THURSDAY,  NOVEMBER 20,  2008

UPDATE AT 9:25 P.M. ET:    From our own State Department:  Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Goli Ameri and the Fulbright Association will co-host a ceremony honoring Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu on Friday, November 21, 2008, at 11 a.m. in the Dean Acheson Auditorium of the U.S. Department of State. The 2008 J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding will be awarded to Archbishop Tutu for his work for peace in South Africa and elsewhere. The prize carries a $50,000 award provided by The Coca-Cola Foundation.

COMMENT:  What a profound farce.  Fulbright was a racist who never changed his racial views.  Tutu has, in the last twenty years, indulged the world's worst dictators.  Their names deserve to be linked together.

UPDATE AT 9:16 P.M. ET:  ABC News is reporting that President-elect Obama is listening to advice from General Brent Scowcroft, Bush 41's national security adviser.  This is not good.  Scowcroft takes a soft line toward our Mideast opponents.   His "advice" to Bush 41 never seemed to result in anything successful.  It was Scowcroft who was sent to China not long after the Tiananmen Square massacre, and acted as if it never happened.

At the same time, ABC reports that retired Marine General James Jones is emerging as Obama's pick to be national security adviser.  Jones is in the Scowcroft mold.  Both men are known to be very aloof to Israel and rather understanding of our enemies.

There are also stories floating around that John Brennan, a former CIA official, may be Obama's CIA director.  He takes a soft line on Iran, as does Vice-President-elect Joe Biden.

None of this should shock anyone.  The nation is getting what it elected.

NOTE AT 8:28 P.M. ET:  Rush, on his radio show today, suggested that the Dems are indifferent to the plunge in the markets and the nosedive in economic statistics because they actually want the situation to get worse.  The logic here is that the worse the economic condition, the more open the public will be to radical leftist "solutions." 

COMMENT:  I don't know if Rush is right on this, but the lack of urgency by the president-elect is telling.  The panel on Brit Hume's Fox News show tonight was in agreement that he should have already named a Treasury secretary to reassure the public.  The incoming party, in general, seems rather casual about what's happening.  There is clearly a tension in the country, apprehension by the business community, deep worry for investors and pension funds, and not much from our new agents of change.

UPDATE AT 8:25 P.M. ET:   PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A judge denied bail on Thursday for a woman accused of killing an FBI agent during a drug raid that led to her husband's arrest on cocaine-dealing charges.  Christina Korbe, 40, was arraigned early Thursday on a homicide charge in the shooting death of Special Agent Sam Hicks on Wednesday.

COMMENT:  An FBI agent was killed yesterday.  There was a time when this would've been a major story.  Instead, it was almost ignored.  Far more attention is given to a prison scandal in Iraq or a charge of abuse by a prisoner at Guantanamo.  I don't think this says as much about us as a nation as it does about the condition of our media. But the media has the power to change the nation, and that's what I worry about. 

NOTE AT 4:33 P.M. ET:  Just for background, here is a graph of the Dow industrial closings since early 2003.  This doesn't include today's drop of more than 430 points:

UPDATE AT 4:17 P.M. ET:  From the veddy liberal Boston Globe:  WASHINGTON - More than three decades after he first appeared before the panel as a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran-turned-antiwar protester, Senator John F. Kerry will be named chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, giving him enormous influence over President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy, according to congressional officials.

COMMENT:  This is pure journalistic hype.  The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has as much influence over foreign policy as the president wants him to have.  It's a safe place for Kerry.  He really can't do too much damage, and he'll feel important.  Teresa can practice her French.

UPDATE AT 4:05 P.M. ET:  Dow closed down about 432, pending final accounting, at 7565.  A couple of more days like this and we'll be in the six thousands.

UPDATE AT 3:55 P.M. ET:  Near the close the Dow is down 419, at 7577.

UPDATE AT 3:39 P.M. ET:  The Dow is down 279. 

COMMENT:  Looks like another bad day.  The idea that the president-elect was, in the midst of this financial crisis, willing to appoint his fundraising chief as secretary of commerce, an individual with no known governmental abilities, is telling us something.  We insist that we want to give Mr. Obama a chance, but increasingly his administration is shaping up to be Chicago politics on the Potomac, and little more.  And we hope we're wrong. 

