Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Pragmatic Idealism

by digby

I don’t have time today to delve into this fine piece by Chris Hayes (which many of you have no doubt already read) about Obama’s pragmatism and what it means. Hayes gets to the nub of the discussions we’ve all been having about Obama’s choices for the cabinet, the “angry left” and the Overton Window and how we think about ideology.

This one point is worth highlighting:

If “pragmatic” is the highest praise one can offer in DC these days, “ideological” is perhaps the sharpest slur. And it is by this twisted logic that the crimes of the Bush cabinet are laid at the feet of the blogosphere, that the sins of Paul Wolfowitz end up draped upon the slender shoulders of Dennis Kucinich. But privileging pragmatism over ideology, while perhaps understandable in the wake of the Bush years, misses the point. For one thing, as Glenn Greenwald has astutely pointed out on his blog, while ideology can lead decision-makers to ignore facts, it is also what sets the limiting conditions for any pragmatic calculation of interests. “Presumably, there are instances where a proposed war might be very pragmatically beneficial in promoting our national self-interest,” Greenwald wrote, “but is still something that we ought not to do. Why? Because as a matter of principle–of ideology–we believe that it is not just to do it, no matter how many benefits we might reap, no matter how much it might advance our ‘national self-interest.'”

I would just add that the constitution itself enshrines that notion with the Bill of Rights. nothing pragmatic about free speech or due process. but it’s in there because the experience of human kind shows that you can excuse any kind of behavior as “necessary” if you really want to. Indeed, we’ve just seen that played out before our eyes.

There’s another problem with the fetishization of the pragmatic, which is the brute fact that, at some level, ideology is inescapable. Obama may have told Steve Kroft that he’s solely interested in “what works,” but what constitutes “working” is not self-evident and, indeed, is impossible to detach from some worldview and set of principles. Alan Greenspan, of all people, made this point deftly while testifying before Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee. Waxman asked Greenspan, “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?” To which Greenspan responded, “Well, remember that what an ideology is, is a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality. Everyone has one. You have to–to exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not.” In Greenspan’s case, it was not. But more destructive than his ideological rigidity was the delusional pretense shared by so many observers that he was operating without any ideology whatsoever. In a 1987 profile, which ran soon after Greenspan’s appointment as Fed chair, the Times quoted a fellow economist who said Greenspan didn’t fit into any set ideological category. “If he’s anything,” the colleague remarked, “he’s a pragmatist, and as such, he is somewhat unpredictable.” The rest of the article chronicled Greenspan’s support for wholesale deregulation of the financial industry and philosophical devotion to Ayn Rand. It’s tempting to conclude that Greenspan’s ideology was allowed to wreak the havoc it did only because it was never actually called by its name.

I actually disagree with Chris a little bit there. I think everyone said that Greenspan wasn’t ideological. But that was just Fed PR. In reality everyone knew that Greenspan came from the right side of the dial. The issue in American politics is less ideology than which ideology. Indeed, conservative ideology has been something openly and enthusaistically embraced up until very recently by anyone who wanted membership in the political establishment. It was just a couple of years ago that Joe Klein was saying things like this:

You know, I’m pretty much a social conservative on a lot of stuff. I’m certainly opposed to late term abortion, and I think the deal to be made is morning after pill is legal, anything after that probably shouldn’t be…in the past year, I’ve stood for the following things. I’ve taken the following positions. I agreed with the President on social security reform. I supported his two Supreme Court nominees, and I support, even though I opposed this war, I support staying the course in Iraq, and doing whatever we have to do in order to stabilize the region.

Obviously, progressive solutions to the nation’s ills can sneak in the back door under the guise of pragmatism, but when the other side reasserts itself it boldly proclaims itself ideological, identifying believers through a strong tribal identity. The end result is a politics that operates between the two poles of centrism and conservatism as embodied by Joe Klein. And the result is messes like the one we’re in now.

