As soon as the name Nidal Malik Hasan hit the web, the right-wing blogosphere erupted.

Muslims should be banned from the U.S. military, the bloggers shouted, in capital letters.

Muslims should be banned from America!! People with Islamic names should be evicted from the White House!!!

And much worse.

Hasan, the suspected shooter in the mass killings at Fort Hood, was born in Virginia. According to The New York Times, he listed no religious preference on his military records.

Hasan’s personal details are, of course, irrelevant to any portrayal of Muslims as a group.

Those who would use the tragedy of Fort Hood as a justification of hate are compounding the tragedy.

Does Warren Buffett know something we don’t?

The answer, on so many subjects, is yes. But about railroads making a comeback?

Buffett agreed Tuesday to spend $26 billion on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation.

“This is all happening because my father didn’t buy me a train set as a kid,” he joked.

There may be some truth in that; a love of ice cream led to his purchase of Dairy Queen.

Buffett also argues that railroads outperform trucks with more efficient, environmentally friendly transportation.

Many of those trains are headed west, carrying coal to western U.S. ports, where it will be shipped to Chinese factories.

While the always quotable Buffett says he is investing in the American economy, he may also be betting on China.

Rich Americans who’ve been especially creative with their tax returns have a new reason to be nervous.

The Internal Revenue Service has formed an enforcement unit targeting wealth taxpayers - or non-taxpayers - who hide income through offshore trusts, partnerships and other feints.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told an accountants’ group Monday that the unit would audit individuals with tens of millions of dollars in assets or income.

“You cannot assess compliance among the nation’s wealthiest individuals by looking only at their 1040s,” Shulman said.

“Our goal is to better understand the entire economic picture of the enterprise controlled by the wealthy individual and to assess the tax compliance of that overall enterprise.”

For Hyatt Hotels, family roots are both a strength and a liability.

The hotel chain was founded in 1957 by Jay Pritzker, who worked with his brother Donald to expand holdings throughout North America.

But in SEC filings, the company acknowledges that a tradition of family infighting “may result in significant distractions to our management, disrupt our business, have a negative effect on the trading price of our Class A common stock and/or generate negative publicity about Hyatt and the Pritzker family.”

The company, 85 percent owned by the Pritzkers, is seeking to raise up to $1.15 billion in an IPO.

To complain that literacy - political, cultural or otherwise - is at a low is to brand yourself an elitist.

Charles M. Madigan may automatically have that reputation as “presidential writer in residence” at Roosevelt University.

So maybe he had nothing to lose in writing a Chicago Tribune column about the ignorance of Glenn Beck’s audience.

“The problem with Beck … is not his narrative, which is entertainingly foolish to anyone who actually knows anything about anything,” Madigan wrote.

“The problem is the size of the audience in the United States that actually knows nothing about nothing.”

Our Muckety down arrow is not for Madigan, but for literacy.

All eyes are on the 62-year-old Republican from Maine.

Olympia Snowe, one of a dying breed called the “moderate Republican,” cast the sole GOP vote Monday for the health care bill.

President Obama thanked her for her courage. Republicans waffled between punishing her and needing her as the bill progresses.

“Forget Sarah Palin,” wrote Laurie Kellman of the Associated Press. “The female maverick of the Republican Party is Sen. Olympia Snowe.”

Snowe isn’t giving anything away.

“My vote today is my vote today,” she said. “It does not forecast my vote tomorrow.”

Roman Polanski is the latest poster boy for Hollywood depravity.

Yet his recent arrest by Swiss authorities represents something bigger: the increasing connectivity of law enforcement across the globe.

As attorney Ronald Sokol noted in the Wall Street Journal, it’s getting harder for Americans fleeing the law to find safe haven abroad.

The number of fugitives handed over to U.S. authorities reached a record high of 579 last year.

Many were delivered as a result of extradition treaties that were created or toughened after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Switzerland had signed a treaty four years earlier.

Leaders of the G-20 have effectively become “the board of directors of the global economy.”

That’s the description rendered Monday by Bob Davis in the Wall Street Journal.

“Now the G-20 will handle the politics of the global economy, largely by member countries peer-reviewing each other’s policies - and by pressing countries to stick to their pledges,” Davis writes.

Because the group of industrialized and developing nations has no offices or employees, it is relying increasingly on the staff of the International Monetary Fund.

Former IMF deputy managing director Stanley Fischer suggests that the G-20 should become the IMF governing board.

In an age of dramatic falls, Saturn’s is still stunning.

When it was launched in 1985, Saturn was conceived as “a different kind of car company” - one that could compete with foreign manufacturers. The plant in Spring Hill, TN, was supposed to be a factory of the future.

General Motors had hoped to sell as many as half a million vehicles a year. It never reached the 300,000 mark.

More recently, the beleaguered automaker had hoped to sell Saturn operations to race-car-driver-turned entrepreneur Roger Penske. However, Penske couldn’t find a manufacturer.

GM CEO Fritz Henderson announced Wednesday that Saturn operations will be wound down, and some 350 dealerships will be closed.

The Alexander family, already a large constellation in the Obama universe, has added another star.

The White House has nominated Adele Logan Alexander, a history professor at George Washington University, to serve on the National Council on the Humanities.

Muckety wrote about Alexander’s daughter, Elizabeth, in December, after then President-elect Barack Obama asked her to write and read a poem for his inauguration. Elizabeth Alexander is a professor of African-American history at Yale.

Adele Alexander’s son, Mark, is a professor at Seton Hall University Law School. He was Obama’s New Jersey campaign director and a member of the transition team.

Her husband, Clifford Alexander, served as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and secretary of the Army.

The latest example of industries gone global? Sports.

Last week, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov bought a majority interest in the New York Nets (already dubbed “The Nyets”).

Prince Faisal bin Fahd bin Abdullah Al Saud of Saudi Arabia has confirmed that he is negotiating a 50-percent share in the Liverpool Football Club, which is owned by Americans Tom Hicks and George Gillett.

