Ironic that yesterday, NY Times columnist Charles Blow, certainly an Obama cheerleader from way back, penned a column entitled Obama’s to Fix, in which he cautions the President to stop blaming George Bush for the “mess” he inherited. Clearly, our President, far from undoing such a mess, is daily making a bigger one of his own. Mr. Blow begins with this ominous phrase:

What a difference a year makes.

In October 2008, the candidate Barack Obama delivered a major economic speech in Toledo, Ohio. In it he said: “Right now, we face an immediate economic emergency, and that requires urgent action. We can’t wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now — who don’t know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don’t know if next week’s paycheck will cover this month’s bills. … We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle-class, and we need to do it not five years from now, not next year, we need to do it right now.

“So today I’m proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities and help struggling homeowners. It’s a plan that begins with one word that’s on everybody’s mind, and it’s easy to spell: J-O-B-S.”

“Right now,” “immediate economic emergency,” “requires urgent action,” “can’t wait.” Wow! He gave the impression that job creation would be his top priority, that action would be swift and effective, that his solutions would not only stanch the hemorrhaging, but reverse the trend.

He has not made jobs his top priority. This health care debacle, bailing out Wall Street, getting into the car business and generally putting money into the pockets of everyone except those who need it have all taken priority over putting Americans back to work. And, no, putting an extra $13 a week into people’s paychecks is not going to do the trick when as Mr. Blow points out the new official labor statistics have us at 10.2 unemployment, which is an increase of “more than 50 percent from the time Obama gave that speech.”

“(By the way, the underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want to work full time and those who’ve given up searching, is a staggering 17.5 percent.)”

I am still at a loss to understand why there was such a great urgency to pass health care legislation that is not supposed to go into effect for more than three years. Someone on another blog made the observation that Obama and Pelosi et al are using the economic crisis and joblessness as a weapon to pass their agenda. As people are panicked at losing their jobs and their healthcare, they are more likely to look to government to bail them out – and more amenable. As Rahm Emanuel said, “never waste a good crisis.” What better time to ram this through. Mr. Blow continues:

Job creation has dropped from top priority to one of many, and President Obama has been remanded to pandering for patience and offering excuses. On the one hand, he argues the tortured rationale that there is good news in the awful numbers: Things are still getting worse but at a slower pace. On the other, he incessantly reminds us that he inherited the crisis. The implication: Don’t blame me, blame Bush.

But this president can’t keep deflecting to the last one. Pain is presently felt. The crisis that took form on Bush’s watch is being experienced on Obama’s. Fair or not, finger-pointing is not effective policy.

This is now Obama’s crisis, and it carries political consequences. During Tuesday’s gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, nearly 9 in 10 voters said that they were worried about the direction of the nation’s economy in the next year. And the majority of those who held that view voted for the Republican candidates. This could portend a flashback to 1994.

It isn’t President Obama’s fault that he inherited this mess, but it is his to fix, and he must make haste. To paraphrase his Toledo prelection: you need to do it not five years from now, not next year, you need to do it right now. J-O-B-S.

There were many options to put people back to work this year if that was really the priority. Clearly it was not. This President spent almost a billion dollars to get his job. I don’t want to hear complaints now. Obviously, he inherited a mess, which he has made worse with reckless spending. No one expects him to fix everything in the space of a year, but I thought his “good judgment” meant he knew how to prioritize. We need leadership and part of that involves sacrificing one’s ego to help those who need it most. That is far more important than pushing legislation just for the purpose of putting a check mark next to one’s name. You don’t not spend billions, even trillions, you don’t have at a time like this. Since this bunch so miscalculated on their $787 billion stimulus package, I am not inclined to trust them now by handing over 1/6 of the economy to their stewardship.

It is interesting that Mr. Blow, who played the race card on Mr. Obama’s behalf last year, is now joining the ever increasing number of his pundit supporters who are having problems with his endless campaigning, blaming and wrongheaded focus.

As to the health care debate, I called my Congressman’s office Friday morning to complain about the bill and his assistant debated the merits with me. At least she took the time to do so. It was a shame she was wrong on the facts. I told her to go back and read the thing. Now we have a 2,000 page beast that the Senate must contend with and we are told it will never pass in its current form. So why the rush? Why wouldn’t this Administration be in the same kind of rush to help get people back to work?

There are 237 millionaires in Congress. Perhaps that explains why they have difficulty relating to the urgent need to put millions of Americans back of work, instead manufacturing an urgent need to pass labrynthian legislation for the mere purpose of saying “Mission Accomplished.”

Hmm. Where have we heard that phrase before?

With Fox News against the White House attempt to censor the cable network. Check that, to shut DOWN the network. I am assuming that, by now, you have heard of the concentrated attacks on the Fox News Network by Administration officials, and the president himself. Larry Johnson had a great piece on this earlier in the week, “Fox Is Not A News Station?,” if you need to catch up.

Well, the strangest thing has started to happen as the White House has continued its unprecedented attack on a major network, not just freezing out a reporter here or there as other administrations have done, but a flat out drive to shut down this network. I can scarcely believe it myself, but what has happened recently is that reporters from other networks, even the Washington Bureau chiefs of the main news outlets, have started to stand WITH Fox News.

It all began with one of my favorite reporters, Jake Tapper of ABC News. He is one of the very few national reporters from a major network to consistently challenge the Obama campaign, and now the Obama Administration. And he did so again just the other day as his post entry indicates:

“Today’s Qs For O’s WH – 10/20/09”
From this morning’s gaggle in White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ office:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

Let’s just stop right there. Jake Tapper referred to Fox News as a “sister organization.” That is HUGE, people. His use of that phrase speaks volumes, as he indicates a solidarity with Fox News (good post on that very topic at Commentary Magazine here). Perhaps it is even a bit of a warning shot across the bow that the White House needs to back the hell off from this attack on a major press outlet.

The Q&A continued:

(Crosstalk) Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion. -jpt

You know I can’t stand Gibbs anyway, that mealy mouthed worm. But Tapper demonstrates what a stand up guy he is by pursuing this line of questioning, and not letting Gibbs, or the White House, off the hook.

I mentioned above that the White House is doing its darndest to completely shut down Fox News. The following video is a good summation of what has happened thus far, the latest attack by the White House, and what the other networks did:

I know, right? They know, I gather, that this time around, it may be Fox News, but next time, it could be CNN, or MSNBC. I would love to think that the solidarity of the major networks was the result of it simply being the right thing to do.

The All Star Panel on Fox News takes this on, too, with a bonus clip of Obama’s discussing Fox News:

Uh huh. Sure, he’s not losing sleep over it. If he isn’t, why are he and his minions going out of their way to ATTACK Fox News? It most certainly IS “breath-taking in its pettiness” as Mr. Barnes put it.

Thomas Jefferson said it best:

“I am… for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.”

And, when he said this:

“Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”

Finally, Thomas Jefferson said this about the importance of a free press and our responsibility to it:

“To preserve the freedom of the human mind… and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man (sic) will proceed in improvement.”

Hopefully, that is exactly why the networks are standing shoulder to shoulder on this issue. They know, as we do, that our liberty is at risk when the press is under attack from its government.

Like Jefferson, like the Washington Bureau, like Jake Tapper, like many of you reading this, I stand on the side of a free press, and on the side of our liberty. It is our duty, it is our call, it is our very democracy.

