Steve Steckler thinks so, saying at The Arena:

[K]udos to Obama for so boldly bring Medicare (and Social Security) into the conversation regarding fiscal discipline. The one big hope I have for Obama — a hopefulness encouraged by his selection of economic advisors — is that his enormous popularity, especially among liberals and labor/elderly constituencies that normally block reform — will give him enough confidence that he can tackle the country’s most politically intractable problems without threatening his re-election in 2012.

Naturally, I disagree; as I wrote at The Arena, I find it ironic that Mr. Steckler or anybody else can pair the terms “Obama” and “fiscal discipline” with a straight face. Yesterday, president-elect Obama — a man ascending to the presidency of a nation that has never once posted a trillion dollar deficit — almost boastfully promised “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come” once he takes office.

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The scores are in, and with the exception of a Democrat who served for just one month, the Democrat most ‘loyal’ to the Bush agenda in the last Congress was (former) Democratic Representative Nick Lampson:

One House Democrat, Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio, supported Bush 100 percent of the time — but she was only a member for about a month, sworn in on Nov. 19 to replace a member who died.

All other House Democrats gave Bush little support. The second-most supportive was Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, at 39 percent. He was followed by Reps. Dan Boren, D-Okla., at 36 percent; Jim Marshall,, D-Ga., and Melissa Bean, D-Ill., at 33 percent; then Matheson at 32 percent.

The full scorecard is here. If you play with it, you’ll see that not counting Rep. Fudge, there were a total of 5 Democratic Representatives who voted to support the President’s position more than 30 percent of the time.

Never let it be said that I am a relentless partisan: I think it would be entirely appropriate for as many as 5 Republicans to vote with Barack Obama more than 30 percent of the time, and to have one who voted with him 39 percent of the time. After all, ruthlessly partisan intransigence on the part of the opposition party would probably lead to a failed presidency — particularly in time of war and recession.

And no one but the most naked partisan would want that.

This is from yesterday, via TPM, and it’s President-Elect Obama declaring that the Burris pick is a “Senate matter:”

“That is a Senate matter. But I know Roland Burris, obviously he’s from my home state. I think he’s a fine public servant. If he gets seated then I’m gonna work with Roland Burris just like I work with all the other senators to make sure that the people of Illinois and the people of the country are served.”

So far, this is just merely Obama flip-flopping from his statement of a week or so ago. Note, please, that he said that he was leaving this up to the Senate.

Note that very precisely.

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It was only a week or so ago that we caught Blue Dog leader Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin spinning nonsense to her local press. She was pointing out that the Blue Dog caucus is larger than it has ever been — so large that they are ‘impossible to ignore’ — and then explaining why the Blue Dogs are forced to play dead while Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership conspire to increase the deficit by about $2 trillion. Now The One has told the Blue Dogs that their proposal for a reform commission to address long-term fiscal imbalances cannot be in the stimulus bill.

Are the Blue Dogs angry? Are they going to vote against the stimulus bill? No. They’re tickled that Obama invited them to a meeting:

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With news that Kit Bond will not seek re-election to the Senate, we need a candidate. I think I could get behind Sarah Steelman for the Senate. Friends of mine describe her as the Sarah Palin of Missouri — and they mean it as a sincere, conservative compliment.

Kimberley Strassel wrote about her during her gubernatorial run.

Her sin is in fact to belong to that new mold of Republican – Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint – who know it’s no longer enough to simply hawk lower taxes. In 10 years as a state legislator and treasurer, her target has been the slothful political favor factory that’s led Republicans away from small-government principles and outraged conservative voters.

And, oh, the howls of misery. Ms. Steelman’s Republican colleagues were livid with her attempt to strip them of comfy pensions, annoyed with her “sunshine law” requiring them to be more open in their dealings, furious at her attacks on their ethanol boondoggles, appalled that she criticized GOP state Speaker Rod Jetton for moonlighting as a paid political consultant. The final straw was her temerity to make her primary race about her opponent’s Washington earmarking record.

Sounds good to me.

Father Richard John Neuhaus died this morning in New York City. He was seventy two.

If there was ever a man who conveyed through his writing that he was ready for this moment, it was Fr. Neuhaus.  But perhaps in my selfishness, there is no man I am more sorrowful to lose.

One could consider this loss in the context of the modern social conservative movement, or for First Things the natural comparisons to losing William F. Buckley, Jr.  But in truth, it is a far greater loss than that.

