Conjecture No More

Today, the name of cabinet designates swirling around in the media ceased to be conjecture. They are no more. They are as leaked. Curious, isn’t it, how names get strategically leaked by “a person close to” the Obama transition team who “spoke on the condition of anonymity” presumably because they were “not authorized” to do any speaking? If it was my team, I would want to know who that person is and stuff a sock in them. Perhaps the real question is who authorizes the unauthorized leak agent? But I digress.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is hardly a “holdover,” as the Washington Post editorialized today. Nor is the significance of the Obama decision to retain him, as the NY Times reported last week, as much “a show of bipartisan continuity in a time of war that will be the first time a Pentagon chief has been carried over from a president of a different party” as it is good international politics. Besides, being the Secretary of Defense is not a show.

Donald Rumsfeld was a show. He liked having his picture taken. He liked being on television. He liked being the 400 pound gorilla in the Pentagon. He did not mind being a criminal. Unfortunately, he enjoyed his ego rather much and was more or less put out to pasture by his crony the vice president, the 500 pound gorilla at the White House.

Mr. Gates, on the other hand, does not like having his picture taken. He is a career bureaucrat who serves at the will of the president, regardless of political party. In a way he reminds me of the late Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s SecDef. Prior to Defense he chaired the Federal Trade Commission in the Nixon Administration and later ran the Office of Management and Budget. However, it is doubtful that Gates will need a presidential pardon, as Rumsfeld and Cheney may.

The president-elect’s choice of Senator Hillary Clinton to become Secretary of State is a bit more problematic. Her job will be to represent the president to the world as opposed to representing herself, which lost her the Democratic presidential nomination. It is that serving at will of the president that is important. It will remain to be seen whether Mrs. Clinton gets that part. It will also be interesting to see whether New York's Governor Patterson offers to appoint the former-president Clinton to replace her in the senate.

If there is any conjecture other than that, it will be about the senate’s questioning of Timothy Geithner in his confirmation hearing to become Secretary of the Treasury. His tenure at the New York Fed may be an asset, if he learned anything as the Wall Street came tumbling down. He too will serve at the will of the president. I suspect he gets that, even if it is conjecture on my part.

Pardons Anyone?

I have previously written that both “W and Cheney deserve a place in history – in a penitentiary.” I have urged the president-elect to offer no blanket pardons to Misters Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rove just in case they are prosecuted for “high crimes and misdemeanors” (Constitution, Art. II Sec. 4). According to Jon Roland of the Constitution Society, “High . . . does not mean ‘more serious’. It refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons,” more specifically public officials. Presidential accountability has been obscured by President Ford's pardoning of President Nixon.

Should Bush, Cheney et al. be prosecuted for "High crimes and misdemeanors"? I posed that question at YouPolls.com and got 33 responses. Of those responding, 61% voted yes. 39% voted no. Take into account the following disclaimer from the site. “Polls listed on YouPolls.com are not scientific surveys. The results reflect only the opinions of those who chose to participate and can be skewed due to multiple votes, percentage rounding, and biased participants.”
Here is a sample of the opinions the poll generated.

“Definitely; Especially Mr. Cheney and don't forget about finding a way to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld.”

“They should be tried for war crimes,” wrote another voter. “We launched a pre-emptive war on Iraq.” Additionally “…the U. S. was a major party to the UN charter, drafted in 1945, which stated that the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state was illegal.”

Here is quite a different point of view. “History is written by the winner, and in this case we're leaving Iraq as winners. By prosecuting individuals connected to this war we open a can of worms. As always history has and will always be kind to winners.”

Probably the most succinct response was this. “Yes, they should. No, they will not. That's life.”

I tend to concur with that one only because to put that band of “public officials” on trial would certainly be public – a show trial, in a manner of speaking. The enemies of this nation would not understand it and only China would think such a prosecution reasonable if not worthwhile. So perhaps I asked the wrong question.

At minimum the Bush/Cheney gang should retire, collect no pensions, and be prevented from making huge sums of money as private citizens after January 20th. They are criminals. Ted Steven has nothing on them.

This That and the Other Thing

Back in September in my posting titled Radio or Not, I took issue with the Post’s George Will over his assertion that a Democratic Presidency would mean the return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine. I wrote that such a notion is bunk since conservative talk radio is cheap to produce. Will’s colleague Michael Gerson has brought it up again. They probably share a new corner of the Post’s commissary and both wrote that in 1987 President Reagan “eliminated” (Will) or “overturned” (Gerson) the 1949 FCC regulation.

No the president did not. The FCC overturned the regulation. By the way, as an independent regulatory agency, the FCC has the power to reimpose the fairness doctrine at anytime without action by either the executive or legislative branches. What Reagan did was veto a congressional attempt to make the regulation a law. The Supreme Court set the stage for the FCC dumping the regulation in 1984 (FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364). The regulation has come up since then, but congress would not support it and nor did the Clinton administration.

The broadcast media of 1949 is a chapter of history, as will be the Internet. So who keeps coming up with the fairness doctrine (beware, brother, beware) with respect to the newly elected administration, other than Will and Gerson? I am going to guess they got it off of talk radio. Besides, other than the Palin worshipping Rush Limbaugh, who cares? That is unless Gerson and Will have information that the Obama administration plans to “pack” the FCC.