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports: President Obama, like any other President, has his fair share of critics. Even fourth-graders have noticed.

“Why do people hate you?”, a fourth-grade boy asked Obama at a town hall event in New Orleans today. “They’re supposed to love you. And God is love.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” replied the President.

Here’s the video of the exchange, though the transcript is below if you’d prefer:

Um, what the hell was he talking about BEFORE the little boy asked his question? Wasn’t he saying, “It’s a man’s turn. Isn’t it? It’s a guy’s turn.” That’s what it sounded like to me, anyway…So, just what came BEFORE that?? Curious.

Obama continued his response to the child:

“First of all, I did get elected president, so not everybody hates me,” Obama noted, before adding, “What is true is if you were watching TV lately, it seems like everybody’s just getting mad all the time. And I — you know, I think that you’ve got to take it with a grain of salt. Some of it is just what’s called politics where, you know, once one party wins, then the other party kind of gets — feels like it needs to poke you a little bit to keep you on your toes.”

“And so you shouldn’t take it too seriously,” Obama told the boy. “And then, sometimes, as I said before, people just — I think they’re worried about their own lives. A lot of people are losing their jobs right now. A lot of people are losing their health care or they’ve lost their homes to foreclosure, and they’re feeling frustrated. And when you’re president of the United States, you know, you’ve got to deal with all of that.”

So, um, not to quibble or anything, but just when do you think you are going to get around to dealing with job loss, home loss, and losing health care? Hey, just asking:

“You get some of the credit when things go good. And when things are going tough, then, you know, you’re going to get some of the blame, and that’s part of the job,” he continued. “But, you know, I’m a pretty tough guy.”

“You’ve just got to keep on going, even when folks are criticizing you, because — as long as you know that you’re doing it for other people, all right?” Obama concluded.

The boy’s question was the last one the President fielded at his event at the University of New Orleans, his first trip to the city since being elected to the Oval Office.

Well, there is a good reason the child asked that question. While Obama did get elected, the latest Fox Poll shows that he wouldn’t if the election was held today, as this article highlights, Fox News Poll: 43 Percent Would Vote To Re-Elect President Obama:If the election were held today, 43 percent of American voters would back Barack Obama for president, according to a new Fox News poll.

Oh dear. I guess that’s some of the “blame” Obama is getting for not fulfilling his campaign promises, for starters, not to mention his continued constant campaigning instead of working thing he’s got going on. Here are the results of this poll:

In what may be the ultimate job rating, 43 percent of voters say that they would vote to re-elect President Obama if the 2012 election were held today, down from 52 percent six months ago, from April 22-23, 2009.

Obama’s job approval rating comes in at 49 percent this week. (Emphasis mine.) That’s down just one percentage point from late September, but it marks a new low approval for the president — and the first time the Fox News poll has measured his approval below 50 percent.

Moreover, the number of Americans saying they would vote to re-elect President Obama has dropped. If the election were held today the poll finds more voters say they would back someone else in the 2012 election than would back the president.

Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday, the latest Fox News poll finds the president’s ratings on foreign issues are lower than his overall job ratings. All in all, 49 percent of Americans say they approve of the job President Obama is doing and 45 percent disapprove. His average approval for the term so far is 58 percent.

Yep, Obama’s approval numbers are below 50% for the first time at 49%. How about on some of the issues:

On Afghanistan, 41 percent of Americans say they approve of the job Obama is doing and 43 percent disapprove. For his handling of Iran, 44 percent approve and 43 percent disapprove.

On the president’s handling of the economy, voters are almost equally split: 48 percent approve and 49 percent disapprove. On health care, some 42 percent approve of the president’s performance and half disapprove, 50 percent.

Among Democrats, 78 percent say they would vote to re-elect President Obama, down from 87 percent in April. For 2008 Obama voters, 81 percent say they would vote to re-elect him — that’s a slight up tick from the 79 percent who said so previously.

Six in 10 Americans — 60 percent — think Obama is a strong and decisive leader.
And while 38 percent think President Obama is getting good advice from his advisors, a larger number — 45 percent — think he is “listening to the wrong people.” (Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from October 13 to October 14. The poll has a 3-point error margin.)

Like Rahm Emmanuel, or David Axelrod, or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid? Yeah, I’d say he’s listening to the wrong people.

And about that whole Nobel Peace Prize thing:

Did He Deserve It?

Upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama said, “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformational figures.” Most Americans agree with the president — 65 percent say he did not deserve to win, while 29 percent say he did.

Furthermore, a slim 54 percent majority of Democrats think Obama did deserve to win, while 38 percent disagree. For independents, 19 percent think he deserved it, while nearly three-quarters, 74 percent, say he did not. Among Republicans, almost all — 91 percent — say he did not deserve it.

When asked why the Nobel Committee gave the president the prize, about a third of Americans, 32 percent, say because he deserved it, while the largest number — 44 percent — think the committee hoped the prize would make Obama “think twice before using military force in the future.”

About that whole Nobel Peace Prize thing. Remember how we were all told the Committee Was unanimous in their decision to give it to Obama? Turns out that 3 out of 5 of them did NOT want to give it to him. Golly gee, I guess truth really DOES will out! Evidently, their reaction was the same as many of ours – he hasn’t DONE anything yet but speechify, for cryin’ out loud!

The poll also address how Congress was doing:

Most Americans are unhappy with Congress these days — 66 percent disapprove, including 45 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of independents and 84 percent of Republicans. Overall, less than one of four Americans, 24 percent, approve of the job Congress is doing.

Looking ahead to the 2010 Congressional election, for the first time this year the Republicans have the advantage: 42 percent of voters say they are more likely to back the Republicans to provide a check on President Obama’s power, while 38 percent say they would vote for the Democrat to help the president pass his policies.

Finally, in a rare example of bipartisan agreement, majorities of Democrats, 53 percent, Republicans, 78 percent, and Independents, 61 percent, agree the country is more divided these days. All in all, 64 percent of Americans think the country is more politically divided today — that’s more than twice the number who say it is not more divided, 31 percent.

Click here for the raw data.

What a bang-up job Obama has done in uniting us, just like he said he would. Blech. Can’t believe people fell for THAT line again, can you? Great – so glad there is one area that is truly bipartisan. Ahem.

And while President Obama is still feeling the love, the numbers of those who love him seem to be decreasing the more they open their eyes to see and their ears to hear. Such a shame they couldn’t muster that BEFORE the election, isn’t it? Now, his daily tracking poll continues to go down; Secretary Clinton’s approval numbers are higher than his (no big surprise to ME there); and his overall rating is at 49%. COngress doesn’t fare much better. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving guy, or more deserving Congress, could it?

Suddenly the disgraced and demoralized Republican Congress has an unearned future, thanks to the superhuman clumsiness of a man who has made himself indispensable to the Obama administration and insufferable to the Democratic Congress, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

The GOP always knew that Emanuel was a problem that could not be solved and could only be endured while he served three tempestuous terms in the House. But now the beleaguered Democratic majority is learning painfully that Emanuel’s talents for bullying, whimsical favoritism, cheerful power-grabbing, and self-congratulatory earthiness have transformed the first hundred days of the Obama administration’s seamless accomplishment into a second hundred days of blame and gloom.