As I said, I’ll write more about this next week when I have time, but I urge you to read Hayes’ article in the meantime and consider all the points he makes. At the end of the piece he makes an observation that has made me think very hard about what pragmatism might mean in terms of Obama and how it applies to this time of crisis:

Dewey’s pragmatism was reformist, not radical. He sought to ameliorate the excesses of early industrial capitalism, not to topple it. Nonetheless, pragmatism requires an openness to the possibility of radical solutions. It demands a skepticism not just toward the certainties of ideologues and dogmatism but also of elite consensus and the status quo. This is a definition of pragmatism that is in almost every way the opposite of its invocation among those in the establishment. For them, pragmatism means accepting the institutional forces that severely limit innovation and boldness; it means listening to the counsel of the Wise Men; it means not rocking the boat. But Dewey understood that progress demands that the boat be rocked. And his contemporary Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood it as well. “The country needs,” Roosevelt said in May 1932, “and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands, bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.” That is pragmatism we can believe in. Our times demand no less.

That’s exactly what the doctor ordered, but we don’t know yet how the new administration is going to operate. Obama is a somewhat inscrutable politician and the Republican wrecking crew is saying pretty clearly that they don’t believe in no stinking pragmatism. But Hayes is certainly right when he says our times demand no less.

Top Cat

by digby

Socks:

We have some bad news today on the presidential pet front. Socks the cat, probably the most photographed presidential kitty in history, has cancer and isn’t expected to live. “His days are numbered,” says Barry Landau, a friend of Socks’ master, Betty Currie. Landau, a presidential historian and author of The President’s Table, tells our Suzi Parker that the Currie family could have put Socks on feeding tubes, but decided against it. “They fear he is too old,” adds Landau, who is writing a book on presidential inaugurations. And a second source told us that Socks is gravely ill. Recall that Currie, who lives in Southern Maryland and was Bill Clinton‘s personal secretary, took Socks after the Democrats left office. At the time, Hillary Clinton had been elected to the Senate and Bubba was moving to New York to run his foundation. In recent years, Socks has been hanging out at Currie’s Hollywood, Md., home and sometimes making guest appearances. But since we last wrote about Socks, his conditions have worsened and included weight loss and kidney problems. Southern Maryland Newspapers Online did a wonderful story about this last year, quoting Currie’s husband Bob saying what lots of us pet owners say: Socks “lives better than I do.”

The presidential pets are always one of the best thing about a White House. Sometimes the only good thing. The current residents two Scotties always bring a smile to my face no matter how much I may loathe their owners. (And I don’t blame Barney for biting that reporter, either.)

Hard as it is to believe, when Clinton came into office it was with a lot of the same excited celebrity obsession that we have today and everybody was gaga about the cat. It wasn’t long before Dan Burton was investigating the cat’s expenses (seriously) and the honeymoon was over, but in spite of the “taint” he was always a good first cat, a celebrity in his own right. I’m glad he has spent his elder years in peace.

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They Can’t Be That Desperate

by digby

Dear God:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell gave Chris Matthews a glowing endorsement for his potential Senate candidacy today, calling the MSNBC host the “strongest Democratic candidate without any doubt” in an interview on Bloomberg TV.

Rendell added that he doesn’t “really know” if Matthews has made a decision to run yet. And he cautioned that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) would be a formidable opponent because of his strong ties to independents and moderate Democrats.

Rendell’s longtime political consultant, Neil Oxman, has been talking with Matthews about running for Specter’s seat and is encouraging him to jump in the race.

His comments come in light of a new poll, conducted by Research 2000, that shows Matthews leading in a Democratic primary field, and would be just one point behind Specter if an election was held today.

The interview will air on Bloomberg TV’s show “Night Talk” this weekend.

I honestly don’t know quite how to deal with this. Over the past year I have strained and even broken treasured friendships over the idea that allowing a Republican to win over a Democrat, no matter how bad he or she is, would be to empower the more destructive of the two parties and ultimately enable the kind of horror show we’ve seen in the past eight years.
But Matthews is a bridge too far. I could never vote for, raise funds for or in any other way help Chris Matthews become a member of the Senate and if it came down to it, if I lived in Pa, I’d probably support Specter. If we thought Lieberman was perfidious and unreliable, we haven’t seen anything yet. Matthews is very nearly nuts as far as I can tell.

I don’t think he can actually win once the Republicans haul out some of his more, shall we say, eccentric blatherings, but Gawd help us if he happens to win.

Here’s just one little example of some of the things this potential Senator has said in just the last couple of months:

Matthews: I’ve been so impressed by Lincoln’s words this week — government of, by and for the people. It isn’t government of, by and for the people. This is being decided, the biggest issue of our time, this economic crisis, the worst, according to the wall Street Journal,since the 1930s, by people so much bigger headed than most voters, than most members of congress, certainly than me. This is being decided by people like Hank Paulson.

