TUESDAY,  JANUARY 13,  2009

INFORM THE DAILY KOS, IMMEDIATELY - AT 8:23 P.M. ET:  Marc Ambinder, at The Atlantic, reports that President-elect Obama is having dinner tonight with conservative columnists George Will, Bill Kristol and David Brooks. 

COMMENT:  MoveOn.Org, after hearing this news, assigned grief counselors to treat its members.   

YOU MEAN, THEY DON'T LOVE HIM?- AT 6:20 P.M. ET:  John Hinderaker at Power Line has some terrific pictures of demonstrations in Iran...in which Barack Obama's picture is set afire.  Apparently, the radicals haven't gotten the word from the inaugural committee.  As John writes, "The point, of course, is that if anyone thinks that electing Obama as President will cause us to be loved by our enemies, just because he isn't George Bush, that person is doomed to disappointment."  See the photos here.

HILL ON THE HILL - AT 5:56 P.M. ET  I monitored some of Hillary Clinton's testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committe, which is considering her nomination to be SecState.  She is very competent at these things, and there should be no problem confirming her.

Curious, though, most of the "policy changes" she described seemed awfully minor.  What we're getting, it seems to me, is Bush Lite.  There'll be some diplomatic dancing and lots of "multilateral" talk, but I didn't detect any radical change, which may be good.  Neither Obama nor Clinton want any setbacks for this country on their watch, and they're not about to be sunk by adopting the policies of the looney left. 

We await, as they say, further clarifications from our government.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO TIM GEITHNER ON THE WAY TO THE TREASURY - AT 5:41 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:

Timothy F. Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be Treasury secretary, failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in federal taxes and also faces questions about the immigration status of a former household employee, according to the committee and the Obama transition.  After the underpayments were detected, he paid back taxes and interest totalling $43,200.

COMMENT:  He should withdraw.  There's too much taint already in this new administration, much of it coming from Chicago politics, and from the need for Bill Richardson to pull his nomination for the Commerce Department.  The idea that the secretary of the treasury, in a time of economic hardship, has a tax problem, and possibly an immigration problem, is disqualifying.  This is a matter of image and style.

ON SECOND THOUGHT - AT 5:25 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — Physics met politics at the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate scientist chosen by President-elect Barack Obama to head the Department of Energy, and the physics bent a bit, as Dr. Chu backed away slightly from earlier statements he has made — that gasoline prices should be higher, and that coal was his “nightmare.”

COMMENT:  What a strange lead.  What does physics have to do with gasoline prices?  Maybe Dr. Chu is just learning that other people know a lot about energy.  Being a Nobel laureate doesn't make you an expert on everything.  Dr. Chu will teach in his new position, but we hope he learns as well.

FANATICS - AT 5:05 P.M. ET:  Reader Adrian Murray alerts us to this, from AP:

WASHINGTON – The incoming Obama administration should launch a criminal investigation of Bush administration officials to see whether they broke the law in the name of national security, a House Democratic report said Tuesday. President-elect Barack Obama has been more cautious on the issue and has not endorsed such a recommendation.
Along with the criminal probe, the report called for a Sept. 11-style commission with subpoena power, to gather facts and make recommendations on preventing misuse of power, according to the report by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee.

COMMENT:  Whenever you see the name "House Judiciary Committee," run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.  The committee is presided over by John Conyers, a hard-left congressman from Michigan.  His state is falling apart, but Conyers devotes his time to this.  Clearly, the much shrewder Barack Obama wants nothing to do with these revenge probes, but Conyers has independent power, and may do as he pleases.

BIAS?  WHAT BIAS?

Posted at 9:19 a.m. ET

One of the things we like to do here is take a news story and examine it for bias.  Reuters today provides an extraordinarily rich opportunity to do just that.  It's a report, complete with appropriate sneering, of President Bush's final news conference of his presidency.  The arrogance of this report, by Matt Spetalnick, should win some kind of prize:

At a farewell news conference in which he tried to burnish a troubled foreign policy legacy, Bush denied that U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo, criticized by human rights groups, had damaged America's moral standing in the world.

Troubled foreign policy legacy?  That's an editorial opinion, not appropriate for a news story.  And again we have the term "human rights groups," even though many of them have clear political agendas, never spelled out by the mainstream media.

Bush, speaking at the White House eight days before handing over to Obama, staunchly defended his record but was at times uncharacteristically reflective.

I haven't noticed that Mr. Bush is either more or less reflective than many of his predecessors.  The reporter offers a journalistic assumption that's been accepted without proof. 

He admitted having regrets that weapons of mass destruction had not been found in Iraq after the U.S.-led 2003 invasion. Presence of such weapons was the prime justification for overthrowing President Saddam Hussein.

