Andy Worthington: The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part Two)

In Part One of this article, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, examined Dick Cheney’s recent interview with ABC News, in which the Vice President presented a detailed defense of the administration’s national security policies, throwing down a very public gauntlet to critics of torture, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and the invasion of Iraq. Part One focused on Cheney’s lies regarding the use of torture and the implementation of warrantless wiretapping, and this second part examines his lies regarding Guantánamo and the invasion of Iraq.

5) On the prisoners in Guantánamo

When Jonathan Karl mentioned that President Bush had said that he wanted to close Guantánamo two years ago, and asked, “Why has that not happened?” Cheney said, “It’s very hard to do. Guantánamo has been the repository, if you will, of hundreds of terrorists, or suspected terrorists, that we’ve captured since 9/11. They — many of them, hundreds, have been released back to their home countries. What we have left is the hardcore. Their cases are reviewed on an annual basis to see whether or not they’re still a threat, whether or not they’re still intelligence value in terms of continuing to hold them. But — and we’re down now to some 200 being held at Guantánamo — that includes the core group, the really high-value targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

THE LIE: Cheney’s description of the remaining prisoners as “the hardcore” is typical, but by no means accurate, as the Vice President has always claimed that those in Guantánamo are “the hardcore” or “the worst of the worst.” Just two weeks after Guantánamo opened, on January 27, 2002, he told Fox News, “These are the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort.” And last July, on CNN, he said, “I think you need to have someplace to hold those individuals who have been captured during the global war on terror. I’m thinking of people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed … There are hundreds of people like that, and if you closed Guantánamo, you’d have to find someplace else to put these folks.”

Given that around 80 prisoners have been released since Cheney made this last pronouncement, it’s clear that his talk of “hardcore” prisoners is a repeated lie, adjusted according to how many prisoners are actually held at Guantánamo.

In addition, Cheney’s unsubstantiated claim about the remaining prisoners ignores the fact that, as I explained at length in The Guantánamo Files, and have repeatedly described in articles (most recently here), the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo were captured not by US forces, but by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when the US military was offering substantial bounty payments for “al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects.” Moreover, they have never been screened adequately to determine whether they should have been declared as “enemy combatants” — not on capture (when they should have received Article 5 battlefield tribunals, according to the Geneva Conventions), not in the prisons in Afghanistan that were used to process them for Guantánamo (where the orders were that every Arab was to be sent to Cuba), and not in Guantánamo itself. The tribunals established to review the status of the prisoners in Guantánamo relied almost exclusively on woefully generic information, and on confessions obtained through the torture, coercion or bribery of other prisoners. As former insider Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham has eloquently explained, the entire process was designed not to provide justice, but to defend the administration’s blanket assertions that the prisoners were “enemy combatants.”

6) On the prisoners’ rights

Cheney continued, “Now, the question, if you’re going to close Guantánamo, what are you going to do with those prisoners? One suggestion is, well, we’ll bring them to the United States. Well, I don’t know very many congressmen, for example, who are eager to have 200 al-Qaeda terrorists deposited in their district. It’s a complex and difficult problem. If you bring them onshore into the United States, they automatically acquire certain legal rights and responsibilities that the government would then have, that they don’t as long as they’re at Guantánamo. And that’s an important consideration.

THE LIE: In this statement, Cheney’s lie, which reveals his disdain for the Supreme Court, is his claim that, as long as the prisoners are in Guantánamo, they don’t have “certain legal rights.” As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, the pretence that Guantánamo was beyond the reach of US law, and that the prisoners could be held without rights, was demolished in June 2004, when the highest court in the land ruled in Rasul v. Bush that Guantánamo was “territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control,” and that, because the prisoners denied that they had “engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against this country,” and had “never been afforded access to any tribunal, much less charged with and convicted of wrongdoing,” they had habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to challenge the basis of their detention before an impartial judge.

The administration then persuaded Congress to remove these rights in two appalling pieces of legislation — the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — but the Supreme Court restored their habeas corpus rights in another landmark case in June 2008, Boumediene v. Bush, and made sure that Cheney could not persuade Congress to remove them again by ruling that this time their rights were constitutional.

The prisoners have therefore had “certain legal rights” since June 2004, although it is clear that Cheney still does not regard Supreme Court rulings as having any impact on the President’s whims as the Commander-in-Chief of a self-declared war without end.

7) On conditions at Guantánamo

Next, Cheney said, “These are not American citizens. They are not subject, nor do they have the same rights that an American citizen does vis-à-vis the government. But they are well treated.”

THE LIE: It is hard to conceive of a manner in which the prisoners at Guantánamo are “well treated.” A dedicated PR machine has attempted to make out that they are all coddled and well-fed, but the truth is that, unlike convicted criminals on the US mainland, who watch TV, have opportunities to socialize, receive family visits and have regular access to reading and writing materials, the prisoners in Guantánamo — who have never been charged with a crime, let alone convicted — are deprived of almost all “comfort items” to relieve the crushing monotony of their daily lives and the desperate uncertainty of their fate. They have, for example, never received a single visit from their loved ones, they are still hurled into isolation cells or beaten by armored response teams for the slightest infraction of the rules, and if they protest their seemingly endless imprisonment without charge or trial by embarking on hunger strikes, they are force-fed in the most brutal manner, even though force-feeding competent prisoners is illegal.

8) On the Military Commissions at Guantánamo

Cheney continued, “They also have the opportunity, and the process has just started now to be heard before a military commission with a judgment, fair and honest judgment made about their guilt or innocence, to be represented by counsel provided through that process.”

THE LIE: I have covered the Military Commissions in depth over the last year and a half, and at no point has it ever been demonstrated that the system dreamt up by Cheney and Addington in November 2001 is “fair and honest.” Every defense attorney appointed by the government has risked his or her career by openly criticizing the system, and several prosecutors have resigned in protest at what they regarded as a rigged system, the most significant being Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor, who complained of political interference, and Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who complained that evidence vital to the defense was routinely withheld. Both stories were covered in detail in my article, “The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials.”