As Reuters notes, United Arab Emirates’ investor Sulaiman al-Fahim last month bought Portsmouth football club, and the Abu Dhabi United Group bought Manchester City last year.

Chinese investors hold 15 percent of the Cleveland Cavaliers while the majority owners of the Seattle Mariners are former Nintendo exec Hiroshi Yamauchi and Nintendo USA.

Liz Cheney, according to a fan quoted in Monday’s New York Times, has become a “red state rock star.”

She is truly her father’s daughter, in policy and in style.

She is smart and sarcastic, often to the point of bullying. And she has taken a bead on the Obama administration, particularly on its positions on torture and homeland security.

Obama, she told Larry King, is “an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America.”

Is she running for something or is she merely defending her “favorite vice president?”

Cheney hasn’t shown her hand, but there’s no question that conservatives are rallying behind her.

On any day, New York City brims with Muckety. This week, it runneth over.

World leaders have gathered here for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. Across town, Bill Clinton hosts the annual get-together of the Clinton Global Initiative, attended by some of the same leaders as well as an elite contingent of former heads of state and business executives.

Of course, there’s good Muckety and bad Muckety, and the bad is also here in abundance.

In a rambling rant before the General Assembly Wednesday, Libyan leader Muammar Al-Qadhafi suggested that U.N. headquarters be moved from New York to help allay U.S. concerns about terrorist attack.

If the U.N. were in a different hemisphere, Qadhafi might find a place to pitch his tent.

A year ago, Hassan Nemazee, chairman of Nemazee Capital Corp., was a force behind the winners.

Although he had been a campaign bundler for Hillary Rodham Clinton, he quickly shifted his support to the new president, giving generously to the Obama inaugural committee. He had previously backed other Democrats such as John Kerry and Chuck Schumer.

In an indictment announced Monday, Nemazee was accused of defrauding Citigroup, HSBC and Bank of America of $292 million. The federal government has accused him of lying about his assets to obtain loans.

“For more than ten years, Hassan Nemazee projected the illusion of wealth, stealing more than $290 million so that he could lead a lavish lifestyle and play the part of heavyweight political fundraiser,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

Now the candidates are fleeing their former booster.

In the health care debate, the cause of the poor and uninsured is being argued by two
patrician sons of privilege.

Long at the forefront was Ted Kennedy, who fought for universal coverage on his deathbed and whose influence continues to be felt.

And now there’s Jay Rockefeller, great-grandson of a robber baron. Rockefeller, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, announced Tuesday that he would oppose Max Baucus’s proposal, which omits the public option.

On Wednesday, he was called to the White House for a private meeting with the president.

As The New York Times notes, Rockefeller and other liberals had been largely ignored by the White House, which placed its bets on Baucus. But with the much-anticipated Baucus plan drawing so little support, liberal voices are again being heard.

She’s beautiful, talented, sought after by music and film producers, and married to a high-powered husband.

You wouldn’t think Beyonce’s Muckety could get any higher.

Then the loutish Kanye West crowded the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and dissed 19-year-old Taylor Swift, winner of best female video.

Beyonce, he said, had made “one of the best videos of all time.”

Later in the program, when Beyonce won best video of the year, she ceded her time to Swift.

“I thought that I couldn’t love Beyonce more and then tonight happened,” Swift said later.

Some say it was a stunt. If so, it played to type.

West is entirely believable as a boor, while Beyonce embodies class.

In the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign, an ill-advised remark about Hillary Rodham Clinton (”She is a monster”) appeared to have cost Samantha Power a continuing role in Barack Obama’s inner circle.

It was a shame. Power is an expert on genocide, a Pulitzer Prize winner and a convincing speaker.

But just when we thought she was out, they pull her back in.

In January, Obama appointed Power as senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council.

On Thursday, the Senate confirmed her husband, Cass Sunstein, as director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Sunstein is a favorite target of the right. Politico reports that the Senate vote was 57-40, with just five Republicans supporting the nomination.

Where is the threshold for errant politicans being forced from office?

Obviously, it’s not crossed by cheating on one’s spouse. Uncounted transgressors, led by Mark Sanford, cling to their jobs. (Said cheating when it involves prostitution might be an exception, but even Eliot Spitzer is reportedly considering a run for the Senate.)

How about failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and assets?

Democrats have been embarrassed by the misrepresentations of Charles B. Rangel, who vastly understated his earnings in disclosures from 2002 to 2006. Two House subcommittees are investigating.

Rangel continues to wield power as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. If he can’t face facts, his party should.

When the cold war ended, spy novelists had to adapt or die.

With the Swiss government’s agreement to release information about secret bank accounts, Hollywood screenwriters lose a plot device almost as important as the car chase.

Scripts needing massive rewrites in the new era of bank openness:

• The Da Vinci Code (2006)
• The Bourne Identity (2002)
• The World Is Not Enough (1999)
• The Saint (1997)
• The Holcroft Covenant (1985)
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
• Mission Impossible (1966)

Gotta love Barney Frank’s way with words.

During an appearance at Dartmouth Tuesday, a member of the audience, holding a picture of President Obama retouched to resemble Hitler, asked how he could support Nazi policy - aka health care reform.

Frank replied that he would revert to his ethnic heritage and answer a question with a question.

“On what planet do you spend most of your time?” he asked her.

“It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated,” he said.

“Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”

We wrote Wednesday about Glenn Beck’s efforts to assign motives to supporters of environmentalism and universal health care.

A Beck fan responded that the talk show host knows what he’s talking about and is “blowing the mainstream media out of the water.”

Which raises the question: If Beck’s ratings are higher than those of most mainstream media, doesn’t that make him mainstream media?

What is the meaning of MSM, if not audience and profitability? The right would define it as any established news outlet failing to reflect its views. (Is the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal MSM?)

Old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting costs money. Spouting off comes cheap. While traditional MSM become candidates for bankruptcy, idealogues can shout up an audience.

We don’t watch Glenn Beck, although we ought to because he reportedly has cited Muckety on his show.