Admitted?  Is this a courtroom?  Is there any doubt that Mr. Bush regrets that WMD were not found?  However, WMD programs were found, but you'll notice that the press never points that out.

Six-party talks with North Korea over dismantling its nuclear arms programs have stalled and little movement is expected before a new U.S. administration. Obama has promised his administration will have direct talks with America's foes, in contrast to Bush's strategy of diplomatic isolation.

Note the slant.  Only a new administration will bring progress.  Why?  Because Obama has a new strategy.  This is absolute conjecture, again given with no evidence.  Pure editorializing presented as news reporting.

Bush, in his 2002 State of Union address, called Pyongyang and Tehran -- along with Iraq, then under dictator Saddam Hussein -- an "axis of evil." He never backed away from the accusation, which came to epitomize what critics called his administration's "cowboy diplomacy."

The implication here is that they're not an axis of evil, or that the term is misapplied.  Evidence please?  Is it "cowboy diplomacy," or the truth?

On Iraq:

The war undercut U.S. credibility abroad and contributed to a resounding victory by Obama, a Democrat, against John McCain, nominee of Bush's Republican party, in the November election.

Really?  All that?  The war may have been unpopular in many countries, but how did it undercut American credibility?  Also, Obama's victory in the popular vote was not resounding.  He won by about six points.  Further, Iraq actually played a small role in the campaign, as surveys showed.  It was the economy that dominated everything.  Where was this reporter?

Indeed, where has the mainstream media been for the last eight years?  I think we know where.

January 13, 2009.      Permalink          

WORST IDEA OF THE DAY - AT 7:45 A.M. ET:  Time's Cairo bureau chief, the vulgar Scott MacLeod, who is rivalled only by the magazine's Joe Klein for out-of-control hatreds and ego, provides this brilliant prescription for Barack Obama to deal with Iran:

Start a dialogue with Iran that will isolate hard-liners, encourage moderates and generally give Iranians a bigger stake in a peaceful Middle East.

COMMENT:  The deeply philosophical MacLeod presents this after a column filled with Bush-bashing.  But wait a second.  Haven't the Europeans been trying just that for about six years?  Shall we list the European diplomatic accomplishments during this period?  And how do you give Iranians a bigger stake in a peaceful Middle East?  We've been providing carrots for years, with no effect.  And MacLeod's simplistic use of the term "hard-liners" fails to describe the true, fanatical nature of the Iranian regime. 

OBAMA WITH PEACE OFFERINGS - AT 7:26 A.M. ET:  From the Politico:

Barack Obama will meet Senate Democrats at their weekly caucus meeting on the Hill Tuesday to address their concerns about his stimulus proposal and plans to add $350 billion to the bank bailout, senior Democrats confirmed last night.

Obama's visit comes after a week of intense negotiations between Obama's economic team and Democratic leaders -- talks that included a pair of sometimes stormy sessions with incoming White House adviser Larry Summers, a former treasury secretary.

COMMENT:  It's becoming clear that, especially on economic matters, the Democrats in Congress will act independently of the Obama administration.    At the same time, I have to wonder whether the "stormy" sessions with Larry Summers actually involved the economy, or were based more on the left's contempt for Summers, who dared to take on some aspects of political correctness when he was president of Harvard.  The left does not forget.

BIDEN IN BAGHDAD - AT 7:13 A.M. ET:  Well, as one great comedian used to say, everybody's gotta be somewhere: 

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Vice President-elect Joe Biden told Iraqi leaders Tuesday that the incoming U.S. administration is committed to a responsible troop withdrawal that does not endanger improvements in security, an Iraqi spokesman said.

COMMENT:   And this differs from the Bush administration's approach by...?  In fact, it seems awfully similar, except for some theatrical trimmings.

THE COUNTDOWN

SEVEN DAYS TO THE AGE OF OBAMIUS

Posted at 6:53 a.m. ET

In seven days the Age of Obamius begins.  Already the cross-cultural currents have begun, ushering in a time of serenity, understanding and perfection.  The Palestinian Authority is opening kosher restaurants.  Russia's Vladimir Putin is taking lessons in country line dancing.  North Korea is having an MGM film festival.  And the city of Berkeley, California, is giving out the Hugo Chavez Peace Prize.  Everyone is excited.

We can report the following:

- Incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel confirmed that President-elect Obama will "quickly empty Guantanamo of enemy combatants."  Emanuel added that he personally will refill it with Republicans.

- The President-elect reprimanded CIA Director-designate Leon Panetta for lobbying the movie industry to have George Clooney play him in the film.

- Hillary Clinton will testify today at her secretary-of-state confirmation hearing.  We can report that she angrily rejected offers to call her Your Excellency, and instead opted for the more modest, and democratic, Your Highness.