Other problems include the fact that two prisoners who were juveniles when seized (Omar Khadr and Mohamed Jawad) have been put forward for trials, despite the fact that no juvenile has been put forward for a war crimes trial since the Second World War, and despite claims that the allegations against them are rigged, and several insignificant Afghan prisoners have also been charged. Moreover, the prisoners regarded as particularly significant (the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, for example) have been allowed to make a mockery of the system, and on the eve of the Presidential election, a man named Ali Hamza al-Bahlul was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his association with al-Qaeda, even though he refused to mount a defense. In the rest of the world, that would be referred to as a show trial.

9) On the alleged recidivism of released prisoners

Cheney was asked about the danger of closing Guantánamo “too soon,” shortly after the following disturbing exchange took place:

Jonathan Karl: So when do you think we’ll be at a point where Guantánamo could be responsibly shut down?
Dick Cheney: Well, I think that would come with the end of the war on terror.
Jonathan Karl: When’s that going to be?
Dick Cheney: Well, nobody knows. Nobody can specify that.
Jonathan Karl: But basically it sounds like you’re saying Guantánamo Bay will be open indefinitely.

Cheney said, “Well, if you release people that shouldn’t have been released, and that’s happened in some cases already, you end up with them back on the battlefield. We’ve had, as I recall now — and these are rough numbers, I’d want to check it — but, say, approximately 30 of these folks who’ve been held in Guantánamo, been released, and ended up back on the battlefield again, and we’ve encountered them a second time around. They’ve either been killed or captured in further conflicts with our forces.”

THE LIE: The claim that 30 former prisoners “ended up back on the battlefield” is a staple of Pentagon propaganda, even though it has never been backed up with evidence. Instead, as the Seton Hall Law School noted in a report last December (PDF), the Pentagon regarded speaking out about Guantánamo as “returning to the battlefield” (as in the case of three Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, who were involved in a film about their experiences, The Road to Guantánamo).

The Pentagon has also conveniently ignored the fact that at least six Taliban fighters were released because the US authorities had refused to consult with their Afghan allies. In 2004, officials in Hamid Karzai’s government blamed the US for the return of Taliban commanders to the battlefield, explaining that “neither the American military officials, nor the Kabul police, who briefly process the detainees when they are sent home, consult them about the detainees they free.”

The true number of prisoners who have “returned to the battlefield” is certainly less than the number quoted by the Pentagon — and by Dick Cheney — although it should also be noted that, even if it were correct, a recidivism rate of 6 percent is considerably lower than in any other US prison, and indicates, of course, that a large number of those released were not terrorists or militants in the first place.

10) On the reason for invading Iraq

Turning to Iraq, Jonathan Karl said, “You probably saw — Karl Rove last week said that if the intelligence had been correct, we probably would not have gone to war,” and Cheney responded, “I disagree with that. I think the — as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren’t any stockpiles. What we found in the after-action reports after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was, what they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks. They also found that he had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted.”

THE LIE: Brazen to the end, Cheney has clung to the WMD deception as though it had ever been anything other than an excuse for regime change following the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, driven by a deranged desire to gain geopolitical supremacy and establish an ill-defined facsimile of the American political and economic system in the heart of the Middle East.

No one credible agrees with Cheney’s assessment of Saddam Hussein’s weapons capabilities — or his intentions — and in addition, of course, Cheney has a colourful and reprehensible record of bullying the intelligence agencies into finding reasons to invade Iraq, and promoting the fiction that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain “yellowcake” uranium ore from Niger.

Moreover, two of Cheney’s particular enthusiasms — the torture of prisoners, and the invasion of Iraq — came together when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of the Khaldan military training camp in Afghanistan (which had little connection with al-Qaeda) was captured and sent to Egypt to be tortured, where he made a false confession that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted his confession, but not until Secretary of State Colin Powell — to his eternal shame — has used the story in February 2003 in an attempt to persuade the UN to support the invasion of Iraq.

This, of course, is disturbing enough, but as David Rose explained in an article in Vanity Fair that coincided with Cheney’s recent ABC News interview, al-Libi was not the only torture victim spouting nonsense about Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

According to two senior intelligence analysts, Abu Zubaydah, the facilitator for the Khaldan camp, who, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was subjected to torture — including waterboarding — also made a number of false confessions about connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, beyond one ludicrous claim which was subsequently leaked by the administration: that Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were working with Saddam Hussein to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. One of the analysts, who worked at the Pentagon, explained, “The intelligence community was lapping this up, and so was the administration, obviously. Abu Zubaydah was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be.”

However, none of the analysts knew that these confessions had been obtained through torture. The Pentagon analyst told David Rose, “As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done. I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq.” He added, “It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective.”

This is the end, for now, of my tour through the dark, unjust and counter-productive world fashioned by Dick Cheney and his colleagues and close advisers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but I hope — as disturbing rumors begin to swirl — that it serves to confirm how a Presidential pardon for the Vice President would, effectively, be an endorsement for some of the cruellest manfestations of unfettered executive power and disdain for the rule of law that the United States has ever experienced.

Bob Burnett: 2008: The Best and Worst

In a tumultuous year, ten political events stood out.

The Worst
5. “Just say no.” Republican Senators Block Critical Legislation: The 110th Congress saw Republican Senators invoke cloture motions - to limit debate and head off filibusters - a record 138 times, more than double the previous ignominious standard. The do-nothing GOP killed legislation with broad support - bills that had already passed in the House of Representatives - including renewable energy tax credits, a windfall profits tax on oil companies, negotiations with drug companies over Medicare drug prices, DC voting rights, and withdrawal from Iraq. As a result Republicans lost eight Senate seats in the general election.

4. “Gimme the money.” Paulson Demands $700 Billion Bailout Blank Check: On September 18th, in a one-page memo to Congress, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed the Troubled Asset Relief Program, demanding $700 billion to purchase mortgage-backed securities, as well as unlimited discretion spending the funds. Congress modified his proposal to release funds in stages and provide oversight. Nonetheless, many believe the TARP program has been a waste of tax-payer funds.

3. “Running on empty.” McCain Suspends Campaign: While the conventional wisdom claims John McCain lost the presidential election because of the economy, he failed because he ran a terrible campaign, consistently making bad decisions. In early September, at the end of the Republican convention, McCain was surging: his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate had galvanized the Republican base and some national polls showed him ahead of Obama. Then came the Paulson’s TARP proposal, which many Republicans refused to support. McCain “suspended” his campaign to return to Washington and broker a deal. And then did nothing. Instead of being viewed as a strong leader, McCain was revealed as confused and erratic.

