TeresaCentric

Join Ted Johnson, Maegan and I as we interview CNN's Ali Velshi about the economic downturn, the stimulus, and explaining it all to the American people.

Thanks to my incredible co-host Maegan Carberry, tomorrow's episode of our weekly podcast Wilshire & Washington will feature Chief CNN Business Correspondent Ali Velshi. I've got loads of questions for him, but here are the most important ones I've come up with so far:

1. Will the economic stimulus package as it stands today really stimulate the economy? Or is this legislation merely designed to get at confidence in the strength of our markets?
2. Will the new administration do the right thing -- which might just be to throw more money at absorbing toxic assets held by our banking system -- when the public is fed up with bailing out Wall Street?
3. Does the hint of a possible bailout just make businesses sit on their heels and wait rather than righting their own ships, thus causing stagnation? (Thanks to Ike Piggot for that one.)
4. How will this economic implosion impact the pace of innovation in the tech sector, particularly in the area of social computing?

But I would be deeply remiss in my duties as a blogger if I did not give my loyal readers a chance to ask Mr. Velshi questions as well. So leave 'em in the comments below, folks, and I'll throw them his way tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. PST / 10:30 Eastern on Wilshire & Washington. Join us!

Obama held another round of talks with Republican leaders today, this time in regards to a key component of his $825 billion stimulus plan. That component being Obama's desire to, essentially, print money and give it to poor people. That may be an oversimplification of giving tax rebates to those who have jobs but who do not make enough money to pay income taxes. But, not surprisingly, Republicans were staunchly opposed to the idea of giving money to people who arguably have not earned it. Now, I'm generally in favor of tax increases and opposed to tax cuts no matter who you are: rich, poor, or middle-class. After all, we can't borrow a trillion dollars a year from China forever. Eventually they'll catch on they we probably aren't going to pay them back. However, this is one tax cut and one aspect of Obama's somewhat ridiculous spending spree that I actually support. The thing about a "stimulus" is that it is supposed to get money flowing back into the economy. Now, as we found out with TARP, if you give money to people during a recession and they save it in a vault, that doesn't really do anything to stimulate the economy (I could have told Bush, Paulson, and Obama that, but I guess they needed to spend half a trillion dollars to figure it out for themselves). However, there is one group of people who might not save money in a vault or mattress in a recession. That would be people don't make very much money. When you're broke, poor, and have a crappy apartment with cupboards full of Ramin noodles, you're probably going to the spend a big government handout pretty quickly. Food, clothing, silverware, that kind of stuff. And that money goes into the economy pretty much right away. So my view is this: we tried giving billions of dollars to rich people to stimulate the economy. While that did help the French luxury jet business for a while, it didn't really do much for the rest of us. So let's try giving billions of dollars to poor people. And if that fails, then we can try giving billions of dollars to me.

I know most of you think that nothing could ever be better than legendary composer Sir Mix-A-Lot's epic masterpiece, "Baby Got Back." But revered songwriter Jonathan Coulton recently gave it a shot.

From the Forbes definition of liberal:

Broadly, a "liberal' subscribes to some or all of the following: progressive income taxation; universal health care of some kind; opposition to the war in Iraq, and a certain queasiness about the war on terror; an instinctive preference for international diplomacy; the right to gay marriage; a woman's right to an abortion; environmentalism in some Kyoto Protocol-friendly form; and a rejection of the McCain-Palin ticket.

