To wit:

Caroline Kennedy’s second act as a Senate hopeful didn’t get much better reviews from New York’s press than her first.

A New York Daily News columnist said “the wheels of the bandwagon are coming off.” New York Post State Editor Fred Dicker already put her on his list of 2008 losers. And The New York Times said “she seemed less like a candidate than an idea of one: eloquent but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way.”

Last Friday after weeks of silence, Kennedy agreed to sit down for interviews with The Associated Press and New York City cable TV’s NY1. Over the weekend, she scheduled another round of interviews with other news organizations from The New York Times to the Buffalo News. The New York Daily News noted she frequently used the phrase “you know” and “ums” during the interview, which was skewered in political blogs Monday.

“There has been some very rough comments,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College poll, following the series of interviews she provided over the weekend. “I have been surprised,” he said. “The welcome mat has not been out from everybody.”

I refer, of course, to Rod Blagojevich:

Brushing aside charges that he tried to sell Illinois’ vacant U.S. Senate seat, Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to the post today in defiance of Senate leaders who said they would not admit anyone he selected.

It was an abrupt about-face for Blagojevich, who had said after his Dec. 9 corruption arrest that he favored a special election to find a successor to President-elect Barack Obama. But Blagojevich said he acted after the Democratic-controlled General Assembly declined to approve legislation for a special election.

“Please don’t allow the allegations against me to taint this good and honest man,” Blagojevich said while introducing Burris at a downtown news conference.

President-elect Barack Obama said in a statement:

“Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat.  I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it.  I believe the best resolution would be for the Governor to resign his office and allow a lawful and appropriate process of succession to take place. While Governor Blagojevich is entitled to his day in court, the people of Illinois are entitled to a functioning government and major decisions free of taint and controversy.”

Alas, it appears that the President-elect and his allies will not be let off the hook that easily. And for those who think that the Senate can just refuse to seat Burris simply because they don’t like Blagojevich . . . well . . . see this.

And pass the popcorn.

This is worth watching–Dmitri Medvedev has decided he is sick of playing Robin to Vladimir Putin’s Batman:

It was an innocuous sounding comment in what appeared to be a routine television interview. But in the six days since Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, described his feelings about taking the oath of office in May, the corridors of power have been buzzing.

“The final responsibility for what happens in the country and for the important decisions taken would rest on my shoulders alone and I would not be able to share this responsibility with anyone,” Mr Medvedev told an interviewer.

For a normal president in a normal country, such a remark would have been a statement of the obvious. But to a select few, it was a “dog whistle”, a message audible only to those Mr Medvedev wanted to hear.

Usually when discussing such matters he stresses his “consultation” with Vladimir Putin, the prime minister and former president, who all but installed Mr Medvedev in his job and is thought to take most of the big decisions. But this time Mr Medvedev stressed that he was the single constitutionally empowered decision-maker.

Kremlin watchers say this assertiveness seems to be part of a new pattern, with Mr Medvedev appearing frustrated that, in spite of his constitutional power as commander in chief, he is stuck in a subordinate role.

“An apprehension is growing on both sides, particularly the Putin side,” said Dmitry Simes, head of the Nixon Centre in Washington, who spent last week in Moscow.

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When passages like the one contained in this story appear in discussing the most recent eruption of conflict between Israel and Hamas, you know that Hamas may well have stepped in it:

There were protests and demonstrations against the offensive throughout the Arab world, as well as in several European capitals. In the occupied West Bank as well as in Israel, Palestinian demonstrators clashed repeatedly with Israeli forces. One protester was killed.

However, some voices in the Arab world indicated that Hamas bore some responsibility. Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian president and head of Fatah – Hamas’s rival – said: “We talked to them [Hamas] and told them `please, we ask you, do not end the truce. Let the truce continue and not stop’ so that we could have avoided what happened.”

Emphasis mine. And emphasis notable.