2. “He’s a terrorist.” Palin Accuses Obama of Being a Terrorist: On October 4th, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” This charge, repeated by McCain, prompted shouted death threats at Republican rallies and the waving of pitchforks. While most Americans - and the Secret Service - saw the terrorist charge as contemptible and incendiary, Palin and McCain persisted for more than a week.

1. “I’m the decider.”Economy Slides into Recession, Bush Does Nothing: For the first six months, President Bush pronounced the American economy “sound” and spurned calls for action. In mid September, Bush reversed course declaring the US was on the brink of economic collapse. On December 1st, economists announced what most Americans had known already, the economy had been in recession since December of 2007. First Bush lied and then he panicked.

The Best
5. “No McCain.” Clinton Endorses Obama: After a sometimes bitter campaign, where Hillary Clinton continued her candidacy long after most observers had written her off, Democrats worried the New York Senator might offer only a half-hearted endorsement of Barack Obama. On August 26th, speaking at the Democratic Convention, Clinton strongly supported Obama giving one of the most memorable speeches of her career.

4. “I can see Russia from my house.”Tina Fey Mimics Sarah Palin: In 2008 Saturday Night Live reinvented itself as a bastion of political comedy. Tina Fey’s dead on imitation of Palin mocked Alaska’s Governor as a vapid airhead totally unprepared for the vice-presidency.

3. “Respect, Empower, Include.” Obama’s Field Organization From the Iowa caucuses on January 3rd to the twenty-five-state get-out-the-vote effort on November 4th, Barack Obama put together the most impressive field organization ever seen in U.S. politics. First, Obamacons took down Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination. Then they defeated John McCain, despite his despicable attempt to label Obama a terrorist and closet Muslim. On Election Day, Obama won the critical swing states because he had a ground game and McCain didn’t. American politics will never be the same.

2. “This is a goodbye kiss, you dog.” Bush insulted by Iraqi journalist: In a vain effort to resurrect his reputation, George Bush took a December “victory” tour of Iraq. In the middle of a Baghdad press conference, where he touted the “success” of his strategy, Bush was the target of two shoes thrown by Iraqi journalist Muntathar al Zaidi, who cursed him in Arabic. The incident symbolized Bush’s Iraq legacy.

1. “Yes we can.”Obama wins Presidency: When was the point you knew Barack was going to be America’s 44th President? Was it after his Iowa victory? Or when it became clear he had out-organized Hillary? Was it his speech on race? Or when we knew Obama was going to win all the debates because of his thoughtful, unflappable demeanor? Or did you bite your nails until the evening of November 4th, expecting something awful to happen that would snatch victory from his grasp? However you experienced the campaign, Barack Obama Obama’s candidacy was an once-in-a-lifetime political thrill; capped by his dazzling victory speech on November 4th. We can and we did.

Franken Senate Victory Projected

Democratic challenger Al Franken finds himself on the cusp of winning a seat in the United States Senate after Minnesota’s canvassing board awarded him a host of challenged votes during deliberations on Thursday.

As of 8PM ET, the Minneapolis Star Tribune projected that Franken would finish the recount process with a lead of 89 votes, positioning him to become the 59th senator caucusing with Democrats in the upcoming Congress.

According to local paper tallies, Franken currently trails Sen. Norm Coleman by a mere five votes, down from the 358-vote margin that the Republican held just last night. The Associated Press has the count even closer, with Coleman ahead by two votes. An aide to Franken told the Huffington Post that, according to the campaign’s internal count, Franken has already taken a small lead.

The gains came as the canvassing board sifted through hundreds of ballots that Coleman had contested during the recount process. On Friday, the canvassing board will consider another 400 or so Coleman challenges. If the pattern remains consistent, Franken should vault past his opponent to a projected lead of approximately 89 votes, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The process by which the Senate race has come to this stage is often confusing. Coleman held an approximately 200-vote lead after the state went through a hand recount of all ballots. However, there remained approximately 1,500 ballots that one or the other campaign contested (and temporarily removed from the overall vote tally). Coleman challenged about 1,000 of these, Franken the rest.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the canvassing board considered Franken’s challenges, which gave a slight gain to Coleman’s lead (Franken, after all, was challenging ballots that were, perhaps erroneously, awarded to Coleman during the recount). But the Franken campaign also gained some votes during the two days; the canvassing board awarded him dozens of ballots that had been wrongfully determined to be non-votes or under-votes.

By Thursday, the canvassing board had moved onto the pile of Coleman challenges, and with it, Coleman’s lead quickly dissipated. It became clear early on that the Senator had challenged many ballots simply because they favored Franken and had a minor (non-disqualifying) clerical error. The board began plowing through the votes until, by late afternoon, Franken found himself down by only five.

As it stands now, it seems likely that Franken will end this process with a lead wider than even his campaign expected. Earlier projections, from the Associated Press, Star Tribune and Franken himself, suggested that Coleman would lose the race by roughly 20 votes or less. And this tally doesn’t even take into consideration the legal and political battle being waged over wrongfully rejected absentee ballots, which the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled, on Thursday, should be counted.

That decision, another loss for the Coleman campaign, could mean even more votes flowing into Franken’s tally, though the Court also stressed that the state and both campaigns come up with a uniform standard for identifying these absentee ballots before they are counted.

Read more: Franken Coleman, Senate Minnesota, Franken Ballots, Franken Senate, Al Franken, Coleman Loss, Challenged Ballots, Recount, Absentee Ballots, Coleman Reelection, Politics News

Connecticut Democrats backing off Lieberman censure resolution.

Last September, the Connecticut Democratic Party central committee agreed on a resolution censuring Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for his vigorous support of John McCain and for speaking at the Republican National Convention. But after Lieberman escaped rebuke in the U.S. Senate, it appears now that the “anger is draining“:

“We’re in the process of updating the resolution to be more reflective of the current time and situation,” said Audrey Blondin of Litchfield, one of two committee members who proposed the censure. Words like “censure” are certain to disappear. So is any suggestion that Lieberman end his affiliation as a registered Democratic voter in Connecticut. Instead?

