What made news yesterday was the slashing of CEO’s compensations.

What was newsworthy was that this was a move decided by Obama’s pay czar on his own, without even briefeng the White House on it

But on Wednesday night, administration officials said that the president of the United States didn’t have all that much to do with a decision that will, in many ways, come to define his relationship with Wall Street.

In fact, sources within the administration say the decision to cap corporate pay was Kenneth Feinberg’s, and his alone. A senior administration official tells POLITICO that Obama did not sign off on the pay master’s decision.

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Which reminds me of another newsworthy story that barely made news: the much praised decision to set a dateline for closing Guantanamo, was made by the White House Counsel Greg Craig. Since now, even CNN fact checking SNL had to give Guantanamo to them, it is Craig who is being scapegoated.

in the case of the CEO pay slash, we are in the celebration phase, so the pay czar us being used as ammunition in the “war on Fox” – with the White House trying to bar Fox from interviewing him and all the other networks refusing to join in the shunning. Maybe they are now understanding the meaning of the White House reserving the privilege of deciding what’s news and what’s not

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In other news, Cheney is at war with the White House on the war with Afghanistan. This is not a pretend war like before Among other things Cheney accuses Obama of taking credit for their plan

“bears a striking resemblance” to the one announced by President Obama in March.

Bush administration handed Obama’s transition team a policy review of the Afghan war conducted last fall to meet the new challenges posed by the Taliban.“They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt,” Cheney said.

And it is true that Cheney did praise Obama in March, when stealing their plan

Leaving aside the dithering – not dithering debate, when Gibbs was asked about Cheney’s remarks – and delivered some – deserved attacks, the  non-answer on the stolen strategy was interesting

“I have not looked at that review,” Gibbs said. ”I don’t know whether what he describes is accurate.”

oops! Seems that like in the debates, Obama got to say “I agree with what they said”. Only he didn’t, he just pretended he said it.

So, the Nobel peace prize laureate, just stole Cheney’s war! Now, if he only could figure out what to do with it!

Update

Adding a link to Cheney’s statements that still works

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