UPDATE AT 1:33 P.M. ET:  From WGN, Chicago:  Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker has told Barack Obama's team she does not want to serve as commerce secretary, a senior Obama official said.  "Penny Pritzker ultimately has decided she does not want to do the Commerce thing," the senior official said.

COMMENT:  Don't you feel deprived?  Pritzker ran Obama's fundraising operation, but her family is up to its eyeballs in subprime mortgage questions because of their inolvement in a failed bank.  Baggage issues here. 

UPDATE AT 10:31 A.M. ET:  LONDON — Oil plunged below $50 a barrel on Thursday, deepening losses over the previous four sessions as battered financial markets reflected ever lower confidence in the world economy and evidence mounted of falling fuel demand.

UPDATE AT 10:03 A.M. ET:  Dow down 164.

HOLD THAT HOLDER

Posted at 9:13 a.m. ET

National Review, not shockingly, is doing the work the mainstream media should be doing in examining Eric Holder, Obama's choice for A-G.  Holder flunks big time.  But I doubt if it will matter.

That didn’t take long.

As we observed throughout the campaign, Barack Obama gave indications that his election would mean a return to the September 10 mentality, a national-security outlook marked prominently by its lack of seriousness about the terrorist threat. In choosing Eric Holder to be his attorney general, President-Elect Obama has taken a step toward confirming those misgivings.

Trouble in River City.  Symbolically, Holder would be the first African-American to be attorney general.

Symbolism, however, cannot camouflage the fact that Holder is a conventional, check-the-boxes creature of the Left.

And the charge:

He is convinced justice in America needs to be “established” rather than enforced; he’s excited about hate crimes and enthusiastic about the constitutionally dubious Violence Against Women Act; he’s a supporter of affirmative action and a practitioner of the statistical voodoo that makes it possible to burden police departments with accusations of racial profiling and the states with charges of racially skewed death-penalty enforcement; he’s more likely to be animated by a touchy-feely Reno-esque agenda than traditional enforcement against crimes; he’s in favor of ending the detentions of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay and favors income redistribution to address the supposed root causes of crime.

This is not good.

In any other time, Holder would simply be an uninspired choice. But these are not ordinary times — we face a serious, persistent threat from Islamist terrorists.

And we'll be reminded of it.

In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton’s commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons — of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse — were issued in the months after al-Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, when the Clinton administration was pretending to be the scourge of terrorism.

And more...

Equally noxious were the stealthy pardons of Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans — Weather Underground terrorists associated with Obama’s friends Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn — issued on the same day as the Rich pardon. Rosenberg and Evans had been serving decades-long sentences for bombings targeting American government facilities. With Holder again helping to circumvent the pardon process and to evade objections from prosecutors, the terrorists’ jail terms were commuted just weeks after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

Nice, huh?  Finally...

To be blunt, Holder is a terrible selection. If there’s any Obama cabinet nomination that Republicans feel moved to oppose, this should be it.

Let's see if the party has any backbone left.  And let's see if these facts about Holder make it into any mainstream news publication or onto any network news show.

November 20, 2008.      Permalink          

PIRATES, BUT NOT OF PENZANZE

Posted at 8:10 a.m. ET

Isn't this strange?  With all the heavy problems facing humankind, whoever thought that piracy would make a comeback?  Now, all of us have dealt with ruthless, sword-swishing pirates who'll steal anything.  After all, I've worked in Hollywood.  But these boys are real pirates, off the coast of Somalia, and they're giving navies a big headaches.  There's got to be a film in this.

Now Arthur Herman, whose history of the Royal Navy is a classic, suggests what can be done about this new plague.  Mr. Obama, please read:

US Marines have been singing about their exploits on the "shores of Tripoli" ever since President Thomas Jefferson sent them to scour out the world's most dangerous pirates, the Barbary corsairs, from their bases in North Africa in 1801. Now President Barack Obama may have to give the Corps the chance to add a new line - by sending Marines to destroy the newest generation of pirates, this time on the other side of Africa.

Watch Code Pink swim out to help the pirates.

Piracy has been an index of civilization's ability to enforce law and order since ancient times. Yet the ability of our civilization to do that is now in question.

The Nov. 15 seizure of an Arabian oil tanker by armed Somali thugs off the Kenyan coast is just the latest incident.

Today oil, tomorrow Japanese TVs.

