The Secret Art of George W. Bush

W. paints! Who would have thought it Thanks to a hacker known as Guccifer who wormed into the computer of the 43rd president’s sister, the world has learned that George W. Bush is an amateur - I would say serious amateur - painter. He may be some people’s least favorite president since Hoover, but as an artist he is, well, a heck of a lot better than any number of world leaders whose names spring to mind, foremost Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.

Images of only three paintings made it to the Internet â€" where they promptly went viral â€" before the Secret Service started to investigate. Two are oblique self-portraits, both ertical rectangles that show Mr. Bush bathing. Needless to say, they raise all sorts of interesting questions about what’s on the former president’s mind these days, and what, if any, art he has been looking at.

One shows Mr. Bush in the shower seen from the back (upper torso only), his well-known squint caught in a white rimmed shaving mirror. The other is a Bush-eye view of the former president as he soaks in a bathtub with the water running: in the receding form of the tub only his slightly-bowed legs from the knees down, and his feet are visible, mostly covered by water.

The forms are handled with care, but awkwardly, which is the source of their appeal. Things are recognizable but just: you can detect posh details like the shower’s chrome hinge and glass door. Everything is honestly accounted for, not sharply realistic, certainly not finicky.

Equally interesting is a detail in the photograph itself. The paintings sit on fairly well-used easels. Has the president been pain! ting since 2009 (or earlier) or did he get them second-hand

The two paintings could be said to depict the introverted self-absorption for which Mr. Bush is known. Perhaps, he is trying to cleanse himself in a more metaphorical way, seeking a kind of redemption from his less fortuitous decisions as president.

At the same time, whatever is going on psychologically, the paintings suggest a man, a painter at ease with his body. He gets some credit for directing his gaze at himself, rather than at the more conventional female nude that is many amateur painters’ first choice. Along with landscapes: the third painting depicts a stone church in Maine, a work in progress that Mr. Bush is shown working on amid weight-lifting equipment in what may be the family work-out room in Kennebunkport, Maine.

For many these works might qualify as outsider art; they give every indication of having been made by a self-taught artist. But so do many paintings shown in the insier art world of today. These works make you wonder if Bush is familiar with Jasper Johns’s “Seasons,” where each of the four paintings is shadowed by a male, seemingly unclothed silhouette, or Pierre Bonnard’s strangely chaste, luminous paintings of his wife reclining in a bathtub. And one can imagine them being not too out of place in a group show that might include the figurative work of Dana Schutz, Karen Kilimnik, Alice Neel, Christoph Ruckhaberle and Sarah McEneaney. Which is to say, they are remarkably progressive looking.

Lew\'s Cayman Islands Fund a Likely Issue at Confirmation Hearings

As recently as 2010, Jack Lew, President Obama‘s nominee to be the next secretary of the Treasury, had as much as $100,000 invested in a CitiGroup hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands’ notorious Ugland House, a building whose mailboxes are home to nearly 19,000 corporate entities, many of them tax shelters.

The investment has been in public documents for years and drew no attention when Mr. Lew was confirmed to be deputy secretary of state in 2009 and director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in 2010.

But the fund is coming to light as Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are zering on taxes lost to off-shore entities, including hedge funds, as a way to stave off $1 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts set to begin March 1.

Aides in both parties said it was quite likely to come up during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. Senate Democrats are struggling to come up with a package of spending cuts and tax loophole closings that could stave off the automatic spending cuts â€" known as sequestration â€" for at least three months. Tax breaks for hedge fund managers and offshore tax shelters are a prime target.

The Finance Committee held hearings in 2008 burrowing in on Ugland House, a nondescript white building in George Town, Cayman Islands, that shelters a bewildering number of corporate headquarters.

“Today we will take a look at some ostensibly crowded halls, those of the Ugland House in the Cayman Islands,” Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the committee’s chairman, said, opening the hearing. “That is a remarkable five-story building that the G.A.O. tells us has some 18,857 tenants. Today we will examine whether many of those tenants are feasting at America’s taxpayers’ expense.”

Mr. Lew divested himself of the CitiGroup Venture Capital International Growth Partnership in 2010. While one disclosure form put his personal holdings between $50,000 and $100,000, administration officials said the true total was $56,000. When confirmed as budget director in 2010, he sold the investment at a loss, for $54,418.

“Jack Lew paid all of his taxes and reported all of the income, gains and losses from the investment on his tax returns,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “The existence of Mr. Lew’s investment is not news to the Senate. Mr. Lew disclosed the investment in his prior confirmations, before three separate committees. here are no new facts that provide a basis for senators to reach a different conclusion about Mr. Lew’s nomination than they reached twice before in this administration.”

