http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/story?id=6285739&page=1
File for Banktruptcy you GAS guzzling SUCKERS!!
The Politico reports that Barack Obama's administration is starting to looks a lot like Bill Clinton's:
Here's how you can tell the campaign is over and the transition has begun: Barack Obama's aides now wear suits and ties, their desks are in the Federal Building on 6th Street in Washington, D.C.--and Clintonites are everywhere. Obama's victory in the general election produced what his primary campaign couldn't: A swift merger of the Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party with the Illinois Senator's self-styled insurgency. The merger began, during the campaign, in the policy apparatus--which is now rapidly becoming the governing apparatus.The absorption of the Clinton government in waiting represents Obama's choice not to repeat what he and his advisors see as an early mistake made by the last two presidents: Attempting to wield power in Washington through an insular campaign apparatus new to town....While only one pure Clintonite, former White House Chief of Staff Podesta, has been added to the Obama inner circle, the shift in Obama's universe is not to be understated. From the top down, his early choices reflect an openness, and even a warmth, to the veterans of 1990s governance. It's a shift from a campaign that in the primary explicitly attacked President Clinton's tenure as a time of partisan strife and missed opportunities....Thirty-one of the 47 people so far named to transition or staff posts have ties to the Clinton administration, including all but one of the members of his 12-person Transition Advisory Board and both of his White House staff choices.
Obama's victory in the general election produced what his primary campaign couldn't: A swift merger of the Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party with the Illinois Senator's self-styled insurgency. The merger began, during the campaign, in the policy apparatus--which is now rapidly becoming the governing apparatus.
The absorption of the Clinton government in waiting represents Obama's choice not to repeat what he and his advisors see as an early mistake made by the last two presidents: Attempting to wield power in Washington through an insular campaign apparatus new to town.
...
While only one pure Clintonite, former White House Chief of Staff Podesta, has been added to the Obama inner circle, the shift in Obama's universe is not to be understated. From the top down, his early choices reflect an openness, and even a warmth, to the veterans of 1990s governance. It's a shift from a campaign that in the primary explicitly attacked President Clinton's tenure as a time of partisan strife and missed opportunities.
Thirty-one of the 47 people so far named to transition or staff posts have ties to the Clinton administration, including all but one of the members of his 12-person Transition Advisory Board and both of his White House staff choices.
If Barack Obama appoints Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, it will send a cynical message to his supporters: that change is something they can still only hope for. Because if Obama relies on this unqualified Washington insider to fill one of the most important positions in his ‘outsider’ administration, it will represent neither change nor hope, just more of the same.
Instead of “Yes, We Can,” Obama will be touting loud and clear: “No, we won’t.”
A Clinton appointment would replace the audacity of hope with the audacity to shamelessly break campaign promises.
As a president without any experience in foreign affairs himself, Obama needs a seasoned partner at State. And Hillary Clinton is definitely not that person - neither in substance nor in style.
Hillary Clinton is the epitome of the entrenched Washington political establishment that Obama so effectively challenged and so thoroughly disdained. That’s what makes her consideration so puzzling. But it’s not just her old politics that should immediately disqualify her. With her out-of-control husband freelancing with foreign governments to raise money for his cronies, his foundation, and for speaking fees for himself, the potential for serious conflicts of interest are incalculable and dangerous. We don’t know precisely what the former president has been up to; it’s all secret. For more than eight years, Bill Clinton has adamantly refused to disclose the fat-cat donors to his library and foundation. Because of a computer error in the Clinton Library, the New York Sun inadvertently learned that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, the U.A.E, Kuwait, and Morocco have chipped in. But what about other governments or businesses?
Can we actually afford to have a Secretary of State whose husband secretly raises money from foreign governments who have strong interests in U.S. foreign policy decisions? That’s what we’d have with the Clintons.
For Obama to choose Hillary would mean that he was ignoring the long overdue and strict ethical and professional standards that he claims will be imposed on all appointees.
Or is Hillary going to have a separate standard of her own? A substantially lower one? Already, it appears that the Obama rule that “if you leak, you’re gone” doesn’t apply to Hillary.
But does anyone really believe that Obama would appoint any other person to State whose spouse had publicly endorsed a controversial foreign leader for a U.N. position that the State Department opposed? That’s just what Clinton did in the corrupt former Soviet state of Kazakhstan, where human rights violations are rampant. Clinton used his prestige as former President to set up a dinner meeting for Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra with President Nursultan Nazarbayev, known best for eliminating all opposition in his country. Giustra wanted to buy some of the country’s valuable uranium rights. Although he had no experience in this region, two days later, Giustra was awarded a contract which the New York Times termed a “monster deal…[that] suddenly transformed the company into the world’s largest uranium producers.” During his very short visit, Clinton publicly promoted Nazarbayev for chairman of a U.N. committee - a position that the United States government, and his own wife, had vehemently opposed. That didn’t stop Bill. And, it worked out well for him and his pal. After the deal was closed, Clinton’s foundation received a $31 million contribution from Giustra and a pledge of another $100 million and half of all of his future mining profits. That’s not peanuts. It was a win-win situation for everyone - except for the United States government’s interests.