Yet the Navy finds itself helpless to stop the attacks. The taking of Sirius Star makes 95 international vessels hijacked this year, triple the number last year. Pirates now hold 17 freighters and 339 crew members hostage - and no one can do a thing about it.

But why?

With no better answer, companies quietly pay the ransoms. Meanwhile, America's NATO allies fear that, if they arrest irregular fighters like pirates, they'll be accused of violating someone's "human rights."

Are you believing that?  Read the last paragraph again.  That's European thinking.  And they look down on us.

History teaches that the only way to destroy pirates is from the land, not the sea - by wiping out their bases.

Those bases are in a nation that's been in anarchy and civil war ever since President Bill Clinton pulled US troops out of Mogadishu in 1993.

Read that one again, too.  That's what happens when you lose.  Losing is never cost-free, especially in international relations.  The surrender-in-Iraq crowd never understood that. 

The Somali government can't impose law and order. It's up to America and the international community to do the job:

* All nations will need to agree not to pay the Somali pirates any more ransoms, which has only encouraged the banditry. And they'll need to force corporations to say no, too.

* The Fifth Fleet will need reinforcements - not more ships, but a Marine Expeditionary Brigade that can wipe out the pirate bases once and for all.

Time for kinder, gentler measures may be running out.

Why is this so important?

Chaotic Somalia is ripe to become the next al Qaeda base. Until now, the country's Islamic fundamentalist militias have been hostile to the pirates. But evidence suggests that at least some ransom money has found its way into the coffers of Al Shabaab, a group on the US terrorist list...

...When the terrorists realize that they can not only enrich but also arm themselves through piracy - and hold the world ransom by threatening to blow up oil tankers in the world's strategic waterways - the seizure of Faina and Sirius Star may signal a new, horrifying chapter in the War on Terror.

And there's only one thing to do.

Get ready to add some new words to the Marine Hymn.

But it would mean Barack Obama taking action against an African nation.  Well, actually, he'd have the credibility to do it.  But will he use that credibility, will he use up those points?   Or will it take some maritime catastrophe?  We await the new administration.

November 20, 2008.      Permalink          

"THE ONE" AND THE OTHER ONE

Posted at 7:21 a.m. ET

Leave it to the Clintons to be the stars of Barack Obama's transition.  While the president elect trots out such magnetic personalities as Tom Daschle, his choice for Health and Human Services, the real story is Bill and Hill.  Does she want it?  Will she take it?  Will she be offered it?  Lie down with Clintons and you get up with a public-relations problem.

So, a few words about the position of secretary of state:  It ain't what it's cracked up to be.  Just as the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, the post of secretary of state is what the president says it is.  Condi Rice clearly has the ear of President Bush, and ranges far and wide.  Colin Powell, no.  James Baker, in the administration of Bush 41, was practically an extension of the president, and foreign ministries knew it. 

Edmund Muskie, Carter's second secretary of state, is barely remembered in the role.  Richard Nixon's first was William P. Rogers, long forgotten because the effective power was kept by Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser, and, later, both national security adviser and secretary of state simultaneously. 

Dean Acheson (Truman) and John Foster Dulles (Eisenhower) are recalled as active, powerful secretaries.  But during World War II, Cordell Hull complained that Franklin D. Roosevelt gave him nothing to do.  He resigned.

So now Hillary ponders.  Presumably, she wants the job, or her husband would not be making grand pronouncements about revealing more of his finances to the Obama transition team than he's ever revealed.  But does she really want it?  She's not exactly the errand-girl type, and that's how it can wind up.  She might also look at the history:  Secretaries of state have not gone on to higher office.  Like the mayor of New York City, it's kind of been a retirement position.  Hillary is only 60.

But wait, wouldn't she be a star overseas?  Yeah, right.  How many American votes are there in Pakistan?

Secretaries of state take the rap when things go wrong, and the president takes the credit when things go right.  Dean Acheson was blamed for Korea, Kissinger for a detente policy that enraged the Republican base, Baker for being anti-Israel, Albright for doing her little dance with the dear leader of North Korea.  The one guy who came out with stature was George Marshall, but he was a five-star general.  His stature came with the package.

So we sit and wait and wonder.  And we read about Hillary rather than Barack.  I wonder how this guy will deal with the Russians.

November 20, 2008.      Permalink           

UPDATE AT 7:13 P.M. ET:   From The New York Times:   Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

COMMENT:  This could make our economic problems look easy.  But is anyone interested?