I can understand how newly-minted Presidents and Presidents-elect chafe at the overweening presence of the media in their daily activities. But I am not prepared to offer them much sympathy when they complain; particularly when, as in Barack Obama’s case, they have benefited so mightily from favorable–yea, fawning–media coverage and were propelled to the Presidency itself as a consequence of that fawning coverage. Perhaps, like the gods, the media first makes proud those whom it would destroy but I don’t think that Barack Obama is complaining about media coverage because he fears that reverse karma is on its way.

Rather, he is complaining because while he wants to be at the apex of the political pyramid, he does not want to put up with the inconveniences that fame brings to those who possess vast political power.

To which, I say “boo-hoo.” I empathize with the difficulty the Obamas must be having in acclimating themselves with their new life but no one made Barack Obama run for the Presidency and no one made Michelle Obama asset to the run. They signed up for all of this and they should have understood from the outset that there was a price to be paid in deciding to go for the Ultimate American Political Brass Ring. In return for having to put up with the constant presence of a press pool, the President-elect is going to have vast amounts of political power, a healthy salary, adulation from all of the “right people” and even more money waiting for him when he leaves office. Oh, and there will be other political, social and financial advantages the likes of which we ordinary mortals will not even be able to comprehend.

So forgive me if I fail to shed a tear for the President-elect’s loss of privacy. He should have known what was coming and he should not have decided to run for President if he could not take the media heat. Maybe some good will come out of this and he will be able to understand more readily the kind of nonsense that President Bush and Vice President Cheney had to put up with–nonsense that led to the very kind of intrusive coverage (and perhaps eventually, negative stories) that Barack Obama now encounters in his daily life.

Jim Powell points out what we should already know; an Obamaian stimulus package will do nothing to give the economy an actual shot in the arm and that across-the-board tax cuts will do wonders by contrast. Of course, dollars to donuts says that this idea will get no attention from the incoming Obama Administration and/or Democrats in Congress, thus ensuring that we will waste hundreds of billions of dollars for little to no effect on the economy whatsoever.

Your tax dollars and government at work. Next, they are going to want to run your health care.

Seems like Rod Blagojevich is not the only governor who might have indulged in a little pay-for-play action:

New Mexico’s Gov. Bill Richardson, who is the newly named Secretary of Commerce in Obama’s about-to-be Cabinet, is also being investigated by a federal grand jury in his home state for possibly steering state bond business from the New Mexico Financial Authority toward David Rubin, a significant campaign contributor, according to an NBC News report, among others.

NBC’s Lisa Myers reports that two former state officials say they’ve recently been questioned by a federal grand jury specifically about allegations that Richardson or aides pushed state business worth nearly $1.5 million in fees toward CDR Financial Products in 2004. The company is headquartered in Beverly Hills.

This was about the same time as CDR’s founder, Rubin, donated $100,000 to two of Richardson’s political action committees; mainly it appears to cover expenses of the governor and his staff at the Democratic Party’s National Convention in Boston that summer.

Rubin also donated another $29,000 to Richardson’s unsuccessful presidential campaign this year and last.

The confirmation hearings on this issue ought to be interesting . . . to say the least. I can’t wait to hear how the business Rubin got from the state government in New Mexico was totally unrelated to his campaign donations to Bill Richardson.

Paul Krugman wants Barack Obama to “make government cool” and figures that the best way to do that is to follow through on the “clean government” standard supposedly set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Amity Shlaes reminds us just how “good government” FDR really was when she discusses the prosecution–or persecution–of former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon by the Roosevelt Administration:

When the Crash came in 1929, Mellon expected blame, and he got it. He took the hostility in stride and coolly capitalized on the downturn to stock his gallery with new pictures–acquiring Jan van Eyck’s “Annunciation” and Raphael’s “Alba Madonna” from the Hermitage in Leningrad. He got bargains because Stalin, desperate for hard currency, was selling works the communists considered decadent.

Such purchases by a Cabinet member would be cause for controversy today–an official from one sovereign state taking advantage of another. But the United States at the time did not recognize the government of Soviet Russia. Men of Mellon’s era were intensely hostile to communism. They believed that by removing the art from the Bolsheviks’ hands, they were rescuing it from thieves. Mellon hid the pictures in a locked room at the Corcoran, a forerunner of the National Gallery. The old man and his colleague David Finley would visit them monthly.

