Could this be the most controversial choice so far in the Obama transition? Or are reporters barking up the wrong tree? It could be a story that comes back to bite them later. It's certain to breed controversy, no matter how fetching the nominee may be in that fur coat. From the report linked above:
The speculation about Rex - will he or won't he? - has been the major topic in the media and across the blogosphere. Michelle Malkin of Hot Air called it "an affirmative action appointment" and questioned whether Rex is in fact a US citizen or a Golden Labrador. ‘If they allow a Canadian puppy onto US soil illegally, next thing you know Obama will be negotiating with terriers, and without preconditions," she told Fox News. "Furthermore, Rex should be required to learn English first." And Dick Morris told the Sean Hannity that passing up the black Labrador in the next kennel will definitively end the honeymoon between Obama and civil rights leaders.
We can be certain that Blue Dog's won't just roll over and play dead on the heels of this announcement. But of course, with the pack mentality in Congress, it's clear that the scenery never changes unless you're the lead dog. And there'll only be one alpha male in the White House, but he'll be outnumbered by the ... females. (I'm not going to go there!) So I guess there's nothing to do but put aside our pet peeves and wait for someone to let the cat out of the bag.
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The latest company to go to Washington asking for a handout is General Motors, and after the less than auspicious start to the $750 Billion Wall Street/bank bailout, many people, not just "free market" conservatives, are asking, "Why should we bail out the big American auto companies?" The underlying implication among conservatives is that labor unions are the source of the problem. Others think, rightly so in my opinion, that the car companies got themselves into this mess by ignoring fuel efficiency and building ever bigger and heavier gas-hogs. So why not let them go belly up? That'll teach 'em a lesson! As is usually the case, it's not that simple.
Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has an interesting post discussing the impact of a possible GM bankruptcy on the development of the greatly anticipated Volt electric car:
So maybe the people who seem to know even less about auto manufacturing than they do about economics should consider that GM is in the forefront of green engineering with the Chevy Volt. From US News:
But before you put the Volt on your 2010 wish list, consider that sending GM into bankruptcy would do more than just break the UAW -- it could condemn the Volt from ever reaching the market:The prototype Volt that GM has been showing off is a sporty four-seater with futuristic touches meant to draw in mainstream gearheads. The dashboard controls are touch-sensitive and set in a white console reminiscent of an iPod. Instead of standard gauges for speed and RPMs, there's a digital display that looks like the screen of a Sony PSP. Wind-tunnel engineering has made the Volt even more aerodynamic than a Corvette, critical for milking the most mileage possible out of the battery. GM says that recharging the car at home, through an ordinary household outlet, will cost less than $1 per day and drain less power than it takes to run a refrigerator.
Ever since Ronald Reagan fired all the striking air-traffic controllers in his first year in office (a strikingly irresponsible thing to do), conservatives have fantisized about ridding the country of labor unions. Never mind that labor unions were largely responsible for the rise of the middle class in American in the mid-twentieth century. As Hamsher points out:
In fact, in their last contract the UAW made deep concessions that put GM wages at a par with their non-union counterparts in the US. But this isn't about facts, this is a religious crusade where "free-marketeers" want to impose Shock Doctrine tactics for philosophical reasons with little regard for the consequences.
The president of GM once famously said "What's good for GM is good for America." Most of us would probably take exception to that these days. But there is a kernel of truth there: letting GM fail could be disastrous for America, especially now with the economy, after eight years of the Bush administration, careening like a football bouncing down a staircase. Bush's own suggestion is particularly poor (who would've guessed...).
George Bush is in favor of helping GM. But he wants to take the $25 billion in loans to automakers from the 2007 Energy Bill and repurpose them, he doesn't want to use funds from the $700 billion Wall Street bailout (which Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have indicated they would like to do).
Congress approved the funds for a Department of Energy program that would help the automakers to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.
Got that? George Bush wants to kill the program that would build more fuel-efficient vehicles.
