1) At BriefingRoom.TheHill.com, Judd Gregg says the U.S. couldn’t even join the E.U. because of the U.S.’s debt levels.

“We won’t even be able to get into the E.U. if we wanted to,” Gregg said this morning on MSNBC, “because our government is so large and so huge.”

The European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) adopted in 1997 requires a budget deficit to be less than three percent, and requires a national debt beneath 60 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“We’ve been lectured by France on the fact that we’re not fiscally responsible right now,” Gregg, the would-be commerce secretary, noted with incredulity.

That hurts.

2) The Weeklystandard.com notes that Obama’s been indulging in “just words.”

Some of what Obama says is just pablum and isn’t supposed to be taken as serious economic thought. At least I hope not. Rather, it might be called economic morale-boosting. Nothing wrong with that, unless he actually believes what he’s saying.
———-
Nor is Obama up to speed on tax incentives. He dismissed the fear of charities that a proposed reduction in the tax deductibility of donations by upper middle class and wealthy Americans would curb giving. “If it’s really a charitable contribution, I’m assuming that that shouldn’t be a determining factor as to whether you’re giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street.”

That’s easy for him to say. Every charity from museums and arts groups to hospitals is terrified by the proposed tax change. And it’s a fair assumption that they know a tax disincentive when they see one. The question is whether Obama does. Perhaps not.

Perhaps charities better front load all they can get from donors now. Obama seems to think a tax deduction doesn’t matter AT ALL. Maybe not for him. Last I heard, his tax returns showed very little charitable giving.

3) The Atlantic has a stunning piece about the financial mess. Here’s the summary:

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

I’ve often wondered if oligarchy isn’t the right term for what and/or who is driving U.S. policy.

4) Realclearpolitics has an interesting piece about the current economy and the lessons learned from the 30s.

Anybody who wants to pontificate about the economy, or the budget, or the deficit right now should think about three questions:

1. What changed the Depression from an ordinary recession into a worldwide catastrophe? (And how bad was it, anyway?)

2. Is this crisis the same or different?

3. If there’s risk of another depression, how do we stop it?

Interesting stuff.

So, um, if the Bush people said, “Hell no!” to them getting TARP funds, and if Timmy Geithner, Tax Felon, was getting all these emails, and was in fact, the ARCHITECT of the plan, and Obama then hired him to be head of the Treasury, that’s not good, right?? Gee, no wonder people are calling for his resignation(heck, I don’t think he ever should have been confirmed in the FIRST place, but everyone wanted to give Obama everything he wanted, just like they did to Bush post 9/11 - go figure. This oughta learn ‘em. Ha - as if these Congresspeople learn from their mistakes…). But Obama is standing by his man, no matter the extra TRILLION DOLLARS the Treasury Department plan will cost us. Way to stand up for the people, Obama - or in this case, just the one.

Sen. Gregg didn’t stand by HIS man, though, when he told Obama he could take his job offer back. Rather, he is standing up for us when he says that Obama’s budget Plan will BANKRUPT the nation. Yes, he did - he came right out and said it:

Holy TOLEDO!!!! See, here’s the thing. When someone is completely inexperienced, and totally unqualified for a position, this is what you get. NONE of the professionals who voted for Obama would EVER hire someone with such a thin resume. Can you imagine a University Search Committee interviewing someone and having him say, “Well, no, I don’t have any real experience, per se, but I can bring new hope to the students for a beautiful world! And I can change the pedagogy to make it even better, even though I have no experience in it, and everything will be FANTASTIC!” First of all, he would never have even gotten an INTERVIEW in that situation, much less be considered a viable candidate for a teaching position, much less the highest position at the school. You can extrapolate to any job (”well, gee, no, I’ve never worked on an oil rig before, but how hard can it BE? I’ll have people I can ask about it, ya know!” ), and get my point. And that is how, just TWO MONTHS into his presidency, we have gotten here. While he vacations - AGAIN - in preparation for EASTER, three weeks away.

“This country country will go bankrupt.” If those aren’t sobering words, I don’t know what is. Keep fiddling away while Rome burns, Obama, keep fiddling away.

Foreword: Special thanks go to my dear friend Truthteller who introduced me to the incendiary phrase, “Lava hot!”

Let’s face facts: Obama does not have a plan for the economy. There IS NO PLAN. That’s because he doesn’t do the work. Most critically, he performs NO oversight or knowledgeable scrutiny of his Treasury Department, his Secretary of the Treasury (the anti-regulation extremist Timothy F. Geithner), his economic advisers galore — nearly enough to fill half of a NCAA game gymnasium — or any of the related and immensely important federal departments. I can imagine his input in the crisis SitRoom as decisions about, say, unmanned drones come up, would be something akin to, “That’s cool. Let’s do it,” as he quickly slips out the door, leaving behind the slack-jawed, head-scratching top executives from the military, Pentagon, and Defense, Intelligence and State Departments (who expected at least a question or two) because he must always be doing what he wants to do — to work out some more, listen to Jay-Z, play in the bowling alley, or hang with his political guru David Axelrod or Chief of Staff campaign adviser Rahm Emanuel.

How do I know this? I know this because this blog and its exceptional team of highly disciplined, fact-checking writers has exhaustively studied this man and we know that he solely cares about (1) campaigning before adulatory crowds, (2) winning at all costs, (3) keeping happy the richest who really benefited his campaign chests most and, we think, sneaked money to Acorn people who got pre-paid credit cards to induce the poor to donate 80% and pocket the rest, and (4) plotting the next campaign and the next big win — while bamboozling the American people, praying that he can keep them as ignorant about his lack of work ethic as he can through his speechifying and teleprompter readings.