As Crash deepened into Depression, animosity mounted. A freshman Democratic congressman from Texas–Wright Patman–tried to have Mellon impeached. By 1932, Mellon was moving out of the Treasury and onto the liner Majestic, crossing the Atlantic to become U.S. ambassador in London. There he arranged, through Finley, the acquisition of the anonymous 1616 painting of Pocahontas that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery today.

Back home in the 1930s, Mellon endured years of prosecution by Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. At the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, one of Mellon’s own successors, led campaigns against him with FDR’s assent. The Treasury charged that Mellon had not paid enough taxes. Morgenthau told the prosecutor, “I consider that Mr. Mellon is not on trial, but the privileged rich.”

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Yeah, right. Isn’t a fuss supposed to be made when the incoming White House Science Adviser has a history of getting so much so embarrassingly wrong? Any chance that an enterprising journalist might ask John Holdren just what in his background and track record of predictions, arguments and hypotheses should justify the nation’s trust in him as Barack Obama’s Science Guy? I mean, we know that the media would be making a big deal about the White House Science Adviser getting schooled on a regular basis by his critics if the Science Adviser in question worked/works for George W. Bush. There is no reason why standards should be different here.

Julian Simon’s ghost would make a better White House Science Adviser than would John Holdren. It’s high time more people made that point. The incoming Administration should get no plaudits whatsoever for this appointment. Quite the contrary; John Holdren’s views and record should be laughed out the court of respectable public opinion.

(Thanks to David Boaz–who gives us more things to worry about–for the link.)

Listed here. Click through all of the links. The fact that we are not paying much attention to these alternatives bodes badly for policymaking, of course. We’ll make the best choices in formulating and implementing an economic battle plan to get out of the current recession if we fully and fairly air and debate all options.

Unfortunately, the genuine perpetrators of the “Shock Doctrine” are working to foreclose the possibility of any full and fair debate. The genuine Shock Doctrine Shock Troops spent the past eight years inveighing against the Bush Administration for supposedly putting ideology ahead of facts and using crises to push an ideological agenda and . . . well . . . we’ve found out that the pot was calling the kettle black the entire time.

“Reality-based community”? Feh. If only.

Within short order, John Cochrane, Eugene Fama, Milton Friedman and others who understand and appreciate that the free market continues to get it right more often than central planners ever could, will find themselves vindicated by the course of history. In a sense, it is already happening; note the portion of the Bloomberg story that points out the Bush Administration’s decision to abandon the purchase of mortgage-backed securities, leaving it to the Fed to do that as a way to increase the role of monetary policy in combating the current financial crisis and recession (moral hazard is an issue here, to be sure, but the Fed’s activities nonetheless do represent an extension of monetary policy–on this general point, see Robert Lucas, via Greg Mankiw). And of course, the lessons of Vietnam–referenced in the story–remain with us; a society that places blind trust in The Best And The Brightest will find itself coming to grief over one significant policy issue or other. Are we actually to believe that the same political class that brought us the depredations of Rod Blagojevich (h/t) will now bring us financial salvation by seizing the controls of the commanding governmental heights and employing Keynesian statism to bring prosperity for all? The very proposition is comical.

“Deregulation” remains a scapegoat for the current crisis–the actuals facts notwithstanding (see here, here, here, here and here for evidence against the claim that deregulation was responsible for the economic downturn. And see this for a good reason to be scared of the creeping approach of economic statism). Perhaps we should propose that those who think the Federal Register makes for thin reading ought to do weight training exercises with copies of it. Either these people will get remarkably buff or they will pull muscles left and right; in either event, the argument that we are somehow regulation-deprived should suffer the brutal blow it deserves to suffer.

Barack Obama will have caused his cyber-base to gnash their collective teeth to bits:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked most Bush administration political appointees except those targeted for dismissal to stay on in the Pentagon until replaced by the Obama administration in the coming months.

