A Clinton Administration?

By Tom Engelhardt

No one should be shocked to discover that, in his transition to the presidency, the "inexperienced" former senator from Chicago has turned to the last Democratic administration that had experience in Washington. It seems, however, that the Obama team is doing so big time. Looking at lists of early appointees for the transition period and the administration to come, from Rahm Emanuel on down, you might be forgiven for concluding that Hillary had been elected president in 2008. Clintonistas are just piling up in the prospective corridors of power.

You might also be forgiven for concluding that just about no one else in America had ever had any "experience." Late last week, the website Politico.com did some counting and came up with the following: "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." More have been appointed since then, including, as White House Counsel, Gregory Craig, the lawyer who defended Bill Clinton in impeachment hearings, and evidently as Attorney General, Eric Holder, who worked in the Clinton Justice Department. And, of course, everyone in America now knows that Hillary herself is being considered for a cabinet post.

What do Washington political and policy types do when their party is kicked out of office? If they want to stay in the Big Town, they tend to go to work for lobbyists, consultancy firms, or think tanks. They raise money. They do what's needed and make good livings until the tide turns. Now, that tide is again rushing in -- and the lobbying money is, of course, rushing in with it. As the Washington Post has described it, there is already a "mini-boom" for Democrats along that lobbying alley, K Street.

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November 19, 2008

McCain's Favorite TV Show, '24,' Brings Torture Back Sunday

By Jon Wiener

John McCain's favorite TV show, 24 -- the one that glorifies torture - is returning to Fox TV this Sunday night with a two-hour special.

McCain named 24 as his favorite show on his Facebook page. The show has done more to advance the Bush White House defense of torture than anything else in the American media. According to its "ticking time bomb" scenario, the only way to stop terrorists from exploding a nuclear weapon in the heart of an American city is to torture them into revealing their fiendish plot.

During the campaign McCain was asked by a reporter which celebrity he most identified with. "It's Jack Bauer," he replied -- the Kiefer Sutherland character who does most of the torturing. "We have a lot in common." And in 2007 he talked about 24 on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: "I watch it all the time," he said. "I'm sort of a Jack Bauer kind of guy."

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November 18, 2008

No Moderate Cabinet

By Laura Flanders

The President-elect is still selecting his cabinet. He's met with Hillary Clinton who's said to be under consideration for Secretary of State and more former Clinton administration officials have been named to top posts.

Gregory Craig will probably get the headlines. He is to be White House counsel. Craig led Bill Clinton's legal team through the 1998 impeachment proceedings. But also on board the new administration will be Ronald Klain. Klain, who's to be Chief of Staff to the Vice President previously served as Vice President Al Gore's Chief of Staff and as a lobbyist for among others the failed mortgage giant Fannie Mae, the media giant Time Warner, and the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, a business group that sought government help resolving asbestos lawsuits.

It's all well and good, we're told. Obama's assembling a cabinet like Lincoln's - moderate and bi-partisan. But bi-partisanship when it comes to things like settling Asbestos suits is the kind of "bi-partisanship" with corporate America that makes people sick -- and not just for political reasons

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November 18, 2008

Will Afghanistan Become Obama's War?

By Tom Engelhardt

One of the eerier reports on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan appeared recently in the New York Times. Journalist John Burns visited the Russian ambassador in Kabul, Zamir N. Kabulov, who, back in the 1980s, when the Russians were the Americans in Afghanistan, and the Americans were launching the jihad that would eventually wend its way to the 9/11 attacks… well, you get the idea…

In any case, Kabulov was, in the years of the Soviet occupation, a KGB agent in the same city and, in the 1990s, an adviser to a UN peacekeeping envoy during the Afghan civil war that followed. "They've already repeated all of our mistakes," he told Burns, speaking of the American/NATO effort in the country. "Now," he added, "they're making mistakes of their own, ones for which we do not own the copyright." His list of Soviet-style American mistakes included: underestimating "the resistance," an over-reliance on air power, a failure to understand the Afghan "irritative allergy" to foreign occupation, "and thinking that because they swept into Kabul easily, the occupation would be untroubled." Of present occupiers who have stopped by to catch his sorry tale, Kabulov concludes world-wearily, "They listen, but they do not hear."