Mr. Lew did not create, manage or operate the fund, officials said. Republican aides did not suggest any illegality or tax cheating with the disclosure. Indeed, Republicans on the Finance Committee had leaped to the defense of Henry Paulson, President George W. Bush‘s last Treasury secretary, when numerous Cayman Island investments surfaced during his confirmation.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, then the Finance Committee’s ranking Republican, accused the president of hypocrisy.

“President Obama has been almost obsessively critical of offshore investments,” Mr. Grassley said. “He called Ugland House ‘either the biggest ! building ! or the biggest tax scam on record.’ That makes this Cayman Islands investment of his top official and now Treasury secretary nominee worthy of attention. The irony is thick. Members of the Finance Committee will question Mr. Lew about his foreign investments at the hearing.”

Newtown Survivor to Attend State of the Union Address

Among the victims of gun violence who will be sitting in the House chamber on Tuesday night when President Obama delivers his State of the Union address will be a teacher who survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Natalie Hammond, who reportedly took bullet wounds to the leg, foot and hand but narrowly escaped with her life, will attend the speech as the guest of her congresswoman, Elizabeth Esty, the representative for Newtown, Conn.

Ms. Hammond, the school’s lead teacher, and another school employee were the only two people to survive after being shot by the gunman, Adam Lanza.

Ms. Hammond will be one of the many victims of gun violence who will attend the State of the Union address.

As part of a campaign led by Representative Jim Langein of Rhode Island, who was shot accidentally at age 16 and left paralyzed, some members of Congress have been inviting as their guests people who have been shot or have lost a family member to gunfire.

Mr. Langevin, whose guest will be the brother of a woman who was fatally shot in a robbery in Providence, has signed up about 20 members of Congress to participate in his effort. He has said he expects to have many more.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said Friday that her guest would be a fourth grader from Newtown who attends a school near Sandy Hook.

The girl wrote Ms. Pelosi a letter imploring her to help pass an assault weapons ban. “We would all appreciate anything you could do to help,” she wrote.

With No Confirmed Medicare Chief for 6 Years, Obama Tries Again

President Obama has renominated Marilyn B. Tavenner to run the agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid, and his action provided a reminder that the agency has been without a Senate-confirmed chief for more than six years.

By any measure, the agency has huge responsibilities. Medicare and Medicaid provide health care to more than 100 million people. They spent more than $800 billion last year, accounting for 23 percent of the federal budget. They are at the center of the looming fiscal fight between Mr. Obama and Republicans in Congress.

Ms. Tavenner is now the acting administrator of the agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The agency has the primary responsibility for carrying out the 2010 health care law, which is expected to provide coverage to 30 million people who are uninsured.

It is unclear how hard Mr. Obama will push the Senate to confirm Ms. Tavenner, a nurse and former Virginia state official.

Ms. Tavenner worked for mor than two decades at the Hospital Corporation of America, first as a nursing supervisor, then as a hospital executive and eventually as president of the company’s outpatient services group.

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, who led the agency under a recess appointment from July 2010 to December 2011, said it was irresponsible for the Senate to allow a vacancy to continue.

“An agency of this importance and complexity needs stable leadership,” Dr. Berwick said in an interview on Friday. “Senators, even those who disagree with the president, need to look in the mirror and see if they are acting responsibly. They have a responsibility to see that the government runs well, even if they disagree with the administration.”

The Senate Finance Committee never held a confirmation hearing for Dr. Berwick, a health policy expert who became a symbol of all that Republicans disliked in the new health care law.

Ms. Tavenner is more of a manager and less of a visionary. She has support from many Democrats and some Virginia Republicans, including Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who has described her as “eminently qualified.”

The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and Families USA, a consumer group, endorsed Ms. Tavenner on Thursday, saying she had done a good job in 14 months as acting administrator.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, said he had met with Ms. Tavenner and found her to be “smart and diligent.’’ But he added, “There are many questions she’ll need to fully answer before I decide whether or not to support her nomination.”

Debate on the nomination will give Republicans a fresh opportunity to assail the health care law, and Democrats are not eagr to fight that battle again.

Congressional Republicans have flooded the administration with hundreds of questions about how it is carrying out the law. Some Republicans vow to hold up Ms. Tavenner’s nomination unless they get answers.

In his first term, Mr. Obama made health care one of his top priorities. He said the cost of Medicare and Medicaid was “the biggest threat” to the nation’s fiscal future. But he did not name anyone to lead the agency until April 2010, after he had signed the Affordable Care Act.

One effect of vacancies at the top of the agency is to give the White House more control over the nation’s biggest health programs, Medicare officials said.