Question: Did Kazakhstan also contribute to Clinton’s foundation? And, if so, what did they want in return for it?
Because there’s more: While Hillary was a presidential candidate, Giustra arranged a meeting with a Kazakhstan government representative and Clinton at his Chappaqua home to discuss the government’s plan to buy a 10% stake in Westinghouse. Now why would they want to talk to Bill about that? Did they feel that they had a special entrée to the former president? Sounds like it. Clinton initially denied any such meeting, but later admitted it after the government representative, who had coincidentally also handled the uranium matter, produced a photo clearly showing him at the Clinton home with the former president.
Is this what the husband of a Secretary of State - or even a Senator - should be doing? Clandestinely meeting with representatives of oppressive regimes? Was he advising them about how to finesse their investment? The public needs to know what this was all about.
Because one thing is for sure: Bill definitely won’t change and there’s no telling who else he’s been hitting up for money.
Remember his partnership with the Emir of Dubai and his other billionaire buddy Ron Burkle? He’s already made more than $10 million on that deal and was secretly advising Dubai on how to get the Port Deal approved in Washington while Hillary was publicly opposing it. He helped the anti-Semitic Dubai create a public relations image as a modern Arab state while it kidnapped and enslaved three and four year old male children to use as camel jockeys.
He’s lobbied for other favorite projects, too. After he was paid $800,000 for speeches by Colombian Free Trade interests, the former president picked up the phone and called several democratic congressmen to advocate passage of the treaty. He’s never registered as a lobbyist or a foreign agent, but that hasn’t stopped him. Nor will it in the future.
The potential problems are obvious.
The husband of a Secretary of State cannot be in business with the head of a foreign country with growing interests in the U.S.
Instead of a rogue co-president, Clinton would be a rogue co-Secretary of State. And that’s something Obama can’t afford.
But aside from being the poster child of the status quo, Hillary is simply not qualified for the job. She has no foreign policy credentials, other than visiting eighty countries as First Lady, where she usually toured schools and hospitals with no diplomatic missions. And, of course, we know her assertions about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia and playing an important role in the Irish Peace Process were just fantasies.
Some commentators suggest that the Secretary of State position has become a “woman’s” seat and that Hillary is the logical next Secretary. But the previous women, Albright and Rice, were not ingénues who needed on the job training. Both were experienced diplomats with PhD’s in their fields. Hillary had none of this background. She didn’t even have national security clearance at the Clinton White House. Obama needs more than this.
Finally, the colossal leaking by Clinton and her allies of her likely appointment, designed to box the President-elect into a corner, should teach Obama a lesson: the Clintons will try to outflank him on every turn and undermine him when he gets in their way. These are no partners for a new president to have on a world stage.
So is the champion of hope and change going to appoint the woman that he derided as the ultimate apostle of the status quo, whose husband travels the world trailing clouds of conflicts of interest in his wake?
Isn’t that just what the old politicians would do?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15617_Page2.html
Barack Obama ran for the White House as the consummate Washington outsider.
Hillary Clinton, his chief rival for the Democratic Party's nomination, by contrast promised "readiness", based largely on her experience as a White House insider during her husband's period in office.
"It took one Clinton to clean up after the first George Bush," she used to say in her stump speeches. "It'll take another Clinton to clean up after this one."
Mrs Clinton lost the battle for the nomination, and her rival went on to win the general election.
But is he now re-assembling Bill Clinton's governing team from the 1990s?
And will the Obama White House be similar to Mr Clinton's - but with a different man in the Oval Office?
Polarised camps
Mr Obama's inner circle during the election campaign was full of people who had never joined the Clinton club in the 1990s.
David Axelrod, Mr Obama's chief strategist, was a veteran of Chicago politics, having worked for a succession of Chicago mayors in the 1990s, as well as on Mr Obama's senate campaign in 2004.
And the other David - David Plouffe, Mr Obama's campaign manager - had worked for the Democratic leadership in the US House of Representatives during the Clinton years, at a time when many House Democrats were getting frustrated with President Clinton for his perceived centrism and missed opportunities.
A number of other senior staffers had a background in the offices of congressional big-hitters Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt.
Most of the Clinton-era political superstars had naturally gravitated towards Mrs Clinton's campaign, but the lack of Clintonites on Mr Obama's staff had the effect of polarising the two camps.
And, at times, Mr Obama was less than complimentary about Mr Clinton's time in office.
"Through Democratic and Republican administrations, it hasn't gotten better for regular folks," he said at a rally in California before the state's primary in February.
And his attacks on "triangulation" and "special interests" - which were central to his campaign message - were viewed as digs at the Clinton years, just as much as they were seen as criticisms of George W Bush.
Clinton veterans
Now that the divisive primary campaign is over, however, and with a general election victory under his belt, Mr Obama has begun reaching out to the Clinton camp - and, most significantly, staffing his transition team with former Clinton insiders.
Although David Axelrod is still on board, the most prominent figures in the transition are both veterans of the Clinton era: Rahm Emanuel, who will serve as Mr Obama's White House chief of staff, was a deputy chief of staff in the 1990s; and John Podesta, one of the co-chairs of Mr Obama's transition team, was Mr Clinton's chief of staff from 1998 to 2001.