“An expression of disappointment, an expression of disapproval,” Blondin said. “And let it go at that.”

An Encounter With Hogs On The Road To Alabama

Our guest blogger is Barry Nolan, a veteran TV journalist who was fired by Comcast Cable’s CN8 channel in Boston for protesting an award honoring Bill O’Reilly.

According to an article in the New York Times, a typical salary in the Smithfield Packing slaughterhouse in Tar Heel, NC is $11.90 per hour, or $476 for a 40 hour week. Because I am a considerate person, I will spare you any description of the grisly jobs performed by those workers in that slaughterhouse.

The base salary of a U.S. senator is $169,300 a year or $3,255 a week. Because I am a considerate person, I will spare you any description of the job some of those senators are doing on us these days.

The slaughterhouse story in the New York Times looked back on the 16-year long struggle to bring union representation to the 5,000 or so workers in Tar Heel, which ended up in court at one point. In 2006, after seven years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Smithfield had engaged in “intense and widespread” coercion and ordered Smithfield to reinstate four union supporters it found were illegally fired, one of whom was beaten by the plant’s police on the day of the 1997 election.

The court also said Smithfield had engaged in other illegal activities: spying on workers’ union activities, confiscating union materials, threatening to fire workers who voted for the union and threatening to freeze wages and shut the plant.

But the big news in the Times story, especially if you pack meat, was that after the long struggle with Smithfield, the union finally won. The slaughterhouse is going union.

On the same day MSNBC had a story about a GOP memo titled “Action Alert,” which went out to the Republican senators just before their “No” vote on the Big Three Auto Makers bailout bill. The GOP memo contained this pithy paragraph:

This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.

It has been a longstanding part of the conservative’s core philosophy that unions are simply bad for business. That is why is why conservatives who are making $169 K per year for standing around arguing, just can’t understand why someone who is making the princely salary of $24,752 for working 40 hours a week in a slaughterhouse would ever want to join a union. It could eat into a company’s profits. Never mind that as a non-union hog butcher, you may bring home a little bacon, but good luck sending your kids to college.

The Federal Poverty guideline for 2008, sets $22,200 as the poverty level for a family of four. Those who do the hard spirit killing, tendon ripping work of slaughtering hogs, forty hours a week, 52 weeks a year, are just barely, faintly above the poverty level.

So just who are these people the GOP sees as the enemy? These awful, greedy, lazy Union people? More »

TV SoundOff: Sunday Talking Heads

Good morning and welcome to your Sunday morning liveblog of the political shows you’ll be sleeping through this morning. And what a special morning it may end up being for us! See, last night I rekindled something that had been lost during the election year. Namely, a social life! That thing where you have friends and you do things like talk in person and drink things together, and you are PEOPLE standing in the SAME ROOM and it’s DIFFERENT from maintaining all of your relationships over IM and Facebook. That thing! And it was great! Here’s what makes today interesting: I realize that whilst out enjoying myself, I forgot to buy coffee filters. So I have no coffee for the first part of this live blog. So, yeah. Facing Fox News Sunday in a raw state of of semi-sleepiness, innocent dreams from the night before still half-remembered? This is going to hurt.

Anyway, NEW MEET THE PRESS TODAY! Can you feel the excitement? If you can, why? It’s not that exciting! Consult WebMD why not? You MAY actually be having a stroke! As always, leave a comment, send an email, peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

Once again, we’ll have Dixie versus Detroit auto bailout “debate,” lots of Blago, and a special panel time where these twerps wonder whether OBAMA IS TAINTED BY CHICAGO MACHINE STYLE BLAGOJEVICHERY!

Also! President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq! He still does those things?

Anyway, yes. Bob Corker wants the Big Three to start paying their employees less. Because WOO CHRISTMAS TIME IN RECESSIONLAND! Let’s drop WAGES. The unions agreed to do so in 2011, but the Corkers of the world wanted it by 2009. “Had the unions just agreed to this by 2009, the bill would have passed.” ALL THEIR FAULT. Of course, the big reason Corker wants Detroit to bring their wages down by next year is because automakers in his district will get to drop theirs just as quickly anyway. Anyway, I’m not fond of the bailout. But you know what I’m even less fond of? DISINGENUOUS PEOPLE.

Oh, and really. What’s Debbie Stabenow going to say about all these things? Why can’t we talk to a lawmaker who doesn’t have a constituency with mad skin in the game, to put it into some sort of neutral perspective, if such a thing is possible.

Corker: “We had everything worked out except for one thing!” And that thing? YAHHH UNION GHOULS! But the thing is, THAT WAS WORKED OUT TOO! In advance! The unions were prepared to make those concessions as stakeholders by 2011!

Stabenow: “This is not the time for a political agenda!” This is a phrase that’s only ever said by people desperately trying to assert a political agenda, or who have been run roughshod by one and who lack anything else to say about it.

Oh well! They’re just going to give the auto companies money and they’re just going to ask for more. Corker’s wrong to suggest that we were at some sort of Historical Crossroads where this whole matter would have been solved. “We tried to get the UAW to agree to a finite date!” Translation: “And when they did agree to a finite date, we tried to get them to agree to a new one!”

Oh, well, people. Drive SmartCars, take mass transit, save your own damn money.

And now! How to Solve a Problem Like Blagojevich? Very few things rhyme with Blagojevich! If you haven’t enjoyed it yet, please to enjoy Spencer Ackerman’s effort to find everything that does:

Anyway, thanks to Blago, there may not be a Senator from Illinois to replace Obama until APRIL. And Blago will decide if it’s THAT rapid, unless they can find some way to pry him out of his seat.

Demi Moore is totally playing Lisa Madigan in the movie of this scandal, which will be titled: CAN I HAVE SOME MORE OF THAT MONEY, A%%HOLE? THE ROD BLAGOJEVICH STORY.

What did Rahm Emanuel know about and when? He totally talked up preferences for Obama’s replacement, and they were caught on tape! Isn’t that embarassing? That Emanuel may have had a conversation, or walked the streets of the same city? No one on Chris Wallace’s panel seems to think so, though he keeps prodding and prodding and using different synonyms. “So you don’t think it’s potentially damaging? Or embarrassing? A matter of much chagrin? Egg on the Obama team’s face? Caught with their pants down? In a tough spot? Where there’s smoke there’s fire? I guess what I’m trying to say is: WILLIAM AYERS.”