Mr. Obama first nominated Ms. Tavenner in December 2011. Finance Committee aides said they were waiting for the White House to submit paperwork for Ms. Tavenner, including copies of a questionnaire and recent tax returns. The panel plans to hold a hearing next week on the nomination of Jacob J. Lew to be T! reasury s! ecretary.

Undaunted by his experience in Washington, Dr. Berwick remains a man with a mission. “I am close to a decision on running for governor of Massachusetts,” he said. “I’m giving it strong consideration. I am very interested in the possibility that states can lead reform on health care and other issues.”

White House Delivers Dire Warning About Automatic Cuts

With a real blizzard bearing down on New England, the policy wonks in the White House tried every which way they could on Friday to warn of the dangers of a different kind of storm.

The officials gathered reporters to describe what they believe will be the effects of sequestration, the automatic, across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic spending that will kick in on March 1 unless Congress and President Obama agree on a plan to put them off.

The string of adjectives was meant to be chilling: “large and arbitrary,” “severe,” “significant and harmful,” “very significant,” “blunt,” “mindless” and “extraordinarily troublesome.”

They didn’t stop with just adjectives, though. In their effort to pressure Republican lawmakers to agree to tax increases as well as spending cuts, White House oficials predicted specific consequences that Americans might not like.

Among them, they said: 70,000 young children will be kicked off Head Start early education programs; hundreds of federal prosecutors will be furloughed; food safety inspections will be cut back; 600,000 women and children will lose nutritional benefits; and small-business loans will be cut by about $500 million.

“The cuts would cause very significant disruptions that would be felt far and wide across the country,” said Danny Werfel, the federal controller of the Office of Management and Budge! t. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. We can’t plan our way out of these consequences or take steps to soften the blow.”

The briefing was the latest attempt by Mr. Obama’s White House to try and make sure that Republicans receive the blame for the consequences of the automatic cuts â€" if they happen.

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House speaker, John A. Boehner, tried to deflect that blame, noting that the House has already proposed alternative spending cuts as a way of avoiding the automatic ones. Mr. Obama has said he wants a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

And a news release from the speaker’s office had the headline: “White House Outlines Devastating Consequences of President Obama’s Sequester.”

“The president is out of excuses,” Mr. Buck said in a statement e-maile to reporters. “We’re glad they’re laying out the devastating consequences of the president’s sequester, but the question remains: what are they willing to do to prevent it”

A spokesman for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said in a message on Twitter after the White House briefing: “Words not used at WH briefing to describe sequestered budget cuts: ‘Here’s our plan.’ ”

At the White House, the economic officials conducting the briefing lamented the lack of flexibility in the sequestration law, which they noted was intentional.

“It was intended to drive Democrats and Republicans in Congress to compromise,” Mr. Werfel said. “It does not represent a responsible way to achieve deficit reduction.”

And yet, none of Mr. Obama’s aides were willing to s! ay that t! he president regretted signing the law that put the sequestration plan into effect. Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, said the automatic cuts were the only way to avoid a default on the national debt in the summer of 2011.

“He could not let the country default for the first time, thus the sequester,” Mr. Carney said. “The whole point in its design was that it would never come to pass.”

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

At Retreat, Clinton Tries to Rally House Democrats

LEESBURG, Va. - “We miss you!” someone in the audience of House Democrats shouted at the 42nd president of the United States.

“Sometimes,” he responded, “I miss you.”

Former President Bill Clinton visited here on Friday morning to rally House Democrats at their annual retreat. And while he injected a healthy dose of energy into the crowd - which thanked him with a long standing ovation, longer than the one given to President Obama the day before - Mr. Clinton also dispensed some tough love.

Sure, it’s easy to revel in the Republicans’ recent political setbacks now, he said. But the Republican Party they will face in 2014 when Democrats hope they can regain control of the House will not be as weak, he warned.

“We should assume going forward that the people who disagree with us honestly in our approach will not make it quite as easy,” he said, noting how Republicans had already signaled that they were moderating their views on issues like immigration in hopes of depriving Democrats the opportunity to paint them as extreme on the issue.

“It’s easy to sneer at that,” he added. “This strategy of theirs is not necessarily guaranteed to fail.”

In many ways, there was no one better positioned ! to warn House Democrats about the potential traps that await them in the 2014 midterm elections. During Mr. Clinton’s first midterm election in 1994, Republicans seized control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

Mr. Clinton offered up some of the lessons of that experience - and how those might help explain the Democrats’ loss of the House in 2010. He said he had been campaigning for Democrats in 2010 when he realized things were not going their way.

“I remember I told Hillary somewhere in the process of it that, you know, we’re going to take a terrible lickin’. And she said, ‘Well, why aren’t you agreeing to do more events’ I said I don’t want it on my conscience. I did this in ’94.”