The question is: Does this experience really have to be repeated to the bitter end -- in the case of the Soviets, a calamitous defeat and retreat from Afghanistan, followed by years of civil war in that wrecked country, and finally the rise of the Pakistani-backed Taliban? The answer is: perhaps. There is no question that the advisers President Obama will be listening to are already exploring more complex strategies in Afghanistan, including possible negotiations with "reconcilable elements" of the Taliban. But these all remain military-plus strategies at whose heart lies the kind of troop surge that candidate Obama called for so vehemently -- and, given the fate of the previous 2007 U.S./NATO "surge" in Afghanistan, this, too, has failure written all over it.

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November 17, 2008

Obama's Political Capital

By Ari Melber

After years of secrecy, Barack Obama's aides are finally dishing on the most powerful asset in his campaign arsenal.

Obama's aides always refused to discuss the campaign's massive email network, which shattered fundraising records and recruited the largest fleet of volunteers in the history of American politics. In 2004, John Kerry's list hit three million, and some estimated Obama's list could top five million. That would make it double the size of the largest email lists in U.S. politics, including older web groups like MoveOn. It turns out those estimates weren't even close.

Obama's list now tops a whopping ten million people, according to today's Washington Post.

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November 10, 2008

California Initiatives: Go Figure

By Jon Wiener

In California's wild world of ballot initiatives, the chickens defeated the egg factory owners, and an anti-abortion parental notification proposition was defeated.

Prop. 8, the ban on gay marriage, is winning 52-48 with 95 per cent reporting: see our separate coverage today by Richard Kim.

California's anti-abortion/parental notification initiative is losing, 52-48, with 95 percent of precincts reporting. The campaign was deeply dishonest – proponents called their proposition "Sarah's Law," supposedly in honor of a 15-year-old girl who died from an abortion gone wrong 14 years ago, an abortion where the parents were not notified. As the LA Times pointed out in an editorial, "Much of that is false. The girl's name wasn't Sarah; she lived in Texas, not California; and though she was 15, she already had a child and was in a common-law marriage, which means she wouldn't have been covered by the law Californians are being asked to consider."

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November 5, 2008

Life After Election Day

By Jon Wiener

No more Todd, no more Track, no more Bristol.

No more Jon Stewart.

No more Colbert Report.

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November 5, 2008

Streaming Live: Democracy Now! Reports the Returns

By Richard Kim

Our friends at Democracy Now! host a special five-hour Election Night broadcast from 7PM to midnight EST, with results as they come in. The program will include on-the-ground reports from across the country, reactions from across the globe, and in-depth commentary. Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez and Jeremy Scahill host; guests include Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, Melissa Harris Lacewell, Roberto Lovato, John Nichols, Laura Flanders, Robert Scheer, Howard Zinn, Tim Robbins, Michael Moore, Bill Perkins, Vincent Harding, Robert Scheer, Mark Crispin Miller, David Sirota and many more.

Watch the webcast:

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November 4, 2008

Prop 8: What’s at Stake

By Richard Kim

It's a bright, sparkling Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, and about a thousand people of all hues and ages are flocking to the south lawn of City Hall. The majority of the crowd is Chinese, but there's a sizable group of Latinos and pockets of South Asians, Koreans, Vietnamese and Indonesians. There are only a handful of black people, but they flow with ease through the throng. There are a few conspicuous white guys in suits too, cloistered around the stage where a band plays sing-along tunes. The mood is buoyant, affectionate. There are balloons and banners everywhere; a jolly Chinese mother cuts up a cake; snapshots are taken; cars honk. People gather in family clusters; grandparents play with children--who make up about half the crowd.

It's the happiest, most diverse political event I've ever been to, and it's not for Barack Obama. It's for Proposition 8--the California ballot initiative that would eliminate the right of gays and lesbian to marry, which some 14,000 same-sex couples have exercised since the state Supreme Court ruled in their favor earlier this summer. Here and now at City Hall, where a good share of those same-sex weddings took place, there's not a single Obama or McCain button in the mix. Instead, everyone is wearing red t-shirts that proclaim in both English and Chinese--Protect Marriage. Yes on 8. The toddlers' shirts have an added touch: I Love My Mommy and Daddy.

When I ask people whom they'll vote for, a few say McCain; a few more say Obama. But the vast majority say, "Yes on 8."

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November 4, 2008

The Undecideds: What's Their Problem?

By Jon Wiener

Undecided voters--"or, as I call them, morons," Bill Maher says--remained a stubborn five or six percent of the electorate as the polls reported final results yesterday. Obama and McCain each have spent tens of millions on TV ads to persuade them, and thousands of hours of door-to-door canvassing to talk to them face to face.

What's their problem? The undecideds have been staring at the menu now for almost a year--why haven't they made up their minds?

In fact the "undecideds" include at least four different groups:

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November 4, 2008