The panel discussion today: WILL OBAMA BE TAINTED? I wish they’f use the headline from that awesomely horrible TIME story: “Can Obama Escape Blagojevich’s Taint?” That put great images in my head! Blago transformed into a rampaging taint…like the Godzilla of taints…blasting Chicago with Taint-Rays. “OH MY GOD! The hair! It’s growing everywhere! Raw like kudzu! Thick as pubes! Can anyone stop THAT BLAGOTAINT?”

Anyway, what to the tired bored people say about it? Wallace says Obama reacted like a “traditional politician!” And he hasn’t released the sort of information to the public that would probably be better rendered unto Patrick Fitzgerald. Hume says, basically, that Obama’s in no rush to hastily bring a bunch of facts forward because the evidence suggests he’s got nothing to do with it, and that his nature is cautiousness, so he’s being cautious.

But has the BLOOM been cleft from the rose, Wallace wonders? Liasson says, maybe a little, “But if this is as bad as it gets, this is pretty good.” William Kristol says that the scandal is pleasingly old-fashioned because it has no sex - and I’m like: “WAIT. WAIT NOW. Bill Kristol. Really. Are you so lazy that you’ve got to plagiarize Kathryn Jean Lopez for your opening thoughts on this matter? THAT IS SAD. Really.”

Juan Williams apparently thought of Jesse Jackson Jr., as being apart from patronage networks, and really, a new-style black leader in the style of Obama and Deval Patrick. And that’s the highlight from thei week’s edition of “Juan Williams Is Totally Effing Kidding Himself!”

Wallace “nationalizes” this issue by pointing out that the the Democrats can be fitted with the corruption accusation now. It’s a good point, up to a point. Dollar Bill Jefferson is gone from office. Blago seemed to have been widely shunned. Rangel is comically, absurdly corrupt, but it’s going to take something more nuclear to pry him from his seat. Liasson says there isn’t the same critical mass that Republican scandals had - no wide, institutionalized participation in organized grift, salted with sex scandals. But give this new Congress a chance!

For the record: my wife did suggest I use a paper towel to brew my coffee. This sort of sounds like the kind of thing that I mess up really bad!

Bill Kristol sighs heavily and opines: “I don’t think it’s very smart for a bunch of Southern Republicans to decide that the future of the Republican party is to beat up working class union members in states like Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.” Spoken like someone who was happy with Southern Republicans saying and doing whatever they wanted until you lost all three of those states.

“Every lobbyist in town is after that money!” Williams yells. Where were you, Juan, when the lobbyists for CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS (as opposed to, you know, CARS) were carting off billions?

So many commercials for Flomax during this show? Does Fox News Sunday give people weak streams? I thought it was just me, and I thought it was all political television shows.

Wow. Next weekend I have to wake up to DICK CHENEY? If anyone has any suggestions on how to approach that, and keep my mind and soul together, I’d like to hear about it.

Dick Cheney at 8am on Sunday. Wow. That is going to hurt!

FACE THE NATION

All right. Even though I do not trust the supremely cheap paper towels to make coffee with, I remembered something during the break: I have a coffee press! All is well.

Meanwhile, here’s Lisa Madigan, talking Blago. “We have a governor who cannot legitimately govern,” she says, explaining her decisions. Her office has been providing assistance and information to Fitzgerald, she says. Does she know about anything about Obama’s involvement? Just what she’s read in the papers, apparently.

Schieffer, bless his heart, asks straight up whether Madigan’s point here is basically: Blago is crazy. Madigan, obviously, won’t stipulate to that. But: “No one in their right mind would accept an appointment to his seat.” So, she’s on board with a special election. Madigan, by the way, is an EXTREMELY. INTENSE. WOMAN. I don’t think she blinked during that entire exchange.

Auto bailout time! Bob Corker is back, this time facing off against Carl Levin and Sherrod Brown. Schieffer relates how the White House is going to bigfoot the Senate. Corker goes into his painstaking explanation of the bankruptcy-without-bankruptcy plan. On the unions: “We did not ask for pay cuts by 2009, we asked that they become competitive.” Of course, the only way to make them “competitive” by 2009 is to make pay cuts two years earlier than everyone agreed.

Levin says that the White House is going to come through and save the auto industry. Levin praises Corker for his brave use of jargon, which I hope isn’t serious, considering Corker’s opinion isn’t structurally distinct from the votes that scuttled the deal. Levin makes a good point, though, suggesting that perhaps Congress should not be stipulating auto-industry wages by law. Aren’t higher wages the sort of thing that makes a job more competitive?

I’ll buy that the UAW probably had an ace in the hole where TARP and a legacy-obsessed lame duck president was concerned - this is why you don’t give huge handouts to people like AIG.

Michael Eric Dyson is on now, saying that (I guess an upside to?) the Blago scandal will help to contrast Obama’s style of governance to the way the Blagos of the world work. That wasn’t the Obama-Blago answer Schieffer wanted, depressingly, who then asks, “WHAT IF…” it turns out Obama or Emanuel had done all this wrongdoing? It raises questions: “What if it turns out that Bob Schieffer killed and ate Caylee Anthony’s baby?” Would that be bad? What if it turns out that Bob Schieffer’s legendary acuity comes to him though the still warm-and-beating hearts of his neighbors’ pets? What if he filters his morning coffee through a skein of orphan babies?

MEET THE PRESS

“Our issues this Sunday…” OMG, David Gregory. David. Listen. I’m going to need you to calm down, okay? I had no idea your voice GOT so thin, and reedy. Okay: yes. It’s your first show. And it’s really exciting because OH NOES BLAGOES! But I need you to chill, baby, because Mitt Romney, fraud spitting robot-ninny is going to be on and YOU SIMPLY MUST PWN HIM TO WIN YOUR FIRST MEET THE PRESS.

Okay, David Gregory? Anyway, Lisa Madigan, Pat Quinn, and Obama Taint today! Plus Granholm versus Romney. And dorky CEOs! Menaces all!

