FRIDAY,  JANUARY 9,  2009

BURRIS BACKED - AT 5:29 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  An Illinois Supreme Court today declared that Roland Burris’s appointment to President-elect Barack Obama’s former seat was valid under state law, even though it had been rejected by Senate Democrats earlier this week.

COMMENT:  What a sleazy affair.  I don't doubt that the court is correct on the law, but the symbolism is awful.  America's first black president will have his Senate seat filled by a man appointed by a just-impeached governor, with the race card played all the way.  The president-elect's silence is disappointing. Another great moment in history.

HOT ROD BACKFIRES - AT 4:23 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times: 

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to impeach Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich on Friday morning on the grounds of abuse of power as the state’s chief executive. He is the first governor in Illinois’s history to be impeached, and his case now goes to the state Senate for trial.

COMMENT:  Somewhat ironic that he's the first to be impeached, since others have gone to jail, including Hot Rod's immediate predecessor.  But why add insult to injury?


STOCKS SLUMP - AT 4:20 P.M. ET:   

Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. stocks declined, extending the market’s worst weekly slump since November, on concern an increase in the unemployment rate to an almost 16-year high signals the global recession is worsening.

COMMENT:  Final figures - Dow down 143 to 8599.

COULDN'T HAPPEN TO A NICER GUY - AT 10:40 A.M. ET: - From AP: 

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich faces almost certain impeachment by the Illinois House, a historic step that would trigger a trial to determine whether the Democratic governor should be tossed out of office.  A simple majority vote will be enough to impeach. With Blagojevich defenders almost impossible to find, the outcome appears set.

COMMENT:  He would be tried by the Illinois Senate.  As of now, Hot Rod doesn't seem inclined to resign.  The key element of an impeachment trial wouldn't be his fate.  No one outside Illinois cares.  It would be the possibility of damaging information coming out about the president-elect or his staff. 

DOW DOWN - AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  The Dow is down 122 points, following release of the latest unemployment numbers.  See note just below this one.

THE BAD NUMBER - AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's unemployment rate bolted to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level in 16 years, as nervous employers slashed 524,000 jobs. The labor market is expected to remain weak as mass layoffs continue.

COMMENT:  We should take two lessons from the Depression here.  One is the importance of speed.  Two is the importance of actually solving problems, not doing things that satisfy influential congressmen or just make us feel good about ourselves.

NO CHANGE HERE - AT 8:33 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  The opposition to Mr. Obama's stimulus package among Democrats in Congress is getting more serious by the hour.  Who knew?  The Dems finally get back into total power, and start fighting among themselves.  We first reported on this yesterday, but The Times has additional details:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan ran into crossfire from his own party in Congress on Thursday, suggesting that quick passage of spending programs and tax cuts could require more time and negotiation than Democrats once hoped.

Senate Democrats complained that major components of his plan were not bold enough and urged more focus on creating jobs and rebuilding the nation’s energy infrastructure rather than cutting taxes.

COMMENT:  But it's the tax cuts that provide the greatest and most immediate stimulus.  The other items can take years to work, and we haven't got years.  We get the feeling that we're looking at an expensive failure here.

HOLD THAT HOLDER - AT 7:59 A.M. ET:  New information can complicate the confirmation of Eric Holder to be attorney general.  Republicans have made Holder a target and have already pledged to give him a tough time.  This, from The Los Angeles Times, won't help his cause:

Attorney general nominee Eric H. Holder Jr. repeatedly pushed some of his subordinates at the Clinton Justice Department to drop their opposition to a controversial 1999 grant of clemency to 16 members of two violent Puerto Rican nationalist organizations, according to interviews and documents.

Details of the role played by Holder, who was deputy attorney general at the time, had not been publicly known until now. The new details are of particular interest because Republican senators have vowed to revisit Holder's role during his confirmation hearings next week.

COMMENT:  Holder's nomination does not appear to be in trouble, but it represents an Obama blunder.  If there's one official you want to be pristine, it's attorney general.  But Holder comes into his confirmation hearings with heavy, roll-on baggage.  He was involved in the infamous Marc Rich pardon, his attitude toward confronting terrorism appears vague at best, and now this.  Couldn't Obama have found someone else?  His choice for solicitor general, Dean Elena Kagan of the Harvard Law School, would have been much better.