“I have received authorization from the president-elect’s transition team to extend a number of Department of Defense political appointees an invitation to voluntarily remain in their current positions until replaced,” Mr. Gates said in an Dec. 19 e-mail to political appointees.

The chance to stay is “available to all willing political appointees with the exception of those who are contacted individually and told otherwise,” he stated.

[. . .]

Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, confirmed that Mr. Gates wants to retain most political appointees. He said the policy of keeping so many holdover officials is unusual for a transition from a Republican to Democratic administration.

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Bad things:

What’s good for General Motors may not ultimately be best for the global economy.

The Bush administration’s $13.4 billion rescue of GM and Chrysler is a fitting finish to a year in which governments around the world expanded their role in the economy and markets after three decades of retreat.

The intervention comes at what may prove to be a steep price. Future investment may be allocated less efficiently as risk-averse politicians make business decisions. Whenever banks decide to lend again, they are likely to find new capital requirements that will curb how freely they can do it. Interest rates may be pushed up by government borrowing to finance trillions of dollars of bailouts.

“We’re seeing a more statist world economy,” says Ken Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That’s not good for growth in the longer run.”

It’s not good for stocks either, says Paola Sapienza, associate professor of finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Slower economic growth means lower profits. Shares might also be hurt by investor uncertainty about the scope and timing of government intervention in the corporate sector.

“If the rules of the game are changing, people are reluctant to invest in the stock market,” Sapienza says.

As they say in the biz, click on the link to read more. Amazingly enough, we have economists quoted in the story stating that as uncomfortable as they are with the government being involved in the economy to the degree that it is, they would be even more uncomfortable if the government was not involved.

That latter sentiment may change quickly once the degree to which statism is undermining long-term economic growth becomes clearer.

Where, in the excerpts discussed here, did the Vice President of the United States say that the President has the right “to dissolve the Constitution”? Cheney gave a general answer to a vague question and pointed out the obvious fact that the President does not have to consult Congress before launching nuclear weapons–mostly because in a launch situation, there would be no time for such consultation. That’s it. Nowhere did Cheney discuss anything about the President having the power to dissolve the Constitution and nothing the Vice President said could even plausibly be interpreted as advancing that proposition.

I realize that Andrew Sullivan doesn’t like the Bush Administration. That doesn’t give him license to make things up on his blog. Blatant and shameless dishonesty is unbecoming, after all.

In his . . . er . . . inimitable way, Joe Biden informs us that he will be heading up a task force on the middle class. “Honchoing,” has apparently become a verb. Imagine if President Bush said something like that, etc.

But so long as we are accepting this neologism, let it be noted that Dick Cheney has decided to honcho the education of Joe Biden:

In a blunt, unapologetic interview on “FOX News Sunday,” Cheney fired back at Biden for declaring in October that “Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.”

“He also said that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution,” Cheney said in a interview that was conducted on Friday. “Well, they’re not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch.”

“Joe’s been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can’t keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive. So I think I’d write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don’t take it seriously.”

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One need only look at QandO’s demolition job on the New York Times’s effort to pin the blame concerning the current housing and financial crisis on the Bush Administration’s supposedly “hands-off approach to regulation.” As QandO points out, there were a whole host of people to blame on this issue–including Democrats who denied that there were any problems with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, even as Republicans sought to have more oversight of the two government agencies.

The Times needs to read Steve Horwitz as well before going off half-cocked about the supposed dangers of the market. I don’t expect it to do so–its easier to beat up on scapegoats than it is to face facts. But the rise of the alternative media is tied directly and explicitly to the failure of mainstream media outlets like the New York Times to process facts and its consistent willingness to allow its editorial board to dictate to its audience what we should believe the facts of a certain story to be.

Of course, this promises to have an awful effect on policy formulation. Misinformation does not lead to good choices when it comes to creating and implementing policy and at a time when we are facing a severe economic downturn and financial crisis, access to the correct information is crucial to our ability to right our economic ship.

Too bad, then, that the Times made it that much tougher to access and utilize complete and accurate information on the financial crisis and the causes behind it. The sentiments in its story were better expressed on the editorial page, if anywhere at all. Ironically enough, by choosing to substitute ideology for facts, the Times has proven itself as intellectually sloppy and dishonest as it presumes the Bush Administration to be.