First, Emanuel used frontman Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Finance Committee chair, to ditch the health-care public option, while sending President Obama to speak softly at dinner at the home of prickly Senator Charles Grassley (R-Grant Wood). The latest Emanuel co-authored ploy—forcing health-care legislation through in the fall with Democratic-only votes—underlines that the White House has become as deaf, daring, and driven as the fabled Democratic machines of Tammany Hall or Emanuel’s own Cook County, where he was a once and future fundraiser for the Daleys.“We suck,” a blunt Republican partisan reports, “but they suck more right now.”

Polling supports this cynical summary. The still lifeless Republicans, who have avoided any credible renovation or even contrition for their decades of swinishness, now enjoy their largest generic lead over the Democrats in years. Trusted touts like Charlie Cook speak of a Democratic loss of at least 20 seats in the House. Republican Party fundraising is up, Republican recruitment is up—even in blue New Hampshire, where a potential loss of Judd Gregg’s U.S. Senate seat is now a likely win with the recruiting of the popular Attorney General Kelly Ayotte—and the GOP’s cheeks have a glow not related to shame.

“It’s Rahm,” a Republican partisan tells me. “The cowardly, brain-dead Republicans are claiming they’ve done something. But it’s Rahm. If Rahm goes, the Dems will not do worse. But it might be hard to undo the damage.”

Like the gifted and overwrought Maximilien de Robespierre once upon a time, Rahm Emanuel has taken control of a revolutionary movement he did not help create nor much contribute to while it was gathering strength under the oppression of the ancien régime of George W. Bush. And just like Robespierre, Emanuel has turned the president’s kitchen cabinet of trusted ex-campaign workers, led by David Axelrod (whose ex-PR firm has enjoyed $12 million in fees so far from fronts controlled by the administration-directed Democratic National Committee), Mark Lippert, and Denis McDonough (a dynamic duo of hatchetmen on the National Security Council), into a Committee for Public Safety that terrorizes Washington’s royals willy-nilly.

The victims are everywhere, and the Republicans know best how brilliantly brutal Emanuel’s methods can be. “Rahm puts people on a string,” a cautious Republican told me. “He did it to Dennis [Hastert, former speaker of the House]. We always knew Rahm had something on him. Maybe it was earmarks. Maybe it was something like classic car-flipping. Dennis never went after Rahm and never allowed us to go after him.”

Emanuel’s methods in the House are now writ large throughout the government. Not one of the House Democrats is suicidal enough to push back in public against what amounts to his extortion and protection racket for each successive piece of partisan legislation—witness the 219 beaten-up votes for cap and trade in the House, or the pummeled Blue Dogs during the health-care brouhaha during recess. One Democratic wag comments that Rahm Emanuel is to the Blue Dogs what Michael Vick was to pit bulls. In the beginning he feeds them steak, then they get torn apart.
However, the Republicans are not as gun-shy—though none is unwise enough to reveal his own name—since they have no financing to have ripped from them; and some Republicans point to the strange quiet of GOP House Minority Whip Eric Cantor as evidence that he may be a victim of Emanuel’s Black Hand style.

After his TARP-supporting apostasy under the Bush ancien régime, Cantor begged forgiveness of his caucus to win the Whip job and was excited to oppose the aggressive White House in its first hundred days, taking pride of place in the Party of No against the stimulus package and the budget. But then Cantor rolled over, advocating to the Republican caucus that it avoid direct attacks on the administration and embrace the fashion of bipartisanship and compromise. In May, Cantor even tried a laughable bipartisan tour with Republican has-beens like Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich (no Democrats showed up) called the National Council for a New America.

What happened? “We think it’s Rahm,” says one Republican who watched the whodunit. “Cantor backed off right after articles ran in his district about Cantor’s wife working for a TARP bank.”
Cantor went so far as to vote for the wild legislation punishing AIG and TARP-bank bonuses with confiscatory taxes that few other Republicans regarded as sane. “We couldn’t understand that vote,” was one comment, “unless it was Rahm.”

Emanuel’s ambitious Committee for Public Safety in the White House, tightly disciplined, indifferent to all Cabinet secretaries including State and Defense, is not limited to sowing fear on Capitol Hill. There are multiple, detailed reports of Rahm Emanuel-authored or -delivered threats to the Netanyahu government in Jerusalem, to the Maliki government in Baghdad, to the Brown government at 10 Downing Street, and now to the Karzai government in Kabul that is entangled in massive voting fraud. A fresh report of a “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving the formerly mild-mannered CIA director Leon Panetta, an Emanuel appointee (as a reward for protecting Emanuel as Clinton chief of staff after Emanuel’s multiple screw-ups in the Clinton White House), points directly to the Emanuel style of extreme persuasion even in national security policy—though Emanuel’s bona fides in diplomacy are a 1991 vacation camp program in Israel volunteering to sing songs and stand around at Israel Defense Force bases with teenagers when he was 31 years old.

Emanuel’s other claim to critical national policy is based on how he got rich in a few dozen months’ work with Bruce Wasserstein in the Chicago office of Wasserstein Perella & Co. as it was being acquired by Deutsche Bank, putting together a merger involving the Chicago-based Exelon Corporation that was also one of Axelrod’s biggest PR accounts and financed Obama’s political career. Emanuel is said to be thrillingly defensive about this episode between his time at the Clinton White House in 1999 and his win of the Democratic primary for the Illinois House seat to replace Rod Blagojevich, a former mentor, in 2002.

Recalled an entertained Republican, “I saw one [Democratic] member walk up to him and ask, ‘So how did you make $18 million in an afternoon sitting at a table in Chicago?’ And Rahm just turned and walked away. It gets to him.”

Just now, Emanuel’s unusually good fortune in Chicago in making $18 million in a very short time may be the only thing on the planet that gets to him. A twist of fate is that as Emanuel’s authority and ambition grow, reaching for swift closure to foreign commitments, staging bipartisan fantasy cruises, then reaching to construct Democratic-only laws that turn the theory of checks and balances into an unlimited credit card on the Treasury, the polling points not only to a rising tide of facedown Republicans but also to a sinking approval rating for a president who entirely controls Emanuel’s fate. Is there a lesson in the detail that the French Revolution waited too long to turn on Robespierre’s ruthless genius, and by the time the guillotine fell, the ludicrously reactionary aristocracy had rallied throughout Europe and led a counterrevolution that swept liberty into the ditch for another lifetime?

John Batchelor is radio host of the John Batchelor Show in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

Secretary Clinton can’t be seen to differ from the president without sabotaging her own power.
…
Left behind on major presidential trips, overruled in choosing her own staff—Hillary Clinton is the invisible woman at State. But Obama’s brilliant foreign-policy spouse may not stay silent forever.

It’s time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa.

Consider the president’s Moscow trip a week ago. In a cozy scene at Vladimir Putin’s dacha, the boys enjoyed traditional Russian tea and breakfast on a terrace. Sitting on Putin’s right was the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Where was Lavrov’s counterpart? She was back home, left there with a broken elbow to receive a visit from the ousted Honduran president, José Manuel Zelaya.

Ms. Brown paints this as a deliberate slight by Obama, or a way to put his own ever-present and over exposed visage out front while keeping Hillary’s far more knowledgeable one out of the limelight. That may be so, but Brown leaves no room for the fact that Secretary Clinton may not have been able to travel last week due to her injury. No matter. Let’s try to harp on the fact that Hillary is diminished anyway. Other articles have been cropping up intimating the same and wondering “how long Hillary is going to put up with this.”