Anyway, there you have the “This” part. Now, here is the “That.” I have previously written that both “W and Cheney deserve a place in history – in a penitentiary.” I call on all US citizens to urge the president-elect to offer no blanket pardons to Misters Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rove. I urge their prosecution for “high crimes and misdemeanors” (Constitution, Art. II Sec. 4).

Here is another by the way. “High,” according to Jon Roland of the Constitution Society, “does not mean ‘more serious’. It refers to those punishable offenses that only apply to high persons,” more specifically public officials. I have posted a poll on that topic at http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=4143 You can vote and see the results for the next few weeks. I will be writing about what we find later.

And now, here is “the Other Thing,” also known as the Alaska Senatorial race. As of this posting, with 60% of the vote counted, Democratic challenger Mark Begich leads the incumbent Republican convicted felon Ted Stevens by 1022 votes. To check them, go to http://www.elections.alaska.gov/08general/data/results.htm .

Hail to the New Chief

In the Roosevelt Room of the White House, the horseback heroic Teddy Roosevelt portrait has been hanging over the fireplace since January 2001. As Michael Gerson wrote in his 11/05 Washington Post column, in January 2009, the portrait of “Franklin Roosevelt will be moved back to that place of honor.” The good news for WaPo’s Gerson and Krauthammer and NY Times William Kristol is that they no longer have to defend an incompetent Republican administration. Instead they can indulge in sniping at a competent Democratic administration.

Actually, Gerson’s sniping has already begun. “And as the result of a financial panic that unfairly undermined all Republicans, Obama has stumbled into the most dangerous kind of victory,” he wrote. “Unfairly” and “stumbled” indeed. What part of the United States becoming “the first majority-white democracy on this planet to anoint a black person as a national leader,” as noted by the NYU educator Jonathan Zimmerman did Michael miss? In his op-ed piece A Victory for America, and the World, Zimmerman wrote, “Consider that the United States did not abolish slavery until 1865. The British Empire beat us by a half-century, outlawing the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1834.”

The conservative pundits have their work cut out for them. It falls on them to articulate what the Republican Party is all about and that will take some time. The country repudiated it and its base of bigotry at the polls. That should be good news. As Republican Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona put it, “The party is finally untethered from the ill-fitting and unworkable big-government conservatism that defined the Bush Administration.”

Let me offer a clue to the Republicans as they figure out who they are. I would like to think that the election’s repudiation precludes any candidacy for Sarah Palin, who actually thinks she has a roll in the GOP on the national stage. Ignorance is not bliss, it is dangerous. One would think that an endorsement by Alaska’s felonious Senator Ted Stevens would be sufficient to disqualify her from any part of a GOP rehabilitation. Maybe it works in Alaska, but Palin’s stuff does not play in the lower 48 except to bigots.

Let me call on the Obama-Biden administration not to pardon Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney for the “deception and criminality,” Mr. Gerson dismisses as “lunatic theories.” Both W and Cheney deserve a place in history – in a penitentiary. Let us all look forward to the changing of the portraits in the Roosevelt Room.

Anything Can Happen

We of the baby boom recall that Wednesday was “Anything Can Happen Day.” Guess what, anything can happen quarter is where we are. Who could have imagined that the GOP would put a couple of nit-wits on its Magic Carpet ticket and honestly expect to win the Executive Mansion? Nit-wit #1 has been unsuccessfully running for president for nearly ten years while Nit-Wit #2 had been supporting the Alaska Independence Party which advocated her state seceding from the Union. The talk radio right bellows they are going to win the election, pay no attention the lying and the racism involved in so doing.

We should remember that the election is about the Electoral College and that the popular vote means very little, except to pollsters. We should remember that the inauguration is not until January 20, 2009. But, mostly we should remember that there are two yet to be convicted incumbents running the executive branch of government in the meantime. Anything can happen before November the 5th, a Wednesday, and it is frightening.

Eugene Robinson writes in the Washington Post, “After eight years of the Bush administration, the Republican Party -- to put it bluntly -- is a mess and a fraud.” He is correct; but, how about criminal and negligent? Rove and Rumsfeld were allowed to publically escape, since they were unelected public officials. But, Bush and Cheney have earned well deserved prison time, which the Nit-Wits would likely pardon. And, of by the way, anything can happen.

Experience This

The bandied about issue of candidate experience is bogus. The entire discussion obfuscates the real deal which is competence. The Democratic party has selected two highly competent candidates for the executive branch of our government. The incumbent, dangerously incompetent Republican Party has selected a retiree and a rube.

I mind the fact Ms. Palin cannot speak any American language I would expect to hear from a competent executive. It’s not alright, folksy or cute. It says that her journalism degree is worthless. Are we really to expect that when she becomes President, she will be able to baffle foreign executive leaders with her untranslatable speech?

I mind that her grasp of US history is incredibly weak. During the founding period, the Vice President was the runner up candidate for the Presidency, never mind that fact that the position is constitutionally limited, and not “flexible” as Mr. Cheney would have it.

I mind her stupid assertion that one can see Russia from Alaska – not from Wasilla or Juneau. I mind her Pole dancer hair-do. I mind her baby holding on stage. And I mind that her husband supports Alaskan secession from the Union. Those are just a few trivial things that are disqualifying of the candidate for the office.

As to her running mate, Mr. Steady, he makes me blink.