Now I give you Senator Judd Gregg and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who both appeared on CNN this morning (yes, both men have strikes against them, but they’re still worth heeding):

[NOTE: THE NEW LONGER VIDEO IS JUST BELOW THIS SHORTER ONE.] This is the short version of Eliot Spitzer on Fareed Zakaria’s show today. His site says they’ll have the full interview up later. Frankly, I don’t care about Spitzer’s scandal. I just want to hear about AIG, because SPITZER KNOWS A LOT ABOUT AIG, given his previous post as New York state’s A.G. and his intensive investigations of Wall Street:

UPDATE: HERE IS THE FULL INTERVIEW OF SPITZER, JUST POSTED AT ZAKARIA’S TRIM, USEFUL WEB SITE FOR HIS CNN SUNDAY SHOW that I regard as must-see TV (and below is one more update you mustn’t miss!):

SECOND UPDATE: See also, my earlier story that featured another Zakaria interview — and which we ALL should watch again — the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf, in my March 4th story, “The economy: Scarier than we thought, and Obama’s plans are too timid to fix it.” My story features a special UPDATE by Larry Johnson that is a MUST-READ. (I love it when Larry interjects commentary into my stories because he is so incisive and smart, and he sees “big picture” scenarios that many people miss.)

See also, my earlier story, “Just The Facts, Barack.”

And DO NOT MISS Larry Johnson’s story earlier today, “Hey Frank. Barack is Drowning Black Folk?.” LARRY HITS IT OUT OF THE PARK!!!

POSTSCRIPT: While I say at the outside of this post that there is no plan, we must remember that tomorrow, the administration is going to announce a “toxic assets” plan. But I’m not optimistic given the vague, wormhole speeches that were intended to be regarded as a “plan.” We’ll all have to check the news tonight — the wire services and the big newspapers — to see if they’ve been leaked an early copy of the “toxic assets” plan.

I will interpret an early leak of the plan as a positive sign. No leaks? That means it’s just more of the same empty words we’ve become accustomed to from the 0bama administration that isn’t administered.

“It comes as uh, as uh, something of a surprise. Because the truth is uh, uh, ya know, Mr. Gregg approached us with interest and seemed enthusiastic,” Obama told State Journal-Register in Springfield, Illinois. “But ultimately, I think, we’re going to just keep on making efforts to build the kind of bipartisan consensus around important issues that I think the American people are looking for.”

Is it possible Gregg believed Obama in his promises of a non-partisanship Presidency? Could that be why he reached out to Obama *with interest and enthusiasm*?

Or did Judd Gregg have hopes of running the census, thus manufacturing an outcome that benefits Republicans?

That sure seems to be the consensus of the Black Caucus. Why else would they complain to Obama about Gregg’s nomination? Bottom line, they were worried that Gregg would not accurately count minorities.

I can understand why Gregg was mad that Obama, pressured by the Black Caucus, pulled the census out from under him. Isn’t he basically saying that Gregg would not be fair, and non-partisan, and not accurately count minorities?

Gregg reached out to Obama, offering to work with him, believing his promises of non-partisanship.

Obama rewarded him with a slap in the face, basically saying that Gregg was incapable of handling the census in a fair and non-partisan way. I see no other way to look at it. Obama was pressured by the Black caucus, and folded, which resulted in an insult to Gregg. This, in my opinion, is why Gregg stepped down.

“We’re going to just keep on making efforts to build the kind of bipartisan consensus around important issues.” Well, Obama had a willing non-partisan member of his cabinet, and Obama made it partisan, by pulling it from him, pressured by the Black Caucus. And now Obama is surprised?

How can Gregg be enthused to work for a President who finds him incapable of non-politicizing the census? (Not to mention a President that shoves that pork-laden stimulus bill through congress, breaking his promises of transparency, which Gregg didn’t support…)

“Under Obama’s census plan, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau, who has yet to be named, would report to White House senior management in addition to the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau.

The outcome of the census has deep political implications, since congressional districts are drawn based on population. Many federal funds are distributed on the basis of population, as well.

The first whiff of greater White House interest in shaping the census came when members of the Congressional Black Caucus complained to the Obama administration about Gregg’s nomination.”

Here is a great debate on Gregg’s appointment, and withdrawal, from the McLaughlin Group. They seem to agree that the census was a major trigger in Gregg’s withdrawal.

“I think Gregg took a stand and refused to be a patsy in the politicalization of the census bureau.” ~John McLaughlin

(Why does Obama feel necessary to blame everyone else for his mistakes. So what if Gregg reached out to him with interest in the job? Obama hired him. I thought the buck stopped with Obama? What does this say about Obama’s judgment, and character? If I reach out to Obama for a job, do I get one, too?)

UPDATE: 7:08 p.m. PT — Batchelor’s show is on now! WIth very dramatic music! I love his pacing, his guests, his mood, his music! Talking about Geithner and the bank executives. Larry will join them at 7:35.

Original: Don’t miss Larry Johnson, a Sunday night regular expert guest on the great national AM radio show hosted by John Batchelor, one of the sharpest analysts in all of radio (or television). John hosts a provocative, fascinating show that also makes you think (a rare double offering on AM radio). Listen live here via Los Angeles AM station KFI 640, starting at 7:00 p.m. PT. (Drop by early if you haven’t listened before since you may need to download a small, easy-to-install piece of software to listen.)