The far more important point Brown neglects to mention is that Obama’s solo trip was not considered a success. He made his amateurish pronouncements on the Cold War and received a long lecture by Putin and did not really get what he came for. President Obama’s actions will not be considered too clever in the long run if he reaps repercussions for having left the only adult in the room at home.

Ms. Brown continues…

Same thing last month, when the president stopped off to see King Abdullah en route to his oratorical home run in Cairo: no Hillary. Nor was there any sign of Middle East envoy George Mitchell or anyone else from the State Department on the Saudi leg of the trip, even though its main mission was to recruit Abdullah into a peace-making partnership with Israel. The king told Obama no, by the way, so it’s fair to ask whether the president could have used a bit more Foggy Bottom prep work. Jim Hoagland noted in Sunday’s Washington Post that the White House’s leak of Obama’s decision to send an ambassador to Syria took Clinton’s State Department by surprise and trumped State’s efforts to squeeze another concession or two out of Damascus first.

As. Mr. Hoagland rightly points out in his piece White House Fault Lines, this may be another strike against the Obama Administration, clearly making a mistake by trying to trump their own very loyal team at State – for no apparent reason.

Ms. Brown seems to delight in pointing out President Clinton’s being “curtailed” by Obama as a concession to his wife’s position. Yet I am sure Brown has a point in noting how Obama, together with Emanuel and Axelrod, need to stick their nose in appointments that should be left up to her:

Hillary, with her usual iron discipline about the big picture of power, is behaving like a stalwart team player. Before she took the job, she was assured she could pick her own trusted team. Yet she was overruled in appointing her own choice for deputy secretary, Richard Holbrooke. Instead, she was made to take an Obama guy, James Steinberg, who had originally been slated to become national-security adviser. (Hillary took care of Holbrooke, one of diplomacy’s biggest stars, by giving him the most explosive portfolio—Pakistan and Afghanistan.) She lost the ability to dole out major ambassadorships, too. A lot of these prizes are going to reward Obama fundraisers instead of knowledgeable appointees like Harvard’s Joseph Nye, whom she wanted to send to Japan.

Ms. Brown complains that Hillary was not given credit for getting Obama to put more troops in Afghanistan, inferring VP Biden is given credit for this. Well, this runs contrary to Ben Smith’s article in Politico, Clinton Gains Respect Out Of Spotlight, as quoted by CBS News, that Hillary trumped Biden on Afghanistan so perhaps Ms. Brown is overstating. Smith’s article is quick to point out that SoS Clinton’s popularity now stands at 71%, higher than the President’s. While pundits the likes of George Stephanopoulos intimated her portfolio and role is decreased because of envoys Holbrooke and Mitchell, Hillary always campaigned on hiring just such heavy hitting personnel to concentrate more diplomatic power in the middle east. Some choice quotes in this regard from the Politico article:

The envoys will be the primary metric through which you will judge her legacy…And even skeptical observers said Clinton appears to have won sufficient control over the envoys after a precarious start.

Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican who serves on the House subcommittee that oversees the State Department and describes himself as a Clinton “fan” for her role in pushing for sending more troops to Afghanistan…

“Between her consideration and her final confirmation she had lost some authority and power as all of these envoys were appointed,” he said. “Once she did get confirmed, though, what we have seen is a steady increase in her authority and control as we have seen envoys seeming to now work with her.”

Leaders in the region, he said, view her as “pre-eminent.” …Clinton is also afforded a level of day-to-day deference that underscores her stature. …The deputy secretary of state, Jim Steinberg, described Clinton’s role with the envoys as “the closer.” ….”The envoys tee it up for her,” he said in an interview. “It’s an extremely powerful way to use someone with her stature.”

Hillary Clinton has also been credited on many fronts as having, in short order, put diplomacy back under the charge of the State Department, rather than the military. Smith states her style as SoS echoes her arrival in the Senate in 2001 — putting her head down, figuring out the job and working hard rather than looking for the spotlight. Tina Brown likewise points out how, historically, this suits Clinton’s work ethic even as she seemingly objects to it elsewhere:

The former first lady and New York senator is no stranger to the big game of politics. Obama’s presidency is tightly White House driven and she is not the only player on a tight leash. … But I doubt she cares about losing the spotlight at this time in her life when she’s not running for something. Unlike Bill, she hates glad-handing and does TV only because she has to. Policy is her meat and drink. On her State Department plane, Hillary is always eager to throw off her well-groomed public look and sit up front with no makeup, wearing sweats and her bookworm glasses, as she crunches her way through a big fat file of foreign-policy memos. She is as formidably well-informed in this job as she was at the Rose law firm in Arkansas, doing all the legal backup work for the guys on a big deal. Or when she played the canny sounding board and strategist for Gov. Bill Clinton in his run for president.

That’s the trouble. You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she’ll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety.

To call Hillary a Saudi wife? That’s quite a leap. And if Hillary were out front and center, I’m sure Ms. Brown would complain about how “ego driven” and “power hungry” she is. Hillary certainly heard enough of that nonsense last year. Once again, I am sure the maddening tightrope a female politician or diplomat has to walk is far more precarious than that of any man in the same position.

I can’t make up my mind reading this article as to Ms. Brown’s end game. To degrade Hillary? To throw down the gauntlet and encourage her to speak out? To slap at President Obama pointing out how foolish he is not to make better use of Secretary Clinton’s considerable abilities?

It is interesting to note that a month ago, not three days before Hillary broke her arm, Ms. Brown penned another article entitled What Hillary Can Teach Sarah Palin. Brown stated that Hillary was an example of “what real female power looks like,” that she is a “dedicated policy wonk who worked on behalf of oppressed women in unpronounceable places long before it was fashionable.”

She then engages in some revisionist history of her own when she stated that Hillary was “humbled at the polls” by Barack Obama. Oh really? So the fact that she won more votes than any candidate in primary history – male or female – 300,000 more than him – that’s humbling? Being outspent three to one, stabbed in the back by your own party, trashed in the media daily, winning more votes and still not getting the nomination, well I have another word for that – and it has nothing to do with being humbled. Knee-capped, maybe.

Ms. Brown lectures Palin to

Take a leaf out of Hillary’s book. (Or from Condi Rice, for that matter. Clinton’s predecessor in the job likewise knows how to disappear herself for a bit while she recoups and rebrands.) Bide your time, don’t waste it.

Her words of wisdom here are “it’s the substance that sustains, not the exposure.” No kidding. Hillary is all substance, that’s for sure. But in her new article – Brown demands more exposure for Hillary. Tina needs to make up her mind. Is she going to believe that Hillary is “biding her time” and knows what she is doing or not?

While I do not particularly care for Ms. Brown’s tone, I’d love to see Hillary front and center myself. Selfishly I would feel safer knowing for certain she was in charge of the foreign policy portfolio at State rather than the rest of the Administration that keeps swapping seats in the clown car. But as Brown notes, when one is starting a job, it pays to build a firm foundation before making a lot of noise.

Let’s see if we start hearing more noise from Hillary.

