INDEED: “Obviously, Daschle was trying to hide a lot! . . . I guess Gibbs means that nobody is trying to hide anything now… now that what they were trying to hide has been brought to light and there’s no way to hide it.”

And, from the comments: “Watching Gibbs at work makes me yearn for the smooth self-assurance and commanding presence of Scott McClellan.” Ouch.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes an uncanny coincidence:

He became concerned in June? Call it Uncanny Coincidence, but it was early June when Hillary conceded and it became crystal-clear that Obama would be the Democratic nominee. And since Daschle had been an early and important Obama supporter, it also became clear that Daschle himself might need to start thinking about his possible role in a Obama administration.

As to the idea that it took his accountant six months to resolve these questions, please – is this the sort of glacial progress we can expect as Daschle oversees the transformation of the US health care system? For any Democrats out there not familiar with the process by which the rest of us pay our taxes, most returns are filed by April 15; summertime is the slow season and one would hope that as important a person as Tom Daschle could have gotten an answer promptly, if he had so desired. In fact, Daschle only got his answer after he had been tapped for a post requiring Senate confirmation; if Daschle had gotten the nod for a consigliere spot in the White House, I have no doubt his accountant would still be researching this.

Let’s recap for folks who are having trouble keeping up – Geithner, our new Treasury Secretary and overseer of the IRS, learned by way of a 2006 IRS audit that he had a tax problem for 2001 through 2004, but relied on the three year statute of limitations to avoid payment on the 2001 and 2002 liabilities; he resolved these only after his nomination in late 2008.

Daschle “became concerned” last June but dragged his feet on resolving the issue until after he had been nominated to a post requiring Senate confirmation.

Read the whole thing.

GORDON SMITH on the House “stimulus” vote:

This was a big whiff for Obama. And if the Reagan and Clinton Administrations are the guide, this may be a tone-setter for the next eight years.

Well, we’ve always got Geithner, Rangel, Dodd, and Daschle to set a tone of public-spiritedness and shared sacrifice. And don’t forget Kent Conrad!

A BIZARRE STORY on those California octuplets.

SO, MICHAEL STEELE DOES OUR INTERVIEW in December, and in January he’s RNC Chair. Bill Haslam does our interview on Wednesday, and on Thursday he raises $1.4 million. Coincidence? . . . I think so.

THE MAKING OF a football.

IN THE WORKS: Super Bowl coverage in 3D?

ZIMBABWE WINS: “Now, I’m very much a ‘let’s not dwell only on the bad news from Africa’ kind of guy. But’s let’s face it, this is a total disgrace. The Mugabe regime now qualify as the most incompetent economic managers in modern history. Congrats, guys — it’s a hard won title, but well deserved.”

UPDATE: The competition isn’t over! Attali Warns of ‘Worldwide Weimar’ as Governments Print Money.

KENYA’S ANSWER to Billy Carter?

DON’T BE EVIL. Or run over Bambi.

FEELING THE HOPE AND CHANGE: Iran says Obama’s offer to talk shows US failure. Wait, I thought only an evil neocon would have suggested this reaction . . . .

TOM MAGUIRE ON TOM DASCHLE’S TAX PROBLEMS: “Daschle supported Obama, eventually opposed the war after falling victim to Bush’s lies in 2002, and has been reliably pro-choice and in favor of legislating higher taxes on high earners (despite a more flexible attitude about actually paying them), so I assume he will get a pass on this. Obviously, if he were a greedy Republican this would be disqualifying.”

And evidence of the hypocrisy and dishonesty of his entire party!

LIST: The 100 Greatest Romantic Albums of All Time. Okay, Marvin Gaye is obligatory, and I was glad to see Thievery Corporation — but The Carpenters?

AMY ALKON: What’s wrong with looking beautiful? Nothing, it just attracts a certain amount of leveling behavior from those who aren’t . . . .

STATE DEPARTMENT PRESS CONFERENCE: A bad review.

DAN RIEHL ON THE G.O.P.: Some Old Dogs Have No Tricks.

FOR C.A.I.R., “major damage control.”

OUTRAGE: Obama and FEMA leave Americans to die in Kentucky. Media firestorm in . . . well, never.

Plus, “Obama dozed, people froze.” And Juliette Ochieng emails: “President Obama doesn’t care about white people…and neither do the MSM.” Well, that wouldn’t fit the narrative.

EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY: Not as reliable as some suppose?

THE LATEST CONSUMER REPORTS has a big section on recommended TVs that makes me think two things: (1) I wish everything got better and cheaper as fast as electronics do; and (2) brand-dominance seems to be the thing of the past.

This time around, Samsung leads in most categories. Sorry, Sony and JVC! Plus, things are so much cheaper. The top-rated 58″ plasma TV is cheaper than my 46″ LCD JVC was a couple of years ago. And the 50″ version — also top-rated in its category — is absurdly cheaper.

Likewise in LCD TVs, the top-rated 52″ (as big as they get), also by Samsung, is much cheaper, and probably better, than my JVC 46″. Are these ratings reliable? I think so. The JVC that I own was their top choice when I bought it, and it did look better than the other sets I compared it to. And we have this relatively cheap Panasonic (42″ and under $700) in our bedroom, and it’s their top set in its category and I think the picture is great. If only, say, medical care were improving as fast. Or politicians . . . .

UPDATE: Yes, I know LCD TVs get bigger than 52″. (Here’s a 108″ model!) That’s just as big as the ratings went.

OBAMA’S TROUBLE GETTING REPUBLICAN VOTES:

It was not for lack of effort on the part of the new president. Obama went to the Capitol to visit Republican as well as Democratic lawmakers, and he encouraged the Democratic draftsmen to scrap a couple of egregiously irrelevant spending programs they had penciled into the bill. But the complaint I heard from Republicans was that Pelosi and her lieutenants, committee chairmen Charlie Rangel and David Obey, had used the tight timetable and their control of legislative procedures to block virtually all efforts to open the bill to compromise.

Obey and Rangel say that’s not the case, but I’m skeptical even if David Broder is not.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Obama praises Iraqis on provincial elections.

“TANGIBLE PROOF” that “the news is propaganda?”

OBAMA’S PLAN HAS ALREADY BOOSTED TAX COLLECTIONS!

In office less than two weeks, President Barack Obama has already increased tax receipts at the U.S. Treasury with an innovative plan to get tax-dodgers to pay up, in full, immediately.

“The president’s plan is simple but ingenious,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, “He targets wealthy individuals who filed inaccurate tax forms, cheating the government out of tens of thousands of dollars. Then he just nominates them for cabinet positions. They suddenly see the error of their ways, and they cut checks for the full amount owed, plus interest.”

Now that really is a new kind of politics!

UPDATE: Jim Treacher emails: “Has David Corn sneered about Joe the Plumber’s taxes lately?”

MORE MEDIA RETRENCHMENT: L.A. Times to cut 300 more jobs.

ALREADY? Love affair between Canada and President Obama appears to be coming to an end. “The honeymoon appears to be over between Canada and newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama, as Obama’s first foreign visit to Ottawa in February will likely focus on a protectionist bill now before Congress. The $820 billion American economic stimulus package will have some strings attached. The U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that includes a provision barring foreign iron and steel for infrastructure projects.”