Tonight’s focus: ““Tim Geithner Problem” Special. Here’s the 7:35 p.m. PT roundtable group and its topics:

735P: Professional Roundtable with Jodi Schneider , CQ , Larry Johnson, No Quarter and State (ret), Ken Silverstein, Harper’s, re the Obama presser, the Geithner speech, the stimulus package in conference, the Gregg nomination blows up, the stimulus bill withouth the GOP.

Check out the full slate of guests and topics, all starting at 7:05 p.m. PT.

The inner White House oversight of the caucus is indeed worriseom. I realize that it’s never partisan-free. But one can strive to have congressional districts decided, best as possible, along true population lines, not what Rahm Emanuel or even Judd Gregg might want for political reasons. (The first UPDATE is at the end of the story.)

Original: At least Senator Judd Gregg came to the realization that this was an idiotic arrangement — how he could fit in with the Obama administration — he who had voted in 1995 to eliminate the Commerce Dept., who had ties to Jack Abramoff, who opposed progressive measures on the census, who the Obama administration took the census away from and put directly under White House control … that he knew that he PERHAPS (?!) was NOT a good fit for the Obama administration?!?!?!

How does Obama come up with these ideas anyway? And WHO checks out these “ideas” thoroughly before they’re announced? (Did no one at the White House realize — before they appointed Gregg — that the census was coming up, and that a conservative Republican would have had control as Secretary of Commerce, since that department has traditionally handled the 10-year census? What else was the White House going to take away from Gregg to render him incapable of having sufficient influence?) And which knuckleheads are allowing him to make these decisions that he comes to regret — and which aren’t sufficiently researched and vetted?

How can Obama appoint a Commerce secretary who was so conflicted by Obama’s stimulus package that he had to “abstain” from voting? That surely didn’t bode well for their future relationships in administration matters.

The Washington Post, through Chris Cilizza’s blog The Fix, reports that Gregg cited “irreconciliable conflicts” — and do note the problems that Cilizza lists that this withdrawal creates for Obama:

New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg has withdrawn his name from consideration as President Obama’s commerce secretary, a major blow to an administration seeking to put a series of Cabinet problems behind it.

“It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the census there are irresolvable conflicts for me,” Gregg said in a statement to be released by his office. “Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns.”

Gregg abstained from the Senate vote on the stimulus package, which passed the chamber 61 to 37. He had not previously offered any public comment on the White House’s plan to have the Census director report to White House officials. Many Republicans, however, had voiced serious concerns about the potential politicization of the department given that move.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) praised Gregg’s decision as “principled” and added: “It’s great to have him back.”

Just days ago, Gregg stood side-by-side with the president to accept the nomination as commerce secretary and declared that partisanship should not get in the way of repairing the country’s
problems.

“This is not a time for partisanship. This is not a time when we should stand in our ideological corners and shout at each other,” Gregg said on Feb. 3. “This is a time to govern and govern well. And therefore, when the President asked me to join his administration and participate in trying to address the issues of this time, I believed it was my obligation to say yes, and I look forward to it with enthusiasm.”

At that event, Obama noted that “Clearly, Judd and I don’t agree on every issue — most notably who should have won the election. But we agree on the urgent need to get American businesses and families back on their feet.”

But even as Gregg and Obama were shaking hands, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill were blasting the stimulus package then making its way through the House of Representatives. In a statement, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said that day that “let no one be mistaken that this bill is the result of bipartisan negotiations. While Republicans were courteously consulted at the member and staff level, we were never at the negotiating table.”

Gregg is the second of Obama’s nominees as commerce secretary to withdraw. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (N.M.) stepped aside earlier this year after allegations of a pay to play scandal involving him came to light.

The decision has any number of wide-reaching political consequences.

First, it creates another opening in Obama’s Cabinet, which saw former South Dakota senator Tom Daschle (S.D.) step aside last week after questions were raised about his failure to pay taxes on a car and driver service.

Second, it slows the momentum that the Obama administration was hoping to build for its economic stimulus plan, which is expected to clear Congress tomorrow. Obama and his team had worked diligently to put the “vetting problems” stories regarding his Cabinet picks to bed but now will watch them dredged back up for the next 24 hours — at a minimum — and perhaps far longer.

Third, Gregg’s return to the Senate means that Republicans have one less open seat to defend next fall. ….

Read all.

UPDATE: Oh boy! I bet the Obama White House is hysterical! Why couldn’t have Gregg dropped this bomb on late Friday afternoon?!?!?! But on Thursday? The day BEFORE the House votes on the stimulus package??? OUCH.

(Which has me wondering … is this meant to throw cold water on the House vote, what with both the Blue Dog Democrats and far-left liberal House members unhappy with the stimulus package? Maybe not. Just a thought. … But the Republicans surely are eager to create some turmoil right before this bill gets the final vote to be enacted and signed by Obama into law. )

On February 6th, NQ featured two posts on this “backpage” issue: (1) SusanUnPC talked about the census and how Rahm Emanuel’s and the White House’s takeover of the process; and (2) I did an earlier piece on the politicization and what it meant for the Dept. of Commerce and its new head.

