CAEN, France — President Barack Obama on Saturday suggested a new and stronger response to North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing, promising to take “a very hard look” at the next steps.
He said North Korea has tested the limits of patient diplomacy intended to persuade the reclusive communist country to accept international demands and end to its nuclear program.
“Diplomacy has to involve the other side engaging in serious way, and we have not seen that reaction from North Korea,” Obama said. “I don’t think there should be an assumption that …

By Patrick Killelea, Wed Jun 3 2009

House prices will keep falling in most places because those prices are still dangerously high compared to incomes and rents. Banks say a safe mortgage is a maximum of 3 times the buyer’s yearly income. Landlords say a safe price is a maximum of 15 times the tenant’s yearly rent. Yet in coastal areas, both those safety rules are still being violated. Buyers are still borrowing 6 times their income, and sellers are still asking 30 times annual rent, even after …

In less than a year we have seen the bankruptcy of financial and industrial behemoths once thought impregnable: Lehman Brothers, Chrysler and GM. Selectively employing the mantra “too big to fail” with companies such as AIG and Citigroup, the U.S. government has sought to reassure the American public that it is acceptable for other large corporations to endure the tribulations of Chapter 11 reorganization; that bankruptcy is actually a healthy business process that will restore profitability to big companies overwhelmed by debt and the consequences of the Global Economic Crisis. …

Near the start of his much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, President Obama described himself as “a student of history;” by the end it was clear that he needs to get back to the classroom.
For all its well-intentioned rhetoric, President Obama’s speech was, sadly, conceptually flawed, empirically challenged, and politically blind to the daily realities that drive hundreds of millions of Muslims to increasing despair.
Conceptually, the President’s goal was clearly to help correct the mistaken notion shared by so many Muslims and Americans of the notion of an essential conflict …

Now that Bush administration officials have launched a major campaign to persuade us that torture “worked,” perhaps it’s worth recalling that George W. Bush’s own FBI director said in an interview last year that he wasn’t aware of a single planned terror attack on America that had been foiled by information obtained through torture.
Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama, delivered that assessment at the end of this December 2008 article in Vanity Fair on torture:
I ask Mueller: So far as …

The Bush administration did not inform Congress that it had waterboarded detainees in classified briefings, after the agency had already done so, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged Thursday.
Pelosi told reporters that the administration officials only told her and those in a classified briefing in the fall of 2002 that they believed they had the legal authority to do so, based on Office of Legal Counsel memos which have recently been released by the Obama administration.
“In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, were not told that …

Responding to the somewhat overwrought critique that Obama did not properly stand up to hostile Latin American leaders during a trip to the region this past week, David Axelrod accused critics of missing the point.
“I think some people misinterpreted what happened this past weekend,” said the president’s close adviser. “I think the real message of what happened this past weekend with the Cuban regime’s response to the president’s decision on remittances, or the overtures from president Chavez. I think what has happened is that anti-Americanism isn’t cool anymore.”
The remarks were …

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. cut about 140 jobs companywide last week as it tries to trim costs during its bankruptcy reorganization.
Read the whole story: Crain’s Chicago Business
Filed by Ben Goldberger

Remarks made by Obama senior adviser David Axelrod on Monday provide the clearest indication to date that the White House is not only uninterested in pursuing investigations of Bush officials involved in torture but views them as a distraction from a larger governing agenda.
Speaking before the Religious Action Center, a Reform Judaism advocacy organization, Axelrod warned against re-litigating the past, arguing that the current White House didn’t need such a distraction when it already had so much on its plate.
“The president believes strongly that we need to be looking forward,” …

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will attend a meeting Thursday with executives from top credit card companies as his administration moves to crack down on certain fees and other penalties, a White House spokeswoman said.
When the meeting was announced last week, Mr. Obama was not expected to attend. Instead, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers were expected to represent the administration’s position.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal
Filed by Marcus Baram