THANK GOD this president has this secretary of treasury and not the one other ones he had before, perhaps. But Richard, the people can’t vote on things like this.

Wolf: (nods sagely)

Matthews: We can’t understand it. I’m one of them. I don’t get it. What are all these derivatives and all this short selling and all this complicated financial … skigamadoo or whatever you call it. What is it?

Wolf: Even the candidates have problem getting through this alphabet soup. I mean, they’ve both mangled the players and the key terms of those involved here. Are they talking about firing the right person when he talks about Chris Cox? Is it Fannie Mac or Freddie Mae?

Matthews: I’m just wondering if it’s above our pay grade? I think Carly Fiorina may have been right. These guys can run for president but they can’t be Secretary of the Treasury.

Matthews: Even elected presidents can’t master this financial game. It’s too complicated. Shouldn’t they come out and tell us who their economic team’s gonna be? … The reason I ask is because we saw the president this week and Bush has all the native intelligence you can have. He doesn’t want to touch it because for a layman to start talking about the economy right now is very dangerous. Right Lynn?

Lynn Sweet: It’s tough. It’s interesting because who would have thought that his treasury secretary would emerge from this crisis…

Matthews:the third secretary, two are gone…

Sweet: Right. That he would emerge from this looking as the strong person in the administration, who’s pulling it together. And we’ll see if the congress gives him the power to run the economy.

Matthews: Is congress willing to make him King Henry as they put on the one of the magazine covers?

Wolf: the cover of Newsweek…

Matthews: Will they let him be King Henry?

Sound good to you?

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Walk Don’t Ran

by digby

For those of you who are cinema freaks, you really must check out Batocchio’s awesome review of the Kurasawa exhibit here in LA. It closes on Sunday, so if any of you locals have a few minutes between eggnogs and desultory trips to the mall this week-end, give yourself a gift and check it out.

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Bipartisan Tango

by digby

It looks like Pat Leahy isn’t inclined to go along with the Republican vapors on the Holder nomination even if it means an ugly fight. And he’s right not to. Sam Stein at HuffPo reports that Leahy has released the following statement:

“In my statement to the Senate on November 20, I commended Senators Hatch, Sessions, Coburn, and Grassley for their nonpartisanship when they praised his selection. Senator Hatch spoke of his support for Mr. Holder, his experience and reputation. Senator Sessions, a former prosecutor, U.S. Attorney, and State Attorney General who is well aware of the problems at the Justice Department, said he was disposed to support him. Senator Coburn called it ‘a good choice.’ In addition, Senator Grassley has acknowledged Mr. Holder’s impeccable credentials while reserving judgment. But of course since then, Karl Rove has appeared on the Today Show and signaled that Republicans ought to go after Mr. Holder. Right-wing talk radio took up the drum beat.”

Leahy also took the smarmy words about Michael Mukasey out of Jon Kyl’s mouth and shoved it right back down his throat. He doesn’t sound as if he’s afraid of a fight.

One of the things we hear a lot about from the press and various DC insiders is that the Obama people learned from Clinton’s mistakes. This is a test of that theory. Clinton was weakened early on with silly controversies over his nominations, which were exacerbated by the Senate Democrats’ willingness to join the Republicans on the fainting couch. He needs the Senate to stand fast and be willing to stare down the Republicans on this stuff. This is a good sign.

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Tell Me How This Ends

by dday

Yesterday Robert Gates, on the ground in Afghanistan, discussed a rapid troop increase (around 20,000) in the country within a matter of months, and a “sustained commitment” over the next three to four YEARS (which would push our presence in Afghanistan to over a decade). Both Gates and Gen. David McKiernan, the top general in Afghanistan, sounded extremely pessimistic, but in ways that to me evoked nothing so much as Robert McNamara:

What was striking about the trip was the tone of weariness that cropped up in the remarks of both Mr. Gates and General McKiernan about the Afghan war. “Let’s put it in historical perspective — this country has been at war for the last 30 years,” General McKiernan told reporters, using the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 as the starting point. “Thirty years. That’s not going to stop overnight. So if your question is, might it get worse before it gets better, the answer is yes, it might.”

When Mr. Gates was asked here if the conflict would last 10 or 15 years, he made a comparison to the cold war. “I think that we are in many respects in an ideological conflict with violent extremists,” he said. “The last ideological conflict we were in lasted about 45 years.”