Bruce Chapman at discovery.org, has a brief run-down of how the BO administration has played this potential move. First, it appeared (at least to MSNBO) that PBO only intended to create some kind of an independent agency for Census. But later [according to newsbusters], Fox news picked up the story that having the Census Director report directly to the West Wing staff is the plan.

Here’s how Fox News covered it on the 9th.

discovery.org”>Chapman describes the move on census this way:

If so, the Obama Administration is threatening a reckless politicization of the Census Bureau and that, in turn, threatens to pull into unnecessary dispute the fundamental data that sustain almost the entire statistical system of the United States. It has the image of a Chicago-style partisan power play.
————-
Mentioned only by inference in discussions so far is the plain hope that a Census Bureau under the thumb of White House staffers might be prevailed upon to adopt a policy to “adjust” the Census numbers in 20101, using sampling and computer modeling–with all the profound implications that would have for political reapportionment and redistricting that will follow the Census count.
————-
First of all, the White House and its Congressional allies are wrong in asserting that the Census in the past has reported directly to the president through his staff. Directors of the Bureau often brief presidents and their staffs, but, as a former director (under President Reagan), I don’t know of any cases where the conduct of the Bureau was directly under White House supervision. That includes Clinton in 2000, Bush 41 in 1990 and Carter in 1980.

They also are dead wrong about the feasibility of using sampling and computer models to make adjustment a credible way to improve the accuracy of the population count for purposes of reapportionment and redistricting.

The WSJ had a piece about this today, quoting Chapman as well.

President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to “restore science to its rightful place” in government. That’s a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn’t think it would mean having the director of next year’s Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. “There’s only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement,” a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. “And it’s called politics, not science.”
————–
Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. “If the original numbers aren’t as hard as possible, the uses they’re put to get fuzzier and fuzzier,” says Bruce Chapman, who was director of the Census in the 1980s.

The issue is sampling. Some people think coming up with hard census numbers based on sampling is efficient and accurate. But other people think sampling produces the wrong data and a “hard count” is the only way to get accurate numbers.

Mr. Chapman worries about a revival of the effort led by minority groups after the 2000 Census to adjust the totals for states and cities using statistical sampling and computer models. In 1999, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Department of Commerce v. U.S. House that sampling could not be used to reapportion congressional seats. But it left open the possibility that sampling could be used to redraw political boundaries within the states.

Such a move would prove controversial. “Sampling potentially has the kind of margin of error an opinion poll has and the same subjectivity a voter-intent standard in a recount has,” says Mr. Chapman.

Starting in 2000, the Census Bureau conducted three years of studies with the help of many outside statistical experts. According to then Census director Louis Kincannon, the Bureau concluded that “adjustment based on sampling didn’t produce improved figures” and could damage Census credibility.

The reason? In theory, statisticians can identify general numbers of people missed in a head count. But it cannot then place those abstract “missing people” into specific neighborhoods, let alone blocks. And anyone could go door to door and find out such people don’t exist. There can be other anomalies. “The adjusted numbers told us the head count had overcounted the number of Indians on reservations,” Mr. Kincannon told me. “That made no sense.”

I would think a better effort at a hard count would be more valuable than sampling. However, the WSJ article ends with a return to Senator Gregg.

The Obama administration is downplaying how closely the White House will oversee the Census Bureau. But Press Secretary Robert Gibbs insists there is “historical precedent” for the Census director to be “working closely with the White House.”

It would be nice to know what Sen. Gregg thinks about all this, but he’s refusing comment. And that, says Mr. Chapman, the former Census director, is damaging his credibility. “He will look neutered with oversight of the most important function of his department over the next two years shipped over to the West Wing,” he says. “If I were him, I wouldn’t take the job unless I had that changed.”

Does Gregg want to be a token? It certainly looks as if he is being set up. Nominated for head of a department he once said should be abolished, Gregg would also find an important part of his job sucked up into the White House. Personally, I don’t understand why Gregg would take that job at all. Aside from the obvious issues, it smacks of condescension and disrespect. Now, while politicians don’t often deserve respect, this seems more than usually emasculating.

(Speaking of which, anyone seen Howard Dean lately?)

Newsbusters again touched on this story as well and noted not a single question was asked at last night’s presser.

The Obama administration’s decision to have the White House supervise the 2010 Census — a response to left-wing complaints that the Census was too important to leave under the authority of Republican Judd Gregg, the nominee for Commerce Secretary — has thus far (as of Tuesday morning) drawn absolutely no attention from the three broadcast networks, with not a single mention on the ABC, CBS or NBC morning or evening newscasts.

Everyone knows the mantra “follow the money.” Well, Census creates the formulas by which that money is sent. You can only follow the money after Census lays down the tracks for it to flow to municipalities and organizations. If an administration can influence how Census determines the count, it can determine where the money goes without having to engage in earmarking or questionable allocations.

They’ll just say, “hey, we’re just following the numbers and getting the money to where it is needed.” But will we be able to trust THOSE numbers?

Now, why would Rahm Emanuel want the Census under his control in the White House? Huh? Why might that be? “The census is used to allocate federal aid to states and draw electoral districts,” the New York Times editorial board wrote in order to REMIND PRESIDENT OBAMA that he might not want a REPUBLICAN in charge of drawing “electoral districts.” Good god almighty. So now Obama’s administration has decided that they’ll do the census themselves. Here is the Fox panel on the census, and we’ll talk about it a bit more below:

P.S. You get extra credit for counting the number of times that Robert Gibbs says “Uh.”