There are some other ideas floating around that make a lot of sense in the long run, like this one via Atrios:
As Josh says, if we're throwing around billions and trillions of dollars we might as well get something good. Instead of writing a big check to the auto companies or loaning them money we could, you know, enroll all their employees in the new national health insurance system.
The point has been made repeatedly that the cost of healthcare is one of the big factors that makes it difficult for U.S. automakers to compete effectively with companies in countries that have some form of national health insurance (that would be ALL of them, except the U.S.). So, what an elegant solution it would be to remove the financial burden of providing health insurance from the car companies as part of a universal health insurance program. Makes sense to me.
UPDATE: Digby has more on this here. Regarding the role of unions in all this:
You simply can't wipe out a million jobs or more as we are just going into a terrible worldwide recession. It's like telling someone they have to go on a diet when they are in the middle of a heart attack. There has to be a bailout.
But there is something else going on, which I mentioned last week in this post --- the Republicans' reflexive political response is to take the opportunity to break the unions...
[...]
And, in the big scheme things, I think we can all agree that well paid, secure employees make for a stable society. The problem with the Big Three has far less to do with their employees than it does with their management --- and a capitalistic ethos that requires a myopic obsession with quarterly profits over long term investment. The union members just make the cars they're told to make. It's not their fault if Americans insisted on buying behemoth gas guzzlers and the auto executives insisted on giving them to them knowing full well a day of reckoning was coming.
Who was it who said, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice..."?
There's no doubt that the incoming administration has its plate more than full with a whole spectrum of disasters. But there is some unfinished business that we can't allow to slip into the memory hole. Over the past eight years untold numbers of people within the U.S. Government have committed crimes of an epic nature. As Ian Welsh at Firedoglake points out:
The SAME people who were responsible for Nixons' crimes, were responsible for Iran/Contra. They and their proteges came back and were responsible for Bush, Iraq, torture, screwing up Katrina and so on.
But we're supposed to let bygones be bygones so they can do it again in the next Republican administration.
If these crimes are allowed to go unpunished, the rule of law will be seriously damaged. This is not about revenge; it's about justice. A desire to "let bygones be bygones" is misguided in an insidious way. That's not bringing us together. That's letting people get away with murder.
The overwhelming majority of Americans, as well as people around the world, have positive views of President-elect Obama, and hope has lifted us. Unfortunately, there are those who are consumed by hate who would destroy the very foundations of our country. No, I'm not talking about al Qaeda. I'm talking about people who would promote this kind of behavior in their children (h/t Andrew Sullivan):
Whoolery and his wife couldn't believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying.
"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," said Whoolery. "They were chanting on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama.' Then adding in a name sometimes of a classmate on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama and Kate.'"
The Whoolery's explained to their kids what assassinate means then contacted the school about what was happening.
This is not funny. It's not harmless. It's irresponsible at best, and traitorous at worst. For those who may have forgotten or be too young to remember, before the attacks of 9/11 the worst terrorist attack on American soil was carried out, not by scary brown people, but by these guys:
That's right, good "patriotic" white males. People who allow their delusions, stoked by zealots and talk show hosts, to run wild can cause catastrophic damage. The tragedy is only increased by the fact that the "enemy" they feel compelled to fight against exists only in their minds.
Those of us who lived through the turbulence of the 1960s still remember the horror and disbelief of seeing three of our great leaders, John, Martin and Bobby, murdered. Whether it's the lone madman or an organized group, there's no way to completely protect ourselves from such people. That is part of the cost of living in a free society. There is simply no such thing as complete security — unless you're locked in a padded cell. But that realization doesn't preclude us from making every effort to eliminate such behavior by marginalizing it to the point that it gets into the "being struck by a falling meteorite" range.
To think that people would teach their children to chant words like "assassinate" while thinking of themselves as "righteous" and "patriotic" is just sick. It's up to every one of us to resist this kind of talk, whether it comes in a forwarded email or a casual conversation. It is a cancer in the soul of humanity, and every individual has a responsibility to do what they can to stop it wherever it tries to spread.
It's not funny. It's not patriotic. It must stop.
