Friday Obama Roundup (excerpts, with video)

"Beyond Obama's Town Hall" (Ari Melber-The Nation) with a video (02:27) from MelissaJenna, "Staying Involved: Ask The President":

President Obama fielded eight questions from guests at his town hall event Thursday, including one from the instantly famous eight-year-old Ethan Lopez. It is obviously great for the President to directly interact with citizens, especially as the nation makes such big choices about how to address the economic crisis. Why should the opportunity be arbitrarily limited, however, to people who happened to attend a packed presidential event in one part of the country?

There's no good answer.

"Our Justified Populist Rage" (E. J. Dionne-WaPo):

Conservatives have argued for decades that the sins most dangerous to our society were rooted in lust when in fact they were rooted in greed.

We are at the beginning of a great popular rebellion against those who showed no self-restraint when it came to lining their own pockets. Their entitlement mentality arose from an inflated sense of their own value and of how much smarter they were than everyone else.

The sound you are hearing in response to the AIG payoffs -- excuse me, bonuses -- is the rancorous noise of their arrogance crashing to earth.

"Does Geithner Get It?" (Eugene Robinson-WaPo)with
video (1:22):

President Obama's claim that Timothy Geithner faces a more daunting set of challenges than any Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Geithner may indeed be the hardest-working man in Washington. But to survive, let alone succeed, he's going to have to make a more convincing case that he's part of the solution and not part of the problem.

"Obama puts up $2.4 bln for electric vehicles" (AFP):

President Barack Obama Thursday unveiled a 2.4 billion dollar boost for electric vehicle development, vowing to compete with foreign nations in the race to be world leader on renewable energy.

"We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad or we can create them here in America and lay the foundation for lasting prosperity," Obama said on the second day of a campaign-style swing in California.

Barack Obama