And so now, we have finger pointing between senators and representatives, the Department of the Treasury, and the White House. Do I even need to tell you that the White House is COMPLETELY blameless in this?? Oh, you know Obama is taking ZERO responsibility for the tax payers, many of whom have lost their own jobs, not just paying to keep these companies afloat, but giving them BONUSES!!!

Oh, yes – Obama is just railing away, despite his Chief of Staff actually working on the whole piece that had the bonuses in it. Oh, wait – that was two minutes ago. That story has already changed to make everything, absolutely everything, Chris Dodd’s fault. Except – Oh Wait – now we find out that Tim Geithner, the man who can’t even be bothered to download Freakin’ TURBO TAX, has admitted that Dodd was ASKED to put in this little loophole. By the Treasury Department. Oops!

So, um, Chris – how happy are you now that you threw your support to Obama?!?! Hahahahahaha! I mean, karma’s a bitch, ain’t it??

Anywho – the whole issue is discussed fully in the video below (H/T to SusanUnPC for the heads up on the video, and Cheneywatch for the video). Pay special attention to Charles Krauthammer:

Well, I gotta say, I think he makes a pretty good point, and not just because he talks about my team, the New York Yankees! Anyway – yes, in the scheme of things, it is not that much money. But I think what bugs people about it all, besides it being OUR taxpaying dollars, is the hubris of it all.

More importantly, though, is the manner in which the Democrats went about this. They have forgotten that when they are solely in power, they will solely take the blame, too. Rightly so, in this case, I think we can agree. Pelosi crafted this pork-laden stimulus bill, any number of top Democrats, they rammed it through, claiming all kinds of horrors would befall us if they didn’t, then Obama sat on it for a couple of days so he could finish up his SECOND vacation (he’s now on his third – in two months), then jet off to Denver to sign it. Yes, I can see why it was so important for them to use fear mongering tactics, then sit back and relax. And apparently, even THEN, no one bothered to read the damn thing. So we get loopholes like the one Dodd, or Emanuel, or Pelosi, or Reid, or Geithner, or WHOEVER the hell it really was, to allow bonuses for people at AIG. That kind of thing just doesn’t sit very well with a lot of people. Still, it is, as Krauthammer was implying, a smokescreen for the BIGGER issues at hand, at which we should be looking, and that is the proposed Budget, the Economy, and the billions in earmark projects for which we are paying.

Well, wait – let me ask you, in this completely scientific way: Are YOU mad that your money is going to pay these other people’s bonuses, especially at a company that you have already given around $173 BILLION dollars? Yes? Well, David Axelrod doesn’t think you are. I am not kidding. That is his latest message: that the American people don’t give a crap about stuff like this. Greg Sargent had this at The Plum:

Come on, guys, can’t we get the message straight on this one?

Yesterday I noted that Rahm Emanuel had said that Obama saw the AIG fiasco as a “big distraction” from efforts to fix the economy. Later in the day, Obama walked that back, asserting that the public was right to be “angry” about the whole mess and right to find it “consuming.”

Today, another senior Obama adviser, David Axelrod, is throwing in his lot with Rahm and the AIG-isn’t-a-huge-deal camp:

“People are not sitting around their kitchen tables thinking about AIG,” Axelrod said. “They are thinking about their own jobs.”

So are people upset about this, or aren’t they? Actually, people are thinking about the AIG disaster. Yesterday’s Gallup poll found that a big majority is very upset about it. Only 11% said they are “not particularly bothered” by it.

Again, this just seems weird politically. Why pretend that folks aren’t pissed off about this at a time when Republicans are moving aggressively to paint Obama as too passive on the issue and position themselves as the outraged and heroic defenders of the taxpapers?

Update: David Kurtz says: “I honestly don’t get what up-side they see politically in taking this tack.” He suggests that it’s “tone deaf.” Agreed on both counts.

I agree on both counts, too, in case you are keeping score.

Has it really only been two months of this guy? Good grief. I wonder who’s going to have to take the fall for Obama next? Hmmm, maybe that new pup the girls are getting (and so much for the whole shelter dog thing – I think we all knew that was just words, too)…

Honestly, I’m getting motion sickness from all of this…

Contributions to Obama Campaign Track Bailout Money

Barack Obama’s lack of leadership in a down economy has now hit [1] crisis proportions, as his claimed inability to block millions of dollars in bonuses for executives of bailout recipient AIG has caused even his supporters to turn on him.

But while the ire of Congress and the media focus are on the $165 million that AIG paid out in bonuses to their executives, the president is hoping you won’t notice the $100 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars that AIG paid out to other banks, including $58 billion to foreign banks and [2] $36 billion given to French and German banks alone.

The Obama administration is allowing AIG to bail out the rest of the world with your tax dollars.

So by all means, the president is happy to have you railing at “evil” but relatively small potatoes AIG executive bonuses, as it points your outrage away from his own far more costly executive abuses.

And of course, the re-distributor-in-chief hopes you won’t notice where much of the rest of the AIG bailout cash is being spent.

While $58 billion of your tax dollars — or more accurately, your children’s tax dollars — are being used to pay foreign banks, a substantial portion of that money ($43.5 billion) is being used to pay American banks, including Goldman Sachs, Merill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, AIG International, and JP Morgan.

The following recipients of President Obama’s trickle-down-to-my-donors bailout plan rank among his top 20 contributors to his 2008 presidential election campaign, according to [3] Open Secrets:

Goldman Sachs: $955,473

Citigroup: $653,468

JP Morgan Chase & Co.: $646,058

Morgan Stanley: $485,823

Well, looky there!! Don’t THOSE names look just a little familiar?! Just WAIT:

Three other banks that were significant contributors to Obama received money through AIG:

Bank of America: $274,493

Wachovia: $214,151

AIG: $112,170

Lehman Brothers, which did not survive long enough to join the list of banks leaching off the work of the American taxpayer, also gave the Obama campaign [4] $276,088.

Individuals identifying themselves as working for the banks above gave Barack Obama’s presidential campaign $3,617,724. In other words, more than 3.6 million reasons for the president to help focus the media’s glare on the relatively minuscule $165 million in AIG executive bonuses, and away from their $43.5 billion portion of $100 billion of taxpayer dollars the administration, by design or incompetence, filtered to other banks through AIG.

In receiving $43.5 billion for their investment of just over $3.3 million, it looks like the banks that gambled on Wall Street certainly got their money’s worth out of their investment in Barack Obama.

Your tax paying dollars at work, folks! To help pay back Obama’s big-money contributors to buy him the highest office in the land. Wheeee!!!!

If you want to read more on the AIG issue, SusanUnPC also has a good piece on the recent AIG/Dodd stuff, “Listen To Your Aunt Susan.” There is also Larry Doyle’s, “AIG Contracts A Brain Freeze,” are just a couple of other articles at No Quarter on the AIG issue.

Charles Krauthammer is someone for whom I have developed a grudging respect, thanks in no small part to my friend, SusanUnPC at No Quarter, who encouraged me to read him (until SusanUnPC told me, I didn’t know that Krauthammer is a psychiatrist who is paralyzed as a result of a diving accident. Clearly, he has not let that stop him one bit.). What I have discovered is that he is a very deliberate thinker. I may not always agree with what he says, but I can’t disagree with how he reaches his conclusions, if you know what I mean. And it is Mr. Krauthammer’s article, The Great Non Sequitur, The Sleight of Hand Behind Obama’s Agenda(h/t to LisaB for this article), with which I want to begin. Again, it is the economy that he is addressing, and Obama’s response to it:

Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the “2 trillion dollars in savings” that “we have already identified,” $1.6 trillion of which President Obama’s budget director later admits is the “savings” of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 — 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.

Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama’s tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that’s a matter of scale, not principle.

All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama’s radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

The logic of Obama’s address to Congress went like this:

“Our economy did not fall into decline overnight,” he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care and education — importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The “day of reckoning” has arrived. And because “it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament,” Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

Well, that’s ONE way of putting it! A non sequitur. Nicely put. He continues:

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan’s Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful home buyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe.

I can’t argue much with him there. And thank heavens SOMEONE is bringing up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Both played a HUGE part in our current fiscal crisis, ye tfor reasons I don’t understand, these two institutions are rarely mentioned in the conversation these days.

Krauthammer continues:

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What’s going on? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

Things. Now we know what they are. The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his “Big Bang” agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.

I guess that’s some of that Chicago-style politics we’ve heard about – not wanting a “serious crisis to go to waste.” That is just so offensive in so many ways, my head is spinning. Apparently, so was Krauthammer’s:

Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy — worthy and weighty as they may be — are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime. (letters@charleskrauthammer.com )

Paul Krugman also takes as his jumping off point Obama’s address to Congress in this article,
The Big Dither (h/t to American Girl for this). You just have to love that title, don’t you? Anyway, Krugman doesn’t seem all that impressed with how Obama is handling things given his rhetoric:

Last month, in his big speech to Congress, President Obama argued for bold steps to fix America’s dysfunctional banks. “While the cost of action will be great,” he declared, “I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade.”

Many analysts agree. But among people I talk to there’s a growing sense of frustration, even panic, over Mr. Obama’s failure to match his words with deeds. The reality is that when it comes to dealing with the banks, the Obama administration is dithering. Policy is stuck in a holding pattern.

Here’s how the pattern works: first, administration officials, usually speaking off the record, float a plan for rescuing the banks in the press. This trial balloon is quickly shot down by informed commentators.

Then, a few weeks later, the administration floats a new plan. This plan is, however, just a thinly disguised version of the previous plan, a fact quickly realized by all concerned. And the cycle starts again.

That sounds about right, doesn’t it? Just keep plying the same piece of crap, and give it another name! Yep – same plan, different day, same result:

Why do officials keep offering plans that nobody else finds credible? Because somehow, top officials in the Obama administration and at the Federal Reserve have convinced themselves that troubled assets, often referred to these days as “toxic waste,” are really worth much more than anyone is actually willing to pay for them — and that if these assets were properly priced, all our troubles would go away.

Thus, in a recent interview Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, tried to make a distinction between the “basic inherent economic value” of troubled assets and the “artificially depressed value” that those assets command right now. In recent transactions, even AAA-rated mortgage-backed securities have sold for less than 40 cents on the dollar, but Mr. Geithner seems to think they’re worth much, much more.

And the government’s job, he declared, is to “provide the financing to help get those markets working,” pushing the price of toxic waste up to where it ought to be.

What’s more, officials seem to believe that getting toxic waste properly priced would cure the ills of all our major financial institutions. Earlier this week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, was asked about the problem of “zombies” — financial institutions that are effectively bankrupt but are being kept alive by government aid. “I don’t know of any large zombie institutions in the U.S. financial system,” he declared, and went on to specifically deny that A.I.G. — A.I.G.! — is a zombie.

This is the same A.I.G. that, unable to honor its promises to pay off other financial institutions when bonds default, has already received $150 billion in aid and just got a commitment for $30 billion more.

Doesn’t that just BURN YOU UP??? That AIG is getting even MORE money? HOW is this going to help, especially since they seem not to have changed their behavior one whit. Krugman continued:

The truth is that the Bernanke-Geithner plan — the plan the administration keeps floating, in slightly different versions — isn’t going to fly.

Take the plan’s latest incarnation: a proposal to make low-interest loans to private investors willing to buy up troubled assets. This would certainly drive up the price of toxic waste because it would offer a heads-you-win, tails-we-lose proposition. As described, the plan would let investors profit if asset prices went up but just walk away if prices fell substantially.

But would it be enough to make the banking system healthy? No.

Think of it this way: by using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of toxic waste, the administration would shower benefits on everyone who made the mistake of buying the stuff. Some of those benefits would trickle down to where they’re needed, shoring up the balance sheets of key financial institutions. But most of the benefit would go to people who don’t need or deserve to be rescued.

And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it’s just not going to happen.

Oh, dear. Well, that’s not very encouraging, is it? No, not really, and Krugman doesn’t think so, either:

So why has this zombie idea — it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back — taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren’t willing to face the facts. They don’t want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it’s very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable.

But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president’s fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more.

That’s been the problem all along, isn’t it? The inability, or unwillingness, to face facts, from our officials AND the electorate, who have demonstrated that very characteristic for far too long. Heck, that’s how we ended up with Obama in the first place – the blind acceptance of his words with nary a glance at his deeds, the unwillingness to look at the FACTS about Obama, who he is, what his record is or is not, his connections to unsavory characters, his Chicago-politician history and style, his lack of policy, his blatant theft of ideas…

And the latter is the big problem now. Because he got over during his campaign by taking Clinton’s ideas, often whole cloth, he has NO idea how to implement them, or how to adjust them, or what is necessary for them to be successful. We are bearing the brunt of this Cheater in Chief, who hasn’t the foggiest how to adequately address the economic climate in which we find ourselves, through loss of jobs, homes, and retirement funds. A man who has gotten where he is not by his own hard work, but the King making of others. This man who provides the non sequitur, the Zombie plan, is not going to fix this disastrous economy. Inaction is not the answer, but WHAT the action is is crucial.

I can only hope that people of this stature, the Krugmans and Krauthammers among us, continue to speak out. Hopefully, prayerfully, their words will get through, and maybe, just maybe, we can get ourselves out of this “thing,” as Emmanuel said, not for political gain, but for the sake of the country.

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?

The American populace knows that the primary architects in the formulation of the Stimulus Plan working its way through Congress are Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. This contingent, along with President Obama, have not been bashful in stating they view the November election results as effectively a mandate to change policies emanating from Washington.

Against that backdrop, the initially proposed Stimulus Plan was so loaded with pork that the Republicans and the American population at large slammed it as more a promotion of the

Martin Feldstein

I will give President Obama credit for formulating a Panel to Advise Obama on Economy.

This panel will be known as the White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board. The Board will be headed by former Fed chair Paul Volcker. He will be joined by Jeff Immelt of GE, James Owens of Caterpillar, William Donaldson, former SEC chair, Roger Ferguson Jr. of TIAA-CREF, Richard Trumka of AFL-CIO, Anna Burger of SEIU, and Martin Feldstein, renowned Harvard economist. The group will be guided by Austan Goolsbee, an economic adviser to the White House.

Do you think President Obama and his economic team would listen to Mr. Feldstein or is that a “mere courtesy” having him on the board? Let’s review what Mr. Feldstein said about the Stimulus Plan just last week.