UPDATE AT 6:52 A.M. ET:  The foreign markets are down following a particularly rough day.  In addition:

- NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc faced a crisis of confidence on Wednesday as investors questioned the survival prospects of the U.S. banking giant, and its shares tumbled 23 percent to a 13-year low.

- WASHINGTON — The chief executives of Detroit’s Big Three automakers departed Washington empty-handed on Wednesday night after two days of pleading for a financial lifeline on Capitol Hill.

Brace yourselves, as Bette Davis famously said in All About Eve, "it's going to be a bumpy night."  Or, in this case, day.

And the president-elect has not selected one person for his economic team. 

WEDNESDAY,  NOVEMBER 19,  2008

UPDATE AT 8:58 P.M. ET:  From The Politico:  Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and former president Bill Clinton have cleared away the final hurdles to a formal offer of secretary of State from President-elect Obama, and officials say the two former foes could appear together for a smiling announcement next week.

COMMENT:  First decision:  Do they play "Hail to the Chief" for Barack or Hillary?

UPDATE AT 8:45 P.M. ET:  From a Fox News report today:  The automakers -- hobbled by lackluster sales and choked credit -- are burning through money at an alarming and accelerating rate: about $18 billion in the last quarter alone. General Motors Corp. has said it could collapse within weeks, and there are indications that Chrysler LLC might not be far behind. Ford Motor Co. has said it could get through the end of 2008, but it's unclear how much longer.

COMMENT: Maybe it's because we owned too many lemons, but, I'm a bit skeptical.  Some questions:  How many decades old are these companies?  And they're all going under at about the same time?  Do you believe in such miraculous coincidences?  I think they're in trouble, but I hope someone who doesn't have a Detroit zip code starts examining the books.

UPDATE AT 6:06 P.M. ET:  From the AP:   Republican John McCain has defeated President-elect Barack Obama in Missouri - the last state to be decided in the 2008 presidential election.  McCain's narrow victory over Obama breaks a bellwether streak in which Missourians had picked the winning presidential candidate in every election since 1956.

COMMENT:  It's like hearing that the deceased's last physical examination went well.  But we take good news where we can get it.

UPDATE AT 5:53 P.M. ET:  From the Financial Times: Iran is forging ahead with its nuclear programme, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog reported on Wednesday, deepening the dilemma facing US president-elect Barack Obama over his campaign promise to engage with Tehran.  The latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency reveals that Iran is rapidly increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium, which could be rendered into weapons-grade material should Tehran decide to develop a nuclear device.

COMMENT:  Another reminder that there's a real world out there, maybe a bit more significant than the size of the inaugural celebration.

UPDATE AT 5:34 P.M. ET:  From the DC Examiner:  Soaring costs expected to accompany huge crowds in town for the Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama could stick cash-strapped Washington, D.C., with a record-breaking bill for services.  Security and capacity measures recommended by the District’s congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and others will almost certainly surpass the $15 million the federal government gives to the District each year to defray the cost of events, Norton said.

COMMENT:  Hey, no problem.  Bailouts are available.  Come one, come all.  Besides, Barack has hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions, a chunk of it from some wonderful guys in foreign dictatorships.  Why not ask him for a bit of help before asking the taxpayers?  Huh?

UPDATE AT 4:21 P.M. ET:  From ABC News:  Two missiles destroyed a militant hideout and killed an al Qaeda commander today in one of the deepest U.S. strikes into Pakistan, underscoring the lethal and effective link between intelligence and technology that is helping the United States wage a covert war against militants.

COMMENT:  Reminds us, and the profession of journalism, that there's still a war on.

UPDATE AT 4:08 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed down about 427, pushing it, before the final figures are arrived at, below 8,000, to 7997. 

COMMENT:  There seems no sense of crisis in the Obama camp.  We heard today about his choice, ho-hum, for secretary of HHS, Tom Daschle.  Please control your excitement.  We hear nothing about an economic team. 

UPDATE AT 1:57 P.M. ET:  CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.  The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. policies.

COMMENT:  The exact term was "house Negro."  It will be curious to see how the "Middle East studies" departments in our universities react to this.  As long as Al Qaida was going after Christians and Jews, many of the "scholars" didn't care.  This is different.

UPDATE AT 1:47 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  WASHINGTON — Former president Bill Clinton has offered several concessions to help pave the way for his wife to be nominated as secretary of state, Democrats close to the negotiations with the Obama transition team confirmed Wednesday.