I'm sorry Teresa and Mark, but as I've said so many times in the past, "conservative" no longer means limited government that stays out of the boardroom and bedroom while "liberal" means nanny state. Prominent blogger, author of "The Conservative Soul", and self-described conservative Andrew Sullivan was among those listed under this definition as the 25 most influential liberals. I feel sorry for Teresa, Mark, and Andrew Sullivan, who have insisted for years that they are not liberal hippies like me. They try consider themselves conservatives, under the old definition as described by notable conservative Lyn Nofgizer, who worked with Ronald Reagan as a Governor and Steve Forbes:

“Allowing for differences I would define a conservative, first as one who believes in the Constitution as it is written. That takes care of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to petition the government, the right to keep and bear arms and, in the words of William O. Douglas in one of his saner moments, ‘the right to be let alone.’ “Second, a conservative believes in small, limited government at every level. Along with this he believes strongly in individual responsibility. That is, a person or a family should take care of itself and turn for help to government only when all other means have been exhausted. It also means that society, before government, has a duty to take care of its own. Government should be a resource of last resort. “Third, a conservative believes taxes should be levied for the purpose of financing the limited responsibilities of government such as providing for the common defense, catching and incarcerating criminals, minting money and filling potholes. Taxes should not be levied for the purpose of redistributing wealth. “That’s about it. “I know there are those who say a conservative should be pro-life, which I am, but I’m not sure a person has to be that to qualify as a conservative. Nor am I sure that a person must be opposed to pornography, which I am. In both cases there are questions of individual rights and responsibilities which are arguable. “One other thing I think a conservative believes is that the parents, not government, are and should be responsible for the upbringing and behavior of their children.”

Unfortunately for self-described "conservatives", just as the meaning of the word "liberal" been changed from "legalizing drugs, raising taxes, and dancing naked while singing kumbaya", to the aforementioned definition, so has the meaning of "conservative." While the new liberals, such as the three aforementioned bloggers, Teresa, Mark, and Andrew Sullivan, hate being lumped in with old-school liberals, such as myself ("kumbaya my lord, kumbaya"), they are no longer left with much in the way of alternatives. After the past eight years, the new definition of "moderate" and "conservative" have been changed. Now "moderate" means uninformed and/or politically apathetic. And conservative means "pro-torture, anti-gay, pro-deficit, pro-spending, anti-science, anti-oversight, and anti-media." Hopefully, the GOP can rebuild itself and rebrand conservatism to mean what it use to. But until the GOP does that, I'm afraid we either need a new set of labels, or small government liberals such as Teresa, Mark, and Andrew Sullivan will be forced to be grouped in with hippie liberals such as myself.

In his second day as President, Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay, banned the use of torture by US personnel and told the Central Intelligence Agency to shut down its secret "black site" overseas prisons. I would have preferred if it had been on his first day, but I understand that he was pretty busy. No comes the hard question, what the hell do we do with these people? The current prevailing idea is to have those who are going to be released sent to Finland, Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Britain and Sweden, who have agreed to take on detainees. As for those who we might actually be able to charge something with, they would be sent to the only maximum security prison in the US, which is located in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Unfortunately, Senator Sam Brownback, my favorite Senator, is having a freakout, and worrying that they are all going to escape and blow up Topeka. Or that Al-Qaeda will mount a massive rescue operation. Hopefully, people who aren't insane will prevail, and we can begin to put this nightmare behind. Yes, it is going to be difficult, complex work to figure out what to do with suspected terrorists captured by the military. But unlike his predecessor, Obama seems willing to address difficult problems, rather than hiding them in Cuba.

Join Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry and I as we discuss the inauguration of Barack Obama and the social media presidency.

Today, I subscribed to the White House blog. Yes, you read that right. I Tweeted today that my mind tends to drift to mundane realities during historic events. It's a way of grounding the moment and making it real and relatable for myself. For me Jason Kottke's post about the new robots.txt file on WhiteHouse.gov was a grounding force that helped me to understand just how technically aware -- and open to the eyes of the world -- this new administration is. We'll be talking about that more tomorrow morning on Wilshire & Washington, join us at 7:30 a.m. PST for all the post-inauguration rundown. Join us.

The best lines, IMHO:

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America — they will be met... Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions — who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage. What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

The essence of this day. Solemn enough to cut through the hype, and true. More later.

I set my alarm for 8:31AM, PST. When I wake up, Barack Obama will officially be the President. Awesome.