Regarding the proposed Stimulus Plan, Martin Feldstein offered that it is far better to go back to work and do it right versus merely doing it fast:

An $800 Billion Mistake

By Martin Feldstein
The Washington Post
Thursday, January 29, 2009

As a conservative economist, I might be expected to oppose a stimulus plan. In fact, on
this page in October, I declared my support for a stimulus. But the fiscal package now
before Congress needs to be thoroughly revised. In its current form, it does too little to
raise national spending and employment. It would be better for the Senate to delay
legislation for a month, or even two, if that’s what it takes to produce a much better bill.
We cannot afford an $800 billion mistake.

Start with the tax side. The plan is to give a tax cut of $500 a year for two years to each
employed person. That’s not a good way to increase consumer spending. Experience
shows that the money from such temporary, lump-sum tax cuts is largely saved or used
to pay down debt. Only about 15 percent of last year’s tax rebates led to additional
spending.

The proposed business tax cuts are also likely to do little to increase business investment
and employment. The extended loss “carrybacks” are primarily lump-sum payments to
selected companies. The bonus depreciation plan would do little to raise capital spending
in the current environment of weak demand because the tax benefits in the early years
would be recaptured later.

Instead, the tax changes should focus on providing incentives to households and
businesses to increase current spending. Why not a temporary refundable tax credit to
households that purchase cars or other major consumer durables, analogous to the
investment tax credit for businesses? Or a temporary tax credit for home improvements?
In that way, the same total tax reduction could produce much more spending and
employment.

Postponing the scheduled increase in the tax on dividends and capital gains would raise
share prices, leading to increased consumer spending and, by lowering the cost of capital,
more business investment.

On the spending side, the stimulus package is full of well-intended items that,
unfortunately, are not likely to do much for employment. Computerizing the medical
records of every American over the next five years is desirable, but it is not a cost-
effective way to create jobs. Has anyone gone through the (long) list of proposed
appropriations and asked how many jobs each would create per dollar of increased
national debt?

The largest proposed outlays amount to just writing unrestricted checks to state
governments. Nearly $100 billion would result from increasing the “Medicaid matching
rate,” a technique for reducing states’ Medicaid costs to free up state money for spending
on anything governors and state legislators want. An additional $80 billion would be given
out for “state fiscal relief.” Will these vast sums actually lead to additional spending, or will
they merely finance state transfer payments or relieve state governments of the need for
temporary tax hikes or bond issues?

The plan to finance health insurance premiums for the unemployed would actually
increase unemployment by giving employers an incentive to lay off workers rather than
pay health premiums during a time of weak demand. And this supposedly two-year
program would create a precedent that could be hard to reverse.

A large fraction of the stimulus proposal is devoted to infrastructure projects that will
spend out very slowly, not with the speed needed to help the economy in 2009 and 2010.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that less than one-fifth of the $50 billion of
proposed spending on energy and water would occur by the end of 2010.

If rapid spending on things that need to be done is a criterion of choice, the plan should
include higher defense outlays, including replacing and repairing supplies and equipment,
needed after five years of fighting. The military can increase its level of procurement very
rapidly. Yet the proposed spending plan includes less than $5 billion for defense, only
about one-half of 1 percent of the total package.

Infrastructure spending on domestic military bases can also proceed more rapidly than
infrastructure spending in the civilian economy. And military procurement overwhelmingly
involves American-made products. Since much of this military spending will have to be
done eventually, it makes sense to do it now, when there is substantial excess capacity in
the manufacturing sector. In addition, a temporary increase in military recruiting and
training would reduce unemployment directly, create a more skilled civilian workforce and
expand the military reserves.

All new spending and tax changes should have explicit time limits that prevent ever-
increasing additions to the national debt. Similarly, spending programs should not create
political dynamics that will make them hard to end.

The problem with the current stimulus plan is not that it is too big but that it delivers too
little extra employment and income for such a large fiscal deficit. It is worth taking the
time to get it right.

The writer, an economics professor at Harvard University, is president emeritus of the
National Bureau of Economic Research.

Barack, how about you and Martin go for a little walk. Take your time!!

LD

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.

WORST JOKE TOLD (by Sen. Joe Lieberman): “Lieberman, who also spoke, ‘noted that former vice president Richard B. Cheney injured himself while moving into his new home, according to a source inside the dinner. “I had no idea waterboards were so heavy,”‘ Lieberman quipped.”

Hey, gang: What’s Sarah about to say to the Prez? And why is Joe Lieberman trying to grab her? And, BELOW THE FOLD, You’ll see more images of Sarah Palin, including video of her arrival.

Here’s the caption via the Chicago Tribune’s blog:

The odd trio at dinner: President Barack Obama, Sen. Joe Lieberman, who campaigned against Obama and for John McCain, and McCain running mate Sarah Palin, who accused Obama of “pallin’ around with terrorists” and now, as Obama joked last night, is “pallin’ around” with his crew. (Photos by Clarence Page)

Now, here are highlights of President Obama’s remarks, via Politico and Memeorandum:

Robert E. Lee, confused

Obama appears tonight at the Alfalfa Dinner, a gathering of Washington’s elite with Confederate roots, a fact on which the president remarked, according to excerpts from his prepared remarks:

I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused.

Now, this hasn’t been reported yet, but it was actually Rahm’s idea to do the swearing-in ceremony again. Of course, for Rahm, every day is a swearing-in ceremony.

But don’t believe what you read. Rahm Emanuel is a real sweetheart.

No, it’s true. Every week the guy takes a little time away to give back to the community. Just last week he was at a local school, teaching profanity to poor children.

But these are the kind of negotiations you have to deal with as President. In just the first few weeks, I’ve had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my Blackberry. I finally agreed to limit the number of people who could email me. It’s a very exclusive list. How exclusive?

Everyone look at the person sitting on your left’ Now look at the person sitting on your right. None of you have my email address.

More on the dinner: “Obamas dine with Palin, McCain and the Bushes,” Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune, and Elite Officially Welcome Obama, Washington Post.

Soon-to-be Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appeared on Charlie Rose’s show for the hour last night. Rep. Emanual verbally swaggered in that oh-so-Chicago-Way, but perhaps a bit less than in times past. In the YouTube excerpt below, Emanuel points out that PEBO is the first pre-inaugural president to pass a major piece of legislation (Troubled Asset Relief Program aka TARP), awarding PBO the right to access the remaining $300+ billion.

Recommended: Check out Jake Tapper’s blog Political Punch at ABC News in which he reveals the names of those few independent-minded Democrats voted against giving President Barack Obama access to the remaining $350 billion. It’s a distinguished group, including my state’s eyes-like-a-hawk, no-nonsense Maria Cantwell. Tapper also learned, by using his many connections, that John McCain reversed his opposition after getting a letter of assurance from Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers that the oversight will be greater than under Bush.

From our Senate booth, ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf tells us that if you look at the roll call, you can see that nine Democratic senators opposed giving PBO the money (for the anti-TARP resolution).

They were:

Perennial vice presidential bridesmaid Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bernie Sanders of Vermont (technically an Independent), Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

Wolf and ABC News’ Vic Ratner note that of these nine, five are up for re-election in 2010: Bayh, Dorgan, Feingold, Lincoln, and Wyden.

Six Republicans voted to give Obama the money …

GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Dick Lugar of Indiana, Olympia Snowe of Maine and George Voinovich of Ohio.