But elections, he said, are just one step in the process of political evolution. And he encouraged them to think beyond 2014.

“I want you to think about what you’re going to do the next two years, where you’re going to end up and how this is part o a long-term struggle,” he told them at the beginning of a speech that went on for more than 40 minutes.

“You have to understand about politics, nothing is permanent. It is an ongoing enterprise,” he added.

Asked to reflect on Mr. Clinton’s advice to not lose sight of the long term, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, said, “Certainly I don’t underestimate any opponent. I don’t overestimate them, either. We’re ready for this challenge.”

Pelosi to Bring Sandy Hook Guest to State of the Union

Representative Jim Langevin’s effort to bring victims of gun violence to the State of the Union address has a high-profile new participant, Jeremy W. Peters reports:

Nancy Pelosi says she will bring a little girl from Sandy Hook as her guest to the State of the Union on Tuesday

â€" Jeremy W. Peters (@jwpetersNYT) 8 Feb 13

The Early Word: Drones

In Today’s Times:

• John O. Brennan, President Obama’s pick for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, faced questions on Thursday from the Senate Intelligence Committee about the secrecy surrounding drone strikes and their legal justification. It is the first time an administration official has engaged in an extended public discussion about their use for targeted killing, Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane report.

• Divisions within the Obama administration over how to handle the violence in Syria were on display Thursday on Capitol Hill as Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before lawmakers, Michael R. Gordon and Mark Landler report.

li>House Democrats are starting to appreciate a new political reality: With control of 200 seats in a chamber shared with deeply partisan Republicans struggling with their own internal divisions, Democrats matter again, Jeremy W. Peters reports.

• Roman Catholic bishops rejected the Obama administration’s latest proposal on health insurance coverage of contraception Thursday, saying that while it seemed to address part of their concerns, it did not go far enough to protect religious organizations that object to the mandate, Robert Pear reports.

Washington Happenings:

• Mr. Obama will speak at the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute in Arlington, Va., honoring Mr. Panetta on Friday.

Q.& A.: Saving Space and Shows on a TiVo

Q.

I have a bunch of TV programs recorded on my TiVo that I don’t want to erase, but I’m running tight on drive space. Can I copy these shows elsewhere, like to a DVD

A.

If you have the TiVo Desktop software for your Windows PC or Mac and have your TiVo recorder connected to your home network, you should be able to transfer the recorded shows to your computer and burn them to DVDs there. Shows that have copy-protection built in will not transfer, however.

TiVo has instructions for transferring the files from a PC or Mac on its site. According to the company’s support docmentation, PC owners should use the $70 Roxio Creator program and Mac users should get the $80 Roxio Toast Titanium software to transfer and burn recordings.

Depending on your home’s mix of hardware and software, you may be able to copy the shows to a disc with a connected DVD recorder or burn the shows to a DVD with other recording software. Wondershare’s $40 DVD Creator is one program that has its own online instructions (and a free trial version) for recording shows to disc and there are many others around the Web.!

If the file-transfer and disc-burning process sounds too complicated, another way to make room for more shows on your TiVo recorder is to add an external drive that gives you more storage space. This approach only works with certain TiVo models, but you can find out more on TiVo’s approved method here. Companies like Weaknees sell upgrade kits for some TiVo models that can add more recording capacity as well.

Q.& A.: Saving Space and Shows on a TiVo

Q.

I have a bunch of TV programs recorded on my TiVo that I don’t want to erase, but I’m running tight on drive space. Can I copy these shows elsewhere, like to a DVD

A.

If you have the TiVo Desktop software for your Windows PC or Mac and have your TiVo recorder connected to your home network, you should be able to transfer the recorded shows to your computer and burn them to DVDs there. Shows that have copy-protection built in will not transfer, however.

TiVo has instructions for transferring the files from a PC or Mac on its site. According to the company’s support docmentation, PC owners should use the $70 Roxio Creator program and Mac users should get the $80 Roxio Toast Titanium software to transfer and burn recordings.

Depending on your home’s mix of hardware and software, you may be able to copy the shows to a disc with a connected DVD recorder or burn the shows to a DVD with other recording software. Wondershare’s $40 DVD Creator is one program that has its own online instructions (and a free trial version) for recording shows to disc and there are many others around the Web.!

If the file-transfer and disc-burning process sounds too complicated, another way to make room for more shows on your TiVo recorder is to add an external drive that gives you more storage space. This approach only works with certain TiVo models, but you can find out more on TiVo’s approved method here. Companies like Weaknees sell upgrade kits for some TiVo models that can add more recording capacity as well.