The latest video clip circulating on the web indicates that he may have fallen off the conspiracy theory cliff - an occupational hazard for anyone who studies power networks, regardless of politics.

Standing in front of a blackboard with a chalk drawing of a tree, Beck tries to link environmentalists, forced abortion, forced sterilization and universal health care.

“How many people in the green movement think that people are a virus?” he asks. “I think that’s a connection. Anybody?”

His panelists are dumbfounded. And so are we.

How bad is the U.S. Supreme Court web site?

On the day that Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the newest justice, the top item on the court’s “what’s new” page was “Amendments to Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, Civil, and Criminal procedure prescribed by the Court and reported to Congress by the Chief Justice, on March 26, 2009.”

The court’s efforts to stay above the fray are laudable, if somewhat laughable, given the 2000 presidential election.

But remaining above popular opinion is not the same as remaining beyond public inquiry.

The court needs to communicate with the electorate. That means topical news releases, profiles of the justices and easier access to case files.

When it comes to online transparency, the court has a long way to go before it catches up to the White House.

While the focus is on the Clintons and their roles in freeing two American journalists from imprisonment in North Korea, political strategist John Podesta is also sharing the glory.

Podesta, chief of staff in the Clinton White House, accompanied his former boss on the trip to Pyongyang and - according to Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC - appeared in court on behalf of the journalists.

Like Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Podesta bridges the old Democratic administration and the new.

He was transition chief for Barack Obama and now heads the Washington think tank, the Center for American Progress.

His brother, Tony Podesta, heads Podesta Group, the fasting growing lobby firm on K Street.

When Wall Street’s style of dealmaking becomes standard procedure in Washington, the taxpayer is in trouble.

Such apparently was the case with the wooing of Charles E.F. Millard Jr., former director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which oversees $50 billion in retirement funds.

When Millard, a former New York City Council member, was named head of the agency in 2007, the financial firms came calling.

The New York Times, which has examined thousands of email exchanges and internal documents, writes that BlackRock, Goldman and JPMorgan Chase pursued Millard so aggressively that they may have broken federal regulations.

Millard’s attorney and spokepeople for the firms have denied the allegations.

However, investment contracts awarded to the companies were revoked last week and Congress is preparing to strengthen agency oversight.

The unspoken word seems to be “uppity.”

Those who would blame Henry Louis Gates Jr. say the black scholar didn’t behave properly when police came to his house investigating a burglary report. Gates was ultimately arrested and led away in handcuffs.

Now Barack Obama is being criticized by police for saying that the arresting officers behaved “stupidly.”

The facts may never be fully determined. It’s possible be that both sides overreacted.

But the Cambridge police commissioner’s insistence that there was no racial motivation ignores the distinction between premeditation and reckless disregard.

The disregard was not only for history, and the long-established divide between police and African-Americans, but for a man who has reached the pinnacle of his profession.

Detroit has a love/hate relationship with itself that explains why, whenever the dying city is shown in a positive light, local politicians and civic boosters latch onto it like a life raft, intoning the same words: “See? Somebody has finally given Detroit its due.”

The new HBO series Hung, a black comedy about a Detroit schoolteacher whose biggest attribute leads him to moonlight as a male hooker, is partly shot on location. And judging by its opening sequence, somebody in the production knows the city well.

It begins with shots from the standard short-list of downtown attractions, then shifts to crumbling monoliths and the eerily unpeopled and decayed neighborhoods.

“Everything’s falling apart,” says the voiceover. “And it all starts right here in Detroit – the headwaters of a river of failure.”

Ya gotta love it. Ya gotta hate it.

It’s a rare post that warrants both Muckety up and Muckety down arrows.

Economic downturns are apparently good for the yo-yo.

The inexpensive toy was a big seller during the Depression. The trend is repeating in the current downturn.

Duncan, which sells most of the yo-yos purchased in the United States, says sales are up 23 percent from a year ago.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company plans to unveil a line of technologically advanced models this summer.

The new versions will have precision ball bearings and weighted casings.

New parkland in Manhattan, where every spare acre has been developed, would seem an impossibility.

Friends of the High Line, a group that envisioned a public space in an abandoned freight railway on the city’s west side, has achieved the impossible.

The elevated rail line has been converted to a narrow park 30 feet above the street. Visitors, strolling a promenade lined by wide benches and wildflowers, are surprised, delighted, and - a rare pleasure in New York - relaxed.

The organization cleared countless hurdles by recruiting city support and backers with money and influence.

Actor Edward Norton sits on the board. Benefactors include media titan Barry Diller and his wife, Diane von Furstenberg, whose son Alexandre is a board member.

The first phase of the park opened last month and a second is under construction.

Muckety can extend well beyond the grave, and the money counters are already putting Michael Jackson on the list of celebrities whose earning power isn’t slowed by death.

Forbes’ latest list of top-earning dead celebrities, released last October, puts Jackson’s former father-in-law, Elvis Presley, at the top of the list. The magazine reported that the King had earned $52 million over the previous year.

Charles M. Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, was second.

Actor Heath Ledger, who died in January 2008 before the release of his film The Dark Knight, ranked third.

And the iconic Albert Einstein, whose name graces sneakers, educational products for infants and Japanese coffee, ranked fourth.

Sure, everyone’s startled by Mark Sanford’s emotional confessions Wednesday.

But the GOP needs to get more fleet of foot.

After disappearing over Father’s Day weekend, the South Carolina governor resurfaced, admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina, and resigned as chairman of the National Governors Association.

When we visited the NGA web site this morning, we clicked on the “message from the chairman” link and found this:

Evidently, someone in the party knew enough to take the message down, but couldn’t think of anything to put in its stead.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Call it Oscar inflation.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced Wednesday that the best-picture category will now include 10 movies instead of five.

Really? Ten potential best pictures?

There already have been years where the academy has had to harvest low-lying fruit. Remember Ghost? How about Babe?

“Having 10 best picture nominees is going (to) allow academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize,” said academy President Sid Ganis.

Translation: The academy is stepping up its marketing campaign for the movie biz.

