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Friday, December 12, 2008
Bush kneecaps GOP senators
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So Republican senators buck up enough courage to filibuster the Detroit bailout package, refusing to let it come up for a vote and thus killing it. In the process, they pretty much alienate a good chunk of the industrial Midwest, further damaging the party’s standing in that region.
After which, the Republican White House says too bad, we’re going to give Detroit the money anyway by dipping into the $700 billion TARP fund.
As White House press secretary Dana Perino put it, “a precipitous collapse of this industry would have a severe impact on our economy, and it would be irresponsible to further weaken and destabilize our economy at this time.”
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that two things have happened here:
— The Bush White House just royally *&8793ed the Senate Republicans.
— And just to make sure the message got through, it basically called the GOP senators irresponsible.
Have I got that right?
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This doesn’t look so good for Candidate #5
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“As Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to pick Illinois’ next U.S. senator, businessmen with ties to both the governor and U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. discussed raising at least $1 million for Blagojevich’s campaign as a way to encourage him to pick Jackson for the job, the Tribune has learned.
Blagojevich made an appearance at an Oct. 31 luncheon meeting at the India House restaurant in Schaumburg sponsored by Oak Brook businessman Raghuveer Nayak, a major Blagojevich supporter who also has fundraising and business ties to the Jackson family, according to several attendees and public records.
Two businessmen who attended the meeting and spoke to the Tribune on the condition of anonymity said that Nayak and Blagojevich aide Rajinder Bedi privately told many of the more than two dozen attendees the fundraising effort was aimed at supporting Jackson’s bid for the Senate.
Among the attendees was a Blagojevich fundraiser already under scrutiny by federal investigators, Joliet pharmacist Harish Bhatt.”
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Bob Gates vs. Donald Rumsfeld? No contest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Robert Gates was named to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense right after the ‘06 elections, the officer corps quietly but sincerely celebrated.
If you want to know why, and if you want to know why Barack Obama has decided to keep Gates at the Pentagon, read the secretary’s essay in the current edition of Foreign Affairs. The contrast with Rumsfeld could not be more stark.
Among the highlights:
“I have learned many things in my 42 years of service in the national security area. Two of the most important are an appreciation of limits and a sense of humility…. We should be modest about what military force can accomplish and what technology can accomplish.”
“We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable priniciples and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock or awe an enemy into submission instead of tracking enemies down hilltop to hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”
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Obama the transformer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Charles Krauthammer sees what I’ve been seeing too — Barack Obama does not intend to be a caretaker president. No, quite the contrary:
“With the country clamoring for action and with all psychological barriers to government intervention obliterated (by the conservative party, no less), the stage is set for a young, ambitious, supremely confident president — who sees himself as a world-historical figure before even having been sworn in — to begin a restructuring of the American economy and the forging of a new relationship between government and people.
….He intends to transform America. And he has the money, the mandate and the moxie to go for it.”
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