What are the predictions

Hillary Clinton will be running the State Department like it was a mini administration. It will not be Obama’s foreign policy but Hillary’s. If Hillary has success, and the domestic front is not going well, she will be praised and people will express regret not giving her the nomination. Obama would have to make quite a number of foreign trips, with major substantive speeches. Would Obama be able to keep up with Hillary who would be constantly travelling. As much as people love Obama. Sectary of State Hillary Clinton will have more press coverage than other Sec. Of State. It will be Hillary vs Obama all over again, and since Obama is President he will attempt to remove her from the position. With a 24/7 news cycle it will become a tough PR battle.

In the next four years no one will ask Obama if he made a mistake.

Criticisms of Obama will be viewed as racism. As a result instead of publicly giving reasons why something is the wrong path (which may help an Obama administration choose a better path) many will give praise to something that is not so praiseworthy. Obama’s administration will happily go down the path less traveled. And unfortunately it will be a path full of peril and too difficult to come back from. One must give good honest fair criticism of Obama’s administration in order to help him have a successful time in office. Making everything Obama does greater than it is may give him greater confidence to choose the wrong path.

Just as those who were in Washington D.C. to witness the Obama swearing found them selves disappointed, so may the many people who have projected on to Obama their ideas of change. They will have assumed that Obama will approach things in a manner that they expect, and when he does things in a very realistic manner they will be asking “Where is the change?”.

Obama will not be able to fully pull out of Iraq in 16 months. Bear in mind, we have built a massive embassy. It will have many troops. How many people will be upset at our final troop level (it will not be zero troops). Troops will be moving in and out of Iraq for YEARS, in fact DECADES. Can Obama make being in Iraq the key to peace in the Middle East? Iraq will have to be transformed from where we fight the war on terrorism, into a major key in creating peace.

When asked about what tax software Sec. Of Treasury nominee Timothy Geithner used in preparing his mistaken tax return, he said Turbo Tax. He did failed to understand the point of why one would be asked the question. It was not to be critical of Turbo Tax but to see if someone filling out their taxes would be prompted to tax certain action and chose to ignore it. If he would be prompted, then it becomes less of a mistake, and more of a intentional error. Bloggers will be grabbing old copies of Turbo Tax and test to see how easy it would be to make such an oversight without any warning by the software.


The Supremes

The Supreme Court will have a vacancy after this years term is completed. Anyone in the Liberal side of the court could retire. I would say it could be John Paul Stevens, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

(btw when will Barrack Obama be added to spell check?)

On thin ice?

Can the recent increase in the Arctic ice be used to prove that global warming proponents are wrong? Or would any one making that suggesting be standing on thin ice? In the month of March you should get the maximum increase of ice. Since this current increase took place in such a short time, how much more will the ice increase during March? How thick will the ice be, and how does that compare to past thickness of ice. We would have to wait until September or October to know what is the minimum amount of this ice remains. To make any argument now that the new formation of ice is evidence of the cyclical nature of Arctic ice would be premature but we would have to wait and see what the ice level does this year.

Leon Panetta

The selection of Leon Panetta by President-Elect Barrack Obama seems to be a surprise to most people. Most of all a surprise to California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She was expecting someone to give her heads up on the nomination. Feinstein in an article “Obama's intel picks short on direct experience” by Pamela Hess is quoted to have said "I know nothing about this, other than what I've read," she said. "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time."
When I looked around cable news shows, and online sites I am finding it difficult to find anyone who is defending Panetta. Some seem to be searching for some explanations. They wonder if Feinstein's objections are more because of she was not informed or because she would like to see a person with an intelligence background to be selected. The answer tends to be the same. He does not have enough experience. So this seems like the a major up hill battle for the new Obama administration. (might be the first battle)
If no one comes forth now and defends Panetta He is not going to be able to survive his committee hearing and will never reach the Senate floor. But could we afford having a CIA chief who would need time to learn about the agency. Or someone who may take the agency in a direction away from securing the US. If Biden was correct, (some major test will be presented to the Obama administration) can we afford to waste time needed to catch the problem before it can happen.

Senate appointments

Must the Democratic Senators reject Burris’ appointment? Can the Senate do a certain amount of vetting. I read the rules committee could be spending 90 days looking into Burris’ eligibility to the Senate. Could the Senate ethics committee also be looking into Burris? If you can insure that no corrupt individual is in the US Senate (well at least that the person replacing Obama is not corrupted.) Blago could be trying to cause trouble by handing the Senate Dems a major PR problem, but must they threaten to block Burris from entering the Senate floor? If he is properly approved in ill. , have hearings to insure he is not part of any justice department investigation, and is not in violation of any ethics rules.


When deciding who to fill Senate Vacancies, one must not just consider the person’s qualifications but ones potential electability. The person selected would have only a year to prepare. That means one year to get a good understanding of the issues, and one year to learn about being a senator. There is no time to learn from your mistakes. In one year a opposition candidate will have risen up, and if the appointed candidate has done a poor job he or she will be on the way out.

So objections to any Blago appointments are probably about future electability. But in the process of preventing someone who MAY be rejected by the people, you are not destroying the person. Find a way to make the person acceptable to others. SHOW people he has no ethical problem, and he is capable of making a contribution to the Senate.