Jeb Bush isn’t running for Senate in Florida - Political News
This is a pretty big development. Once Florida’s Senator Mel Martinez announced he was retiring, it was the prevailing conventional wisdom that Jeb would jump in. I figured Martinez was retiring to open up the seat for Jeb. Even George and Jeb’s father was on t.v. this past weekend touting Jeb as a Senator — and even as president. But, today, Jeb said no:
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced that he won’t run for Senate in 2010. President Bush’s younger brother had been a rumored candidate for the seat to replace Republican Mel Martinez, who is retiring after one term in the Senate.“While the opportunity to serve my state and country during these turbulent and dynamic times is compelling, now is not the right time to return to elected office,” Bush said in a statement.
Jeb probably does want to return to elected office — as the president. But, it’s going to take America and the world a long, long time to recover from this Bush presidency.
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Feinstein and Rockefeller publicly disapprove of Obama CIA choice - Democratic Source
This is important news, for a number of reasons.
First, a word about Difi, Rockefeller and Panetta.
1. Difi drives us nuts, and anyone who reads the blog knows it. She’s the Dem we’re always having to beat up in order to get her to do the right thing (though Max Baucus comes a close second). So, I readily acknowledge your, my, first impulse to be “who cares what Difi says?” The problem is that America cares. To us, Diane Feinstein is a pain in the butt. To my mother - aka Middle America - she’s a smart person, who is an expert on the issue, who has a D after her name, and who thinks the guy may not be qualified. She also has power and can screw with Obama mightily, now and in the future. Our dislike for Difi is irrelevant to this equation.
2. Then there’s Rockefeller. Totally worthless human being and an absolute joke as the outgoing Intelligence chair. But to America at large, he’s the outgoing chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a Democrat. What he says matters to ma and pa in the sticks, even if the rest of us think he’s a joke. And when he questions Obama’s nominee in such a critical area, it matters to the public at large.
3. Panetta. Interesting choice. Opposed torture, not wedded to the national security special interests. I acknowledge all of that, and applaud it. But because he’s an unusual choice, even an unconventional one, I’d argue that you need to handle this nomination very carefully, so as to avoid any possible hiccups (Democrats per se need to tread carefully in the area of national security because we’ve spent so many years letting Republicans pummel us with it).
Now for why I think this story matters. As Joe and I have written before, experienced politicians in Washington - like Feinstein and Rockefeller - don’t go public with criticism of a fellow Democrat unless private avenues for expressing their concerns are exhausted, and proved fruitless. That means that Feinstein and Rockefeller likely have other, larger concerns, with the Obama transition, than what we’re seeing here. I.e., the frustration was already there, and only just came to a head now.
Second, Feinstein is the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. She wasn’t notified of Obama’s choice. That’s rather unheard of. She has to oversee the CIA director’s nomination hearing. You absolutely positively want her on board. You don’t just spring the nomination on her in the press. Again, the fact that she’s ticked off, going public, and expressing disapproval of the choice is a big big deal. As is Rockefeller’s public criticism, as the outgoing chair of the Senate Intell Committtee and all the gravitas that entails.
But it’s more than that. Feinstein’s and Rockefeller’s public criticism gives an opening to Republicans to try to defeat this nomination. You can debate the merits of whether Feinstein and Rockefeller are to blame for going public, or whether Obama is to blame for provoking them, but the public criticism of the nominee by the top two Senate Democratic experts on intelligence matters gives cover to any Republican, Democrat or Independent interested in defeating this nomination.
Adding to the problem, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who also sits on the Intell panel, says that he wasn’t just notified of the pick, he was consulted on the choice. That’s an even greater slight to Feinstein, since it’s not as though the transition was giving no one a heads up.
Then there’s the issue of Panetta’s experience, which both Feinstein and Rockefeller express concerns about. Panetta is being asked to lead the CIA. Usually you pick someone to head an agency who is an expert in that field. Yes, it’s often better in life to choose someone for a job who is smart, a quick learner, a good manager, and who can learn the details later. But for the heads of government agencies, you tend to choose someone with experience in that field. The choice of Panetta has already raised some eyebrows. That’s all the more reason you make sure you have your ducks in a row, that you’ve “sold” Panetta to your most important friends, such as in the incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, before making the choice final and then going public. The pick of Panetta is not a slam dunk, and shouldn’t be treated as one.