Here’s what happens when “sabermetrics,” the statistical analysis of baseball, goes to the box office.

Megastar Brad Pitt will play manager Billy Beane in Moneyball, the story of a how an underfunded team beats its higher-priced competitors by recruiting lower-paid, unknown players.

Beane, as described in Michael Lewis’s book, also titled Moneyball, knew he couldn’t afford top-rung players. So he emphasized less appreciated stats such as “on-base percentage,” turning a team with one of the game’s lowest payrolls into a winner.

Obviously, the new math of baseball hasn’t reached Hollywood.

Note: It may be that Hollywood is taking a closer look at the numbers. Columbia Pictures pulled its support from the film Friday, just days before filming was to begin.

It must be difficult to go from master of the universe to servant of the people.

National Economic Council Chairman Lawrence Summers has a reputation for intellectual arrogance. Sunday’s New York Times described him as “the brilliant but sometimes supercilious Mr. Summers.”

He’s the son of two economists, nephew of two Nobel Prize winners (from opposite sides of the family, no less), former Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard.

And in the leadup to the global financial collapse, his brain commanded top dollar. The hedge fund D.E. Shaw, where Summers was a managing director, paid him $5.2 million last year, according to his financial disclosure form.

Summers collected another $2.77 million for speaking before some of the same institutions receiving bailout money, including Goldman Sachs ($202,500) and JPMorgan ($67,500).

Now he’s part of an administration that’s calling for executive salary caps.

The president and the first lady evidently are not allowed to have any fun until the nation’s problems are solved.

When the two flew to New York Saturday for dinner and a Broadway show, the Republican National Committee quickly issued a press release criticizing them for leaving Washington for “a night on the town.”

Noting that General Motors is expected to file for bankruptcy Monday, the release said: “Putting on a show: Obamas wing into the city for an evening out while another iconic American company prepares for bankruptcy.”

The GOP might take a hint from the top tunes of the Depression: “Happy Days Are Here Again,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “You’re Driving Me Crazy,” among them.

We want to make whoopy, and we want the first couple to make whoopy, too.

New York’s elite aspire to board seats with the city’s most prestigious cultural institutions, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is at the top of the mountain.

However, the criminal trial of Anthony D. Marshall, son of the late Brooke Astor, has brought unaccustomed glare even to those who are used to the spotlight. Witnesses have included museum vice chair Annette de La Renta, trustee emeritus Henry Kissinger and former director Philippe de Montebello.

Over the years, Astor contributed about $20 million to the museum, Montebello testified earlier this month.

Marshall, accused of tricking his elderly mother into changing her will, was himself listed as a trustee emeritus of the museum as recently as 2007. His name was dropped from the list in the museum’s November 2008 annual report.

Charles E.F. Millard’s fortunes appear to be plummeting along with those of the federal agency he used to head, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Millard, a former New York City Council member, is under investigation for his relationships with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and other companies during his federal tenure. An inspector general’s report accuses him of engaging in improper communications with half of the firms bidding to manage the pension agency’s $48 billion portfolio.

During a Senate committee hearing Wednesday, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination three times.

The pension agency’s acting director, Vince Snowbarger, told the panel that the pension corporation’s deficit had tripled, to $33.5 billion, in the past six months.

George W. Bush did major damage to the GOP brand.

That’s the conclusion of a new Gallup analysis which charts a precipitous decline in the number of voters who identify themselves as Republican, across nearly every demographic group.

Since the start of Bush’s presidency in 2001, the percentage of those who call themselves Republican has shrunk from 44 percent of the electorate to 39 percent, while those calling themselves Democrat increased from 45 percent to 53 percent, Gallup found.

The only groups Republicans did not lose ground with are weekly church-goers and self-professed conservatives, as well as minority voters who never supported them in significant numbers.

Because the defection is so broad, it suggests a turnabout for the GOP may require more than a strategy of simply skewering Democrats.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions is about to get his 15 minutes of fame, leading the GOP’s response to President Obama’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court.

His coming out promises to be dramatic stuff. A conservative Southerner who was nominated to the federal bench in 1985 by President Reagan, Sessions’ candidacy never made it out of the Judiciary Committee because of allegations of “racial insensitivity.”

Now that Sessions is on the other side of the table, he has promised civil deliberations. But in his first hearing in his new role this week, he was notably combative.

Expect the justice hearings to be gripping, with Sessions auditioning for a major national role in his party.

There are fleeting moments - and he’s counting on them - when we consider the possibility that Dick Cheney’s continued attack on Barack Obama might be sparked by informed concerns for America’s future.

Then, inevitably, his commentary on national security turns into political vitriol, and we can breathe easy, knowing that Cheney is trash talking again. Still. Endlessly.

On Face the Nation Sunday, he dissed retired Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican who supported Obama in 2008. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has described Powell as “just another liberal” who should enroll as a Democrat.

“If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh,” Cheney said. “My take on it was Colin had already left the party. I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”

It won’t be long before Cheney and Limbaugh are the only people left in this echo chamber.

Health insurance companies have offered to stop charging women higher premiums.

Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group, made that offer Wednesday while testifying before the Senate Finance Committee.

It was the latest concession by an industry trying to fend off creation of a government insurance plan that would compete with it for middle-class workers and their families.

As part of that effort, insurers had already agreed to accept all customers, regardless of illness or disability, if every American were required to have coverage. Last month, they also offered to stop charging higher premiums to the sick.

But such concessions are likely to have a boomerang effect. Agreeing to end de-facto discrimination against women and sick people, after all, underscores the shortcomings of a healthcare industry organized around the profit motive.

John Edwards has become an object lesson in how far and how fast someone’s star can fall.

The former North Caroline senator and two-time presidential contender acknowledged this weekend that he is under federal investigation for possible improper use of campaign funds to keep his extramarital affair quiet.

If that weren’t bad enough, Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth, who has terminal cancer, has a memoir coming out next week that describes her devastation when her husband told her he had cheated.