This idea that anyone, much less the Secretary of Defense, would make such an analogy between the Cold War and a regional conflict in a broken country, with all the attendant “central front in the war on terra” folderol, has to be very worrying to the safety and security of troops in that part of the world, fighting and dying for an extremely uncertain cause. Searching for meaning in Afghanistan is futile. You just have a bunch of old warhorses justifying the whole thing to themselves. Are we bringing democracy and freedom to a remote part of the world?

And then there were the daily frustrations of (British Lieut. Colonel Graeme) Armour’s job: training Afghan police officers. Almost all the recruits were illiterate. “They’ve had no experience at learning,” Armour said. “You sit them in a room and try to teach them about police procedures — they start gabbing and knocking about. You talk to them about the rights of women, and they just laugh.” A week earlier, five Afghan police officers trained by Armour were murdered in their beds while defending a nearby checkpoint — possibly by other police officers. Their weapons and ammunition were stolen. “We’re not sure of the motivation,” Armour said. “They may have gone to join the Taliban or sold the guns in the market.”

Are we solidifying a strong central government?

…once bin Laden slipped away (nice passive voice there -ed. ), the mission morphed into a vast, messy nation — building effort to support the allegedly democratic Karzai government. There was a certain logic to that. The Taliban and al-Qaeda can’t base themselves in Afghanistan if something resembling a stable, secure nation-state exists there. But the mission was also historically implausible: Afghanistan has never had a strong central government. It has been governed for thousands of years by local and regional tribal coalitions. The tribes have often been at one another’s throats — a good part of the current “Taliban” uprising is nothing more than standard tribal rivalries juiced by Western arms and opium profits — except when foreigners have invaded the area, in which case the Afghans have united and slowly humiliated conquerors from Alexander the Great to the Soviets.

Are we fighting a defined enemy where we are on the side of the “Afghan people”?

It’s also not clear who the United States should be talking to. A recent report by the Center for American Progress names six major Islamic insurgent groups fighting in Afghanistan–including not just the Taliban and Al Qaeda but a colorful cast of characters, such as the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan; the so-called “Haqqani Network,” which recently tried to kill Karzai; and Hezb-i- Islami Gulbuddin, followers of the rapacious Afghan warlord and former bin Laden ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who once declared that, because a million Afghans had already died in civil wars there, he saw no great problem with another million perishing. The Taliban itself consists of numerous tribally oriented splinter groups with various leaders and motivations–some little more than criminal gangs who may be willing to cooperate with the United States for the right price. But the group’s core leadership is not the deal-making kind. “When I was at the State Department, we had some dealings with [the Omar-led Taliban], and it always came down to ‘We’ve got time and Allah on our side,'” says Weinbaum.

The mission is fuzzy, and thus the mistakes magnified, like the incident this week where US forces killed 6 Afghan police officers by accident during an assault on a suspected Taliban commander. When the local population has little understanding why these foreign fighters are in the country or even whose side they are on, incidents like this become more and more demoralizing and set public opinion against the foreigners with guns increasingly seen as an occupier.

Meanwhile, the commanders whose job it is to know these things understand what the commitment would have to be to even attempt what many consider to be a thankless and hopeless counterinsurgency mission.

Around the time of the November election, John Nagl, a retired Army Colonel, took a helicopter ride across Afghanistan. What he saw below worried him […] Winning in Afghanistan, he realized, would take more than “a little tweak,” as he put it to me from back in Washington a few weeks later, when he was still shaking off the gritty “Kabul crud” that afflicts traveler’s lungs. It would take time, money, and blood. “It’s a doubling of the U.S. commitment,” Nagl said. “It’s a doubling of the Afghan army, maybe a tripling. It’s going to require a tax increase and a bigger army.” […]

Nagl’s rule of thumb, the one found in the counterinsurgency manual, calls for at least a 1-to-50 ratio of security forces to civilians in contested areas. Applied to Afghanistan, which has both a bigger population (32 million) and a larger land mass (647,500 square miles) than Iraq, that gets you to some large numbers fast. Right now, the United States and its allies have some 65,000 troops in Afghanistan, as compared to about 140,000 in Iraq. By Nagl’s ratio, Afghanistan’s population calls for more than 600,000 security forces. Even adjusting for the relative stability of large swaths of the country, the ideal number could still total around 300,000–more than a quadrupling of current troop levels. Eventually, Afghanistan’s national army could shoulder most of that burden. But, right now, those forces number a ragtag 60,000, a figure Nagl believes will need to at least double and maybe triple. Standing up a force of that size, as the example of Iraq has shown us, will take several years and consume billions of U.S. dollars.