- Chris Matthews was so overcome with emotion at having an exclusive interview with Barack Obama that he spontaneously knelt down and kissed Obama's wedding ring.

- A day after Mr. Obama denied comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, a draft of his inaugural address leaked, beginning with the words, "Eleven score and 13 years ago..."

- It's also reported that Michelle asked Barack to lose the stovepipe hat.

January 13, 2009.      Permalink          

MONDAY,  JANUARY 12,  2008

PREDICTABLE

Posted at 6:59 P.M. ET:

As we've said many times, we wish the new president well.  We want to see him and the nation succeed.  However, we expect that the next week will be filled with events and statements that will make us wince.  At the Angel's Corner, our subscription service, we have something called the Pompous Fool Award.  Standards are high.  Many seem to want the honor.  We give the award only after rigorous examination.  We expect to have many, many candidates in this next inaugural week, and may have to give the award several times, or have runner-up categories.  Already the pompous rhetoric is flowing. 

Leave it to the teachers' unions to get on the bandwagon.  Oh, wait, bandwagon has military connotations.  Maybe, so students aren't traumatized, we should say peace wagon.  Okay, the teachers' unions are on the peace wagon.  Both unions are essentially branches of the Democratic Party, they contribute, and they want results.  So they will be greeting President Obama on inauguration day with new lesson plans for our kids.  Consider whether you want your children to have a 24-hour flu that day:

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association jointly developed five suggested lesson plans about the inauguration plus a recommended reading list...

So far, no problem.

The idea for the suggested lesson plans came from the inaugural committee and it approached the NEA and AFT to draw them up, said committee spokesman Brent Colburn.

Whoops.  Problem.  Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican inaugural committee had made the same suggestion?  Oppression!  Spying on our schools!  Thought control!  The right-wing grip on our children's throats!  I, I don't know if I can go on.

"It is crucial that our students understand that we are not only living history and making history with this inauguration, but also carrying forward the historical contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his influence on our incoming 44th president," NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said in the same statement.

Okay, but getting hooked on race is not the way to do this.  He's an American president.  All inaugurations are historic.  He will be judged on his record, not his race.  Do these unions understand that?

One of the suggested lesson plans asks teachers to generate discussion about the similarities between Mr. Obama and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president whom historians regard as one of Americas greatest. It is entitled "Two Presidents from Illinois."

Oh boy, here it comes.  Can you feel the p.c.?

Fifteen similarities were picked out, ranging from both entering the presidency during wartime to both having been lawyers before entering politics and from both having been criticized "for being too inexperienced to run the country" to both selecting political rivals to serve in their cabinets.

Nothing like getting it wrong from the start.  Lincoln didn't enter the presidency during wartime.  The first shots were fired weeks after he took the oath. 

And this whole Lincoln comparison is enough to have us reach for the seasickness pills.  We revere Lincoln because of what he did as president.  Obama hasn't even entered the office.  Let's calm down on this.

Another suggested lesson is to have to students watch Mr. Obama's inaugural address, on TV or the Internet, and ask up to six questions in small groups.

Among them:

— "What vision does President Obama have for public education?"

— "What does he say divides us as a country and how does he want to unify and strengthen America?"

— "How will President Obama make our country more secure?"

— "What does President Obama ask Americans to do to help strengthen the country?"

I don't know about you, but that list gives me the creeps.  It sounds like something out of a socialist state.  You know, Glorious Leader says...  Glorious leader expects...

We want to welcome the new president warmly.  But what about some tough questions for students?  And what about listing the accomplishments, as well as the failures, of the Bush administration?

January 12, 2009.      Permalink          

WELCOME, ROLAND, WE REALLY NEED YOU - AT 6:18 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  Senate Democratic leaders today cleared the way for Roland Burris to be seated as a senator from Illinois, after his appointment by the state’s now impeached governor had turned into a weeklong spectacle shifting between the nation’s capital and the corruption scandal back in Illinois.

COMMENT:  An absolutely sordid affair, with the race card played without shame.  The first African-American president in the nation's history will be succeeded in the Senate by a mediocrity appointed by a governor on the verge of being removed from office.  We recall that one aspect of President Kennedy's transition and early presidency was the lack of influence he had over his party.  We seem to be seeing a repeat.  Either Mr. Obama chose not to intervene to prevent this embarrassment, or was powerless to act.  Either way, this is no ornament to him or his party. 

REJECTING THE TRUE BELIEVERS

Posted at 8:34 a.m. ET

The president-elect has wisely signaled rejection of any broad inquiries into how the Bush administration pursued the war on terror.  By doing this Mr. Obama goes up against the Daily Kos and Move-On crowd, which is on the fringe left of the Democratic Party.  From The New York Times: 

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects.