Under federal scrutiny is $100,000 that Edwards’ political action committee paid to Rielle Hunter for producing a video about his candidacy, as well as $14,086.50 paid to her company for “furniture.” Edwards’ national finance chairman, the late Fred Baron, also paid Hunter to resettle in California, although he has denied that campaign funds were used.

Edwards said he is cooperating with the probe.

Louis Caldera knows turbulence.

Former president of the University of New Mexico and secretary of the U.S. Army, Caldera’s many former business connections include membership on the board of IndyMac, the former California mortgage lender that failed last summer and was taken over by the FDIC.

After Barack Obama’s election, Caldera was named assistant to the president and director of the White House military office. Now he’s at the center of a major embarrassment to the Obama administration, having organized the Air Force One photo opp that terrified New Yorkers Monday. Plane Stupid, the New York Daily News called it.

Caldera has apologized, but Obama, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and many others have expressed outrage. Odds are good that Caldera will soon end his teaching sabbatical and return to UNM.

The music world follows live-or-die economics: If your audience thinks it unlikely that you’ll survive much longer, your ticket price goes up.

Last year, Amy Winehouse commanded a reported $2 million for a 45-minute set at a private party hosted by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. Many believed she was on the verge of an ugly demise.

Yet the cracked-out, lyric-slurring chanteuse beat the predictions of her parents, fans and a web site called “When will Amy Winehouse die?”

Death-defying behavior may be a great marketing ploy, particularly when you’ve lost millions in the recession, as Winehouse has.

Now word comes that a concerned father is jetting to her side in St. Lucia, after she severely burned herself while cooking - not crack, but dinner. The British tabloids have called it her “Rasta pasta disasta.” Maybe not.

Even those who claim there’s no such thing as bad publicity would probably make an exception for unwanted connections to accused murderers.

Medical student Philip Markoff, charged with robbing women who advertised on the Internet and killing one of them, has become known in the media as the “Craigslist killer.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that this is the third slaying linked to people who have met through the Web site.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is quoted: “We do everything in our power to make use of the site as safe as possible, and to keep inappropriate activity of all sorts - especially criminal - from the site.”

Which has the greatest impact on a book’s sales:

a) Winning the Pulitzer Prize

b) Being handed to the president of the United States by an outspoken, frequently misbehaving foreign leader in front of an international audience?

Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Monday for Olive Kittredge, a set of linked stories set in small-town Maine.

By Tuesday morning, her book was number 24 on Amazon’s list of 25 bestsellers. The prize winners for history, biography and nonfiction were not on the list.

Open Veins of Latin America, the anti-imperialist book handed last weekend to President Obama by Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, was number 3.

For a time, it appeared that New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo was following the steps of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, clearing a path to the governorship by targeting overpaid Wall Street titans.

His investigation of AIG bonus payments is a sure crowd pleaser, much like Spitzer’s probe into the pay of Dick Grasso, former head of the New York Stock Exchange.

But it now seems that Cuomo may find his political leverage closer to home. His examination of pay-for-play arrangements by officials overseeing the state pension fund has legs. Two former top officials have been indicted; another defendant has pleaded guilty.

Steven Rattner, head of the Obama administration’s auto task force, has been identified as one of the execs who courted investments from those under investigation. Other state and financial leaders are likely to be drawn in, in coming months.

So far, advantage Cuomo.

How can we not write about the late-blooming Muckety of Susan Boyle?

At last count, a video of her performance on Britain’s Got Talent had been viewed more than 18 million times, generating more than 86,000 comments.

Here’s a 47-year-old woman without panache or looks or media savvy. The Los Angeles Times calls her “a stocky, beetle-browed woman who would not ordinarily rate a second glance on the street.”

All she has is a voice, and an unassuming ability to put judges in their place. Audiences across the world are weeping and rejoicing and cheering her on.

Susan, don’t wax your eyebrows or mousse your hair or change your frock. We love you just the way you are.

Suddenly, Eliot Spitzer is everywhere.

A year after he stepped down as governor of New York in a scandal involving a high-priced call girl, Spitzer has returned to the soapbox, writing a regular column for Slate and doing interviews on radio and TV.

He recently has appeared on NBC and MSNBC, talking about market reform. When asked by Today host Matt Lauer about his use of hookers, he offered his own best spin, acknowledging he had erred, but saying it was neither frequent nor lengthy “in the grand context of my life.”

Spitzer dismisses reports that he is eyeing a run for New York attorney general in 2010, saying he has no interest in running for office.

Perhaps not. But the onetime prosecutor is doing his utmost to remind people of his smarts and his longtime crusade against the excesses of Wall Street.

Caroline Kennedy can’t seem to catch a break.

After rumors circulated in the Italian press that she was being eyed for the post of U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, conservative U.S. Catholics began protesting.

“It’s imperative, it’s essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has a pro-life values,” former ambassador Raymond L. Flynn told the Boston Herald.

But former Kennedy staffer Philip Johnston defended Kennedy’s appropriateness. “The church is about a lot more than abortion,” he said. “It’s about human rights and poverty and supporting workers around the world and she is a great symbol of those values.”

Italian publication Panorama originally reported that Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry had asked Obama to consider her for the post. Neither Kerry’s office, nor the White House would comment. Kennedy has largely vanished from public view since her ill-fated bid to win appointment to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat.

Barack Obama held a Passover seder for friends and family Thursday night, marking what is believed to be the first time a president presided over the feast honoring the Jews’ exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt.

The guest list included Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s closest advisers, and family friend Eric Whitaker, who is visiting from Chicago and attended a seder last year with the campaign. Two of the president’s highest-profile Jewish advisers, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod weren’t there, however.

The idea dates to last year’s campaign, when several Jewish aides celebrated Passover on the road, and decided to replace the traditional toast, “Next year in Jerusalem,” with “Next year in the White House.”

Girls’ Muckety is heading up, with the unlikely lobby team of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michelle Obama.

During a visit last week to a girls’ school in London, Michelle Obama choked up as she told the students, “All of you are jewels.”

