† A Day Of Firsts Celebrated By Second-Rate Festivities: Aretha Franklin admitted to CNN's Larry King that the cold affected her singing on Inauguration Day:

King: Is that [“My Country ‘Tis Of Thee”] a tough song to sing?

Franklin: No, not at all, but (Tuesday) it was. Mainly because of the temperature outside. I don't have to tell you, it was freezing, if you were there. Some singers it doesn't bother, and others it does. I don't care for it. It affected my voice. …

King: [I]s it hard to sing outdoors?

Franklin: It depends on the temperature. Yesterday, Mother Nature was not very kind to me. I'm going to deal with her when I get home. It, by no means, was my standard. I was not happy with it … I was delighted and thrilled to be there. That was the most important thing, not so much the performance.

And The New York Times reports that the classical quartet performing “Air and Simple Gifts” by composer John Williams were only pretending to play the piece:

[W]hat the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.

The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own). …

Performing along to recordings of oneself is a venerable practice, and it is usually accompanied by a whiff of critical disapproval. Famous practitioners since the Milli Vanilli affair include Ashlee Simpson, caught doing it on “Saturday Night Live,” and Luciano Pavarotti, discovered lip-synching during a concert in Modena, Italy. More recently, Chinese organizers superimposed the voice of a sweeter-singing little girl on that of a 9-year-old performer featured at the opening ceremony of last summer’s Olympic Games.

In the case of the inauguration, the musicians argued that the magnitude of the occasion and the harsh weather made the dubbing necessary and that there was no shame in it.

† Is Geithner’s Nomination DOA?: No. But here’s how he ‘splained his tax boo-boos to the Senate Finance Commitee, according to The Wall Street Journal:

According to Mr. Geithner, he initially failed to pay payroll taxes on income he received from the International Monetary Fund in 2001, and then repeated the error in the three subsequent years, despite the help of an accountant. … He acknowledged signing an IMF statement at the time that he understood he had been reimbursed to pay those self-employment taxes, adding that he should have read the statement more carefully. …

Perhaps the most embarrassing moment for Mr. Geithner was his attempt to evade the questions by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl on why he had only remedied the error on back taxes for two of the four years. Because the statute of limitations had run out on the 2001-2002 tax payments, Mr. Geithner was not legally required to pay them - and didn't until a Treasury confirmation hearing seemed possible. …

But instead of fessing up that he had obeyed only the letter of the law … [h]is replies finally brought Mr. Kyl to insist, "Would you answer my question rather than dancing around it - please?"

† Your Bonus: $0. Continued Employment: Priceless.: An anonymous sources tells The Wall Street Journal that former Merrill Lynch & Co. CEO John Thain resigned after Bank of America Corp. CEO Kenneth Lewis lost confidence in him after learning of “mounting fourth-quarter losses at Merrill from the transition team handling the Bank of America-Merrill merger rather than from Mr. Thain himself”:

[W]hen Mr. Lewis asked Mr. Thain what happened, the Bank of America CEO did not get a “good explanation for what was happening and why” …

The Bank of America CEO also concluded Mr. Thain has exercised “poor judgment” on a number of fronts. He left for a vacation in Vail, Colo., after the losses came to light, bonus payments at Merrill were accelerated so they could be collected before the end of the year and Mr. Thain had planned to fly this week to Davos, Switzerland, even though Bank of America had signaled that such a trip was not a good idea, this person said.

† Revenge Of The Nerds: Racine, WI Mayor Gary Becker – whose party affiliation The Associated Press has still to divulge - resigned after being accused of trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a state agent posing as a 14-year-old girl, for whom he offered to buy lingerie and offered to take her to a hotel to “have lots of fun.” According to AP, he is facing six felony counts:

Becker, who is married and has two children, is charged with attempted second-degree sexual assault of a child under 16, possession of child pornography, child enticement, use of a computer to facilitate a child sex crime, attempt exposing a child to harmful material and misconduct in office. The charges carry a maximum penalty of more than 114 years in prison and $370,000 in fines.

