President-elect Barack Obama has picked Tim Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rather than former Harvard University president Larry Summers, as Treasury secretary. That makes it unlikely that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who worked for Summers when he ran the Treasury for Bill Clinton, will return to Washington.
Barack Obama was elected just a few weeks ago, and he does not take office until late January. But everyone is so excited! He got his transition website up and running right away, and everyone in America immediately clicked on the "jobs" tab, because everyone in America needs a job. Sorry, guys—they've already received 200,000 applications. Which is unprecedented for an incoming administration. We did the research! In December of 2000, right after it finally became clear that George W. Bush would be our next president and the world was therefore doomed, the New York Times reported that there was a surge of applications for jobs in his administration too. That surge was totally pathetic, though, in retrospect:
The Wall Street Journal reports that Barack Obama has picked New York Fed president Timothy Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary, at least according to "a person close to the transition process." This makes him both Obama's cutest potential cabinet member thus far, as well as the man responsible for figuring out a way to prevent us all from being homeless this time next year. [WSJ]
Barack Obama had to give up his Blackberry, as we all know, because presidents can't leave paper trails anymore (thanks, Nixon). Now comes news that some Verizon employees "accessed and viewed President-elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone account." They checked out who he called, and who called him, just for kicks it seems like. Huh. How would they even recognize Bill Ayers' number? Anyway all the employees have been suspended and some of them will face "disciplinary action," according to Verizon's CEO. Because you are simply not allowed to just violate a person's privacy by peeking at their phone records, unless of course the government wants these records, in which case hand 'em over, warrant or no, and don't sweat getting sued.
Michael Kinsley argues that Barack Obama, smoker, claims he quit smoking, but probably didn't quit smoking. Kinsley makes the very good point that why the hell does Barack Obama need to quit smoking? We elected him because he's so cool and calm, the last thing we should do is take away his cigarettes. Not mentioned: why do we never see our smoking politicians smoke anymore? No photographs! How can a man be followed around by cameras essentially non-stop for two years without someone snapping a photo of him bumming a smoke? Everyone's in the tank! (Of course, it doesn't matter anyway, as Barack Obama is not even eligible to be president. It's true!) (It's not true.)
As Lewis Black harangued about last night on The Daily Show, there is some seriously silly newly-minted Barack Obama merchandise. Like those horribly cheesy collectible plates, and all the newspapers in the land that have become "November 5th Edition" souvenir stores. And now, from beautifully blue Michigan, come the tiniest and perhaps most "really reaching here, guys" of Obama-associated products. They're called Nanobamas and they're each smaller than a grain of sand. And, OK, they're not technically for sale, but they're still weird! A mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan created the minuscule Obama portraits "to raise awareness of nanotechnology and science." Yes, there needs to be more awareness of science! Like about what science is and why it can be used, for some reason, to make wee portraits of our newest president-elect. The coolest part of the whole project, though? How cool everyone who worked on them is:
Today is the Great American Smoke Out, the perfect day to speculate, as Michael Kinsley has in today's Washington Post, that it's doubtful that Barack Obama has really managed to kick the habit: "If Obama actually has accomplished the miracle of giving up cigarettes at the apogee of a presidential race, he should be happy to let us know this and add to his superman image." But Kinsley appears willing to forgive him for his sins: "Obama's steely calm is now one of our country's major assets. If he needs an occasional cigarette to preserve it, let's hand him an ashtray, offer him a light and look the other way." [WaPo]
America, as we've learned, has a big PR problem. The rest of the world doesn't like us so much! Our current president is something of a laughingstock, you see, and we have this problem with expecting others to live up to the ideals we espouse as we fail to live up to them ourselves. You can see how that might bug people, right? Thankfully we're done with the Bush administration. Listen to how little Bush is respected by the Russians and French:
The Wall Street Journal invited Rahm Emanuel to address some business leaders and invite them to, uh, advise the incoming president about what he needs to do. Because you know who don't get enough input into how the world is run? Corporate executives. It didn't matter, though, because Rahm just said, basically, "fuck it, we'll do it live." Universal health care? Full speed ahead! The Journal describes Emanuel as being "combative with a business audience." He wouldn't say they'll give the unions everything the unions want, but he wouldn't say they wouldn't either. He pinned the blame squarely on the assembled corporate types, of course, for fucking over the middle class for twenty years.