Clinton, meanwhile, has long been a champion.

“A society that denies and demeans women’s rights and roles is a society that is more likely to engage in behavior that is negative, anti-democratic and leads to violence and extremism,” she said last month.

The Obama White House also has named the first ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues.

But few in the administration touch as many internationally as the first lady and the secretary of state.

Monday was a huge news day for Detroit: The White House nudged out the chief executive of GM and leaned on Chrysler to merge with Fiat; and Michigan State University’s men’s basketball team reached the Final Four.

But not a single resident of the area learned of those developments by picking up a copy of The Detroit Free Press or The Detroit News deposited on their doorsteps.

Monday, as it turned out, was the first day of the papers’ new policy of eliminating home delivery on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Instead, readers are directed to go the papers’ Websites, or they can buy a shortened version of the paper at stores, newsstands and street boxes.

The last time Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced a bailout plan, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped like a rock.

The earlier plan was ripped for its vagueness, and Geithner, for being ill at ease. On Monday, though, after he unveiled a $1 trillion plan to buy up so-called toxic assets, the market rocketed up almost 500 points.

The White House has warned against reading too much into the market’s daily gyrations; still, the surge must have been comforting to Geithner, who has come under heavy criticism for missteps.

The plan, while not uniformly praised, got an early endorsement from The Financial Services Roundtable, a trade group for the nation’s largest financial institutions. Just as significantly, Geithner handled reporters’ questions with the confidence of a battle-hardened veteran.

Former AIG Chairman Maurice “Hank” Greenberg loses no opportunity to slam the insurer’s current management - as if Greenberg played no role in creating the financial mess.

In an interview Thursday, Greenberg refused to accept any responsibility for AIG’s unraveling, although he set up the financial products division which would bring the company down.

“It was the greatest company in history [then],” he told CBS’ Early Show. “In the insurance industry, there wasn’t anything like it.”

Asked whether current CEO Edward Liddy should be fired, Greenberg, who was ousted himself in 2005, did not hesitate: “I think he should be replaced. You can call it what you want.”

Barack Obama will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the annual Gridiron Club banquet in his first year in office.

At the very least, his absence is a tacit acknowlegement of the waning power of Old Media. For years, the Gridiron dinner, at which elite Washington media types sing ditties parodying politicians, was considered a must-attend affair.

But Obama’s decision is really the least of the club’s problems these days, as many newspapers take a scalpel to their Washington bureaus and to their national political coverage.

The truth is that less coverage inevitably translates into less clout.

While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is being likened to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is emerging as a voice of wisdom.

The normally reticent chairman has stepped up his public appearances in recent weeks, including an interview Sunday on 60 Minutes.

A former Princeton professor, Bernanke is an expert on the banking system during the Great Depression.

“If you had to choose one individual to be in charge of the Fed during this crisis, that person would be Ben Bernanke,” New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman has written.

No matter your politics, the resounding response to the showdown between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer is enervating.

People care deeply about the economy. They know they need to know more. And irony of ironies, the guy who represents fake news is arguing their case.

We need solid reporting about finance. We need Paul Krugman more than we need political rants.

In an era when newspapers are cutting coverage and the business news network is resorting to cheap shots, a comedian is our advocate. Go, Jon, go!

In its Saturday edition, when readership is low, The Washington Post is quietly announcing that it’s drastically cutting stock tables and folding daily business coverage into the A section.

Even in the midst of the newspaper crisis, this is an astounding turn of events. Not since the Great Depression has the economy been a bigger story. And not since the days of FDR has the nation’s capital been so focused on finance.

Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli acknowledges that the changes, designed to save money, will give less prominence to business news.

We used to think CNBC was a network about business.

Since Jan. 20, it has become a political channel dominated by Republicans angry at the Obama administration.

Network chiefs apparently are targeting a demographic of riled, tax-paying investors, much as MSNBC wooed frustrated Democrats during the Bush years.

At a time when everyone of every political stripe needs to be smarter about the economy, this approach is just plain dumb.

If Twitter is outshining Facebook these days, MySpace is almost an afterthought. (See Compete.com’s latest report.)

So it’s not that surprising that three MySpace execs are leaving to start their own venture.

Among those jumping ship, reports The Wall Street Journal, is COO Amit Kapur, a “rising star.” The other two are Jim Benedetto, engineering SVP, and Steve Pearman, product strategy SVP.

Valleywag has the full memo on the departures. No word yet on the nature of the startup.

Economic news is so relentlessly dismal that you’d think there were no high fliers left.

Rest assured. Christie’s sale of Yves Saint Laurent’s belongings set a record for a private collection sold at auction, bringing in $483 million.

Some fortunate souls have enough stowed away to spend like there’s no tomorrow. A painting by Henri Matisse sold for $46.4 million. A Brancusi sculpture brought in $37.7 million.

An art deco chair - presumably not headed for John Thain’s new office - sold for $28.3 million. And a 16th-century bronze double head of Janus fetched $2.6 million.

Janus, suggestively, is the god of beginnings and endings.

In the 1980s, when Steven Rattner left the New York Times for Wall Street, a lot of journalists groused that he had sold out. Some were heartbroken.

People in the news biz probably should have paid closer attention.

Many of them are now unemployed, while Rattner, having made his fortune, is heading to a new circle of power in the Obama administration.

He is leaving the hedge fund he started, Quadrangle Group, to become “counselor to the secretary” of the White House task force on the auto industry.

Not exactly the car czar, but a lot more exciting than looking for freelance work.

Not everyone is counting paper clips as a result of the recent bankruptcy filing by the owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

The salary of Brian Tierney, the public relations executive who put together the investment group that bought the papers from McClatchy in June 2006, was boosted 38 percent, to $850,000, about two months ago, according to filings by Philadelphia Newspapers L.L.C.

EVP Richard R. Thayer said the company still saved money because Tierney became publisher of both papers in fall 2006 with no pay increase. Tell that to the lenders still owed $395 million as of January.

Update 4 p.m.: Bankruptcy lawyers said that Tierney and two other top executives would defer 2008 raises while the company tries to shed debt.

