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I spent the past couple of days up at Tea Gardens. A bit of a break – a chance to string a few days of nothing and sleep together really. Broken up by a round of golf. The weather was all over the place. And the only thing that we paid attention to was the unfolding news from Victoria. Horrible and tragic. Then you hear about the volunteer efforts and the donations. I can’t say I’m surprised at all by it – it’s a tradition of this country.

Thomas.

The End of Tom Daschle’s Nomination

Overnight (our time), Tom Daschle’s name was withdrawn from the nomination for the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He owed the taxman money to the tune of $140,000 due to knowingly not reporting income. Which makes him twice as much an idiot as I thought he was when he first hit a snag in the nomination. This guy would have been a great man for the job, especially in crafting a universal healthcare policy for the US. Instead, he gets to sit on the sidelines and watch someone else do it.

The worst part of it all is that he knowingly accepted the nomination under false pretenses. All accounts point  to Daschle only informing the Obama team of his possible tax problems after the public announcement. Very deciectful, because it meant that the Obama administration was tied to him. When he hit the problems, Obama should have booted him straight away. They are different to Timothy Geithner’s problems – in all seriousness, a lot of middle class and upper class Americans have the same tax issues as Geithner without actually knowing they are faulting tax payments. It’s totally different to Daschle who was working and not paying tax on the income. Idiot.

No one knows who the second choice is for the job. With the appointment of Judd Gregg to Commerce, a Republican, expect a serious Democrat (in terms of being blue through-and-through, and certainly left and not centre-left) to be nominated. Universal healthcare is a traditionally Democrat idea, so it’s got to be someone clearly from the left. It probably won’t be another Senator. Howard Dean got shunted from any positions even with all the great work he did for Obama – his name will probably hit the rumour circuit soon. Beyond that it’s too hard to narrow the field down.

Farewell Tom Daschle! Thanks for ruining the party. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Or the shoes.

Thomas.

Cutbacks

No, nothing to do with work. To do with this blog. As most of my regular readers already know, I was accepted into the Eduation Honours program at my university. I had a rough idea of what I was getting into (writing, reading, research), but after my meeting with my supervisor today, I’ve realised that it’s enough work to force me to pay the projects and the final thesis more attention that I would normally pay an assignment. So I weighed up: cut back on work hours (which means cutting back on my income) or cut back on my few leisure activities (blogging, bludging, watching television to all ends of the morning, bludging, watching copious amounts of movies, bludging, etc.) to a certain degree while keeping available one night a week to socialise. It was, really, a no-brainer: activities I do to pass time had to be cut back.

I intend to continue blogging, though far less frequently once the semester starts (March), and probably somewhat less frequent starting now. My supervisor wants a basic literature review by next Wednesday (4 pages) about my topic. So, yeah, I had better start on that. Not that it’s being marked proper, just that one of the graded assignments for the first semester of the program has an assignment in it that is a literature review which will form a section in the thesis. So I’ll hash something together. Anyway, just thought I would provide everyone with a head-up and an update.

Thomas.

New books

As a reward for myself for my hours of work over the past few months I bought up on some books I had been eyeing (online) for a while now. Yesterday, the first of them arrived – In His Own Words: Barack Obama – The American Promise. It’s over 500 words of Obama’s speeches from 2007 to September 2008. Primarily I bought this as a resource above anything else. It’s far better to watch those speeches over YouTube or similar websites than read them. However, when it comes to actually looking at the construction of speeches as texts, here’s 500 pages of examples.

Today I got the shipment that contained 3 books that I was really looking forward to getting. The first is Faking It: How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself. It’s a book by a group of people who run the website CollegeHumor.com (I recommend checking it out because there is some seriously funny videos that they have made). It’s a satirical stab at all those self-help and motivation books that clutter bookstores these days. I flicked through a few pages and was laughing out loud at some of the things in there. Extremely funny stuff.

The second book is How Barack Obama Won: A State-by-State Guide to the Historic 2008 Presidential Election. As the title suggests, it’s a state-by-state guide to the exit polls, the real number results, and some commentary on why the state went the way it did. It’s good for three reasons. Firstly, it provides a summary of the election results according to the state-based demographics – so a good political historical resource. Secondly, I’m able to use it to cross-check some of my statements and my prediction made on this blog. Thirdly, come the reelection bid, I’ll have a great resource to ground all my predictions for the results in 2012. I’ll be able to compare these comprehensive results with the 2010 results, and the state of state demographics in 2012.

The third book is one that has received a fair bit of attention recently. Not for anything negative mind you, rather because President Obama has been spotted carrying it around. It’s also been a book that has shaped Obama’s political moves since his election. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is all about the cabinet that Lincoln assembled out of his political opponents. An example, his Secretary of State was a man that was the heavy favourite to with the Republican primary, only to be beat by this new-comer, upstart of Lincoln. It was a bitter fight too. Sound a little familar? Anyway, I’m keen to delve into this one, as William Seward (Lincoln’s Secretary of State) is my favourite Secretary of State in US political history (due to the things he did through the Civil War – not least, when Britain threatened t o intervene on behalf of the Confederacy, Seward exploded in a series of letters to British politicians and representatives telling them that the North wanted a war with England and would happily engage with them!). I’m also keen to delve in because it’s a great US political history read.