Lisa Madigan, our Avenging Angel of Justice Meted Out with Brisk Intensity and an Unblinking Eye, Who Tina Fey Shall Also Play, on Saturday Night Live, holds out the hope that Blago will Do The Right Thing (as per Mike Huckabee/Spike Lee) and resign of his own accord on Monday, to spend more time with his foul-mouthed wife, their indictments and their constant and unreasonable demands that other people GIVE THEM THEIR MONEY GIVE IT TO THEM NOW.

By the way, my press coffee turned out quite nicely!

Is there an option for him to resign and continue to get paid, Gregory wonders? Really? We’re concerned about alleviating this guy’s financial worries? Apparently, there is such an option. Madigan says, “I had heard that one of his main concerns was his financial situation.” I had heard the same thing! It was all over these transcripts released my the U.S. Attorney’s office. Apparently, another one of Blago’s chief concerns is the word “motherfucker.” I share that concern, actually! I guess we are not so different, Blago and I. We both swear, we both need more money, we’re not too happy about the Cubs…at the same time, there are differences. My wife is not a potty-mouthed harridan and I have hair that people respect.

Why is Blago incapable of serving? Madigan says there’s just too much alleged in the Fitz releases to give anyone any confidence that any of his decisions aren’t governed by his rapacious need for scrilla, all of the scrilla, right now and evermore in perpetuity. “From here on out, he’s going to be tainted.”

Does she know more than what we’ve been told, evidencew-wise? Madigan can’t answer that in any way other than to say that her office has been working with PFitz.

What about Madigan’s own political ambitions? She insists that she is not conflicted, saying that she has to uphold the duties of her office. She insists that she has not thought about taking any office herself.

Meanwhile, Pat Quinn, Lieutenant Governor, was at one point telling everyone what an honest and forthright man Blago was. So, what say you, Pat Quinn? Well, apparently after 2006, “things got worse and worse,” as Blago got deep into pay-to-play and kicking Quinn out of his administration (in spirit, I guess). Today, I imagine Quinn is happy about the alienation. Quinn hasn’t talked to Blago since August of 2007! Can you imagine?

Quinn seemed to be in favor of special election for the vacant Senate seat. He now thinks an interim person can fill in between now and that election. Obviously, though! Blago could not appoint this interim Senator!

Madigan is in favor of the special election, because of the taint. THE TAINT!

Woah! Is it just me, or was it weird to learn that Madigan and Quinn had been sitting next to each other all that time? Was there a shot that established that? (REWINDING.) Okay. Yes, there was. Still, that was awfully strange direction!

Some reaction to David Gregory. Emailer Gary Kirk says:

Loved the pregnant pause after Gregory introduced his first guests and they waited for him to actually ask them something. It was sort of a “holy fuck - what do I do now?” moment that made him seem a bit more human that the “Thunderbirds” puppet I usually take him for…

Thunderbirds references are always welcome here.

SickOfTheCrap comments:

Speaking of being disingenous, Jason, the automakers are not fiscally able to keep paying the current rates through 2011. That’s what the whole debate was about. By bringing their wages into line with those of foreign automakers in the US by the end of 2009, it was thought that there was a chance that this could keep the automakers afloat. The UAW appears too short-sighted to see this. At this rate, their employers won’t even be around in 2011.

I’m not averse to what you’re saying, but really, if this comes down to a matter of whether these companies have a few more months of being able to afford a workforce versus several more months of having a workforce…well, the point is that IS NOT REALLY the problem with the automotive industry! The Big Three have deep, endemic problems with virtually every facet of their existence, and they refuse to address them.

Inigo-Jones says:

You own a coffee press but you normally opt for crappy machine brewed coffee? I no longer trust you.

I can understand. But in my defense, it’s a very old and very cheap press. You probably wouldn’t use it, if you had your druthers. (It’s still pretty great, brewing coffee this way. I just need a better press, with a higher yield.)

And now, Mary Mitchell and Chuck Todd - who YES many people think should have gotten the hosting gig - are here to answer questions. The first question he answers is to say that the communication between Rahm and Blago were “perfectly normal” and the only thing the Obama camp has to worry about is if anyone did any dealbrokering. But why the delay from Obama in fully disclosing the contacts? Mitchell thinks it’s a perception problem? She also thinks it’s mindblowing that Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s name not being on Rahm’s list. You’ll forgive me if my mind remains UNBLOWN by that fact. Todd notes that Jackson would have had a hard time holding the seat in 2010, which is why he wasn’t on the list.

What is wrong with politics in Illinois? Hey! Maybe lots of things! But a lot of political machines are happy to not be in the spotlight. Mitchell is maybe onto something when she says that Blago’s greatest sin was getting caught, and in such vulgar fashion. Todd talks about how important it is to follow the connections between Wall Street contributions and connect the dots to lawmakers who allowed things like exotic, nutlog derivatives and who backed bailout giveaways. It’s almost as if Todd is saying, “Well, if I can’t host this show, at least listen to my suggestions!”

David Gregory really appreciates it!

Panel time! Here’s your panel of experts: Mitt Romney, Jennifer Granholm, Carly Fiorina, Erik Schmidt, and Lee Scott. Just what America needs! Inspiring words from CEOs! Just like in the Gospel of John!

Anyway, Granholm says that we didn’t do a good enough job explaining what failure of the Big Three would mean. Which is perhaps true! I think that just so many things are failing right now. She goes on to suggest that the importance of an American domestic auto industry is the lost innovation in the areas of energy independence. “We’ll be replacing a dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on foreign batteries.”

Romney says everyone agrees that they don’t want the auto industry to go away. But there’s a $2000 competitive disadvantage that Detroit faces. So let’s remove that disadvantage by unionizing the Dixie plants, right? Let’s have national health care? Such things makes Mitt cry! Granholm objects! Romney recites thoroughly debunked claims about labor costs.

Eric Schmidt says a bunch of nice stuff about America that he probably pulled from Google’s annual report. David Gregory asks Lee Scott if he’d take over a Big Three company, drawing a lot of dark laughter. Carly Fiorina refuses to talk about any of the things that happened to her when John McCain locked away in the closet, where she could not talk about McCain’s incompetence with the press.

“Credit is unavailable!” Fiorina says, bobbing her head wildly! “Banks are not lending!” Uhm…DUH.