After waging the first real internet campaign for for the White House, the Obama camp is now applying its web savvy to the stimulus package.

Federal guidelines released last week call for agencies to create Recovery Act pages on their web sites and to post major announcements on Recovery.gov.

There’s also a mandate that information be distributed through RSS - a format that allows widespread publication through feeds to other web sites.

Score one for transparency.

While the financial crisis has hurt online advertising revenues, it has also spawned a new batch of pitches on Google Adsense. Call up the latest Bloomberg story on the latest scam - by billionaire R. Allen Stanford - and you may see:

When one door closes, another opens.

George W. Bush’s refusal to pardon Scooter Libby in the final days of his presidency - despite intense lobbying by Dick Cheney - offers a tantalizing clue about the state of his relationship with Cheney.

Libby, the former vice president’s chief of staff, was convicted of obstruction of justice for his role in leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Bush had already commuted Libby’s prison sentence, but the vice president wanted a full pardon for him. The fact that he could not persuade Bush to do this most personal favor suggests the extent of Bush’s disaffection.

Howard Schultz’s announcement that Starbucks will sell its own brand of instant coffee, called VIA Ready-Brew, is a risky move with a huge potential upside - and downside.

The upside is the untapped market for instant coffee, particularly overseas. In the U.K., 81% of coffee sales are instant. In the States, the strategy is to appeal to those who want convenience, or who don’t want the waste from brewing an entire pot.

The downside, of course, is that Starbucks may alienate all those whom it trained to think of coffee as a luxury product. While the jury is still out, Schultz gets high marks for taking risks to reinvent his brand.

Building a brand generally takes time, money and a product the public wants.

But when the brand comes to stand for war profiteering and the slaying of innocent bystanders, it’s probably time to shift marketing strategies.

Blackwater Worldwide, the private security company whose guards have been indicted in the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians, has changed its name to XE, pronounced “ZEE.”

Soon we’ll be seeing an unpronouncable symbol for the “CEO formerly known as Erik D. Prince.”

Jim Cramer is no Pollyanna.

In October, the former hedge fund manager and current Mad Money host caused a panic by telling NBC viewers to get out of stocks “right now!”

So it’s especially surprising to read the current issue of New York magazine, in which Cramer comes to the defense of Secretary Treasurer Tim Geithner.

“The press, the pols, the Wall Streeters - they are all dumping their golden boy just when he’s figured out how to solve the most intractable set of financial woes since the ones that landed on FDR’s desk 76 years ago,” Cramer writes.

In coming months, the U.S. Census is likely to replace the stimulus package as a political hot potato.

The Obama administration wants to move the 2010 census out of the Commerce Department - where it would have been supervised by Republican Judd Gregg - and into the White House, the domain of wily political strategist Rahm Emanuel.

After years of underfunding census activities, crucial not only for the drawing of congressional district boundaries but for business and government planning, GOP leaders are howling.

When the list of Madoff victims was released last week, we immediately grabbed a copy and began parsing it into a database.

So did nearly every other media site. Many printed the full list the next day. Instant publication is the lure of the Internet, particularly when media are desperate for traffic and revenues.

Muckety did not publish the list. We did present a map of investor locations, and we’re using the list as an indicator of muckety-mucks who might warrant further research.

We continue to cross-check every entry - a precaution other media should have taken.

Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps has been suspended from competitive swimming for 3 months after he was photographed smoking marijuana, reports the Washington Post. Kellogg announced Thursday that the company will not renew its endorsement deal with Phelps because his behavior was “not consistent with the image of Kellogg.” Phelps has previously appeared on cereal boxes for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Corn Flakes.

The Super Bowl, always noteworthy for its commercials if not its football, this year provides a stark measure of a distressed economy. Although Hyundai has purchased air time, not a single American auto maker advertised during Sunday’s game. GM, an advertiser for more than a decade, stayed out of the spotlight, quietly counting its bailout money.

Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich boycotted his impeachment trial Monday to take his case directly to the people. In nationally-broadcast interviews, Blagojevich compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and complained that his trial is rigged. Whether or not he is guilty of corruption, one got the sense of a man with a grandiose sense of himself who seems to have lost his grip on reality.

The best you can say about NY Gov. David Paterson’s “process” to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton is that it didn’t get him charged with a crime. But it was clumsy. It took forever. And it left the public-minded, if inexperienced Caroline Kennedy twisting in the wind (with some help from her), while sowing doubt about whether Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand was really his first choice. Not exactly the decisive image a gubernatorial candidate seeks to cultivate.

How long before the deposed kings of Wall Street finally get it? Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain resigned from Bank of America Thursday after several disagreements with his new bosses. The Wall Street Journal reports that Thain recently vacationed in Vail, planned a trip to Davos and accelerated bonus payments. Not to mention revelations that he spent more than $1 million on his office renovation. So long to the $1,400 waste basket.

Jason Wu skyrocketed into the public eye when Michelle Obama arrived at the inaugural ball wearing a one-shouldered ivory gown created by the little-known designer. The 26-year-old is based in New York and has designed his own collection for only three years. Speaking to the Advocate, Wu said it would be “a long shot” for his design to be chosen by the first lady. Wu is currently prepping for New York fashion week, where he will certainly be in the spotlight.

Only a year ago, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard professor and consummate networker, hatched the idea for The Root, an online magazine geared to black readers, over drinks with Washington Post publisher Donald Graham. On Sunday, he and Graham threw a bash celebrating The Root’s first anniversary and Barack Obama’s inauguration, drawing luminaries such as Alice Walker, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey. Not bad for a first birthday.

In this time of buyouts and layoffs, experience has become a synonymn for overpaid and cuttable. Today, every worker over age 40 is cheered by the cool, expert handling of US Airways Flight 1549 by C.B. Sullenberger. “Sully,” as he is known, is 57, with a piloting record that goes back to the 1970s, when he flew F-4s for the Air Force. Lauding his safe landing Thursday on the Hudson River, The New York Times even called the old guy and his crew “nimble.”