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Wow. I don’t know what Barack Obama has done to make the Washington Post so angry at him, but I can’t imagine the paper would trot out a Nixon analogy lightly:

Presidents have long strived to centralize influence in the White House, often to the frustration of their Cabinet secretaries. But not since Richard M. Nixon tried to abolish the majority of his Cabinet has a president gone so far in attempting to build a West Wing-based clutch of advisers with a mandate to cut through — or leapfrog — the traditional bureaucracy.

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During lunch I was a bit surprised that the subject of the bailouts had not come up. As lunch was winding down, I asked the Vice President his thoughts. He’d been quoted in the past, whether accurately or not, that deficits do not matter. I wanted to know if he thought they did. I never got a direct answer on that, but what he said was most interesting.

“It is important to distinguish between different problems,” the Vice President told me. The recession is one problem and the financial/liquidity problem is another.

He transitioned back in his life to the Nixon and Ford days on price and wage controls. He said they were “an inappropriate exercise of government . . . motivated by politics” not sound economic policy. “I don’t put that on my resume,” he laughed.

He said government should not meddle in the free market, but he viewed last summer as different because it was a financial crisis. “If the [financial system] does not work, nothing else will work,” he said soberly.

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[Former EPA Administrator Carol] Browner, for example, in promoting Obama’s “green” agenda, will attempt to exert authority across half a dozen federal departments and agencies, including Energy, Interior, Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency.

In announcing her appointment, Obama promised a new level of “coordination across the government, and my personal engagement as president” on energy and climate policy. He said Browner will have the power to “demand integration among different agencies; cooperation between federal, state and local governments; and partnership with the private sector.”

Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said, “The energy and global warming problems are so broad, it’s a necessity to have a quarterback.”

The Washington Post

Carol Browner was the EPA chief under Bill Clinton.Since that time she has served on the boards of several environmental organizations.She will be directing an activist environmental agenda from the White House and we should all be afraid.

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In case you missed it, Stratfor had a tremendous writeup, on the occasion of the death of Mark “Deep Throat” Felt, on the real meaning of the revelation that Felt was Woodward & Bernstein’s source. Basically, it’s a reminder that anonymous sourcing is just another way for the media to be beholden to powerful figures, usually in the government, who are often acting in unsavory ways even when they tell the truth (and when a news report is anonymously sourced, there’s no way to have any conifdence that it is true). Stratfor focuses on the fact that Woodward and Bernstein were basically naive pawns in Felt’s continuation of J. Edgar Hoover’s power game - particpants in, not opponents of, the dirty tricks of the era. Here’s the key takeaway:

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Once it became known throughout the state that Governor Balgojevich was being entertained by the U.S. Attorney for his creative attempts to shore up his retirement plans and once it was realized that the Governor had yet to pick a replacement to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat, the Illinois GOP latched on to the call for a special election as the solution for that issue.

Unfortunately, they’re wrong.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it is definitely the only way a Republican could possibly be sent to Washington as our junior senator from Illinois. But special elections are not the constitutional way we fill a vacated senate seat. It just isn’t.

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With yesterday’s announcement from the Congressional Budget Office that the fiscal year 2009 federal budget deficit is projected to be $1.2 trillion dollars, Republicans in the House and Senate should realize that the time has come for them to pull their support for any economic stimulus package proposed by the incoming Obama Administration. The CBO’s budget numbers don’t include the as yet unseen stimulus bill, which is rumored to carry a price tag of anywhere between $600 billion and $1.2 trillion on its own. By this time next year, the government could be carrying a balance sheet that is as much as $2.5 trillion in the red. As the once and future party of fiscal responsibility, Republicans should not want to be anywhere near those numbers.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner were making conciliatory noises on Monday after President-elect Obama went to Capitol Hill to lobby for his stimulus bill. Obama said that the deal would include $300 billion in “tax cuts” with which he hoped to buy Republican support. McConnell and Boehner expressed pleasant surprise at the alleged size of the tax relief in the plan – alleged because some of the tax relief is slated to go to people who don’t pay federal income taxes in the first place – and hinted that they could support a stimulus bill this focused on reducing taxes.

But more than their support for passage, which he does not need, Obama was attempting to buy political cover from Republicans, which he wants. Obama wants to insulate hmself from blame when the post election afterglow fades away, his stimulus plan inevitably fails, and the American people get stuck with the bills. McConnell and Boehner doubtlessly know this; but they lack the political courage to stand athwart the new Administration and yell “Stop!” If they want to rebuild the Republican Party’s image as the party of fiscal restraint, however, that is exactly what they must do.

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We identified the problem with that pop up window that kept coming up. It appeared to be a remnant ad server spitting out some malicious javascript. We shut it down the other day, but it has started happening again this morning.

We just shut down Tribal Fusion altogether. Please let me know if you are still getting the popup window.