Along those lines, this part of the Times story is evidence of the problem Obama faces with this choice:
Lee H. Hamilton, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, of which Mr. Panetta was a member, said Mr. Panetta’s good relationship with Mr. Obama could translate into influence within the broader intelligence community.Mr. Hamilton said Mr. Panetta could make up for a lack of direct intelligence experience by picking a strong group of aides at the agency.
It’s never good when even your defenders are saying publicly that your choice as CIA director doesn’t have experience in intelligence matters.
Josh Marshall thinks that maybe Obama intentionally cut Feinstein out of this decision. But to what end? It’s one thing to ignore people who are of no consequence (and even that can come back to haunt you), but quite another to take on the incoming chair of a major Senate committee - the very committee, like it or not, that you need in order to get your nominee confirmed. There’s an old adage about taking on the king: If you’re gonna shoot him, you better kill him. (Works for grizzly bears too.) Difi can screw mightily with Obama over this nomination, and for years to come as chair of a committee on an issue where Democrats are traditionally weak. Regardless of whether you or I like her, I just don’t see the logic in ticking her off while not taking her out.
All of this strikes me as part of a larger pattern that weaves its way from the campaign through the transition. It’s about “political autarky,” as I’ve called it. It’s the belief that you can, and should, do everything yourself - and that your traditional friends and allies are not only irrelevant, but should actively be shunned. I wrote this last month about the strategy:
Obama’s people seem to have a predisposition towards going it alone. Given a choice between using someone else’s wheel that’s already out there, and reinventing one themselves, they tend to go for the latter. In real terms, this means that Obama’s campaign decided early on not to embrace the Netroots. They would simply create their own blogs and online grassroots at BarackObama.com. And while this worked, famously, to a degree, there came a point in the campaign where the Obama team and the blogosphere both realized they needed to work together in order to win.
At some point in politics, you need friends. Even people you don’t particularly like. Team Obama has so far shown no reticence in wooing Republicans (Rick Warren and $300bn in tax cuts come to mind). At some point they’re going to need to start wooing Democrats as well.
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How Karl Rove Almost Saved Blagojevich’s Bacon - Cited by Sharpy News
Hastert, Rove, Kjellander
You’d think that with Patrick Fitzgerald having been busy investigating the Rezko-connected corruption alleged against Illinois Governor Ron Blagojevich, that Blago would have been doing everything he could to get Fitzy pulled from his U.S. Attorney job in a bid to kill the investigation. But according to several witnesses for the prosecution at the Rezko trial, the three persons most involved in trying to get Fitzgerald ousted from his U.S. Attorney gig were all powerful Republicans: Karl Rove, former US House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert, and prominent Illinois Republican (and 2008 Republican National Convention organizer) Bob Kjellander.
The plot was hatched in early 2005:
Maloof said he met with Rezko at Rezko’s Wilmette mansion in February of 2005 after Maloof had received a federal grand jury subpoena. Maloof testified that Rezko told him not to worry.
"The federal prosecutor will no longer be the same federal prosecutor," Maloof quoted Rezko. "Patrick Fitzgerald will be terminated and Dennis Hastert will name his replacement."
Hastert at the time was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the ranking Republican in the state’s elected delegation to Capitol Hill.
Maloof’s story appears to corroborate the plot described in the guilty plea of former Illinois finance authority chief Ali Ata. He was charged with Rezko in a separate federal financial fraud case. Ata claims Rezko told him that Illinois Republican power broker Robert Kjellander would lean on then-White House political chief Karl Rove to fire Fitzgerald to kill the Rezko investigation.
Hastert lost his job as speaker after the 2006 election and resigned from Congress late last year. So far, ABC7 has been unable to reach him for a comment on Maloof’s testimony.
Rove, of course, probably wasn’t interested in protecting Rezko so much as he was in fighting off Fitz over the Plame case. Kjellander and Hastert had their own motivations, as Rezko, contrary to being the heavily-partisan Democrat fundraiser of the TradMed’s imaginings, actually raised heavy amounts of cash for Republicans as well:
Republicans in Washington could presumably be persuaded to spike an investigation into Democrat Blagojevich because Rezko raised money for the GOP too and is accused of scheming with Republican heavyweight Stuart Levine, who has pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Rezko.
Kjellander, former treasurer of the Republican National Committee, received $809,000 in consulting fees for Blagojevich’s 2003 sale of state bonds, much of which prosecutors believe was funneled through a Rezko associate to Rezko "assignees." Kjellander has not been charged with wrongdoing.