David Gregory: “Governor Romney, you understand the capital markets pretty well…” Wow. I’m going to have to ask for evidence of that claim. Romney says that Americans’ net worth has dropped, somehow. “In the last couple years,” he makes sure to point out. Of course, he suggests that what we need are tax cuts and spending stimulus - but he probably won’t be happy about infrastructural spending, and he’s probably in denial about Obama’s tax cuts. But, hey! He doesn’t say anything like that today! I’m just extrapolating from his days on the stump.

Actually, part of me wonders if Fiorina and Romney maybe want to hurt each other a little.

Eric Schmidt, who advises the transition team, thinks that stimulus could provide a “two-fer,” improve infrastructure AND grow a new energy industry.

I sort of hope Fiorina runs her bull about the Irish corporate tax rates again, for auld lang syne!

Fiorina says she thinks the consumer is important and that job creation is important to consumers, and YEAH, HERE WE GO!!! High U.S. corporate tax rates!

AMERICA! Would you like to have the 12.5% corporate tax rate that the Republic of Ireland has? OF COURSE YOU WOULD! Trust me! You REALLY, REALLY would. Want to know why? As a percentage of GDP, IRELAND RAISES MUCH MORE REVENUE FROM CORPORATE TAX THAN AMERICA DOES. How do the Irish do that? Are they just drunk, all the damn time? Yes, but that’s not the reason! The reason is that despite our nominally high corporate tax rate, there are so many loopholes for corporations to wriggle out of paying, it’s pathetic! In August of 2008, the GAO released a report that noted that two-thirds of corporations operating in the United States did not pay any tax at all.

So, yes. Let us do exactly as the Irish do, please please please! But just note that when you suggest to Carly Fiorina that the drop in tax rate comes with a concomitant closure of these loopholes, she stamps her tiny feet, “No, no. no!”

For more on what a complete bullshit artists Carly Fiorina is, ENJOY.

Romney is now wondering why the President doesn’t do more the frack up the economy in the time he has left.. And now Eric Schmidt is back to just happily talking about how America is awesome, and there’s no other place on earth where he’d rather experience a painful financial crisis, except that he won’t experience any such thing because HE IS THE PRESIDENT OF GOOGLE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

What is everyone watching as far as indicators go? Granholm says consumer confidence and access to credit, so “leaders” should tell sweet little lies about how everything will be fine. Fiorina says there should be conditions attached to bailout monies that require lending. Schmidt says Obama’s stimulus package will bring confidence back to the market. Romney doesn’t want to predict something, because he will be wrong. Lee Scott just wants “Wal-Mart Mom” to be confident. Dave Gregory wants Mitt’s wife to be well, which we all want.

I think the highlight of David Gregory’s first day was when he said President Bush could “tap the TARP,” because that sounded pretty damn dirty.

That will do it for another Sunday. Thanks to everyone who helped to caffeinate me this morning. I hope that this liveblog somehow contributes to your restfulness as well, and everyone here at HuffPo hopes your holiday season is in full, happy swing. See you next week!

Read more: Sunday Morning Talk Shows, Video, Media News

McCain Whacks RNC, Defends Obama Over Blagojevich (VIDEO)

John McCain sideswiped the Republican National Committee on Sunday for the intense focus it has placed on Barack Obama’s relationship (however thin) to Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Saying he was confident that information would be made public regarding the president-elect’s contacts with the embattled Illinois governor — who is accused of putting up Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder — McCain urged his Republican colleagues to keep their political priorities in order.

“I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary,” said the Arizona Republican. “You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary. And so, I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois, but I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.”

McCain’s remarks, delivered during an interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, come amidst a blitz of statements, press releases and web videos from the Republican Party on the Blaojevich subject.

On Sunday alone, the Illinois GOP launched a web site that would reportedly link 12 different state Democrats with the scandal-plagued governor. The RNC, meanwhile, released a web video titled, “Questions Remain,” highlighting Obama’s “evolving explanations” regarding the Blagojevich affair. Last week, RNC Chairman Mike Duncan said Obama was undermining his pledges for transparency and the “moderate-type” campaign that he ran on, by not being forthcoming about his contacts with the Illinois Governor.

For all of this, the complaint issued in the Blagojevich case indicates that Obama had no direct ties to the governor’s pay-for-play scheme. The president-elect has said as much. Moreover, Blagojevich is heard in wiretaps repeatedly cursing Obama and complaining that the transition team was offering only “appreciation.”

McCain, who has almost never been popular within deeply partisan Republican circles, seemed to acknowledge the notion that this is, at its heart, a tale of a corrupt Illinois pol, not some massive entanglement involving Obama that the RNC is insinuating.

Read more: McCain RNC, Obama Balgojevich, Rnc Blagojevich, Blagojevich Affair, This Week Mccain, John Mccain Obama, Mccain Blagojevich, John McCain, Sunday Shows, Mccain Rnc Attacks, Video, Politics News

McCain Campaign Sells Blackberries Filled With Confidential Files

When I found out from Wonkette that the McCain-Palin campaign was holding a firesale of campaign sundries — including teevees and laptops — not far from my neighborhood, I briefly thought about driving over to see what deals there were to be had. My wife talked me out of it, telling me that what she wanted for Christmas was a gift “not drenched in the stink of terrible failure.” As it turns out, I should have gone, because the campaign was selling twenty-dollar Blackberries choked with campaign emails and addresses of GOP bigwigs!

A Fox reporter documented the find:

There were only 10 left. All of the batteries had died. There were no chargers for sale. But people were snatching them up. So, we bought a couple.

And ended up with a lot more than we bargained for.

When we charged them up in the newsroom, we found one of the $20 Blackberry phones contained more than 50 phone numbers for people connected with the McCain-Palin campaign, as well as hundreds of emails from early September until a few days after election night.

We traced the Blackberry back to a staffer who worked for “Citizens for McCain,” a group of Democrats who threw their support behind the Republican nominee. The emails contain an insider’s look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support.

But most of the numbers were private cell phones for campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists.

We called some of the numbers.

“Somebody made a mistake,” one owner told us. “People’s numbers and addresses were supposed to be erased.”

“They should have wiped that stuff out,” another said. But he added, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”

You would think the McCain campaign would have known better, seeing how McCain invented the Blackberry in the first place.