"Hillary Clinton will be the next secretary of state, unless she’s not." That's what John Koblin wrote last night in The Observer. Has the story advanced since then? Nope. Obama offered—but not formally offered—Hillary the job. She's considering. They're vetting Bill. Bill promised to stop taking money from foreigners. Hillary hasn't accepted because it hasn't been offered formally. Ted Kennedy wants Hillary to stay in the Senate. And hey, the news-starved press dragged Obama into the Clinton drama machine! As we all remember, the Democratic primaries were way more fun than the general election. A black guy versus a woman! The Clinton Machine versus Hope! Jeremiah Wright! Shouty angry Bill! Snipers in Bosnia! Bittergate! Whee! Once Hillary conceded, the Democrats closed ranks and the Obama machine stopped playing with the press entirely. McCain's campaign didn't get interesting until Palin showed up and didn't get fun until they all began infighting. But just like everyone had to make up some news about Bill not loving Obama enough during the primaries, now everyone has to figure out what the Clintons are up to with this SecState nonsense. It's fun to speculate about which sneaky Clinton players are leaking what to whom, and is Bill's camp pushing it, and does Obama know what he's getting into? In truth, Obama probably just told Hillary the job was hers if she wanted it, depending on how Bill's vetting goes, and she's weighing her options now that Bill's seemingly acquiescing to Obama administration requests. Meanwhile, Tom Daschle just agreed to head Health and Human Services and act as Health Care czar and no one cares! As we've said, we've never been convinced that Hillary has any particular insight or expertise, foreign-policy-wise, or at least any more than any other Senate Democrat (and why pick from the Armed Services committee and not Foreign Relations?). We quite like her views on domestic policy. And with Ted Kennedy on the way out, it would be awesome if she spearheaded the Senate side of the upcoming sure-to-be-insane health care war. But she wouldn't be a bad Secretary of State, and she'd surely run a better State Department than Rice and Powell did. So sure, go for it. But on the whole, the media's going to need a new way to cover the Obama administration, as this has just been madness.
Everyone in the world is thrilled that America elected Barack Obama! There was dancing and American flag-waving on streets that more recently have been burning American flags (both abroad and in San Francisco). It looks like America will have a President who'll, you know, be diplomatic and respect international law and maybe not be so much of a terrible American stereotype! This is all bad news for terror network al-Qaeda, who rely on American aggression and foreign affairs incompetence to keep that anti-Western fervor up. So they quietly talked up a John McCain presidency on their message boards while publicly endorsing Barack Obama in order to pull the old reverse psychology trick they tried against Kerry. It didn't work! So now they're just calling Obama names. They released a stupid video, of course, in which Ayman al-Zawahiri calls Obama a "house negro" and quotes Malcolm X! They have some legitimate policy grievances with Obama, of course, because while the Bush strategy was to use the 9/11 attacks as a pretense to go ahead with a pre-planned invasion of non-al-Qaeda secular dictatorship Iraq, the Obama plan is to go back into Afghanistan—and Pakistan!—and kill all of them. (Bush thought this plan so clever he secretly instituted it himself at the very, very end of his presidency.) Still, even with the threat of ramping up that particular war, Obama is simply not a very good recruiting tool for Islamic Extremists! So they are kinda reduced to just needling the President-elect, with this Malcolm X talk. Obama, of course, has written at length of reading Malcolm X: "Only Malcolm X's autobiography seemed to offer something different. His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me." Who knew al-Qaeda seconds-in-command were reading Dreams From My Father? But, of course, their invocation of Obama as a "house Negro" is a total misreading. As Malcolm said:
It was odd, wasn't it, that Britain's Guardian, of all publications, was first to report Hillary Clinton planned to become Barack Obama'sSecretary of State? The paper's DC bureau chief, according to today's Observer, "said... his source said he could use the information as long as he didn’t source it." One tipster of ours, apparently speaking speculatively, is certain the source has to be Sidney Blumenthal, who was a senior unpaid campaign advisor to Clinton during her campaign, was an aide in Bill Clinton's White House and — key detail — has a column at the Guardian, presumably handled by the DC bureau, since that's where he lives.