Something to bear in mind when the Republicans and their GOP/Media Complex allies work to try and use Blago’s woes against Obama.
FDL Blagojevich Coverage
Who are some of the officials named in the indictment?
Liveblog of the Fitzgerald Press Conference
How Rove Almost Saved Blagojevich
SEIU Statement Suggests Rove Talked to SEIU
Blagojevich Impeachment Hearings To Start
Blagojevich: Oh My, He’s So Gangster
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Another Woman on the Middlesex County Freeholder Board - Cited by Sharpy News?
Promoted from the diaries by Jason Springer
Diane Walsh of the Star Ledger is reporting a couple of potential candidates for the open seat on the Middlesex County freeholder board, including South Brunswick Deputy Mayor Carol Barrett.
Edison is one of the biggest towns in the county and doesn?t have a representative on the freeholder board since Jane Brady retired in 2004.
Charles Tomaro, a former Edison councilman, emerged as one of the likely candidates for the panel, which already has members from Woodbridge, the county’s biggest town; Piscataway, another Democratic stronghold; New Brunswick, the county seat; as well as Carteret, Highland Park and South River.“I’m putting in my name,” Tomaro said, referring to the Democratic county convention scheduled for Jan. 4 to fill the vacancy. The new freeholder would take a seat on the board at the annual reorganization meeting Jan. 6. Tomaro’s father-in-law, Tom Paterniti, the Democratic chairman of Edison, supports his candidacy wholeheartedly.
Walsh reports that Jun Choi hasn’t endorsed him. In fact, her thesis is reflected in the title of her article, “Infighting could cost Edison spot on county panel.” As an aside, the salary is apparently $23,438.
The party likes a geographic balance giving Edison and East Brunswick politicians a leg up, but the southern part of the county is being given more weight than in the past.
Some officials said the southern portion of the county, where there has been tremendous population growth, deserves more attention. South Brunswick Councilwoman Carol Barrett, a labor leader, was mentioned by officials as a possible candidate from south county.The party chairman [Spicuzzo-kw] said Democrats try to select candidates that balance the board in other ways also. For instance, he said the current board is a mix of men and women and racial and ethnic minorities.
If a woman is chosen, it will bring the number to 3 women out of 7 seats. That will add to the 5 new women who won local seats in 2008. It’s not the kind of leaps and bounds success that women had last year in the state legislature, but it would reflect steady progress for the county.
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Thank You to All Heroes of the DFL - Cited by Sharpy News
Around this holiday season, I like to say “Thank You” to people who serve unnoticed. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor party has many people who work so hard to create better communities and better government. This is mostly volunteer work with a few underpaid jobs. These are the everyday heroes!
I have been on three executive boards and supported the highest level financial budgeting, so I can tell you for certain, what a donated dollar buys in the DFL is truly impressive. While corporations have to have big ticket conventions with lots of perks to support training conventions, the DFL does training with volunteers, a few simple handouts, an inexpensive room, coffee, water, crackers and maybe a little help from a support staff person. This Democratic frugal one-on-one personal persuasion with the support of a few shiny bits of literature goes up against the corporate media advertising and spun news, and still manages to win.
So send a card of cheer, thanks and good will to your local DFL group or the main office:
Minnesota DFL Party
255 E Plato Blvd
St. Paul, MN 55107-1623
And even the smallest contribution will be well spent, if you are able to be generous. If you have not yet participated in the Minnesota’s Political Contribution Refund, you can give a gift of $50 ($100 as couple) that you get back from the Minnesota government with just a little bit of paperwork. It’s a gift that you get back in two months, what could be better than that.
If paperwork is too much hassle, there is also the easy online option!
Mention “Grace Kelly sent me” in the note line, and I will know that you went there. Also write “Thanks for all you do!” and the whole staff will feel a double thank you.
Or if you cannot give, you could simply write an email thank you.
The thank you notes make all the difference, since they are so rarely said. Even in critiques we have recognize all hard work and effort. A thank you now and then makes the difference in people not burning out, even here in writing citizen journalism and blogs. Fortunately, the co-chairs of DFL party have said they have the spirit and enthusiasm to do a least one more term. So special thanks to Brian and Donna, who are again candidates to lead. Special thanks and kudos to every volunteer, every staff person, every candidate, every elected official, every contributor, and every voter who helped the DFL through out this year. Thanks to all the citizen journalists as well! Thank you for working for the common good. Thank you for making the world a little bit better. Thank you for all you do!
Write here or contribute here.