I’m still shaking my head that the New York Times editorial board — like a stern schoolmaster — had to remind the President WHERE the Census is done, and who is in charge. It was after that editorial that the Obama administration woke up (!), and moved the Census operation to the White House.

Below is the editorial. It’s sad, isn’t it. And it’s also sad that NONE of Obama’s aides — not one of them — knew this before they all got the “genius” idea of nominating Judd Gregg to be Secretary of Commerce, a plan that is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to start.

(1) He’s a Republican. A conservative Republican. He does not SHARE the values and platform of the Democratic party.

(2) He voted in 1995 to kill the Department of Commerce.

(3) He is a conservative Republican who does not share the values of the Democratic party and its membership.

(4) There are hints of associations with Jack Abramoff.

(5) He’s the Democratic base’s worst nightmare.

(6) OF WHAT POSSIBLE USE IS HE? Can anyone tell me?

Now, the editorial:

There’s been a lot of speculation about what President Obama was thinking when he decided to nominate Senator Judd Gregg, a prominent Republican, as secretary of commerce. Is he looking for the dissenting voice that will sharpen his views? Or, as The Wall Street Journal put it, is he trying to psych out Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, by availing himself of Mr. Gregg’s advice on how to pick off Republican votes in the Senate?

Time will tell. An easier question to answer is what Mr. Obama wasn’t thinking about when he chose Mr. Gregg. It seems safe to say that the 2010 census was not weighing on the president’s mind, though it should have been.

The Census Bureau is a major agency within the Commerce Department, and the decennial census — the next one is in 2010 — is a mammoth undertaking. After years of mismanagement and underfinancing by the Bush administration, the bureau is so ill prepared to conduct next year’s count that Congressional investigators have warned that it is at high risk of failure unless corrective action is taken immediately.

Mr. Gregg was never a friend of the census. As chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the Commerce Department’s budget, he frequently tried to cut the bureau’s financing. In 1999, he opposed emergency funds for the 2000 census requested by President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled House.

The census is used to allocate federal aid to states and draw electoral districts. Given all that, one would think that the White House would be paying more attention. It isn’t. A director of the census, who must be confirmed by the Senate, has yet to be named.

In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Gregg must explain what he would do to get the 2010 census back on track. Before that, Mr. Obama must choose a competent director and pledge his administration’s full support to spend whatever is necessary to salvage the count.

This is pathetic. This is White House 101 stuff. How did ALL of Obama’s aides and advisers MISS THIS?

Consider, for example, that The One promised a new way of doing business in Washington but is responsible for managing the vetting of prospective nominees that green-lights not one but three tax cheats. Instead of showing them the door and finding someone smart enough to know that, if they make more than $200,000, they ought to hire an accountant, Barack signs off on their nominations. (Maybe it is okay to not pay taxes and hold public office in Chicago).

It is only when the press gets wind of the facts that Barack and his team realize they have a problem. Sorry, this is not a “new way of doing business in Washington.” It is the same damn thing.

Barack and his team are acting like every other politician who has taken up residence in the White House–they initially decided to look the other way and excuse the inexcusable. While I credit Barack for admitting his mistake, it is a mistake he should not have made. Unfortunately, it appears that this is not an isolated event.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his typically understated fashion, offers up a list of warning signs and lays part of the blame laser-focused on the lap of the media for abetting the disastrous choice of the American people, so desperate for a “savior” from the Republican disaster, that they bet it all on a naive political neophyte:

Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.

The proof is so obvious:

No matter his protestations that he alone made the decision, it’s clear that former Senator Tom Daschle was summarily dumped, and Steve Clemons hints that Rahm Emanuel had a hand in it (”Many of Daschle’s camp are quite furious with Obama’s chief of staff.”) Clemons also argues that, in typical Democrats’ fashion, they gave up the fight long before they needed to.

General Anthony Zinni, who was already preparing for his departure to Iraq as its new ambassador, is left hanging by the White House. The puzzled general finally called up Gen. Jones, Obama’s National Security Advisor, and “was told that Christopher Hill, the outgoing assistant secretary of State for East Asia, was getting the job.” [SEE ALSO: Laura Rozen's "General Zinni gets undiplomatic treatment from Obama team" and related Memeorandum-listed stories.]

Gen. Zinni said no explanation was given. “That kind of bothered me,” he said. “I was told that I had it.”

What the hell? And now we have more distressing news coming out on Obama’s nominee to head Commerce, Sen. Judd Gregg.

The arch-conservative New Hampshire senator, as I wrote yesterday about a report in CQ Politics, “voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.”

Now we find out, via Time’s Mark Halperin, that Gregg had “ties to the disgraced lobbyist” Jack Abramoff. The White House is sloughing off the problem, even though Halperin points out that “a former legislative aide [of Gregg] is allegedly ‘Staffer F’ cited in a guilty plea last week by a former Abramoff deputy.”

The left hand is clearly not in touch with the right hand.

How did General Jones know that General Zinni was not the choice for Ambassador to Iraq, yet no one in the White House disabused Gen. Zinni of his justified assumption that he had the job?

How did no one in the White House and the very large vetting staff not clear Daschle’s tax problems and his relationships to for-profit health care companies?

How did no one in the White House not know that Gregg had voted to demolish the agency that he’s now been picked to oversee? Or that he has ties to Jack Abramoff?

