Happy Thanksgiving!

I hear you ask, "Falconer, what does the crew of the Starship Enterprise have to be thankful for?"



If they're wearing gold or blue, a whole lot.

If they've got red shirts on, not so much, unless they've got an amusing accent or they're pretty.

Upper Class Scion Makes Good

This is a story of one man's struggle to overcome a system that was keeping him down. He only had a four-year college education and a bachelor's degree in science from a small private college in the centre of Kentucky. They said he couldn't work in NOAA. He proved them wrong.

In one recent example, Todd Harding -- a 30-year-old political appointee at the Energy Department -- applied for and won a post this month at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There, he told colleagues in a Nov. 12 e-mail, he will work on "space-based science using satellites for geostationary and meteorological data." Harding earned a bachelor's degree in government from Kentucky's Centre College, where he also chaired the Kentucky Federation of College Republicans.

That's from a Washington Post article on "burrowing," which I learned about at Pharyngula.

I believe that I was acquainted with Todd Harding while I was at Centre. I think I can recall what he looks like. We didn't interact much, of course; our courses were completely different. But it looks like he was able to schmooze his position in College Republicans into a post that may prove troublesome for Obama.

I'm afraid I am very distressed over this. It can be good to recognize someone in government -- "Hey! It's that guy! I remember a vaguely embarrassing incident in which he was peripherally involved! ... Get me the newspaper's number!" -- but I didn't think anyone I knew at Centre would have gotten into a position that could potentially harm the country in even the slightest way.

Son of Them What Brung Ya

Okay, Obama, Wes Clark is a retired general. He worked tirelessly on your behalf during the general campaign. He was skeptical of the war in Iraq for a very long time, although I'm not sure if he initially supported it or not.

Jim Jones, on the other hand, no, not that Jim Jones, General James Jones, supported John McCain. I'm not sure of his position on Iraq.

And who is it rumor has it is your pick for cabinet? Jim Jones!

Was Wes Clark busy or something? Did he not return your calls? What?

Seriously, Wes Clark is like the Rodney Dangerfield of Democratic retired service people: No respect at all.

Happier Times

I wonder if that desk is still there.

November 22, 1963: Never Any Words

Heads Exploding

Via the incomparable Bob Somerby, here's David Broder, and it is David this time, as quoted by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, regarding Hillary as Secretary of State:

What Obama needs in the person running the State Department is a diplomat who will carry out his foreign policy. He does not need someone who will tell him how to approach the world or be his mentor in international relations. One of the principal reasons he was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war in Iraq was not in American interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton.

Emphasis mine.

Just a short point about that second bold passage, and then on to the meat of the first.

So Obama decided, on his own, that war in Iraq is not in our best interests. That makes me qualified to be a better president than most. Hell, I'd be a better president than Obama because I don't think it's in our best interests to rattle our sabers at Iran until they do something preemptive, or to transfer our soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan, both of which Obama is either implying he'll do or outright stating we ought to do. In short, being right on Iraq is not, IMO, sole qualification and justification for being President; we have to consider everything else. But the AUMF vote has been made the Golden Rule of who's fit to be President, or even a decent person, and who isn't.

All right. Deep breath.

I kind of see David Broder's point. Obama doesn't need Hillary Clinton to advise him on foreign policy. After all, that's one of the reasons he picked Joe Biden as VP: to cover what could be perceived as a weakness on foreign policy. So he doesn't need Hillary telling him about the world as well as Joe.

And what ego! Presuming to tell the President about foreign policy! Why, you'd almost think that's what the Secretary of State is for! But we were mistaken, of course. Obama doesn't need advice or consent, because he is all-knowing! He's Black Jesus! It must take ego to presume to tell Him what to do. After all, he hasn't even completed his first term as Illinois Senator! And then he won the Presidency! We are dealing with an intellect, quite clearly, vast and cool. What can Hillary, who after all was merely First Lady for eight years, and the junior Senator from New York for eight after that, possibly have to tell Black Jesus? He will wrestle with the problems of the world and break them like twigs!



ABOVE: Black Jesus, only, you know, kind of Caucasian, wrestling with the problems of the world.

Give Someone An Excuse

And they'll take it.

They say Obama is considering Dennis Ross for Special Envoy to Iran. According to that link, Ross has spent the past I don't know how many years lobbying Washington for Israel. He's currently backing a paper on "Iranian Nuclear Development" that's being billed as bipartisan but was in fact written by a couple of people who were instrumental in ginning up war with Iraq: Michael Makovsky (in the Pentagon) and Michael Rubin (with Don Rumsfeld). Ross has also been implicated in sabotaging our previous talks with Iran at Camp David II and the 2000 talks in Geneva.

If we want to soothe relations with Iran, appointing an Israel-flogging lobbyist who obviously doesn't want peace in the Middle East is not the way to go about it.

I can understand Obama having to walk big and wave the stick around during the elections; Iran has been a perennial bugbear and they still attacked him with lies about "no preconditions."

But is it wise to appoint someone who's looking for a fight as a special envoy to a country with whom our relations are strained? Isn't that like sending pugnacious emails to someone you've had lots of arguments with recently?

Be Kind; Unwind!

Because the video store doesn't like it when you return your videos all wound up. They'll charge you $5 to destress that copy of Mary Poppins you just handed them.

So sit 'em all down before you take 'em back and let 'em watch this:

Clinton's Big Fault Is He Didn't Fail Upwards

Paul Krugman, via Mom:

Everywhere you look, there’s stuff about Bill Clinton’s donors and all that, often with the implication that there must inherently be something dirty going on, because, well, just because.

But I guess that’s just the way things are. After all, do you remember all the grief President Bush got over his family’s questionable business ties?

Neither do I.

Of course there wasn't any grief. Don't you know Monica changed everything?

(There's also the Whitewater non-issue; a crummy land deal in which the Clintons lost money was part of the national discourse for a couple years, and has ever since irrevocably stained Bill's record. I guess the story here is mostly that Clinton somehow didn't profit from losing all that money, while W made profiting from losing money his career, and thrived at it.)

Holder For Attorney General

Go read Glenn Greenwald if you've got 20 minutes or so.

For those who don't care to click through: Eric Holder has publicly condemned Gitmo, rendition, torture, and indefinite detention; he has said "we let fear take precedence over the rule of law," which is a very good thing to say, I think.

Back in 2002, Holder argued that "given the way in which they ["War on Terror" detainees] have conducted themselves, however, that they are not, in fact, people entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention." Then, after the 2006 Supreme Court ruling that stated the detainees had to be considered eligible under the Geneva Convention and treated accordingly, he said "it was disgraceful that the Supreme Court 'had to order the president to treat detainees in accord with the Geneva Convention.'" So which is it, Eric? Eligible or not?

Eric Holder's hard on marijuana and a staunch supporter of mandatory sentencing. Glenn says it's harder to be harsher on drug offenses than Joe Biden, and Joe's going to be Vice President. He may also have been involved in extraditing Elian Gonzalez.

So, maybe he's going to close Gitmo and stop torturing. If we can sort out whether he thinks our detainees are covered by the Geneva Convention first, maybe we ought to focus on his other problems after we've paid some attention to restoring our good name.