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The Ledbetter Effect - Political News
There was a good piece in the Times yesterday about the ripple effects of the Ledbetter decision throughout the lower courts. With Sam Alito as their guide, judges have apparently concluded that the statute of limitations in any particular discrimination case expired anywhere from five to ten years before the discrimination actually began. In at least one case, this was literally true:
The Idaho plaintiff, Noll Garcia, uses a wheelchair. He said his apartment violated federal standards because it was not readily accessible. Under the law, he had two years to challenge a “discriminatory housing practice” in court.Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, writing for the majority, said this two-year period began when construction of the building was complete. Mr. Garcia lost out because he filed suit in 2003 — within two years of renting the apartment, but 10 years after it was built.
Legislating this nonsense away ought to be one of the top ten priorities for the incoming administration.
On a similar note, I was hoping that the press might resolve in the new year to stop mentioning Joe the Plumber every few minutes. Apparently not. From the same article, there’s this:
Ms. Ledbetter, who worked at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., for 19 years, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, campaigned for Mr. Obama and made a television commercial for him. She became a hero to many Democrats, their answer to “Joe the Plumber.”
Except that Lilly Ledbetter was a legitimate example of someone who suffered demonstrable, material harm from Republican ideas, whereas Joe Wurtzelbacher was a campaign gimmick whose failure as such was overshadowed only by the campaign gimmick selected as the Republican vice presidential nominee. And unless I’m mistaken, August still precedes October in the Gregorian calendar. I’m not sure, then, how Ledbetter becomes an “answer” to Joe the Plumber. But this is clearly good news for John McCain, and I suspect the race is beginning to tighten.
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Martin Wolf Puts It Better than Anyone Else I Have Seen - Cited by Sharpy News
Martin Wolf on our current magneto trouble:
FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - Keynes offers us the best way to think about the financial crisis: We are all Keynesians now. When Barack Obama takes office he will propose a gigantic fiscal stimulus package. Such packages are being offered by many other governments. Even Germany is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into this race.
The ghost of John Maynard Keynes, the father of macroeconomics, has returned…. Like all prophets, Keynes offered ambiguous lessons to his followers. Few still believe in the fiscal fine-tuning that his disciples propounded in the decades after the second world war. But nobody believes in the monetary targeting proposed by his celebrated intellectual adversary, Milton Friedman…. Now… it is easier for us to understand what remains relevant in his teaching….
Minsky… we should not take the pretensions of financiers seriously. “A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.” Not for him, then, was the notion of “efficient markets”….
[T]he economy cannot be analysed in the same way as an individual business. For an individual company, it makes sense to cut costs. If the world tries to do so, it will merely shrink demand….
The third and most important lesson is that one should not treat the economy as a morality tale. In the 1930s, two opposing ideological visions were on offer: the Austrian; and the socialist. The Austrians – Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek – argued that a purging of the excesses of the 1920s was required. Socialists argued that socialism needed to replace failed capitalism, outright. These views were grounded in alternative secular religions…. Keynes’s genius – a very English one – was to insist we should approach an economic system not as a morality play but as a technical challenge. He wished to preserve as much liberty as possible, while recognising that the minimum state was unacceptable to a democratic society with an urbanised economy. He wished to preserve a market economy, without believing that laisser faire makes everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
This same moralistic debate is with us, once again. Contemporary “liquidationists” insist that a collapse would lead to rebirth of a purified economy. Their leftwing opponents argue that the era of markets is over. And even I wish to see the punishment of financial alchemists who claimed that ever more debt turns economic lead into gold. Yet Keynes would have insisted that such approaches are foolish. Markets are neither infallible nor dispensable…. [T]he task for this new administration is to lead the US and the world towards a pragmatic resolution of the global economic crisis we all now confront….
The shorter-term challenge is to sustain aggregate demand, as Keynes would have recommended…. [T]he load will fall on the US, largely because the Europeans, Japanese and even the Chinese are too inert, too complacent, or too weak…. [T]his period of high government spending is, alas, likely to last for years….
No less pragmatic must be the attempt to construct a new system of global financial regulation and an approach to monetary policy that curbs credit booms and asset bubbles. As Minsky made clear, no permanent answer exists. But recognition of the systemic frailty of a complex financial system would be a good start.
As was the case in the 1930s, we also have a choice: it is to deal with these challenges co-operatively and pragmatically or let ideological blinkers and selfishness obstruct us…
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Fighting Against Violent Leftists - Today in Politics
Via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air is the story of a liberal social activist who became an informant for the FBI and helped stop a plot to make (and presumably use) firebombs during the Republican National Convention in September.