I’m expecting 4 more books, over 3 packages. One should arrive tomorrow. It will contained Obama: The Historical Campaign in Photographs (apparently the best visual resource of the campaign’s progress) and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. I’ve been looking for a good Jackson, one of my favourite presidents, biography that looks at his political career more than his military one. When this was released, it was called the be all and end all of all Jackson biographies. So I’m eager to start this one too. Photographs is more of a light read/flick through/visual resource to keep at hand for the future. It also brings together all those eventful photos that are spread out all over the Internet into one book.

The 2 remaining books are Obama: The Historic Front Pages – a collection of the world’s newspapers that depict various events through Obama’s campaign (highly interesting and a good historical resource) – and The innauguration of Barack Obama: A Photographic Journal – another visual resource to keep on hand. Those working at Amazon.com could easily be mistaken for thinking a shipment full of US political reads, and books about the new president, would be destined for a US address.

I’ll try and keep my readers informed as to my progress through the books and how well they rate.

Thomas.

Confirmation of Eric Holder

I previously reported that the Judiciary Committee has voted 17-2 in favour of Eric Holder, and that his name would be passed onto the Senate for a full floor vote. The vote, carried out Monday, confirmed Holder as the new US Attorney General. The result was 75-21 (not too far off my prediction of 77-22). This is a sweep for a position and vote of this kind. The 21 Republicans who voted no are the GOP/Bush loyalists who don’t want Holder looking into the past 8 years. The 20 that voted for Holder are the remaining progressives, the north-east Republican Senators, and those that are looking to work with the administration. While there was a ground effort by the ‘GOP faithful’ to make the confirmation much, much more difficult, it didn’t find any legs. Also, it should be noted that not one Democrat crossed the floor – all ‘no’ votes were Republicans. Holder proved to be clean and an apt candidate through his hearings. Now, Eric Holder, Attorney General, can get about his business.

Thomas.

Barack Obama picks Judd Gregg for Commerce

As speculated, Judd Gregg, the Republican New Hampshire Senator, will be announced as President Obama’s nominee for the Secretary of Commerce position. In short, some backroom deals were struck between Obama, Gregg, and state Governor John Lynch. Lynch will not pick a Democrat to replace Gregg, but is free to deal with any state Republican politician to pick them if they promise to not run for reelection in 2010. Or he can pick the weakest Republican he can find. Either way, Lynch has to pick a Republican, but is free to set it up that the Democrats pick up the seat in 2010.The latest is that it will likely be J. Bonnie Newman, former chief of staff to Gregg and currently executive dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Former New Hampshire governor Walter Peterson and former senator Warren Rudman have been floated as well. Newman would do Lynch a favour in that he could point to not only sticking to democratic will and ignoring partisan politics, but that he appointed a woman to the Senate. It’s not unlikely that Lynch will be thinking about a potential run for the seat in the not too distant future, so everything that’s going on should be scrutinised for political maneuvering.

Obama’s bipartisan rating just went through the roof. It doesn’t count for too much in the end unless the administration gets the economy and the country back on track. If they do (before 2012, which is a very hard task but not all-together impossible), the Obama can continue his campaign of ‘change’ and a ‘new Washington’. But if things are still struggling, the it won’t count for anything at all. It’s likely that Gregg is looking for an easy retirement, so he certainly won’t be using this position to propel himself up in the party’s ranking. I suspect that, as the GOP stands now, they wouldn’t give him the time of day. Gregg will (hopefully) do a bang-up job and go down as a hero of the administration that fixed the largest economic disaster this side of the Great Depression. Not to mention the Republican Senator, appointed by Obama, who helped turn the page on partisan politics.

All this comes off the back of a report that the investigation into Bill Richardson, Obama’s original pick, is being expanded. Like I said in a previous post, Obama would probably have waited to name a new nominee if the investigation was going  to either prove that Richardson was in the clear or it was going to be a small-scale affair. If the investigation is being expanded it kills both of those options – it’s going to be a big thing and it’s probably going to find Richardson was in the wrong. Thus, Gregg is nominated.

I feel sorry for Obama being stabbed in the back by his nominees. First Richardson, then Timothy Geithner, then Tom Daschle (whose problems have got a lot worse since I last wrote on him). They all contribute to Obama losing his shine and people’s optimism in him. Which is bad when you are dealing with an economic problem that is going to be rescued by consumer confidence, they need to have confidence in the people in charge. They should make clear to the administration that they have some potential problems (which, by stated accounts, Richardson and Dascle hid from Obama and Rahm Emanuel until after they were publicly announced).

Anyway, this should make for good politicking in the next few weeks in both parties.

Thomas.

Quick stattery

The blog’s preformance has returned to the levels of visitorship from when the interest in the primaries wained and the interest in the general election picked up. 2,506 visitors for the month. Not bad I think – I was expecting much lower. Somewhat surprisingly, Amélie vs. Garden State was the most popular post (186 views for the month). I suspect that it will be the top post going through the year on this basis. Unless something big hits the blogosphere and I latch on. Various other Obama posts make up the top ten of the list.

Anyway, just some things I thought I would mention.

Thomas.