it much more tonight.

What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.”

The New York Times has excerpts from the the book, "The Obamas." The book, which will be published Tuesday, devotes many pages to the role of Michelle Obama. Shorter version: She gets frustrated with her husband's staff at times and she is Obama's biggest supporter. So what else is new?

Glenn Greenwald's takeaway:

Reading this Jodi Kantor excerpt makes one think things may have been better if Michelle Obama had been Chief of Staff:

Geithner!

It’s housing, stupid. More precisely, it’s housing finance. As the Obama administration seeks ways to revive the economy, not to mention win an election, it is becoming clear that the biggest mistake officials made when they took office nearly three years ago was to underestimate the continuing damage to the economy from the mortgage crisis.

No sh*t.

Krugman:

What’s unforgivable is the way policymakers, both at the Fed and elsewhere, basically declared Mission Accomplished as soon as the panic in financial markets subsided and stocks were up again. When spring rolls around, we’ll reach the third anniversary of Ben Bernanke’s declaration that “green shoots” were making an appearance — and there will still be 4 million Americans who have been out of work for more than a year. Yet there has been no sense of urgency about dealing with unemployment; indeed, most of the elite conversation has been about stuff like cutting Social Security payments a decade or two from now.

As Drum says, that’s the true radicalizing experience.

I'm curious to know how Drum, and Krugman for that matter, have been "radicalized." I mean, we all know Tim Geithner was the person who fought hard for the approach the Obama Administration has taken. Shouldn't someone "radicalized" be asking why Geithner is still the Treasury Secretary? Sure, the GOP won't let you name a Treasury Secretary afterwards, but wouldn't the removal of Geithner be a positive in and of itself? If not, why not?

Speaking for me only

President Obama has decided to pardon more than a White House turkey this Thanksgiving. Yesterday, he issued 5 pardons and commuted one sentence.

The pardons are unimpressive. Three of the pardons were issued to people who had received probation more than a decade ago. The other two pardons were issued to people who finished serving their sentences 20 years ago.

On the other hand, the commutation deserves praise: Obama commuted the sentence of a woman named Eugenia Jennings, who was sentenced in 2001 to 22 years (262 months) for distributing crack cocaine in the Southern District of Illinois. It was her third felony crack conviction. Under Obama's order, she'll be released next week, after serving 10 years. She'll still have to serve 8 years of supervised release.

I just finished reading her 2001 sentencing transcript and her rejected 2008 motion to reduce her sentence under the Sentencing Commission's two level reduction in crack cocaine guidelines that year. Both are available on PACER. It's a very interesting story, one the sentencing judge, G. Patrick Murphy, called a tragedy.

Here's the tragedy of Eugenia Jennings:[More...]

Jon Chait regurgitates his article on "why liberals should not be disappointed in Obama" (in other news, Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen regurgitate their "Obama should not run for reelection" article.) I scanned the first two pages and saw nothing new, so I stopped reading.

I'll regurgitate my old line on why there is seemingly a significant amount of disappointment on the Left in President Obama -- his supporters believed he was really a progressive, unlike that Third Way/DLC Hillary Clinton. You read it here a lot - "not a dime's worth of difference" on policy. Obama supporters (I mean emotional supporters, I supported Obama because I thought he was the most electable of 2 candidates who were basically the same on policy) wanted and did believe otherwise. They were wrong. Now they are disappointed. Not surprising really.

There, I saved you the 10 minutes you would have taken to reread Chait's lecture on why you should not be disappointed in President Obama.

Busy again. But read John Judis' review of the Ron Susskind book.

And yes, Geithner should have been fired.

Open Thread.

Why has the administration’s flagship foreclosure prevention program been so ineffective in helping struggling homeowners get loan modifications and stay in their homes? One reason: The government’s supervision of the program has apparently ranged from nonexistent to weak.

[. . .] “For two years, they’ve known how abysmal servicers were performing, and decided to do nothing,” said Neil Barofsky, the former special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP or the bank bailout, which provided the money for HAMP. “It demonstrates that if you have a set of rules for which compliance is completely voluntary and no meaningful consequences for those who violate them, having all the audits and reviews in the world are not going to make a bit of difference,” he continued. “It’s why the program has been a colossal failure.”

Remember, this was the Obama Administration's major initiative to address the homeowners crisis in America. Geithner is an incompetent scoundrel. If Obama loses next year, it will be because of Tim Geithner.

Speaking for me only

Via Greg Sargent, who writes:

The story here is not what the White House said but that it was asked to weigh in on the protests at all — another sign of the remarkable speed with which it has grown from a crowd chanting at police two weeks ago. As for the substance of the White House response, it would have been a mistake for it to go any further than it did here — registering an understanding of economic frustration. Because if there’s one thing that’s growing clearer by the hour, it’s that this is an entirely organic effort, one that’s about nobody but the protestors themselves.

I think Greg misses an important point - the White House's cozy relationship with Wall Street is part of what is being protested. Hard to see an Administration that has Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary being in tune with a protest against Wall Street. BTW, as long as offering "an agenda" to Occupy Wall Street seems to be the latest rage, here's my contribution - demand the firing of Tim Geithner.

NYTimes:

The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear a case concerning the 2010 health care overhaul law. The development came unexpectedly fast and makes it all but certain that the court will soon agree to hear one or more cases involving challenges to the law, with arguments by the spring and a decision by June, in time to land in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign.

This is an interesting development, and to me, surprising. Policywise, I am not sure I see the urgency. As a matter of politics, I need to think about this one. (Alternate thought, POTUS team believes SCOTUS wants to hear the case in 2012. IF so better to look as if you want it too.)

In terms of legal tactics, I think it is not smart. Scalia and Kennedy seem less likely to vote with the Administration in an election year to me. Better for the case to be decided in 2013 it seems to me.

Speaking for me only

Last night, the Senate confirmed six U.S. Attorneys, five of whom were the preference of Republicans. Traditionally, nominations for U.S. Attorneys are presented to the President by the senators of the district. If the district's senators are not in the President's party, representatives from the House who are in the same party are consulted.

President Obama. however, has chosen to ignore tradition and nominate U.S. Attorneys preferred by Republican senators, against the advice of House Democrats. [More...]

President Obama issues a Presidential Memorandum on Major Illicit Drug Transit today.

Obama says he almost put Canada on the list for being a major transit point for Marijuana and Ecstasy. He also praised the African countries that worked on the DEA's Excellent African Adventures.

What effect does the Memorandum have? Legally, it's the same as an Executive Order, but this one doesn't seem to call for any action. It also doesn't seem to be tied to a denial or reduction in aid to these countries. Is it the opposite? A prelude to spending more money on the drug war in these countries? (Added: BBC News article on memo is here.)

Jacob Sullum has the October cover story at Reason on President Obama: Bummer: Barack Obama Turns Out to Be Just Another Drug Warrior." As if anyone should be surprised.

I'm not. I've been writing since 2007 that he would do little to temper the War on Drugs. I would have called the article "Bummer: Barack Obama is Still A Drug Warrior." Why?

[More....]