Which of course is an impossible burden right now. But the questions everyone should be asking are not how we mask over that needed commitment, but: Why are we in Afghanistan, what is the desired end-state, where is the national security interest, and how can we possibly succeed? Otherwise, it becomes nothing but a resource suck. Having terrorists project power from a country where they have safe harbor is undesirable, but of course they already have that across the border in Pakistan, where the forces we’re supposed to be fighting in Afghanistan are increasingly installed. Pakistan, of course, is an entirely different set of nightmares. These are complex and interconnected regional struggles, a “murky Chinese puzzle,” as Juan Cole calls it, to which adding fresh sets of troops without thinking through the consequences for our military, for our hobbled finances, for our national security, seems to me unwise. The first step would be trying to actually explain why we’re in Afghanistan and what our troops are expected to do there. If you can’t, you ought to leave.

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Hooverville

by digby

You know the Republican party completely devolved into a destructive anarchic force when Dick Cheney sounds like a sane person by comparison:

Administration officials have been warning for weeks that failure to pass the bill could lead to an even deeper recession.

That was the message Vice President Dick Cheney brought to a closed-door Senate GOP lunch Wednesday, reportedly warning that it’ll be “Herbert Hoover” time if aid to the industry was rejected, according to a senator familiar with the remarks. A Cheney spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny the vice president’s remarks.

I think the Republicans actually want the country to go into a depression. They think that will somehow benefit them politically because they’ll blame the Democrats for making things worse. It’s how they roll.

Update: Andrea Mitchell asked Chris Dodd earlier whether this is becoming a war between north and south. It’s an interesting question, but one not unanticipated by some of us as we observed the Republican party turn into a regional minority.

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Not Good Enough

by digby

Eugene Robinson is someone who has always been an Obama booster and perhaps he thinks his column today is somehow “helping” him. But it actually is ushering in a new rationale for the media’s scandal mongering. Check this out:

In handling questions about the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich — for allegedly trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder — Obama has gone strictly by the book. His statements have been cautious and precise, careful not to get ahead of the facts or make declarations that might later have to be retracted. For most politicians, that would be good enough. For Obama, who inspired the nation with a promise of “change we can believe in,” it’s not.

Nice. He goes on to spell out all the ways in which it’s ridiculous to assume that Obama is involved in this scheme, but, as expected, it still doesn’t pass the smell test:

Obama has denied speaking to Blagojevich about the Senate seat. But Obama’s initial statement seemed crafted to avoid the question of whether his aides had been in touch with the governor’s office. He said at a news conference yesterday that he was certain his people “had no involvement with any dealmaking,” and he added that his staff was still “gathering facts” about possible contacts. But all this seems awfully coy. It’s obvious that the president-elect would have an interest in who was appointed to the Senate from his home state — for good reason. For that matter, it would be unusual if the president-elect didn’t have a preferred candidate. The normal thing would be for Obama’s staff to talk to Blagojevich’s staff — and, unless prosecutors have asked him not to, I don’t understand why Obama hasn’t stated this simple fact. Blagojevich thought, according to the affidavit, that Obama wanted the Senate seat to go to someone identified only as “Senate Candidate 1” — believed to be Valerie Jarrett, a prominent Chicago businesswoman who is one of Obama’s closest supporters. On the evening of Nov. 10, Democratic sources abruptly cut off speculation about Jarrett and the Senate seat by leaking word that she would become a White House adviser. That happens to be the same day that the FBI overheard Blagojevich, in a two-hour conference call with his wife and advisers in Illinois and Washington, talking in detail about the various candidates and what he wanted in return from appointing any of them. That raises the question of what the Obama team knew about the investigation and when. Other portions of the affidavit are full of references to Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Chicago wheeler-dealer who was convicted of fraud this year. Rezko was an early supporter of Obama; the relationship has already been thoroughly examined, but I can’t imagine that Obama wants to have to talk about it again. None of this is likely to hurt Obama in any material way or even dim the glow of his victory and upcoming inauguration. But maybe it can be a lesson. Real “change” would be throwing away the playbook and getting all the facts out now, rather than later.