CAMELOT NOT - AT 7:50 A.M. ET:  Governor David Paterson of New York may or may not have been dropping hints, but the Caroline Kennedy fan club could not have been happy at his latest remarks about the contender for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat:

ALBANY - Caroline Kennedy's lack of elected office experience "does not help her" in her quest to represent New York in the U.S. Senate, Gov. David Paterson told The Buffalo News this morning.

"The notion that I have to take Caroline is not coming from me," Paterson said in an interview in his Capitol office with The Buffalo News. He said "gossip" has become a "greater force right now than my decision."

"What I would say is that, to the media, it's Caroline and the others. To me, it's there are 10 to 15 good candidates," said the governor, who will appoint the successor to U.S. Sen.Hillary Rodham Clinton after she is likely confirmed later this month as U.S. secretary of state.

COMMENT:  Not exactly an endorsement.  Maybe Caroline should cancel the moving van.

THE COUNTDOWN

11 DAYS TO THE AGE OF OBAMIUS

Posted at 7:29 a.m. ET

In only 11 days the Age of Obamius begins.  Oprah will be slim, The New York Times will be renamed The New Bama Testamant, no team in professional football will be permitted to lose.

We can report the following developments:

- Both the president-elect and vice-president-elect were seen actively preparing for their new roles.  The president-elect received an intelligence briefing.  The vice-president-elect finished shorthand class.

- The Obama transition team established three standards for a new pick for secretary of Commerce - successful businessperson, not wiped out in the recent stock market dive, and not under indictment.  It will interview the two candidates today.

- Hillary Clinton renamed the personal plane of the secretary of State "Air Force Should Have Been."  She said women would understand.

- The president-elect struggled to establish the right mood with his upcoming inaugural address.  He is considering delivering the speech in Aramaic, and then turning high-octane gasoline into hydrogen. 

- Code Pink has been appointed Official Disrupter of the inauguration, and will be given two minutes to spray fake blood on Leon Panetta.

- The incoming president has finally selected the desk he will use in the Oval Office.  By tradition, a president picks the desk of someone else who's been elected president.  Under pressure from his party, Obama chose the desk of Al Gore.

January 9, 2009.      Permalink          

THURSDAY,  JANUARY 8,  2009

DEMS VS. THE ONE

Posted at 7:22 p.m. ET

Lesson of the week:  In Washington, all business is business as usual.  President-elect Obama is running into trouble in his own party over his stimulus package.  Some objections may be valid.  Others seem to be the same old story - put my pet project first, or else.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Democratic-led Congress is moving to assert control over President-elect Barack Obama's plan to revive the U.S. economy, posing an early challenge that could define his relationship with Capitol Hill, where the resurgent Democratic Party has strengthened majorities in the House and Senate.

The Obama magic wand isn't having much effect on Congress.

Some of the strongest objections can be found within Mr. Obama's own party. Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) raised doubts Thursday about the job-creating value of Mr. Obama's proposed $500 payroll tax holiday, which he scoffed would only put $20 a week in a worker's paycheck.

He might have a point on amount.  But putting any money in peoples' pockets can help...rather than earmarking it for federal spending programs.

Also Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) questioned Obama proposal to reward businesses with a $3,000 tax credit for every job they create. "There's just not a lot of history of that working very well," said Sen. Wyden, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will be a starting point for the stimulus package on Capitol Hill. He suggested that infrastructure spending would have a "much bigger economic" impact, and cited a specific need for investments in high-speed rail.

Dud.  Infrastructure spending takes too long to work because projects have to be planned, approved and contracted.  Tax cuts work because the money quickly goes to the people.

As concerns are coming to the forefront, the timetable for action on the broader plan is slipping, with party leaders and Mr. Obama now aiming for enactment by mid-February.

How long have they had to plan this?

For Mr. Obama, who takes office on Jan. 20, the doubts emerging on Capitol Hill pose an immediate challenge, with somewhat conflicting goals. Not only must he rein in lawmakers who want to add potentially costly items to the package, as the expense of his own initiatives, but he must win over deficit hawks aghast at its cost and fearful of the long-term implications for U.S. fiscal policy.

Again, the way you win over deficit hawks is with tax cuts.  Tax cuts stimulate the economy, and, in the end, that adds to federal revenue, reducing the deficit.  But members of Congress want stuff for their districts and states, which is a big part of the budget problem.