Read more: Blackberry, John McCain, McCain-Palin Fire Sale, Sarah Palin, Politics News

Josh Nelson: Senator Evan Bayh: Friend of Obstructionist Republicans

The 110th congress saw the most obstruction in history, literally. The Republican minority in the Senate forced cloture votes well over 100 times, shattering the previous high mark of 61. Now that Democrats are likely within reach of 60 votes on major progressive priorities like establishing a universal health care system and capping CO2 emissions, Senator Bayh is determined to sabotage his party.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) is trying to mobilize moderate Democratic Senators to form a group based loosely on the House Blue Dog Coalition.

“I think we have a wonderful opportunity to break the gridlock that has existed in Washington for too long,” Bayh said in an interview. “We need to do that in practical ways that will solve problems. The place that will be most important in striking that right balance will be in theSenate.”

To suggest that this move is intended to “break the gridlock” is extremely disingenuous. The intended effect is the opposite. Namely, to support do-nothing Republican Senators in their perpetual quest to make sure the Senate is never able to pass any worthwhile legislation. To borrow a phrase from Yossarian, “The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.” Kagro X explains:

As critical as I’ve been of the Myth of 60, I do recognize that breaking gridlock in the Senate is chiefly a matter of overcoming the filibuster, and that’s done by unifying a bloc of 60 votes on questions of cloture. Following the 2008 elections, Senate Democrats are closer to being able to make that a working reality just among themselves than they have been in decades, and here comes Evan Bayh, declaring that the message of the 2008 results is that it’s time to fracture the largest Senate Democratic Caucus since 1970s and become a thumb-sucking holdout instead.

If Senate Majority Leader Reid had just an ounce of integrity he would at least make an attempt to prevent the formal fracturing of his caucus. This is not the case:

“Nearly a decade of Republican fiscal irresponsibility has contributed to our current economic crisis,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said in an e-mail statement. “That is why Sen. Reid welcomes Sen. Bayh’s decision to form this group. For we know that Sen. Bayh, like all Democrats, is committed to restoring our nation’s fiscal and economic health.”

Steve Benen explains why this is so dangerous at a time when economists of all stripes are in agreement that a major spending package is needed. He writes:

In the House, the Blue Dogs are not only overly cozy with corporate lobbyists, this is a coalition reluctant to embrace a progressive vision on issues like climate change, and committed to a financial plan focused on spending reductions and balanced budgets — precisely when the federal government needs to be doing the opposite.

Unfortunately, given the politics of the Hoosier state, the odds of electing a better Democrat are quite low. Indiana is rated R+7 on the Cook political index. Bayh is incredibly popular in the state, especially for a Democrat. The most recent numbers I’ve seen have his approve/disapprove at 58/32. It is highly unlikely that Bayh will face a significant primary challenge in 2010.

In some ways, having Bayh in the seat is worse than having a Republican. Not only does he seem poised to move even further to the right, but he also provides incredible cover for Senate Republicans whose legislative strategy has been reduced to gumming up the works at every opportunity. It will be hard for Senate Democrats to place the blame squarely on obstructionist Republicans if a group of worthless conservative Democrats led by Senator Bayh is helping them get to 40 on major issue after major issue.

Originally posted at The Seminal.

Pressure Grows On Obama To Push Bush Aside

November’s unemployment numbers have started a fresh round of fretting both over the future of the economy as well as who — in the immediate sense — will steer the country through the crisis.

The political fireworks, such as they are this time of year, were set off yesterday when Rep. Barney Frank and others let it be known that they want Barack Obama to play a more assertive role in solving the mess.

“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank told consumer advocates Thursday. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”

Certainly, the remark was meant more as a criticism of the current White House occupant’s effectiveness than it was of Obama’s cautious approach towards inserting himself into the fray. A veteran of presidential transition’s past, however, says that while the urge to call on Obama to step in immediately is compelling, it is also mistaken — not in the sense that having two cooks in the kitchen would hurt the economic recovery process, but because this crisis, constitutionally, politically and morally, rests in the hands of George W. Bush.

“This thing about one president at a time is not just a saying,” said Mickey Kantor, former Secretary of Commerce under President Bill Clinton. “[Obama] is not president of the United States. He is not. He can do what I think he has done in looking strong and forcefully making statements from time to time — trying to move forward and create the sense that we have the ability to address these issues. But he can’t usurp or fill a vacuum that is existence because the Bush administration has seemingly turned the lights out already. I’m deeply concerned about that, and I’m not saying this in any partisan. But Obama has to be cautious here.”

Frank and other Democrats on the Hill would not dispute the notion that Bush and his crew have largely “checked out.” The current head-scratching move — putting aside the actual policy matters — was a trip made by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to China this week.

“The Secretary of the Treasury is in China right now,” said Sen. Chris Dodd. “It’s time to come home. We’ve got a serious problem on our hands. And I realize that he’s got a meeting over there, but we need him here.”

And yet, concerns that Obama should play a more assertive role are as much immediate in their focus as they are long-term. Among progressives there is an emerging fear that the agenda of the incoming president will be scrapped before it has even begun. The dread has only worsened alongside the economy’s fall 0- whether it be the automotive industry’s impending bankruptcy or unemployment numbers going up by nearly two million in 2008 alone.

Two weeks ago, I asked Kantor whether he thought Obama would have to scrap his presidential blueprint in light of these pitfalls. He responded by saying that the economic crisis, while daunting, would not be insurmountable.

On Friday, he dismissed the notion that things had grown worse since our last conversation, saying he always figured it would be this awful. “It bottoms out, I think, by the first quarter of next year,” he said.

And while he continued to preach optimistically about the possibilities of an Obama White House, he did note that fiscal prudence and restraint would impact the early years of the president-elect’s economic plans.

“[The crisis] will inhibit some things, like how much money he can put immediately in health care, energy, infrastructure. We are going to have a huge budget deficit. The first thing we are going to need is to have a stimulus package… Clearly that is going to happen,” Kantor said. “[Obama] can tackle the budget by bits and pieces in several areas. He is going to be inhibited by his own restraint and understanding that you don’t want to bust a whole in a budget that you can’t recover from.”

Read more: Bush Economy, China Bush, Obama Frank, Paulson China, Obama Economy, Obama Budget, Hank Paulson, Obama Kantor, Mickey Kantor, Barney Frank, Obama Dodd, Politics News

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