Ezra Klein on Vox
Trump’s rise has driven a rehabilitation of the George W. Bush brand. Bush’s personal decency, his impulse toward tolerance and inclusivity, glows against the backdrop of Trump’s casual cruelty and personal decadence. But the catastrophic misgovernance in which George W. Bush ended his presidency, and Trump ends his first term, reveals the continuity between the two administrations.
"Do you really believe that we lost 18-to-34-year-olds by 19 percent, or we lost Hispanic voters, because we are not conservative enough? No. This is a ridiculous line of thought. The truth is we lost young people because our Republican brand is tainted."It's a good thing he's not up for reelection anytime soon.
-- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the New York Times.
In an interview with ABC News, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) blasted Republicans in Congress for not engaging with President Obama.Huntsman also broke with conservatives on civil unions recently. The conventional wisdom is that he is angling for the GOP nomination in 2012. If this is indeed the case, will he succeed? Or, is his move towards the center premature for a party that seems to be getting more conservative, not less?
Said Huntsman: "You can't just say no. You can't just obstruct or obfuscate. Instead of just kind of grousing and complaining, it would do us all a whole lot of good if we actually started engaging directly in finding compromises and common ground and shared solutions... When you are devoid of the ideas, or the content that would allow you to articulate or paint a better future, you have no choice other than to fall back on 'no, we are not going support it, it cannot be done."
It seems Huntsman is intent on positioning himself as a possible moderate Republican candidate for president in 2012.
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter is switching parties so he can run in the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, abandoning his party because he does not want to be "judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate."
Specter, in a Tuesday afternoon statement, said he knows his supporters will be disappointed but says he is "willing to take all comers" in his Senate race. President Obama called Specter this morning when he heard the news and told the Pennsylvania senator that he's "thrilled" to have Specter on the Democratic side of the aisle.
...She’s an expert on tracking economic outlooks and employment trends. And in a recent report, she estimated that an additional 5 million jobs could be lost this year without an economic stimulus package.Peter Orzag
Through complex calculations, Romer aims to plot who will lose their jobs and, roughly, when. By turning those numbers inside out, however, she says she’s able to isolate the industries to target with stimulus cash to save those jobs...
...Orszag, who wrote and signed the introduction of that CBO report, will now be charged with making sure the Obama administration’s infrastructure projects are implemented quickly and efficiently.Read the entire article here.
He gave up $5 million in unvested stock and a job in finance for the low-paying, high-stress position of chief of staff to Hickenlooper. He left that post to take the helm of an urban school district. Throughout his working life, Bennet has zigged and zagged between seemingly unrelated jobs for which he had no prior experience. And in each case, he left with a measure of success...
After running “the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history,” President Obama’s staffers encountered “a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts” on their first day at their new jobs. “It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
It appears that President Obama will get to keep his Blackberry. More specifically, he’ll get a “spy-proof” alternative that is “reportedly capable of encrypting top secret voice conversations and handling classified documents.”
In 2006, Henshaw was replaced by Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a South Carolina lawyer and former Bush fundraiser who spent years defending companies cited by OSHA for safety and health violations.
Foulke quickly acquired a reputation inside the Labor Department as a man who literally fell asleep on the job: Eyewitnesses said they saw him suddenly doze off at staff meetings, during teleconferences, in one-on-one briefings, at retreats involving senior deputies, on the dais at a conference in Europe, at an award ceremony for a corporation and during an interview with a candidate for deputy regional administrator.
His top aides said they rustled papers, wore attention-getting garb, pounded the table for emphasis or gently kicked his leg, all to keep him awake. But, if these tactics failed, sometimes they just continued talking as if he were awake. "We'll be sitting there and things will fall out of his hands; people will go on talking like nothing ever happened," said a career official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter.
In an interview, Foulke denied falling asleep at work, although he said he was often tired and sometimes listened with his eyes closed...
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever...(H/T: Open Left)
... Across the Middle East, young people like Mr. Fawaz, angry, alienated and deprived of opportunity, have accepted Islam as an agent of change and rebellion. It is their rock ’n’ roll, their long hair and love beads. Through Islam, they defy the status quo and challenge governments seen as corrupt and incompetent.These young people — 60 percent of those in the region are under 25 — are propelling a worldwide Islamic revival, driven by a thirst for political change and social justice. That fervor has popularized a more conservative interpretation of the faith.
“Islamism for us is what pan-Arabism was for our parents,” said Naseem Tarawnah, 25, a business writer and blogger, who is not part of the movement.
Southern and western states are poised to snatch more congressional seats from the rest of the country as Americans pursue open spaces and warmer climates.The nation's migration west and south has slowed, according to new government population estimates. But states in the Northeast and Midwest are still projected to lose political clout in Washington after the 2010 census, when the nation apportions the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, based on population.
Texas stands to be the biggest winner, picking up as many as four seats, while Ohio could be the big loser, giving up as many as two seats, according to projections by two firms that specialize in political apportionment. California is in danger of losing a seat for the first time since it became a state, though experts disagree on the likelihood of that happening.
Some top retired military leaders and some Democrats in Congress are backing William White, chief operating officer of the Intrepid Museum Foundation, to be the next secretary of the Navy - a move that would put the first openly gay person at the top of one of the services.The secretary's job is a civilian position, so it would not run afoul of the ban on gays serving in the military, but it would renew focus on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy as President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office.
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