All in all, 31 of the 47 transition or staff posts that Mr Obama has filled so far have gone to people with ties to the Clinton administration, Politico has reported.
Eleven of the 12 members of his Transition Advisory Board are Clinton veterans.
And, according to officials quoted by a number of US media outlets, Mr Obama is even considering picking the biggest Clinton insider of them all - Hillary Clinton - as his Secretary of State.
Mr Obama's embrace of former Clintonites is - like his earlier eschewal - partly born of necessity.
If Mr Obama wants to get advice from Democrats with White House experience, then the only resource he really has is the Clinton White House.
Mr Clinton, because the preceding Democratic president had served such a long time before him, did not himself have access to the expertise that Mr Obama has at his disposal.
As a result, Mr Clinton's team lacked experience - and many observers cite this as the chief reason for the perceived missteps in the early years of his administration.
Mr Obama is attempting to learn from his predecessor's mistakes, and draw on the Democratic Party's well of expertise.
Anger
But can this team of rivals and veterans really deliver the "change" that Mr Obama promised his supporters on the campaign trail?
When Mr Emanuel was appointed, some of Mr Obama's allies on the left expressed alarm.
Mr Emanuel is known as something of a centrist in the party, and he fought hard in the 1990s for the Nafta trade deal, opposed by many on the populist wing of the party.
Similarly, if Mr Obama were to appoint Mrs Clinton as Secretary of State, it could anger those in the party who objected to her stance in favour of the Iraq war.
So will Mr Obama's administration be a retread of the Clinton years?
History tells us that presidents who appoint veteran advisers do not always turn out to be repeats of their predecessors, says Jonathan Chait of the New Republic magazine.
"When George W Bush ascended to the presidency in 2000, there were numerous stories about the proliferation of veterans of his father's administration, and whether this signaled that his would be a repeat," he tells me.
"This proved - here I am understating - not to be the case."
It is unsurprising that Mr Obama has chosen to tap the Clinton talent-pool for his transition team. It is a pragmatic, common-sense move.
But it could be a sign that the differences between the rival camps during the primary were overstated.
Ultimately, the proof that Mr Obama is changing Washington will come not from his staffing picks - but from the policies his White House adopts.
By appointing experienced hands, he has certainly shown that he means to push through his agenda - which may yet prove to be more liberal than Mr Clinton's - using the best possible talent at his disposal.
We all got fu*ked with the CHANGE SHIT.......
Eric H. Holder Jr., former deputy attorney general under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration, is being considered for attorney general in President-elect Barack Obama's administration.
Mr. Holder has a history of being sponsored for prominent positions by presidents of both parties. He was appointed a United States attorney and then deputy attorney general by President Clinton. For the previous five years, he served as a judge on the District of Columbia Superior Court, a post to which he was nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Holder worked for 12 years with the Justice Department's Public Integrity section, prosecuting misconduct by state officials, judges, F.B.I. agents and a Federal prosecutor. In recent years, he has worked as a partner at Covington & Burling, representing big-name clients like the National Football League, Chiquita Brands International and Merck.
Mr. Holder, as deputy attorney general, did not play a direct role in President Bill Clinton’s controversial pardon of Marc Rich, the fugitive financier, who in 1983 fled to Switzerland rather than face tax evasion charges. But when queried about his view of the pardon, Mr. Holder told the White House he was “neutral, leaning towards favorable.” The comment was later seized on by Democrats to defend the pardon and by Republicans to blast Mr. Holder for endorsing what became the most heavily criticized pardon of Mr. Clinton’s presidency, in part because it turned out that Mr. Rich’s former wife, Denise Rich, donated large amounts of money to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library.
Mr. Holder is close to Valerie Jarrett, an Obama confidant and co-chairwoman of the Obama transition team. During the campaign, Mr. Holder was part of a vice-presidential advisory team that helped pick Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as Mr. Obama’s running mate.
Born Jan. 21, 1951, in the Bronx and raised in New York City, Mr. Holder attended public schools and graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School.
I am already regretting my vote and support for Obama to see all the Clinton Jokers taking over.
Eric Holder, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and longtime ally to Barack Obama, is under “strong consideration” to be Obama’s attorney general, a Democratic official said Tuesday. Newsweek reported Tuesday that Obama had decided to tap Holder for the job. But this official said that an offer had neither been made or accepted. Transition aides also cautioned that a Holder appointment is “not necessarily a done deal.” But there are abundant signs that Holder is being eyed with intense interest by the Obama team. Transition officials have talked with Senate Republicans about whether they would stall Holder's confirmation because of his role in the controversial 2001 pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. There is no evidence that Holder actively supported the pardon, but he was criticized for not alerting the White House to strong objections to it among some Justice Department lawyers and federal prosecutors in New York.
The Senator speaks to reporters following his colleagues' decision to let him keep his Homeland Security chairmanship.
Expresses regret for some of the negative things he said about Obama during the campaign, says "this is a new chapter."
And/But: He is stripped of his chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works subcommittee.
