She was afraid of being sent to her room without supper. AIG Vice Chairman Anastasia Kelly, who was in charge of legal, human resources, corporate affairs and corporate communications, resigned with “good reason” over her executive pay. She’s eligible for severance, and man, that severance should keep her from eating cans of Chef Boyardee for a long time – $2.8 million. source
You know they had information that an analyst could have quickly put together and said ‘something’s wrong here’ and it didn’t get done.
Former CIA and military intelligence officer Joseph Cuellar • Describing what CBS News refers to as “no sense of urgency” to stop a terror attack like the underwear bomber. Cuellar and others are calling the response inexcusable. OK, guys, after days of establishing this, how are we going to fix it? Right now, the incident is a total political echo chamber we need to escape, stat. source
criticism Former veep Dick Cheney’s take on Obama: “He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war.”
smackdown The administration’s take on Dick Cheney: “It is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers.” Ouch. source
Obviously playing politics As you might have noticed, we’ve been hard on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over the last couple of months because of his seemingly obvious attempts to stonewall progress on health care, not offer any real solutions, and really just try to kill Obama dead in in the water. Which is why it’s nice to hear Arlen Specter, who caucused with the GOP at the beginning of 2009 only to switch sides, basically say it.
What the Senate needs The Senate needs some reforms, because right now it’s clearly weighted against the majority party too much. The House can get things done with a simple majority; the Senate, however, has all these useless votes and filibusters, and needs a two-thirds majority to even be useful. Arlen’s been on both sides, and he’s been a Senator long enough that his words should be heeded. Good show, man.
The only reason that the U.S. economy is doing as well as it is, is because of the government stimulus package. Now, if the government doesn’t introduce another stimulus package, this one will burn off in the first half and in the second half we could easily slip back into recession.
Westwood Capital Managing Director Len Blum • Arguing for the need for more stimulus on CNBC this morning. He notes that the government isn’t exactly in a position to be giving out more stimulus money due to the massive amount of lending it’s doing at the moment. Is this guy full of it? Depends on who you ask. Others argue that we might see a soft landing instead of a double dip. We argue that CNBC is full of speculation and it’s kinda hard to trust the speculation from their network. source
neat An Italian artistic collective creates an art project called Seppukoo, designed to allow people to kill their virtual Facebook identities. It’s clearly a novelty.
lame Facebook, claiming it’s a big, bad privacy violation and a bunch of other things, gets lawyers involved. Seppukoo, bravely, doesn’t back down at all. source
Sure doesn’t sound like an awesome job. A while back, Ben Southall won a job as caretaker of a gorgeous Australian island. It was marketed as the “best job in the world,” and applications were accepted via YouTube. Well, one thing they didn’t tell you in the job description was that you could get stung by deadly Irukandji jellyfish and nearly die, as Southall did. This, friends, is why you shouldn’t have ambition. It stings you back sometimes. source