Then there’s the hilarity of candidates promising one thing to win a race, and then doing the opposite once in office. Hey, they all do it, as Barack Obama’s followers have discovered. Ahem. (FISA, Iraq, Guantanamo, war crimes trials of Bush/Cheney, and on and on.)

Jeff Merkeley in Oregon ran an ad attacking then-Sen. Gordon Smith for supporting the TARP legislation, but on Thursday, after taking the seat from Smith, Merkeley voted to release the second half of the money he thought never should have been passed in the first place.

Now, here’s the video I promised you, plus a bonus video that you’ll love:

The full video of Friday night’s interview won’t be available on Rose’s site until Monday.

Next up is a must-see video from an earlier Emanuel appearance on Rose’s PBS show.

Did you ever catch this video? It’s quite something. You do know, don’t you, that Rahm’s mother famously said, before this year, that Rahm was the least accomplished of her three sons.

Ari Emanuel is a famous Hollywood agent on whom the character of Ari in HBO’s Entourage was based. And Ezekiel is a world-famous physician who has written an important book on health care.

A rebroadcast of a conversation with Ezekiel, Ari, and Rahm Emanuel. President-elect Barack Obama selected Representative Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff.

Here’s the full program:

The most recent piece by Kass deals with an issue about which very few people are talking: Rahm Emanuel’s seat. Yeah, right? Hardly anyone is talking about who is going to fill his seat:

With the eyes of the nation on the saga of Tombstone Burris—and our Illinois politicians hopping predictably toward impeaching the governor like those dancing chickens at the state fair—don’t forget another vacant congressional seat of prime importance to the Obama White House.

Until last week, it belonged to U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Tomczak), now chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama, who ran on the platform of bringing reform to American politics.

With so many new readers from strange lands finally getting interested in how Chicago works—and by this I mean the editorial boards of many American newspapers—you might start by learning about Emanuel’s 5th District.

It is dominated by the shadow governor of Illinois, state Sen. James DeLeo (D-How You Doin’?), the state central Democratic committeeman, the fellow who’ll decide who gets slated by the party, the guy behind the guys.

Say, whaaaa? You mean there are more Chicago-style politics going on in the state even though good ol’ Blago has been charged with some shenanigans? Of course, you know that type of politics has NOTHING to do with Obama, or emanuel, or Emil Jones , or any other Chicago politician, right? Oh, sure:

Emanuel’s district runs from the historically mob-dominated town of Melrose Park on east, through Elmwood Park into the city, to Chicago’s Viagra Triangle along Rush Street. No, how you doin’?

Jimmy’s not talking to me these days. He didn’t like the columns about his luxury car leasing deals and those trips to the casino in Aruba with that other big risk-taker, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.

Yeah, that Jesse White.

That is from the, “you can’t make this shit up” file. Kass continues:

Yet there is another expert on Emanuel’s political rise, the world’s foremost authority in the field:

Don Tomczak.

Unfortunately, Mr. Tomczak, a top political operative for that other famous reformer, Mayor Richard Daley, is indisposed.

Tomczak will be indisposed until July 3, 2010, when he is scheduled to get out of federal prison, where he was sent after pleading guilty to taking $400,000 in bribes for city trucking contracts in that department Daley still doesn’t know anything about.

“Mr. Tomczak was a gentleman of the old school,” his lawyer, Patrick Cotter, said the other day. “That was the only way he was ever taught to do things. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation.”

“A gentleman of the old school”? That’s a LEGAL defense these days?? Oh, no – just in Chicago, the very place in which Obama CHOSE to begin his political career. Hmmm – I wonder why:

Years ago, Daley put Tomczak in charge of an illegal political army of stooges on the city payroll who worked elections to get promotions and overtime to benefit Daley’s machine.

City Hall allowed Tomczak to bring the Democratic army out to Will County to elect his son Jeff as a Republican state’s attorney. But the important work was in the city, where Tomczak muscled for Emanuel in 2002.

There were hundreds of Tomczak/Daley stooges knocking on doors, manning precincts, passing literature for Emanuel to install him and knock out a true progressive local Democrat, Nancy Kaszak.

Tomczak testified to this at a federal trial of other convicted Daley patronage chiefs. The mayor was so upset that his mouthpiece, David Axelrod, felt compelled to write an op-ed piece in the Tribune that took the side of patronage and clout, saying it wasn’t all that bad, really.

Well, if AXELROD said it “wasn’t all that bad,” then surely, it wasn’t (cough, choke):

Simultaneously, Axelrod was massaging the message for Obama about transcending the old, corrupt politics and ushering in the sunshine of reform, a slogan that sent tingles up the legs of pundits.

After Tomczak cooperated and testified, Emanuel defended Daley and denied any knowledge of the Tomczak army that elected him.

“I am not here to excuse any illegal acts or the violation of the public trust,” said Emanuel at a lunch at the City Club. “Corruption is corruption. It cannot be excused and it cannot be overlooked.”

But he did overlook it, saying Daley didn’t know what was going on at City Hall because the mayor “outsourced” his politics, and Rahm didn’t know who sent Tomczak and hundreds of knuckle-draggers to install him in Congress to do the people’s business.

And now this pause until we can all stop laughing. Rahm claims Daley didn’t know what was going on or that he was clueless about the legion of people out drumming up support on his behalf (wow, does THAT ever sound familiar). And that corruption cannot be tolerated???? Oh, hahahaha – that’s a good one, Rahm! You card, you!

Okay – now that we’ve wiped our eyes from laughing ’til we cried at this massive hooeyfication, get this:

“I guess when you have hundreds of city workers show up to help you on your campaign, you don’t ask any questions,” said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association, in an interview Thursday.

“Rahm is one of the few people who defended the mayor in these corruption scandals. He’s a creature of Chicago politics. As Mayor Daley benefited from Tomczak’s efforts, so did Rahm Emanuel,” Stewart said.

I have a question. Do ANY of these people believe the crap that comes spewing out of their mouths? I mean, REALLY – any one of them? I’m just asking because I cannot imagine saying stuff like this and not crack up laughing, or feel compelled to TELL THE TRUTH, but that’s just me.

Meanwhile – Rahm defended Daley from all of the corruption scandals? For real? And now he’s Obama’s right-hand man? Wowie zowie:

Now that Emanuel is working to help Obama bring reform to the nation, 5th Congressional District candidates will eagerly rub up against Jimmy DeLeo, and the lucky one will get a kiss on the cheek. DeLeo is having a big meet soon at the Zam Zam Banquet Hall, and the neighborhood will be awash in the sound of puckering.

But do chickens really have lips?

In the meantime, Blagojevich will be impeached and his Senate appointee, Burris, will fill Obama’s seat.

Tombstone will ooze into the job the way lime Jell-O fills one of those terrifying fish-shaped molds your grandmother keeps in her cupboard. So no real surprises there.

But if you really want to see dancing chickens, watch what happens in the 5th Congressional District.

Emanuel will want someone to sit still and keep the eggs warm until he’s ready to reclaim his nest. And here’s my question.

Are they chickens, or are they just dancers?

jskass@tribune.com

I’m sorry, too – but it had to be done, don’t you think (and trust me when I tell you I found the shortest, best one!)?

I guess only time will tell for these Chicago-style politicians – both in IL and in DC…