But now we're into governing.  Fading away are the mass Obama rallies - the last one will be the inaugural bash - and a week from Tuesday Mr. Obama will have to earn his paycheck.  He'll find that the "historic moment" of his election will live on only in the smitten media and among the party-line multiculturalists in academia.  For the rest of us, he must produce.

January 8, 2009.       Permalink              

CAUGHT BY A FOX - AT 3:41 P.M. ET:  From Fox News: 

A high-profile Norwegian doctor who has said the September 11 terrorists were justified in their attack is now treating patients in Gaza and is being accused of presenting "hard-core propaganda" to TV interviewers in his telling of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.  Dr. Mads Gilbert has become an unofficial advocate of the Palestinian cause, his critics say.

International media reports, including those from the BBC, CBS, CNN and FOX’s sister station Sky News, present Gilbert as an ordinary doctor.  But a look at his record shows that Gilbert, 61, is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist "Red" party, and he has been involved in solidarity work for the Palestinians since the 1970s. He has criticized the international aid organization Doctors Without Borders for refusing to take sides in conflicts.

COMMENT:  It's utterly typical of today's journalism.  People are featured in stories, and we're given only a sliver of information about them.  It would be like having Adolf Hitler interviewed, describing him as a German politician, and leaving it at that.  But I've noticed that the problem exists almost exclusively when leftists are featured.  If someone on the right is the subject, we get details about that person.  If the person is on the left, the background is kept vague.

OBAMA JAWBONING - AT 3:29 P.M. ET - From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday urged Congress to act quickly to pass sweeping economic stimulus measures, including a tax cut and an infusion of as much as $800 billion, or face the likelihood that “this recession could linger for years.”

In making an unusually direct and high-profile appeal in remarks at George Mason University in northern Virginia, Mr. Obama was building on a campaign for swift economic action that he has conducted for weeks — each time in ever-sharper terms.

COMMENT:  Perfectly proper to warn about the economy, which continues downward.  But news reports say that even Democrats on Capitol Hill are having trouble figuring out exactly how the money will be spent.  Obama must refine his program, make it completely clear.  I wouldn't be surprised, by the way, if he reinstitutes FDR's practice of evening, "fireside chats," on TV.

WARNING ON IRAN - AT 3:22 P.M. ET:  From AP: 

WASHINGTON -- William Perry, who headed the Pentagon during a 1994 nuclear standoff with North Korea, predicted on Thursday that President-elect Barack Obama will soon face a nuclear crisis with Iran.  Iran is "moving inexorably toward becoming a nuclear power," with ominous implications for the Middle East, Perry said.

COMMENT:  Sooner, rather than later.  With the American economy in turmoil, it's logical for Iran to assume we'll be focusing on that.  I doubt that the free fall in the price of oil will deter Iran.  Even economically challenged countries can develop the bomb if they focus their resources.

MINNESOTA CRAZY

Posted at 9:12 a.m. ET

Professor Steven E. Schier of Carleton College has a remarkable take on the U.S. Senate election, recount, and upcoming court challenge in Minnesota.  The race has incumbent Republican Norm Coleman challenged by rarely funny comedian Al Franken.  Published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, this will not increase your reverence for democracy:

Will of the people? Er . . . no. Accidental Senator? Absolutely. That’s the certain result of the recount nightmare currently occurring in our state.

The basic problem can be simply stated. The margin of error that Minnesota’s election system provides is simply larger than that margin of victory in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race. That means the winner of the race is certainly the product of chance error.

And that also carries a particularly disturbing implication. The counties and localities where our election system functioned most poorly – through lost ballots, newly found ballots, and wrongly rejected absentee ballots – created a disproportionately large number of the random errors that produced the outcome.

It’s as if we decided that the Senate race should be determined by the worst election procedures in the state, because, at the end of the day, that is what has happened.

Nothing like laying it on the line.

It’s no wonder that the last close statewide recount in 1964 wasn’t decided until more than four months after Election Day, and that it was decided in court, not by the canvassing process. We have to look forward to a similar dragged out process in 2009.

Well, Franken has waited in the wings before.  It won't hurt him.

There are procedural solutions to avoid recount nightmares like this in the future. One, now on track to be employed in Minneapolis city elections this year, would have avoided our current Senate election uncertainties. In this system, voters rank order their preferences among several candidates, and if their first choice falls below a threshold of votes, their second choice would then be counted. This allows all voters to express a preference that counts in the final vote; no wasted votes result. Imagine if the over 437,000 votes garnered by Dean Barkley had their second choices allocated among Coleman and Franken. Their votes would count, whereas in the recount they are ignored, and the outcome in all probability would be clearer.