We're still at war.  The people pushing these "inquiries" simply want to destroy our war effort, and this is the way they're doing it.  In war, horrible things happen.  But to go after people after the fact is to shatter and demoralize the very forces needed to win.  Of course, the hard left knows that.

But Mr. Obama also said prosecutions would proceed if the Justice Department found evidence that laws had been broken.

We had one of these "purity" inquiries in the 1970s, and it almost destroyed the CIA.  Remember, there are no inquiries on the other side.

These probes are often pushed by people who say they want us to remain  "true to our ideals."  But these are the same people who'd sell out those ideals in a second.  They pushed withdrawal from Vietnam, leaving the Vietnamese and Cambodians to their fate, and never batted an eyelash.  Some ideals.

“A new president doesn’t want to look vengeful,” said a former Bush White House lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson, who was a Harvard law classmate of Mr. Obama and has represented administration figures as a private lawyer, “and the last thing a new administration wants to do is spend its time and energy rehashing the perceived sins of the old one.

“No matter how much the Obama administration’s most extreme supporters may be screaming for blood, the president himself doesn’t seem to share that bloodlust.”

In that, the new president is acting wisely.  He might get some points from the America haters, foreign and domestic, if he went after the Bush people, but he apparently understands the damage he could do.

Sadly, the usual suspects in Congress haven't gotten the message:

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, has already introduced a measure to create a commission to investigate Mr. Bush’s detention, interrogation and rendition policies. Mr. Conyers’s bill would establish a bipartisan nine-member commission with subpoena power and a mandate “to investigate the broad range of policies” undertaken with claims that Mr. Bush’s wartime powers as commander in chief trumped laws and treaties.

Conyers is a political extremist who got to be chairman of a critical committee through longevity.  A bomb thrower in an important position.

Mr. Obama is facing even more intense pressure from liberal, human-rights and civil-liberties groups to allow some kind of investigation into the Bush administration’s terrorism policies.

I love the term "liberal, human-rights and civil liberties groups."  Yeah, right.  Consider:

Some groups are focused on prosecution. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecution efforts were justified, even if they did not lead to convictions, as a way to deter future officials from undertaking a similar “assault on the law itself.”

Translated:  We don't want any of these people to get the job done.  The Center for Constitutional Rights is a hard leftist operation, frankly a front group.  As usual, The Times whitewashes what some of these groups are really about.

The blogging army must be vigilant toward those who constantly call for these probes.  While we clearly support the rule of law, many of these critics have other, uglier motives.  They must be exposed, or we will lose this struggle.

January 12, 2009.       Permalink          

DOCUMENTING THE MADNESS - AT 7:56 A.M. ET: Ace blogger Andrew Berman (http://www.bermanpost.com/) photographed the anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-freedom rally in New York's Times Square yesterday.  His pictures are here.  Many of these hate rallies are descending into violence, and there apparently was some at this one as well, with police officers injured.  The "Arab cause," whatever it is this week, has been taken up by the far left, something the mainstream media refuses to report.  That same refusal was present, by the way, during the Vietnam War. 

GAZA UPDATE - AT 7:46 A.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  Senior Israeli officials said for the first time in the war that they believed that the Hamas military wing was beginning to crack and that Hamas leaders inside Gaza were looking for a cease-fire. News reports said Hamas fired at least one missile out of Gaza into southern Israel without causing casualties.

COMMENT: Let's hope so, although I'm always concerned about reports saying that fanatical, suicidal movements are about to crack.  We learned about that the hard way in our war to defeat Japan.

THE COUNTDOWN

EIGHT DAYS TO THE AGE OF OBAMIUS

Posted at 7:03 a.m. ET

In eight days the Age of Obamius begins.  You can see the smiles on the faces of all the anthropologists already.  Ditto ethnic studies departments.  Finally, they won't have to meet in back allies and faculty lounges.

We can report the following:

- Michelle Obama admitted she doesn't know what her husband actually stands for either, but promised to find out and tape it.  Her mother says she's coming to live in the White House because she wants to learn what Barack Obama is really like.

- CIA Director-designate Leon Panetta was stopped by guards when he tried to get into a transition meeting wearing a CIA disguise.  The guards knew it was a fake because Monica Lewinsky never wore red.

- After being denied his request for a 19-gun inaugural salute, Joe Biden is negotiating for Jack Bauer to visit and fire a cap pistol.

- Frustrated by his inability to find a new secretary of commerce, after Bill Richardson's embarrassing withdrawal, President-elect Obama gave the assignment to Chicago political operatives, who immediately put the seat on e-bay.

- Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who had some criticism last week of the president-elect's transition team, arrived in the Senate wearing a head bandage, and giving effusive praise to the whole Obama operation.  It's rumored she was kidnapped over the weekend and given an Obatomy.

January 12, 2009.      Permalink