Larry Johnson made a great point last night in his story, for which he took some heat, “Let’s Give Barack Credit“:

Did you catch Barack telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “I screwed up.” Damn, is that refreshing. After eight years of George Bush never admitting to any mistakes (even though they were numerous and glaring) it does appear that President Obama may be serious about this change thing.

However, the sole thing that matters after you admit you made a mistake is if you change your OWN behavior and that of your staff.

It’s disturbing to read Steve Clemons’ report about (1) the ease with which Democrats concede defeat and (2) the behavior of Rahm Emanuel, the man on whom Obama must most depend:

Obama seems to be replicating the pattern — conceding defeat on Tom Daschle, one of the people most responsible for actually creating the Obama political machine — and on the very same day yielding a senior cabinet position at the Department of Commerce not to a leading business official or Democratic Congressman or Governor — but rather giving it to Judd Gregg who voted 14 years ago to abolish the Commerce Department.

People will be parsing for some time Tom Daschle’s missteps with his taxes, and why he wasn’t vetted more by the Obama team, and whether Rahm Emanuel was part of the game knifing Daschle from behind, and what the political upper crust in Washington sees as “normal” when they leave office — but mostly, this was about the opposing team taking down one of Obama’s most important chess pieces.

This was all about Obama, about humbling him, about dividing progressives over whether to support or oppose Daschle.

What we see are two interesting things. First, we see that the divisions between the political franchises inside the Obama camp are fraught with tension and anger now. Many of Daschle’s camp are quite furious with Obama’s chief of staff.

Yes, Obama has been humbled. Perhaps. If he’s learned.

But the news about the “tension and anger” within the Obama camp is disturbing. For that to be cured, a strong and experienced leader is needed, and is Obama up to the job?

And if he isn’t, is his staff? Hell, his press office can’t even get out their daily press briefing videos and transcripts. You try to get one promptly, and you’ll see what I mean. (Meanwhile, over at State, Hillary’s press staff, like clockwork, posts the daily press briefing video and the transcript with lightning speed.) Victor Davis Hanson declares Robert Gibbs a “nightmare”:

Gibbs as press secretary is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won’t go away, given his long McClellan-like relationship with Obama (McClellan should have been fired on day hour one on the job). Blaming Fox News for Obama’s calamities is McClellan to the core and doesn’t work. He already reminds me of Reverend Wright’s undoing at the National Press Club—and he will get worse.

And the Columbia Journalism Review’s blog, Campaign Desk is as skeptical about Obama’s press office as I am:

Who’s Undercutting Obama?
For the moment, at least, it’s his press office

[...]

While it is too early to judge just how this will work out, the early signs are troubling. And interviews with a dozen Washington reporters indicate that the Obama press operation tends to embrace friendly questions, while treating skeptical questions as not worth their time or, worse, as coming from an enemy. [...]

Questions about whether Shapiro [a White House press office staffer] knows the difference between off-the-record, background, deep background, and on-the-record did not get asked, because Shapiro made it clear he had no interest in answering anything about how the Obama press secretary’s office is operating and what its tone will be. He said questions should be submitted in writing by e-mail to nshapiro@who.eop.gov. I sent Shapiro an e-mail outlining the contours of what would be covered in an interview, but have not received a response as of this writing, the following day.

Shapiro did say that there are press office numbers to call beside 202-456-2580, which has been the main White House press office number for decades. “You should have used one of them,” he said.

And those numbers are? Shapiro said these numbers would be made public soon. (Thoughts of the illogic made famous by Kafka, Catch-22, and Lewis Carroll’s King of Hearts come to mind here.) But there is more to this than just the answering, or not answering, of telephones and questions. [...]

The Obama administration is also editing briefing transcripts. So far it posts only snippets of some White House briefings at whitehouse.gov. Shapiro promised that would be corrected soon.

Politicians make choices and have to live with them. How they deal with journalists—especially whether they are candid and direct about dealing in facts—sets a tone that will influence the administration’s ability to communicate its messages, especially those Obama messages that run counter to deeply ingrained cultural myths about the economy, taxes, and the role of government. … [Read all -- it's worth it.]

Victor Davis Hanson has a litany of Obama’s failures.

One which struck me was Obama’s utter naivete in expecting the Republicans, over a series of luncheons, cocktail parties and Superbowl chips and dips, to warm to him — to find him inescapably charming and the answer to their prayers too. But these grizzled GOP veterans know far too much about D.C., about legislation, and about how to manipulate the malleable Democrats to ever be “touched” by the Obamatopia that sadly overcame millions of dreamy-headed Americans.

Obama seems to be the kind of guy who loves the campaign, the chase, the hunt, and the all-glorious win. But he is most definitely NOT the kind of guy who likes the day-to-day tough drudgery and decision-making.

Like many of his adoring fans at Daily Kos, he wants what he wants when he wants it. The hard work part of governing — the grinding job of building longterm alliances and forging sensible compromises and the long hours involved in accomplishing all of that, just do not appeal to these people. They want to snap their fingers, and have what they want.

I have never seen in Obama the capacity for that kind of work. I still do not.

I think that that is one reason that Obama made the disastrous decision to let Nancy Pelosi and David Obey control the writing of the stimulus packaging bill. That bill should have been closely overseen and scrutinized in the White House, and have received the most cold-hearted “due diligence” possible.

But Obama and team did not want to do that hard work. They thought they could pass off the job to Nancy and crew, a truly frightening decision given Nancy’s penchant for pet far-left projects that drew immediate criticisms from so many that the Republicans voted a unanimous NAY and even 11 Democrats in conservative districts also had to vote NAY in order to keep their seats.