In another case of a sordid sex scandal involving an elected official, AP reports that four Portland, OR, newspapers – including Just Out, a newspaper serves the gay and lesbian community - are calling on Sam Adams, the city’s mayor since New Year’s Day, to step down after he admitted lying about a sexual relationship he had with a teenage boy in 2005:

Adams, 45, said the teen was 17 when they met in 2005, and that the relationship did not turn sexual until the boy turned 18. He said he lied because he was afraid voters wouldn't believe that his young lover had turned 18 before they started having sex. …

As newspapers called for him to step down, Oregon Attorney General John Kroger agreed to investigate whether a crime was committed.

Meanwhile, questions emerged about the mayor's hiring of a reporter from an alternate weekly, the Portland Mercury. The reporter, Amy Ruiz, had confronted Adams about the relationship with the teen in early 2008.

She dropped the story and was added to Adams' staff as a planning and sustainability policy adviser, an area in which she lacked experience.

Not that AP ever gets around to telling you, but Adams is a Dem.

† The Media Love Obama, But He Doesn’t Love Them Back: Politico’s Michael Calderone reports that at Thursday’s White House briefing, reporters gave press secretary Robert Gibbs an earful:

Veteran CBS newsman Bill Plante was one of the most vocal critics, questioning the White House’s handling of Wednesday night’s second swearing in – which was covered by just a four-reporter print pool that didn’t include a news photographer or TV correspondent.

He also asked … why ABC, which paid millions to host the DC Neighborhood Ball, was granted the only inauguration day interview with President Obama – a move he equated to “pay to play.” …

It’s been a bumpy 24 hours for Gibbs and company, as members of the White House press corps have publicly expressed frustration with an administration promising openness and transparency. …

“It is ironic, the same day that the president is talking about transparency, we were not let in,” CNN’s Ed Henry said on the air Wednesday night after news of the second swearing-in broke.

Henry’s main gripe was that television reporters weren’t permitted to cover a historic moment, when Obama once again raised his right hand and took the oath before Justice John Roberts. The only images came from White House photographer Pete Souza.

Three wire services - The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse -  refused to move those images, in protest of the White House’s handling of the event.

The wire services’ photographers were also denied access to photograph Obama sitting in the Oval Office on the first day, and similarly refused to move the White House approved photos.

Michael Oreskes, the AP’s managing editor for U.S. news, told his own news outlet that “we are not distributing what are, in effect, visual press releases.”

A Reuters spokesperson echoed Oreskes objection: “Using these photos would be a major break with established precedent and would compromise the long-held tradition of independent photo coverage of the president and the White House by the major news agencies.”

The Washington Post’s often droll but not always original (last item) Dana Milbank thinks that “[f]or the voice of an administration that came to office promising openness and transparency, he instead sounded, well, abundantly cautious.”


† GOP Hoping To Find A Chair That’s “Just Right”: The Stiletto’s favorite, Michael Steele, is now virtually tied for the lead with current RNC chairman Mike Duncan, though the race remains too close to call, according to Stuart Rothenberg. National committee members will meet in Washington next week to cast their votes.

† R-E-S-P-E-C-T: You Get As You Give: Philadelphia Daily News columnist Christine M. Flowers gives a raspberry to Dems who insist that “even if you didn't vote for him, even if you don't agree with his policies, we as Americans should all support Barack Obama”:

The implication: If we love this country, we want its leader to succeed. You know, the old "If we don't hang together, we shall all hang separately."

We all know how well that worked with George Bush, don't we? (In fact, haven't we had eight years of hearing that the highest form of patriotism is dissent?)

So it's one thing to wish President Obama well as a human being, to acknowledge the historic magnitude of his getting elected, to admire his sweet family and his mellifluent speaking voice and his prodigious brain.

But it's quite another to endorse his social, economic and national security policies if, in fact, you think they pose a serious threat to the fabric and essence of this country we all claim to love.

The Stiletto joins Flowers in fervently hoping that no matter how much the Obama administration studies the issue, they will not be able to figure out what to do with the accused terrorists and jihadis being held at Gitmo and keep studying the question for the next four (or eight) years.

Ironically, on his very first day in office Obama finds out that even when you try to please some people, your efforts are met with criticism instead of gratitude. Welcome to George W. Bush's world.