Not only did conservative columnist George Will hammer away last fall at John McCain’s “dismaying temperament.” But this week, Will had President-elect Barack Obama over for dinner with a bunch of his buds in the right-wing punditocracy, including David Brooks and Bill Kristol. Will may lean right, but he knows how to ride a wave.

NBA legend Charles Barkley is taking a leave of absence from his position as a sports commentator on TNT following his arrest for DUI. Blood test results revealed that Barkley was driving with a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the Arizona state limit at the time of his arrest on Dec. 31 in Scottsdale. A date for Barkely’s return to TNT has not yet been set, but he will be off the air for a minimum of several weeks, reports the Associated Press.

Mark E. Rey, the former timber lobbyist who heads the U.S. Forest Service, had signaled his intention to make a rule change that would help a developer convert forests into housing subdivisions. The shift, to be made before Barack Obama became president, had huge implications for Montana, where Plum Creek Timber Company could have paved as many as 900 miles of roads through Forest Service land, according to the Washington Post. Plum Creek announced yesterday it was dropping the road-use request.

The Federal Election Commission has overruled its counsel’s recommendation to fine a U.S. Chamber of Commerce group accused of illegal spending to attack Democratic VP nominee John Edwards in 2004. The party-line vote to reverse a counsel’s recommendation is highly unusual. “The FEC has transformed itself from a merely dysfunctional agency to one that now openly thumbs its nose at the law,” said Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group.

Although she is campaigning to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton in the U.S. Senate, Caroline Kennedy has declined to disclose basic financial information. Through a spokesman, she told the New York Times she would provide that material only when she becomes a senator. While her stance is legal, it hardly measures up to the good government ideals she has always espoused.

Erik Prince’s clout is fading fast. A State Department report suggests that his private security company, Blackwater Worldwide, will lose its license to work in Iraq. Five Blackwater guards have been indicted on manslaughter charges. In a rather desperate-sounding Wall Street Journal column this week, Prince expressed continuing pride in the Blackwater team.

The spectacular scam of uber-trader Bernard Madoff undermines the oft-repeated idea that a Jewish cabal controls world finances to advance Zionist interests. Madoff allegedly defrauded not just leading banks and business leaders, but also many wealthy Jews and Jewish institutions and philanthropies. Time for conspiracy theorists to give the hoary myth a rest.

Back in the good old days of 2007, Mark Zuckerberg was playing coy, turning away prospective buyers of Facebook, whose value was set at $10 billion or more. As Henry Blodget noted on Alley Insider yesterday, Facebook’s estimated value has dropped to about $2 billion, meaning that young Zuckerberg, who owns less than a third of the company, is no longer a billionaire. Something to shoot before before he hits 30.

The revelation that the Securities and Exchange Commission looked at Bernard Madoff’s trading firm, but failed to bring any charges, is the latest blow to the reputation of an agency already criticized for insufficient monitoring in the wake of the financial crisis. “This is a debacle for the SEC,” Joel Seligman, an SEC historian and president of the University of Rochester, told the Wall Street Journal.

For years, hedge fund managers have guarded their privacy like a dog at the gates of hell. Unfettered capitalism meant business without the prying eyes of regulators or journalists. Someone should tell the folks at Cerberus, the owner of Chrysler, that those days are gone. When you ask Congress for billions, you open your books.

Just when you thought newspaper fortunes couldn’t sink any lower comes word that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich demanded the Tribune Company fire editorial writers as a quid pro quo for state assistance in the sale of Wrigley Field. It’s got to put a spring in the step of scribes at the Chicago Tribune, whose owners just filed for bankruptcy, that at least the governor read the paper and thought it mattered.

You wouldn’t think Donald Rumsfeld’s muckety could fall much more. However, the nomination of retired Gen. Eric Shinseki to be secretary of veterans affairs underscores past differences with the former secretary of defense. When Shinseki told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2003 that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to maintain order in Iraq, Rumsfeld ridiculed him. Rumsfeld’s out. Shinseki, who retired in 2003, is back in.

For those who had come to see the late President Richard Nixon as an elder statesman, memos and tape-recordings just released from the Nixon archives offer a stark reminder of his darker side. One note, handwritten by top aide, H.R. Haldeman in 1971, refers to Nixon’s order to take action against “TK,” believed to be Sen. Ted Kennedy. “Get him - compromising situation . . . Get evidence - use another Dem as front.”

You’ve got to hand it to Eliot Spitzer. The man dubbed the ‘Luv Gov’ by New York’s tabloids is pursuing his political rehabilitation with the same zeal he once showed in going after Wall Street traders. Today he debuts as a member of the Fourth Estate, writing a twice-a-month column for Slate about finance, regulation and government.

Samantha Power, who lost her place in the Obama inner circle after she publicly called Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” is working her way back. The Washington Post reports that the Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on genocide is part of the transition team, offering advice on - of all things - State Department issues.

You might not notice this if you haven’t set a Google alert for billionaires in the news (which we, of course, have), but American moguls are keeping a low profile. Nowadays, the titans snagging headlines are from Russia, Mexico or Germany, and they’re comparatively dull. We suspect there are a few American billionaires still breathing, and we’d love to hear from them again.

Hedge fund billionaire George Soros, a friend of the president-elect, will see his already significant influence rise in coming months. As The Wall Street Journal noted Saturday in a piece titled The Apotheosis of Soros, he has backed Barack Obama since his 2004 Senate race.

Matt who? Remember the days when you dedicated a browser window to the Drudge Report? Although the Obama White House is sure to give him plenty of fodder, the hatted wonder isn’t pulling MSM strings the way he used to.

Detroit has seen more reversals in fortune than most American cities. But the past few months - with the mayor deposed and in jail, the automakers near collapse and Rep. John Dingell knocked from his powerful perch on House Energy and Commerce - is one for the records.

Granted, the PR folks of the Big 3 have a lot on their plates right now. But someone should have remembered to tell the bosses to fly commercial.