If there is any doubt whatsoever that trade policy is going to be the ugly stepchild of the incoming Administration and that Barack Obama will play both sides on the issue, such doubt is resolved by the fact that the President-elect chose to counterbalance the selection of a pro-free trade United States Trade Representative in Ron Kirk with an antediluvian protectionist in Hilda Solis for Secretary of Labor. On a related point, the fact that Solis supports the odious card check bill does not and should not cause people genuinely interested in the health and vitality of the American economy to be enthusiastic about her appointment, though I am sure that power-grabbing unions are even more thrilled than the mainstream media makes them out to be in its stories.

Remember when the Bush Administration was preparing to take office eight years ago, warned us that we were entering a potentially recessionary period and got castigated by Democrats for supposedly “talking down the economy”?

Sure you do.

Apparently, it was bad to do that kind of thing back in 2000. But it is perfectly all right to do it in 2008. The Newsbusters article makes it clear that Barack Obama is also “talking down the economy” but he doesn’t get any kind of media grief whatsoever for it.

Double standards? Clearly. And the incoming Administration’s efforts to “talk down the economy” have increased thanks to Joe Biden:

[Biden's] take? It’s bad. Bleak. Awful. He told the [George Stephanopoulos] that he’s worried about the economy “absolutely tanking.”

“The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in,” Biden told Stephanopoulos. “There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking. That’s the only short run.”

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John McCain and Joe Lieberman have written a very good editorial on Iraq policy, in which they point out that thanks to the implementation of the surge and the counterinsurgency strategy–again, let us note that the President-elect and Vice President-elect opposed both of these policies and have not yet admitted error–there is an opportunity for bipartisan consensus to be created at long last when it comes to Iraq. Both invite the incoming Obama Administration to do what it can to foster this consensus.

To my mind, it would be tremendously helpful to follow the McCain-Lieberman recommendations and continue to have Ryan Crocker serve as Ambassador in Iraq, to rely on the judgments of Generals Petraeus and Odierno when it comes to formulating troop withdrawal plans and to stop pushing for artificial withdrawal dates and funding cutoffs through Congress.

We shall see whether the incoming Administration takes up the McCain-Lieberman offer. If it does, it shall have sufficient cover to pursue an effective Iraq policy–something the Bush Administration has not had and something that will help further American interests in the Middle East as well as setting Iraq firmly on the path towards normalcy. Of course, it is entirely possible that the incoming Administration will opt instead to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In which case, I hope that the President-elect is prepared to see his poll numbers drop.

Precipitously.

Memo to the international community: Robert Mugabe is double-dog daring you to do something about his incompetence and tyranny:

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, on Friday vowed “never” to bow to external pressure to step down and said no African country had the courage to send troops in to oust him.

Addressing the annual congress of his Zanu-PF party in Bindura, the 84-year-old autocrat – in power since leading Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980 – was at his most defiant.

The death toll from an outbreak of cholera reached 1,111 this week, from some 20,600 reported cases, raising pressure on regional states to intervene more forcefully and causing growing exasperation around the world at the veteran Zimbabwean leader’s refusal to follow the spirit of a September power-sharing accord.

But Mr Mugabe brushed off a growing international outcry at the suffering caused by the gathering collapse of the Zimbabwean economy and implosion of public services and mocked recent calls from several leading African figures for him to resign.

“I will never, never, never, never surrender,” he told his followers. He said he would remain in power until Zimbabweans “decide to change him. Zimbabwe is mine, I am a Zimbabwean. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans.”

“Zimbabwe is mine.” Note that phrase and the commensurate implications that Mugabe can do whatever he wishes with Zimbabwe. If you are as appalled and disgusted with what has happened to Zimbabwe during the course of Mugabe’s tyranny, those words ought to send chills up your spine.

I have to think that this is a test for Africa. Will it allow Mugabe to make a mockery of the continent, or will it actually muster up the courage to take him on?