The automobile industry’s domestic sales figures for 2008 are out, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, they do not paint a pretty picture. With the exception of BMW’s Mini and Subaru, all brands posted losses - yes, even Toyota and Honda. Chrysler took the biggest hit, as its sales were off by 30%. General Motors sales dropped nearly 23%, and Ford managed to do only slightly better with a sales decrease of almost 21%.

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Republicans push back against turning a stimulus package into a bloated boondoggle.

Republican Senators spent the day at a retreat at the Library of Congress with three distinguished economists–Martin Feldstein, Larry Lindsey, and Peter Wallison–talking about how to get the economy going.

At the conclusion of the retreat Senators McConnell and Alexander spoke about what an economic stimulus ought to contain:

Senator Alexander: We — as the leader said, we want to be full participants in any kind of stimulus package that actually helps our economy grow, helps create jobs, helps stabilize housing.

We’re not interested in just spending money that we don’t have for projects that we don’t have to have at a time of such high deficits.

Watch the video:

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The media, let’s face it, want Barack Obama to succeed. They’ll want him to succeed until the moment Americans start getting slaughtered again in American streets by terrorists. And then they’ll want him to succeed even more.

But we must be prepared to set the record straight.

I am deeply concerned that Leon Panetta, a man with no prior intelligence experience, is Obama’s pick for CIA. Obama was scared to make a legitimate pick because the anti-American left opposed John O. Brennan.

And it is crucial to understand this point. Whatever else the CIA may be, it’s not simple. And because the American people entrusted the presidency to someone who needs to learn on the job, we cannot afford for critical advisers to also be learning on the job.

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Historic days lie ahead, and not because the occupant of the Oval Office will soon be of an atypical color.

The United States, throughout its early history, has been the only major trading nation to carefully avoid extensive government involvement in economics and finance. We went for more than 100 years without even a central bank (meaning, an official lender of last resort). And when the need for the Federal Reserve finally became undeniable in the wake of the Panic of 1907, its architects conceived it in secret meetings, and with a quasi-private structure, because they knew even then that Congress would never go for another attempt to establish a “Bank of the United States.”

During the New Deal, the role of the Federal Reserve was expanded to include regulatory control over the US banking system. In 1951, the Fed finally established its full independence from the US Treasury (in the sense that they could refuse to monetize issues of public debt), and entered the modern period of its history.

But in keeping with the American tradition of relatively light control over financial matters, the Fed’s objectives have always been primarily to maintain confidence in the value of the dollar, and to ensure the integrity of the interbank payments system.

They have long held a balance sheet consisting almost entirely of risk-free US Treasury securities. At times, like any lender of last resort, they have made funds available to their correspondent banks, but generally for the shortest possible terms, at relatively high “penalty” interest rates, and requiring collateral of the very highest quality.

In short, the Fed has never been a risk-taking entity. To take risk (and, equivalently, to intermediate credit) has always been the function of the private sector.

Until 2008.

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Washington has issued an APB for former Representative and putative Chief of staff for the Obama White House Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel is 5′ 7″ tall, slight of build and has salt and pepper hair. He is know to cuss like a sailor. He was last seen on December 12th claiming he is getting “death threats” over his multiple meetings with corrupt Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Emanuel has been known to hang around with several unsavory characters in the past. It is commonly known that Emanuel has been a close confidant to impeached presidents and senators that have experienced intense sniper fire in Bosnia.

If anyone has seen or heard from Rahm Emanuel, please alert the media. Apparently they have forgotten he exists.

That is all.

It was just announced this week that representative Chris Donovan (D, Meriden, CT) is the next Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives. What makes this a strike against good government is that Donovan is a former member of the Service Employees International Union. (Donovan info and further bio)

So, we have a former union leader (and former as only having left union leadership a short time ago) now stepping into the role of Speaker of the House where his former colleagues in the unions will be lobbying him for favorable legislation and other goodies.

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When States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald announced the investigation of the pay-to-play scandal centered around Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich there came to light a meeting between Blago and a top officer of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). There was no indication of what the meeting was about and at fist no one knew who the SEIU representative was.

Later it came out that Blago met with Tom Balanoff, president of the Ill. chapter of the SEIU. This was blown off as of little importance ever since. However, now it has been learned that the president of the SEIU, Andy Stern himself, also met with Blago during the period of time that Blago was trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat.

What was originally assumed to be only a meeting of a local union chief and a governor is now seen to be a meeting with a corruption mired governor and the national head of one of the most powerful unions in the country. And all at the same time when that same governor was trying to elicit bribes unto himself!

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