Jesus H. Christ. They always say this and it’s never, ever enough. Obama could sit down with David Gregory and spill his guts like he was lying on a therapist’s couch and he would be accused of not “getting the facts out.” This is because the only “fact” they care about is one that says there was wrongdoing. Anything other than that is being “coy.”

These trumped up scandals present a serious Catch 22 for politicians. If they are prudent and follow the law, they will use careful and precise language. If they follow their political instincts and play these situations like the soap opera the media demands, they will deny everything in the most emotional terms. Either way they are screwed.

Part of Robinson’s problem, I’m afraid, is that he and many of the beltway wags spend time on MSNBC, where the reporters, if not the hosts, are vying with Fox for the sheer exuberance of their speculation and “analysis.”

Yesterday, this was how David Shuster opened his show:

DAVID SHUSTER, HOST: Tonight, damage control. President-elect Barack Obama tries to distance himself from an arguably delusional and allegedly criminal governor of Illinois, who still refuses to leave office. But there are still some things Mr. Obama can’t explain as he transitions to 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE. Forty days until the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. Welcome to the show. I’m David Shuster. The headline tonight, “Unanswered Questions.” Amidst indications that an adviser or representative of President-elect Obama may have heard Rod Blagojevich allegedly attempting to sell Obama’s vacated Senate seat, today Mr. Obama spoke to the press. But the president-elect declined to say who his representative on the phone with Blagojevich may have been and what that person heard or did. Instead, the president-elect declared that nobody close to him would engage in any scheme and that the Senate seat never came up in Obama’s own conversations with Blagojevich. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I have never spoken to the governor on this subject. I am confident that no representatives of mine would have any part of any deals related to this seat. I think the materials released by the U.S. attorney reflect that fact. I have asked my team to gather the facts of any contacts with the governor’s office about this vacancy so that we can share them with you over the next few days. (END VIDEO CLIP) SHUSTER: If Mr. Obama’s staff knew Blagojevich was attempting to sell the Senate seat for cash or a cabinet position and they didn’t call in the FBI, that could be embarrassing and damaging to Obama. On the other hand, if it was somebody close to Obama who told investigators, perhaps in the first place or early on, Obama will be insulated from the Blagojevich fallout. The intrigue now revolves around a key meeting and conference call on November the 10th. According to the criminal complaint, it went on for two hours and included Governor Blagojevich, his wife, his general counsel, an unnamed adviser, the governor’s chief of staff and various Washington, D.C. , based advisers that the FBI has not named. The criminal complaint says Mr. Blagojevich discussed ideas for cashing in on the power to name Obama’s Senate successor. The Blagojevich discussion included “what he can get from the president-elect for the Senate seat.” During the meeting, Governor Blagojevich complained about his financial situation. “The immediate challenge is, how do we take some of the financial pressure off of our family?” A few hours later there was a stunning report from CNN. “Two Democratic sources close to President-elect Barack Obama tell CNN that top adviser Valerie Jarrett will not be appointed to replace him in the U.S. Senate.” At the time, reporters, including myself, were convinced that Valerie Jarrett was highly interested in the Senate seat. So the report was a remarkable turnaround, and it was punctuated two days later by Jarrett herself during an interview on PBS.

They speculated about that crap for an hour. So, you can see why a supporter like Robinson would feel he’s actually being somewhat understated in his call for Obama to come clean.

This is how the press routinely handles these kinds of scandals, so I’m not all that surprised. But I have to admit, I didn’t think his promise of change and reputation for ethics reform would be used against him right out of the box.

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Hold On

by digby

Blogojevich is an ass and should either resign or be impeached as quickly as possible. But this move on the part of the Illinois AG is nonsense. We don’t ask courts to “remove” people from office because they refuse to resign . We just don’t. We impeach them under a proper legal process. I can’t stand this rush to change the rules whenever people don’t do what they’re “supposed” to do. Tell the legislators to give up their Christmas break, get their asses in gear and do their job. The state will survive.

Blagojevich is innocent until proven guilty and the legislature and political system have the power to check anything he does through perfectly legal means. The AG’s excuses about certain payments that have been delayed is nonsense. Payments are being delayed all over the country for a variety of reasons. That’s not a reason to remove the Governor through extraordinary means.