Another alternative is to have a runoff election if the margin between the top two candidates is small – say, under 5,000 votes – or if either candidate fails to get 50 percent of the vote. Georgia, with its 50 percent threshold law, held a runoff election in early December, producing a decisive winner from among the top two candidates.

We have lived with the legacy of elections so close that we can never be sure of the outcome. 

In 1960, John F. Kennedy narrowly won the presidential election over Richard Nixon despite disputed vote totals from several states, particularly Alabama and Illinois. Allegedly, when Kennedy met Nixon for the first time after Election Day, he said: “Well Dick, we’ll never really know who won the election, will we?”

We Minnesotans will never really know, either. Whether he’s Senator Franken or Senator Coleman, the winner is surely Senator Accidental.

I recall walking with friends through the streets of Chicago at 5 a.m., the day after the 1960 election.  The Chicago Sun-Times came out with a headline:  

IT'S KENNEDY 

An hour later the paper came out with a new headline:

IS IT KENNEDY?

And that's the way it's been left for almost half a century. 

Professor Schier makes good sense.

January 8, 2009.      Permalink          

PLANNING FROM THE LEFT - AT 8:02 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:

It's no secret Barack Obama plans to enact the biggest economic stimulus package in history next month.  What's less known is that he plans to quickly follow it with a sweeping re-regulation of the U.S. economy.

One of the leading ideas would combine the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission into a super-regulator that would be like another Federal Reserve as a cornerstone of the U.S. financial system.

This plan, still in draft form, is likely to include tough new rules for stock trading, banks and the broader financial sector — as well as greater transparency for how government money is spent cleaning up the entire system, according to Democrats familiar with the plans.

COMMENT:  We're free marketers here, but I can't deny that Wall Street brought this on itself.  There is simply a limit to the abuse people are willing to take.  My great fear is that the creeps who created a lot of these problems will, with their army of lawyers, figure out a way around the new rules, and that the average guy who puts some of his savings in the market will again be left holding the bag.  That's not free enterprise.

MATTHEWS TINGLES OUT - AT 7:40 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

Chris Matthews, the host of the MSNBC program “Hardball,” told his staff on Wednesday night that he would not run for the Senate in 2010 from Pennsylvania.

COMMENT:  A great loss to the nation.  How will we survive without his calm reasoning and exquisite statesmanship.

MIDEAST UPDATE - AT 7:33 A.M. ET:   Rockets were fired into northern Israel for the first time since the Gaza flareup began.  From The New York Times:

JERUSALEM — Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden on Thursday as at least three rockets were fired into the north of Israel from Lebanon.

The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

COMMENT:  Now watch the usual suspects come out of the journalistic woodwork to say, "But no Israelis were killed, right?  Why should Israel be angry?"

THE COUNTDOWN

12 DAYS TO THE AGE OF OBAMIUS

Posted at 7:30 a.m. ET

We begin a new feature - the countdown to the new age, when peace will cover the Earth, the oceans will recede, and Chryslers will sell again.  This is the coming of the age of Obamius.

With 12 days to go, we can report the following developments:

 -  CIA director designate Leon Panetta was seen, with fake beard, and nose and glasses set, sneaking out of a video store with old DVD's of "I Spy."  In addition, it is known that Panetta has written to Sean Connery, asking for advice.

-  Chris Matthews was rushed to Washington's Georgetown University Hospital suffering from acute leg tingle.  Matthews, who once reported a tingle up his leg whenever he heard Obama speak, alarmed co-workers when he complained of a sharper tingle up the other leg.

-  Some five million people are expected at the inauguration, 95 percent of whom are personal friends of Roland Burris.

-  The president-elect, after reviewing the work of Governor Rod Blagojevich, is set to announce that he is no longer from Illinois, but from Kansas.  He will say, "We only have one state at a time."

-  After seeing the latest Senate polls from New York, Mr. Obama denied knowing Caroline Kennedy, but said he understood that she was a campaign volunteer.

- Mr. Obama profusely apologized to the living former presidents, who met with him at the White House, after learning they'd been stripped searched and drugged before being allowed near him.  But Jimmy Carter bit him anyway.

More bulletins coming each day 'til January 20th, the day of Obamius. 

January 8, 2009.      Permalink