From the Statesman:
In a federal courtroom in Minneapolis this month, the public transformation of Brandon Darby of Austin will become complete.
In four years, he has gone from a never-trust-the-government activist to the confidential informant who helped the FBI arrest two Austin men on suspicion of building firebombs during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September.
The reaction of this news from some of his former activists? To call him a traitor to their cause. What? Were you expecting something else?
“Everyone that knew Brandon has gone through a whole range of emotions. Clearly, he’s betrayed the trust of the community, and all the communities he’s worked with,” said Lisa Fithian, a social-justice activist who worked with Darby in Austin.
Heh. A guy tries to stop violence from being committed and he’s betrayed the community? I assume Fithian enjoys committing acts of violence to emphasize her point. The comment shows that she just doesn’t get it. If stopping violence is betrayal, well, we can take all the betrayal we can get from members of such a community.
But after helping out during Hurricane Katrina, where he developed his attitudes toward government and law enforcement, Darby found out what he was getting in to.
But he said that while working there, he concluded that some activists seemed more intent on promoting radical agendas than helping people.
As for why he got involved with the FBI, Darby said it was because he discovered that people he knew were planning violence.
“Somebody had asked me to do something that would’ve resulted in hurting people, and I said no,” he said. “So they started asking other people. At that point, that’s when I went forward and contacted somebody in law enforcement.”
A lot of people who develop similar emotions can be easily taken in by such groups. We’ve seen it happen a lot in the Middle East, and certainly it can happen in the U.S. But it does take a strong will and a realization of right and wrong in order to combat such temptation. And Darby had that. Of course, he has at least a slightly more life experience than what I’d guess the two guys in the pictures from the article have. Darby is 32.
So, he should be commended for his work with the FBI. Violent activism is never good activism in my book.
Tags: War, Hurricane, Republican, Convention
The Novice Torturers - Today in Politics
By Patrick Appel
Publius reviews Jane Mayer’s brilliant book:
In reading Mayer, one striking aspect of the administration’s anti-terrorism policies is how completely haphazard and impetuous they were. There was practically no deliberation within the government, particularly among the branches who (1) actually knew something about this stuff; and (2) were, you know, statutorily authorized to do something.
Instead, a lawless cabal of ignorant people – Yoo, Addington, etc. –decided to craft national anti-terrorism policy having basically noexperience in the relevant fields (military, terrorism, etc.). Thedisparity between (1) the magnitude of decisions being made, and (2)the relative ignorance of the people making them is simply staggering.The Geneva Convention – one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind,and US policy for decades – was gone with a stroke of John Yoo’s pen(noted military expert John Yoo). A decision to free the CIA from lawsagainst torture, and to break with decades of precedent and opt forkangaroo court military commissions over courts martial – all gone, allupon an uninformed whim.
I had a similar epiphany while reading Mayer’s book. The Bush administration took an agency, the CIA, with little history of interrogation and made it the de facto interrogator for terrorists and "terrorists." FBI agents, who were trained, competent interrogators with decades of experience, wanted nothing to do with the torture techniques outlined by Rumsfield – because experienced interrogators knew better. Not only did the government violate the law, they put our national security in unexperienced hands at the very moment when good intelligence was needed most. Here’s part of an interview with Mayer from earlier this year:
[Zubaydah] was questioned first by the FBI. And in fact when the FBI saw what was going on and how the CIA intended to treat him, they withdrew, because they were afraid that it was criminal. And in fact one of the FBI agents told headquarters of the FBI he thought that the CIA interrogators should be arrested.
After 9/11 the Bush administration was obcessed, unstandably, with preventing another attack. But they failed to understand that going harder – authorizing torture – doesn’t create better intel. Cheney et al wanted to torture these detainees and they shoved the most experienced operators out of the way to do so. It’s unbelieveably reckless.
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Ground War - Political News…
And we have ourselves a ground invasion of Gaza. A week ago, I did not expect this. If the Israelis want to push this, Hamas cannot win in any conventional sense of the term, even to the extent that Hezbollah was able to resist in Lebanon. I’m guessing now that this ends with Israel installing a Fatah administration that the Gazans are going to hate. From Israel’s point of view, I suppose it’s better to have Palestinians blow each other up than blow up Israelis. In the long term, I still don’t see an endgame.
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