This stuff is becoming more and more common in our system and we shouldn’t support it. It’s undemocratic and goes against the principles of our legal system and constitution. I’m sorry it’s inconvenient but that’s too bad.

Update: I just got this in my email:

December 11, 2008 (NEW YORK) – James Tierney, director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, is available to speak with media about the authority of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to petition for the removal of Governor Rod Blagojevich from office. Blagojevich was charged Tuesday with federal corruption. Madigan has said she is prepared to take action if Blagojevich does not resign.

Tierney: “Most people don’t know that the attorney general can sue his or her own governor. But a state attorney general is the lawyer for the people of the state – not just for the office holders or the bureaucracy.

“If an elected official fails in his or her duties and the fundamental integrity of the government is at risk, an attorney general has the discretion to act independently to protect the public from ongoing harm.

“Impeachment is a vital method to remove an office holder from his or her position, but it is not necessarily the exclusive remedy. A state attorney general can move quickly to stop an official’s continuing illegal behavior even as impeachment proceedings occur. Further, an attorney general can ask the state’s judiciary to temporarily strip an office holder of authority pending impeachment.

“The office holder has recourse to counsel and the opportunity to make his or her case before the courts. That said, it is part of the attorney general’s responsibilities to advocate for the public interest.”


James E. Tierney is the director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, where he has also taught as a lecturer-in-law since the fall of 2000. Tierney served as the attorney general of Maine from 1980 until 1990. He is currently a consultant to attorneys general and others.

I still think this is wrong, particularly seeing as the person who’s doing it is a possible candidate for Governor or senator herself. It’s not the best way to do things.

If Blagojevich were hearing voices or in a coma, you can see this. But this is legal and political and there are more legitimate ways to deal with this.

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Lifeline?

by dday

It looks like Treasury is going to step in and provide the Big 3 with bridge loans, using the TARP money authorized by Congress.

WASHINGTON — The White House and the Treasury gave strong indications Friday that the U.S. government, at least temporarily, would help prop up the American auto industry.

“Because Congress failed to act, we will stand ready to prevent an imminent failure until Congress reconvenes and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry,” Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said.

And, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it is considering using the Wall Street rescue fund to prevent the USA’s strapped carmakers from failing.

Perino, speaking aboard Air Force One as President Bush flew to Texas for a commencement speech, said it would be “irresponsible” to further erode the economy by allowing failure in Detroit.

If this indeed does go through, it would have to just be a loan, with little or no strings attached. Instead of following through with a tough negotiation, Senate Republicans get nothing. If this was a game of chicken, Harry Reid played it pretty nicely, actually. He must have known that there’s still a whiff of self-protection in Bushworld and that they don’t want to be compared with Hoover (even though they will anyway).

As for Senate Republicans, the full story of what they did is astounding.

They were invited, repeatedly, to participate in more than a week of negotiations with a Republican White House. They declined.

They were asked to provide an alternative bill. They refused.

Finally, one of their members – Senator Corker of Tennessee – participated in a day-long negotiation with Senate Democrats, the UAW, and bondholders. Everyone made major concessions. Democrats gave up efficiency and emissions standards. UAW accepted major benefit cuts and agreed to reduce workers’ wages. Bondholders signed off on a serious haircut. But when Senator Corker took the deal back to the Republican Conference, they argued for two hours and ultimately rejected it.

Why? Because they wanted the federal government to forcibly reduce the wages of American workers within the next 12 months.

I guess the UAW agreed to rollbacks over 3 years, but not in 2009. That was the dealbreaker. Amazing.

Though not the best method, this is the best possible outcome, if it goes through.

However, I understand the GOP’s long game here. They can now ramp up their “blame the union” strategy, say they weren’t willing to “give in” to them, and roll that into the fight over the Employee Free Choice Act. If the auto companies survive, they did it on the dole and they’re not a viable business. If they don’t, they can say “I told you so” and blame the unions some more. It all exists in a vacuum, without the caveat that we’re in the midst of a credit crisis and that the UAW already agreed to concessions which will factor in next year and that Ford, in particular, was making very good decisions until they ran into the brick wall of a global economic slowdown.

…I’d like it explained to me how Bob Corker becomes a Senate star in this scenario. He was sent out to break the union and cut the wages of millions of people in the Midwest. Do you think they’ll have a lot of goodwill?

…Rachel Maddow was very, very good on this last night.

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