In the wake of the overwhelming Democratic victory in the 2008 election, many pundits have rushed to present the notion that America is a "center-right" country. They argue that the votes offer no justification for a liberal mandate for the incoming Obama administration. That's just sour grapes combined with more Republican obfuscation. This map from the NY Times showing by county whether Americans voter more Democratic or more Republican than in 2004 shows a clear trend.
DailyKos has some good analysis. As many writers point out, America is, in fact, a nation of Moderates, who can shift to right or left politically, but not so much to extremes. Since Reagan's election in 1980, the pendulum has swung as far to the right as it could go. I think the evidence points to a sustained swing to the left for many years to come — provided the Democrats do a better job of running the country than the Republicans did. That shouldn't be too hard.
I've been crazy busy every since the election, so I haven't written a post in a while. It seems like we really are in a different world. It's amazing the optimism I've seen on so many smiling faces of all colors in the last week. It's even more amazing considering that we're still in a terrible crisis, but we can deal with crises if we have hope that we will eventually prevail. That's something very powerful that Barack Obama's election has given us. As Frank Rich said in Sunday's New York Times, It Still Feels Good...
I'll have more to say in the future, but for right now, I just have to let the music and images do the talking. Here's a cool one via Crooks and Liars:
Growing up in the 1960s, I was one of many who came to believe that music was a powerful force that could be used, like any other powerful force, for good or evil. This is, in my opinion, an example of that power used for good. Let's play it again.
You can't make this stuff up. This is what the Christian Right has come to in this country. Via John Cole:
“We are going to intercede at the site of the statue of the bull on Wall Street to ask God to begin a shift from the bull and bear markets to what we feel will be the ‘Lion’s Market,’ or God’s control over the economic systems,” she said. “While we do not have the full revelation of all this will entail, we do know that without intercession, economies will crumble.”
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church, so I spent a lot of my youth reading and studying the Bible. Although I have abandoned the literal, supernatural interpretation of the Bible, I have retained the core principles of Jesus' philosophy, along with enough grounding in the Bible as literature to see the irony in this situation. Obviously I'm not the only one to see the comparison to this episode from the book of Exodus:
For those who aren't familiar with the story, while Moses was up on the mountain getting the Ten Commandments, the people he had just led out of slavery in Egypt, the Hebrews, were down below melting their gold jewelry to make an idol in the shape of a calf. When Moses came down and saw them praying to it, he was really mad. What followed was 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
Praying for wealth is the antithesis of Christian philosophy. The self-proclaimed leaders of the right-wing religious movement in America have a lot more in common with another group of people, and I don't mean Jesus' disciples, but the Pharisees.
The next time you see or hear someone claim they are doing God's work by persecuting the "sinners" and praying for success in the stock market, I think it's safe to say that Jesus would be seriously offended. I know I am.And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
John 2:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables;
John 2:16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
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Former U.S. Ambassador Peter Bridges writing at The Huffington Post says:
A friend and former colleague of mine in the Foreign Service, Kevin McGuire, some time ago drafted a short statement of support for Obama and began to ask retired Foreign Service officers if they would sign it. So far 334 of us have done so, including by my count 66 former American ambassadors.
If you would like to know why we have done so and who we are, you can find our reasons and our signatures at Foreign Policy for Obama.Com: Declaration of Support by Over 280 Former Diplomats.
You can go to ForeignPolicyforObama.com and click on the link in the left hand column.
I will remind you that the Foreign Service of the United States is our country's career diplomatic and consular service. We staff both the State Department in Washington and our embassies and consulates abroad. Usually two-thirds or more of our ambassadors are Foreign Service officers, although both Democratic and Republican administrations have made a number of ambassadorial appointments for political reasons. Some of these Republican appointees and, by my count, two former career officers, have come out for McCain.
As Ambassador Bridges points out, these are people who understand America's role in the world better than most politicians and pundits. Their support for Obama adds considerable substance to the idea that Barack is the best candidate to deal with America's international issues and restore our reputation as the "Good Guys" that has been severely damaged by Bush-Cheney.
UPDATE: Also see this by Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the chief architect of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in Bosnia.
