Sorry for my absence the past few days, but sometimes life intrudes into blogging and news-reading time.
Democrats in Congress are working on a full-court media press to show that they will not be rubber stamps for President Obama (9 days, people!). They are throwing around words like "constitutional duty" and "checks on the power of the executive." Which is great. But, it would have been really nice if they discovered this urge, oh, about eight years ago.
Also, reaction to the new stimulus details and the continuing Burris drama.
And, I think I may be singlehandedly ruining the environment with all my Google searching...
The headline from the Washington Post this morning: Democratic Congress Shows Signs It Will Not Bow to Obama. I don't expect anyone in Congress to be a rubber stamp for Obama, but how many times did the Democratic Congress bow down to President Bush?
Democrats described two forces as contributing to the less-than-full embrace of Obama out of the gates: a weariness of being taken for granted for eight years by the outgoing Bush administration; and more recently, a sense that the $700 billion bailout for struggling financial institutions known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program was rushed through last fall in two weeks, a de facto abdication of Congress's responsibility.
So what, now that Bush is leaving they suddenly decide they are going to grow some balls? And from the Baltimore Sun:
Sitting at a conference table in his Capitol office, Rep. Steny Hoyer picked up a Capitol Hill newspaper and draped it in front of his face, like a veil.
"I don't work for Obama," declared the front-page headline, in large black type.
The words came from the Senate's top Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada. But Hoyer of Maryland, the number-two Democrat in the House, wanted to echo the sentiment.
Hoyer told a group of journalists seated around the table that while he's excited to see Barack Obama become president, he hopes that the Democratic Congress will live up to its constitutional duty to check the power of the executive.
Um, hello? Where have you been the last eight years? I'm glad they finally decided that they should live up to their duty to be a check on the executive, but I wish they had discovered that urge a little sooner...
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I thought maybe we could finally put the Burris drama behind us after last week, but apparently I was wrong again. Politico reports that Burris is likely to return to Washington this week to demand his seat:
Roland Burris may return to Washington next week to demand that he be accepted as the legitimate Senate appointee to replace President-elect Barack Obama and be sworn into office, according to a Burris adviser.
If Burris' appointment is not accepted, he will file a lawsuit challenging Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership's refusal to seat him, the adviser said.
Burris now has a certification from the Illinois Secretary of State, so I don't think Reid has much to stand on if he continues to deny Burris the seat. (Although, the Chicago Tribune still thinks Congress has legal standing to deny Burris the seat.) The longer this thing is drawn out, the worse it gets. But, I should never underestimate the Congressional Democrats' abilities to make things worse for themselves.
Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette thinks the Democrats' handling of the Burris situation has been a "public relations disaster" from the beginning. Starting the year on the wrong foot, indeed...
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Cynthia Tucker at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks that Republican concerns over government spending in the stimulus are laughable after their track record the last eight years:
Although many noted economists have recommended a spending bill in the trillion-dollar range, House Minority Leader John Boehner was quick to oppose that price tag. “An $800 billion-to-$1 trillion package, on top of the deficit we already have, you’re adding an awful lot of weight to the debt,” he said last week, adding, “You can’t buy prosperity with more government spending.”
Never mind that many economists say that you can. Never mind that for six free-spending years, the Republican majority rarely met a pork barrel project its members didn’t like or a budget plan that was too costly for their tastes.
But now that a Democrat is set to take the helm and millions of average Americans need help with health insurance or heating bills or groceries, the GOP suddenly worries about spending too much money. Now that experts are recommending Keynesian spending to avert a second Great Depression, Boehner and his cohorts can’t tolerate massive deficits. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
As Tucker rightly points out, Republicans never raised many objections to spending billions and billions of dollars in Iraq, but when you start talking about assistance for average Americans then, suddenly, we are "spending too much." Additionally, the New York Times editorial board argues that stimulus tax cuts for businesses and upper-income Americans will not help the economy.
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In terms of the stimulus, Krugman still thinks the plan is too weak. Jonathan Cohn argues that Obama has left the door open for adding more government spending to the plan down the road:
I may be insufficiently sophisticated in the ways of telegraphing political intentions, but that certainly suggests to me that Obama and his advisers are not closing the door on adding yet more government spending--either in this package or later on, as part of a separate legislative initiative.
Keep in mind that, in a Washington Post op-ed last month, Lawrence Summers, who will be the administration's top economic adviser, wrote that "in this crisis, doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much." We'll see if that mentality pushes the final stimulus levels even higher, one way or another.
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There are rumblings that some campaign promises will have to wait until the Obama administration gets a handle on the economy:
Although Mr. Obama has not publicly identified which priorities will have to wait, advisers and allies have signaled that they may put off renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, overhauling immigration laws, restricting carbon emissions, raising taxes on the wealthy and allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
Rahm Emanuel says goals #1, #2 and #3 are all the same: jobs. Obama is on ABC's This Week this morning and he tells George Stephanopoulos of getting the economy back on track:
"Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game," Obama said.
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The night before the inauguration, Obama will host a dinner honoring John McCain. That seems kind of funny to me for some reason. The purpose of the dinner is to illustrate Obama's commitment to bipartisanship.
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The New York Times is reporting that Paterson and Kennedy had their first formal sit-down about the New York Senate seat:
About 10 potential candidates for the seat, which Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to vacate soon to become secretary of state, have filled out lengthy questionnaires from Mr. Paterson about their work history, finances and other information.
The interview on Saturday is one of several that Mr. Paterson has said he will conduct over the next few days with those interested in the job. Some of them, such as Representatives Steve Israel and Carolyn B. Maloney, Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell and Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, met with Mr. Paterson in previous weeks.
I'm sure Kennedy will be thrilled to know that Sarah Palin thinks she is qualified.
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Speaking of our favorite Alaskan politician, did you hear that story about how Levi Johnston quit his job after it emerged that he did not have the required high school degree? And some wondered whether Palin had anything to do with getting him the job, even though he wasn't qualified? Well, Dan Fagan, the Anchorage Daily News columnist who uncovered the story, is getting a lot of heat:
I questioned whether ASRC might have admitted Johnston ahead of others despite his not meeting the necessary requirements because of his association with Palin. After the column ran, the governor denied she had anything to do with it. That may be true but we will probably never know if ASRC intentionally admitted the unqualified Johnston because of his close ties to the most powerful politician in Alaska even if Palin knew nothing of it.
I thought investigating Johnston's suspicious entry into the ASRC program was a legitimate use of my column. Then the e-mails starting coming in by the truckload.
and:
I guess it is true what they say: Hell hath no fury like a Palinbot scorned.
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The French newspaper Le Monde has published a never-before-seen interview the Obamas gave in 1996 about their marriage. ABC News has a translation. Nothing really newsworthy or earth-shattering, but it is an interesting peek into their life and marriage before Obama's political career took off.
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Given the insane number of Google searches I do, I could singlehandedly be destroying our environment:
Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2. Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
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What's on your mind this morning?