Citing "several" anonymous people close to Hillary Clinton, Politico reported the Democratic senator is still weighing whether to accept the job of Secretary of State, should it be offered. That contradicts a report in yesterday's Guardian that Clinton planned to accept such an offer from Barack Obama offer once the president-elect's team was done vetting her husband, the former president. Hillary might want to stay in the senate and help fix health care instead, her people tell Politico. Translation: there's no formal offer yet, and also no way in hell Hillary Clinton is going to let people think her future is at the whim of That One's "fairytale" administration:
Guess who the new Attorney General will be? Eric Holder! He was an assistant AG back in—wait for it—the Clinton Administration! Yay, change! Hah, see, this is what happens when you only had an eight year vacation from your 40 years of desert wandering. Holder will help close Guantanamo Bay. Thankfully, Holder has a lot of experience freeing evil criminals, because he totally signed off on the Marc Rich pardon! Let's all take a magical trip back to that wonderful story, shall we? Marc Rich founded Glencore, a commodities supplier that does lots of business with "rogue states" and so on, back in the wild 1970s. Rich was a fantastically wealthy commodities trader and decided one day to evade some taxes and also to do some illegal business with Iran, during the oil crisis. He bought some cheap oil, from Iran, and sold it in the US for double the price. Some of this oil dealing happened while Iran was holding a couple Americans hostage. Whoops! Then Rudy Giuliani indicted him and Marc forgot to come back to America from Switzerland and he ended up on the Most Wanted List for a while. Some time later, Marc's lovely wife Denise donated millions of dollars to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, and she ponied up $450k for the Clinton library. One day, as his presidency ended, Bill pardoned Marc. Denise was thrilled! Some mean Republicans wanted to indict Bill, because honestly they'd just had a lot of fun hounding him for bullshit and were sad to see that wonderful time come to a close. But, you know, the president can pretty much pardon anyone he wants for any reason he wants. Pardoning an asshole millionaire because his socialite wife gave you money is probably more defensible than pardoning Nixon so the nation can heal or whatever. Still, it was gross and dumb, because no one liked Marc Rich besides his wife and some Israeli charities he donated to and the King of Spain. Not even his old lawyer, noted asshole Scooter Libby, actually liked him that much, though he defended the tax evasion, which was, oddly, the thing Bill didn't pardon him for. Anyway! Bill didn't seriously ask anyone in his Justice Department about whether or not he should pardon Marc Rich, but he did ask then-deputy AG Holder for his opinion, and Holder said he was "neutral, leaning towards favorable." So it's all his fault and he will be the worst Attorney General ever, as long as you pretend not to notice that the last three guys to do it have probably been the worst in history, or at least since Ed Meese. The Clinton scandals were fun because no one actually got hurt or was tortured and most American cities survived more or less intact.
Your Gmail sponsored link that will make you hate Democrats of the day: "Mama Voted For Obama." It's precisely the idiotic indoctrinating garbage you think it is, except for this awesome scene of cartoon Obama reenacting the My Pet Goat incident as, presumably, the nation burns. Good work, Mama. The terrorists won. [Little Democrats]
The fun thing about George Bush was that he was stupid, so very stupid, and so we could all complain all the time about how stupid all the people who voted for him were. Americans are fat, lazy morons who watch Two-and-a-Half Men. But now? Now 53% of voters chose our guy! So it would sure be dumb for the Republicans who spent eight years complaining about how liberal elitists have no respect for the gut wisdom and heartland values of Real Americans to now accuse the majority of people who voted for Barack Obama of being complete idiots, right? Not so much, if you're former talk show host John Ziegler! He has a fun new website about how Obama voters can't "correctly" answer loaded, misleading trivia questions about the candidates, which proves that they're stupid, and he has some data from pollster John Zogby to back him up! The site is called "How Obama Won," and it will surely be the "Fuck the South" of the YouTube Generation, except that "Fuck the South" was at least funny, and this is just dumb. Ziegler "randomly selected" 12 Obama voters and proved conclusively that they are all dumb idiots because they didn't know various Republican talking points but they did have vague recollection of bad things said about Republicans. Media bias! Here are the questions Zogby asked of 512 Obama voters:
♦ When Barack Obama mentioned on 60 Minutes that he was reading a book about FDR, what book was he referring to? At least one publisher wants to know. [NYT]
♦ National Geographic is getting into the videogame business. [THR]
♦ Pepsi has dumped its longtime ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, in favor of TBWA/Chiat/Day. [NYT]
♦ Rosie O'Donnell is planning to appear on three episodes of Rachael Ray's cooking show this month. [NYDN]
♦ ESPN has outbid Fox for the broadcast rights to college football's Bowl Championship Series, beginning in 2011. [WSJ]
♦ Maxim has named NBC's Amy Robach as "hottest news anchor." [TVNewser]
♦ Just in time for Christmas, Fox News' Sean Hannity is sponsoring a series of "Freedom Concerts." [HuffPo]
♦ Here's video of a stilted Arianna Huffington filling in for Rachel Maddow on MSNBC last night, in case you missed it. [Gawker]