Now, we have a mess of a stimulus plan that is so bad that Obama is not likely, at present, to even bring in the few Republicans he needs for the bill to pass the Senate. Even reliable types like Olympia Snow are rejecting the bill in its present form. She has directly asked Obama to remove the unnecessary and pork-driven parts of the bill; he’s said he did, but he has not. And she knows it.

And, while they fiddle, and Obama doesn’t do the hard work necessary, the American people — and the world’s people — are left with a worsening recession and increasing joblessness and worsening opportunities for small-, medium-, and large-sized businesses of all types.

You’ll have to read Victor David Hansen’s article in full, but here’s the closing:

This is quite serious. I can’t recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton’s initial slips). Obama immediately must lower the hope-and-change rhetoric, ignore Reid/Pelosi, drop the therapy, and accept the tragic view that the world abroad is not misunderstood but quite dangerous. And he must listen on foreign policy to his National Security Advisor, Billary, and the Secretary of Defense. If he doesn’t quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism—angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.

Have we anointed a messiah who sinks the minute he’s put out on the water? Have we hired a weatherman who can’t tell which way the wind is blowing? Have we chosen an orator who can only parrot the words of hired scribes, but lacks the depth of experience to understand the peril that lies before us? When I look at Barack I fear I am seeing a younger, but equally feckless clone of Jimmy Carter.

Perhaps this explains why he ended up in an elementary school. The naive, joyous laughter of schoolchildren provided a welcomed escape from the burdens of poor decision making.

UPDATE #3 (uh, did Obama know this when he decided on Gregg?): “Gregg Voted to Kill Commerce Before He Agreed to Lead It”, CQ Politics, February 2, 2009:

President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995.

Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H., whose nomination was expected to be announced Tuesday, also worked in the Senate to trim the department’s budget as head of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee.

Gregg’s 1995 votes were cast for the fiscal 1996 budget resolution, a nonbinding blueprint that outlined the GOP’s fiscal priorities after Republicans won full control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

The Senate version of the controversial measure envisioned spending cuts of more than $960 billion, almost half of it from Medicare and Medicaid. [MORE INDICATIONS that health care will not be reformed, but may be cut back? Just asking! - Susan] Democratic efforts to amend it were uniformly rebuked by a united GOP majority on the Budget Committee.

Ultimately, the Commerce Department survived, and Gregg has since shown more interest than most of his Republican colleagues in funding some of its agencies, particularly the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Gregg also fought President Bill Clinton’s efforts to increase funding for the Commerce Department to administer the 2000 census. Indeed, Gregg’s commitment to basic functions of the department has been questioned at times.

“He was generally pretty harsh on them and not really interested in their programs, especially the commerce side of things,” said a Democratic appropriations aide. … Read all.

Update #1: Social Security and Medicare do require some adjustments, but aren’t we all grateful that the Republicans never managed to turn over Social Security monies to private account investments in the stock markets and mutual funds?!?!?! Social Security especially offers some future protection for the many people in our country who are stuck in dead-end, minimum-wage jobs and who will never be able to save enough to be able to provide income in their old age. And many of these minimum wage workers do the most physically taxing kinds of jobs, which are very hard on the body, and age them sooner than those who get white-collar jobs. As one Democratic senator said on an old West Wing I watched the other night, “What do we do about sheet metal workers whose knees and backs are shot by the time they’re 55?” We can’t bump up the age much more.

If we do anything at all, I’d advise we exclude those who are wealthy and have enough annual income in retirement that that SS monthly check is not a loss. And Medicare? It is so efficiently managed that its administrative costs run around 1.5-3% annually — amazing for a huge government-run enterprise. But it is far from free. The necessary supplementals can cost seniors at least $350 per month. And god help those who hit the “donut holes” in the Plan D prescription drug plans — they’re left with hundreds of dollars of expenses until the end of the year.

What scares me most is that President Obama doesn’t give a damn about any of this. During the campaigns, we TRIED to tell people this Obama’s economic advisers are in favor of privatizing Social Security but those who dared, like RonK Seattle, were summarily kicked out of true-believer blogs like Daily Kos. And what also frightens me is that we’ve lost Senator Daschle over a tax problem when he was one of the best-informed people anywhere on health care plans. It’s a tragic loss that may ruin our chance to improve health care in this nation. Yes, he screwed up. Damn, he wasn’t perfect, and yes he’d taken advantage of his Senate experience to make big bucks.

BUT, think about this? Who among any of us hasn’t got “skeletons” in OUR closets that would prevent us from confirmation, if the requirement is nothing short of sainthood? This is getting ridiculous. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone …. (Probably not accurate, but we heathens can’t quote the Bible perfectly.) But god we needed Daschle’s expertise. Obama should have FOUGHT for Daschle, but instead he did the easiest thing politically — he threw Daschle under the bus, just like he does most everyone who causes him any problems. [Update 2: The adage about "throwing the first stone" works if we consider the totality of what a man or woman has done, but Obama is the one who falls WAY too far for me. Not only has he never accomplished anything substantive that truly helped citizens, he's rarely if ever tried, and has only busted his ass when he wanted to win a campaign.]

The PREVAILING VIEW is that Daschle still had the votes to win confirmation, so what happened? I’ll bet you anything that Obama chickened out, and forced him to withdraw because he CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT of standing up for the best nominee! Daschle will never say that, but I’m nearly sure of it.

