Mad Men

I immediately read it as a reference to the AMC series Mad Men and all that one might associate with it.

mad men is drama series running on the amc channel. it’s about the life of people working at an advertising agency during the early 60s. has a 50s feel. “mad men” is slang insiders used to refer to ad people working within the industry. time is calling obama and geitner pitchmen, who need to sell the stimulus package.

i cant remember the outfit but keith (or was it rachel?) cited another poll that showed that while support has dropped, it still had 52 % support for the stimulus.

time is calling obama and geitner pitchmen,
although i wouldn’t put it above time to use the caption as a pun, intending a double, derogatory meaning.

It could be old pals Bush and Blair, or it could be old pals Joey and Tony (image 2 of the same Time White House Photo Blog)…

…but it doesn’t really matter who the individual men are. Now they represent The Man, and no matter what they do, somebody ain’t gonna like it.
Thus, the new and improved administration can say things differently, but they don’t need to change things much at all. From today’s New York Times, Biden Signals U.S. Is Open to Deal With Russia on Missiles:

MUNICH — The United States will pursue a missile defense plan that has angered the Kremlin, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Saturday, but he also left open the possibility of compromise on the issue and struck a more conciliatory tone than the Bush administration on relations between the countries.
“It is time to press the reset button, and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia,” Mr. Biden said in a speech at a security conference here attended by global leaders and diplomats.
The highly anticipated speech, seen as the first major outline of the new administration’s relations with the world, came just days after Kyrgyzstan’s president announced a decision to close a United States base there that is crucial to the war in Afghanistan, which President Obama has made his biggest foreign policy priority. That announcement was made in Moscow, and many American officials concluded that the Russians had pressured Kyrgyzstan as part of their campaign to reassert control over former Soviet republics.
Foreign policy experts said that the Obama administration was likely averse to making any outright concessions on the missile defense system just days after the Kyrgyz announcement, fearing it could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Mr. Biden, they said, seemed to be balancing the need to appear firm against the administration’s hopes to reverse a several-year slide in American relations with Moscow.
Some Western diplomats had expected Mr. Biden to announce a strategic review of the missile defense system as a way to defuse tensions between Washington and Moscow. Although Mr. Biden did not go that far, he did leave room in both the speech — and in an interview afterward — for unspecified changes in the plan.
“We will continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability, provided the technology is proven and it is cost-effective,” Mr. Biden said.
The system, as conceived by the Bush administration, would place missile interceptors and a radar system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russians balked at the placement so close to their border, saying it was proof that the system was meant to combat their nuclear arsenal, rather than a missile threat from Iran as President Bush said.

T’was hoping for more change, but reality keeps butting in.