COMMENT:  This tells us that she obviously wants the job, and badly.  It also tells us that the only way she won't get it is to be turned down, which would split the Democratic Party.  I wonder if Obama regrets having started this whole thing. 

UPDATE AT 1:40 P.M. ET:   From The New York Times:  CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama has offered the nomination of Secretary of Health and Human Services to Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Democratic Senate leader who was an early supporter of Mr. Obama’s run for the presidency.

COMMENT:  First, wouldn't it be sporting if the president-elect, given the economic crisis, would tell us who his economic team might be?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Second, does the Obama camp know anybody who isn't a Democratic Party retread?  Every name mentioned for the Cabinet thus far comes from well inside the beltway.  This isn't change.  It's change back to the old guys.

UPDATE AT 1:26 P.M. ET:  The Dow is down 235.  I'm sure the "financial experts" on TV can give you reasons.  I can't.  It was up yesterday.  Did any fundamental really change that much?

BAMWATCH OR BAMWRECK?

Posted at 7:09 a.m. ET

We're not in the prediction business here, and I think our very informed readership expects us to be pretty careful about what we say and report.  That stated, I can't resist the temptation to ask a simple question:  Do you get the sense that the Obama transition has run into trouble?

Let me explain.

During the campaign, McCain/Palin hit away at Obama's lack of experience.  One part of experience is the simple fact of knowing people - who they are, what they can do.  Roger Kahn, author of the classic, "The Boys of Summer," about the old Brooklyn Dodgers, wrote that one of the pleasures of going to see the Dodgers in their small park, Ebbets Field, was that you got to know what they were like.

We are two weeks into the transition, coming off an Obama campaign that lasted 21 months, and we get the sense that Mr. Obama doesn't know enough people, hasn't thought about enough people, to effect the kind of change he promised.  It is simply remarkable how he depends on holdovers from the Clinton government, a government he trashed during the primaries.  Hillary Clinton at State?  Eric Holder at Justice?  Rahm Emanuel, Clinton insider perfecto, in the office next door in the White House?  Larry Summers, Clinton's Treasury secretary, a strong shot to get his job back?  Susan Rice, from Clinton's White House, a strong possibility to be national security adviser?

Now we find that the new deputy White House chief of staff will be Mona Sutphen, top aide to Clinton's UN ambassador, Bill Richardson, and the woman, according to Byron York, who had substantial contact with Monica Lewinsky, to whom Richardson offered a job.  Richardson himself is also being interviewed.

All we need is Monica with that dainty blue dress.  We assume it's been dry-cleaned.

Look, it's normal that some people from the last Democratic regime will be hired.  But after Mr. Inspiration's promises, you'd think his first impulse would be to look beyond the usual employment pool.  It clearly is not.  And we have the feeling that Obama just doesn't know that many people, doesn't know what they are like, that his knowledge of government is thin, that he doesn't have the names in his mind, that he hasn't marveled at people who contribute something outside a political campaign.

That is inexperience.  He has time, but he is proving that the charge was true.

November 19, 2008.      Permalink          

JOE THE GIANT

Posted at  7:06 a.m. ET

No sooner had Senate Democrats voted to forgive Joe Lieberman for his support of John McCain, and let him keep his main committee post, then the wisdom of that decision became clear.  Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, recently convicted of a laundry list of corruption-related offenses, was beaten in his bid for re-election, the tally announced only yesterday, giving the Dems at least 58 seats in the new Senate.  Georgia and Minnesota are still out.  Thus the Democrats are close to the 60 votes needed to cut off a Republican filibuster, making Lieberman's vote critical.  Even if the Dems pick up two additional seats, Lieberman is gold-plated because there can be defections in filibuster votes.

Thus Joe stays alive, and more than alive.  The wing nuts of the left who tried to destroy him have repeatedly failed.  They are screaming across the internet this morning that he was not sufficiently punished.  Only hanging by the neck would seem to satisfy them.  These are people for whom political punishment, not achievement, is the highest priority.  They symbolize the mentality and adolescence of the far left, and eventually they always lose.

We congratulate Senator Lieberman, a man who represents all that was once good about the Democratic Party, when it was truly a national-security party that would "pay any price" in the defense of freedom,  The good old days.

November 19, 2008.      Permalink