NOW back to the original story I wrote late last night: I recall being impressed with Senator Gregg’s coherent, detailed explanations of negotiations last fall at the height of the presidential election race to forge a negotiated agreement for Bush’s economic rescue plan. And I’ve heard that he’s a “budget wonk,” which is an asset. But I just ran across this article, and am bringing it to your attention solely because you have to ask yourselves what kind of a real Democrat is Barack Obama? Or is he one? Or does he care?

Is he a fool? Or a callous deal-maker, the kind who consorted for years with Tony Rezko who stole millions of dollars of the hard-earned money of taxpayers and failed to keep his bond with the people, to improve heretofore public housing and left it to rot, to be foreclosed, to be uninhabitable while his friend, the ever-ambitious Barack Obama glanced away?

Is Barack Obama a fool, I ask again? Who else would appoint a man to be Secretary of Commerce who was planning to vote against Obama’s stimulus package, as was Gregg?

Or is Obama — as I feared throughout the contests because what little of a record the man does have suggests it strongly — a callous deal-maker who is manifestly untouched by the real lives of real American citizens and who only looks for the adulation and the next campaign dollar?

Would he really appoint a Secretary of Commerce in a Democratic party administration whose idea of improving the economy is to create “a commission of center-right insiders operating in secret and circumventing Congress in order to destroy Social Security and Medicare”?

Say what you want about the Democratic party but, at its finest, it has been about creating a harbor to protect our nation’s citizens.

Good men and women of the Democratic party fought the toughest battles against both giants of industry and hard-right conservatives to give Americans the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare.

I am reading a book about one such man, who served in the House from 1936 to 1944 and in the Senate from 1944 to 1981. Warren Magnuson, my representative and senator from the State of Washington, long before I was even born, looked out for me and you. He not only helped Franklin D. Roosevelt pass his great bills but he went on to create and pass bills that forever have changed all of our lives for the better, from the Consumer Protection Act to numerous environmental protection measures. Here are some of his words, in 1936, when he first ran for the House, and through a lingering Depression:

“Roosevelt has brought order from chaos,” he said. “The Democratic policy is water power without profit, schools for all children, programs to cure unemployment. … (page 56, “New Deal, New World,” from the book, “Warren G. Magnuson and The Shaping of Twentieth Century America.”)

Water power without profit? Yes, that had to be fought for. Schools for all children? Yes, that too had to be fought for.

The Washington state Democratic party platform, at its convention over which he presided, called for:

a social security program, unemployment compensation, aid to dependent children, public health programs, collective bargaining and labor arbitration, and federal aid for dams and irrigation.

Unemployment compensation? Yes that too had to be fought for. Public health programs? That too. Federal aid for dams and irrigation (which has made possible the great farming lands of the west)? Yes, those too had to be fought for.

And then there is social security. The “third rail” of politics, as it is sometimes called.

We know that Obama is a novice who skimmed the surface of the U.S. Senate fleetingly, never bothered even to learn all the rules, and who used his office solely as a springboard to the presidency. We know that such a man, with the ego to run with so little to show for his life, save a couple political victories and a best-selling biography, had to have the most exceptional nerve to run for the most powerful office in the world.

Obama touts his “bipartisan” approach to politics as if it makes him fly with the angels, above the blood sport that is really politics. There’s something naive about his approach. He played his “bipartisan” hand so overtly that the House Republicans were only too eager to show him how that works in their town, with nary a “bipartisan” vote from their side of the aisle.

It was almost as if he thought he could win over the Republicans the same way he had made women faint at his rallies and once-sensible people fall for his promises as if he were the next messiah.

Only those grizzled, cynical GOP veterans know the system in D.C., and they are not that easily won over, nor will they ever be won over by his supposed charm and charisma.

And now he’s bringing in another Republican, whose true allegiances are to his party and his GOP comrades in the Senate and House to oversee the nation’s commerce. But he’s doing so without the requisite experience and knowledge, himself, to see if Judd Gregg is on the up-and-up with him, or will be leading him down a path to the destruction of all that those courageous men and women fought for back in the 1930s and 1940s.

And Franklin Roosevelt was so much more than Barack Obama. Roosevelt truly did “change” Washington, D.C. From the book again (Magnuson’s nickname was “Maggie”), in 1936:

Maggie would sit alongside another freshman, Texas Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson was twenty-eight; Magnuson, thirty-two. …

This was Franklin Roosevelt’s Washington, not Herbert Hoover’s — a city in fundamental change from the center of a laissez-faire capitalist federation to a seat of government suddenly concerned about every aspect of American society from Wall Street to Main Street. It was more the Washington, D.C. we know today, a strong central government–…

This was the Neal Deal government, a consequence of its rescue of capitalism. …

Years later, when asked to explain his and Johnson’s devotion to the New Deal, Magnuson said, “All of us are creatures of our times. We needed to do something [in the 1930s] no matter what it was called. It was a modest approach.

A modest approach. What an understatement. He and Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt changed our nation forever, and for the better.

Nowhere in the Obama “stimulus package” do we see any great programs such as we saw in what Magnuson mentioned.

And nowhere in Obama’s haphazard piling on of experts do we see even a glimmer of a coherent plan that will not only lift the recession/depression but will also reinvigorate this nation and the rest of the world.

It’s late. I’m done writing. There’s more to say. Another time.