This clip is from the local Fox affiliate in New York today. New Yorkers seem to be very angry about having been chosen for what seemed to many a re-enactment of 9/11. Buildings were evacuated and people fled in fear of their lives. Some were injured trying to escape what they imagined to be a new terrorist attack. And all because the White House wanted to update its file photos of Air Force One, and failed to consider the obvious: that jumbo jets flying at Manhattan without warning are bound to terrify people.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Republicans charged that Obama and his team lacked the experience and judgment to tackle the challenges the nation faces. But did anyone expect that one of those ‘tough’ calls would be whether to send a jumbojet screaming toward Manhattan at low altitude, chased by F-16s? Before today, I would have told you that was one of the easy questions - especially when it was nothing more than a photo-op.

The White House was quick today to throw its own appointee under the bus. Louis Caldera - whom Obama named to this job almost 5 months ago - quickly took the blame for the decision to send the president’s plane to New York for some publicity shots. It appears that Caldera also takes the blame for forbidding information about the flyover to be disclosed to the public. Reports say that the Presidential Airlift Group made the decision to keep this a secret. And according to the White House webpage, the Group falls under Caldera’s jurisdiction.

I see no indication of how many people work under Caldera, or how many oversee his decisions. However, it boggles the mind to think that there were no grownups in the White House who recognized what a terrible idea this was. But then again, lapses in judgment seem to be par for the course with this administration.

Read and be shocked:

Just days before Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was scheduled to lay out his much-anticipated plan to deal with the toxic assets imperiling the financial system, he and his team made a sudden about-face.

According to several sources involved in the deliberations, Geithner had come to the conclusion that the strategies he and his team had spent weeks working on were too expensive, too complex and too risky for taxpayers.

They needed an alternative and found it in a previously considered initiative to pair private investments and public loans to try to buy the risky assets and take them off the books of banks. There was one problem: They didn’t have enough time to work out many details or consult with others before the plan was supposed to be unveiled.

The sharp course change was one of the key reasons why Geithner’s plan — his first major policy initiative as Treasury secretary — landed with such a thud last Tuesday. Lawmakers, investors and analysts expressed dismay over the lack of specifics. Markets tanked, and fresh doubts arose about the hand now steering the country’s financial policy.

Public acceptance of the plan suffered from several missteps, said sources involved in the decision-making or in close contact with those who were.

The Obama administration, they said, failed to rein in the grand expectations built for the plan on Wall Street and in Washington, concluding that they would rather disappoint the markets with vagueness than lay out a lot of details they might have to change later — a failing they saw in the Bush administration’s handling of the crisis.

Meanwhile, the sources said, Obama’s senior economic advisers were hobbled in crafting the plan by a shortage of personnel. To date, the president has not nominated any assistant secretaries or undersecretaries at the Treasury, and the handful of mid-level staffers who have started work were still finding their offices and getting their building passes and BlackBerrys.

Read More →

It must be interesting to make collection calls to the presidential palace in Caracas:

Venezuela’s state oil company is behind on billions in payments to private oil contractors from Oklahoma to Belarus, some of which have now stopped work, even as President Hugo Chavez funnels more oil revenue to social programs.

Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, says unpaid invoices jumped 39 percent in the first nine months of last year — reaching $7.86 billion in September. And that was when world oil was selling for $100 a barrel.

With prices plummeting by more than half, PDVSA is trying to renegotiate some contracts. But analysts say hardball tactics to reduce charges from crucial service providers could backfire by lowering Venezuela’s oil output. And foreign debt markets are reflecting jitters about Venezuela’s finances.

Pity the poor people of Venezuela who must suffer the consequences of Hugo Chavez’s incompetence.

An agreement has been reached between Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that allows the latter to join a government of national unity in Zimbabwe. The terms of the deal are . . . well . . . take a look:

ROBERT MUGABE, the Zimbabwean president, will have the power to dismiss his arch-opponent from a government of national unity even though the two men have agreed to join forces in an effort to rescue the country’s ruined economy.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who will become prime minister, could be sacked for incompetence under the terms of a deal that leaves the 84-year-old president firmly in control.

There were mixed reactions to the deal in Zimbabwe. Some feared Mugabe would use Tsvangirai, 56, to extend his power. Others felt that the opposition leader would neutralise the president. One opposition sympathiser said she was “hop-ing for the best but preparing for the worst”.

The story of one’s life if one follows politics in Zimbabwe. Why Tsvangirai agreed to this monstrously bad deal is anyone’s guess. The story indicates that the deal was necessary if there was to be any chance whatsoever of Zimbabwe getting foreign aid, but what is to stop the Mugabe government from getting rid of Tsvangirai once the aid is received? Additionally, what of British and American assurances–also noted in the story–that any government which had Mugabe as the President should be ineligible for aid?

Far from being any path towards national unity in Zimbabwe, this deal seems, instead, to be a not-so-subtle way for Mugabe to consolidate his authority. No responsible member of the international community should support it in any respect.