The past week has allowed us to glimpse the outlines of the new Obama administration at least personality wise with policy implications therein by the people either announced or heavily leaked as cabinet choices and so far for this conservative the choices have been, for the most part, outstanding so let’s take a look at these people and what they tell us on how the new administration will approach the big problems facing this country and the world in the coming year.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner

The choice of Geithner emerged after much speculation involving such former Clinton administration officials as former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Citicorp executive and former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker. Geithner, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, has been heavily involved with the current infusion of capital into the nation’s ailing financial firms engineered by Hank Paulson and by choosing the youthful Geithner Obama is signaling a continuity at Treasury that should be reassuring to equities markets whose volatility is likely to continue as the nation and world sinks deeper into recession. What isn’t clear is the extent to which the nation will need even more than the $350 billion left in the TARP program and to what extent that capital infusion will go into areas of the economy outside the financial institutions, i.e., the failing Big 3 automakers. Obama is signaling that he will be going beyond this $700 billion infusion but has given no indication that he will allow the Big 3 to tap into it without accompanying structural changes that will require them to shed jobs and a business model that is antiquated and no longer competitive. Last week’s torpedoing by Nancy Pelosi and House liberals of the Levin-Voinovich plan to allow the Big 3 to use the $25 billion already allocated to them for “green” investment in vehicles to serve instead as a bridge loan to stem the cash bleed out suggests that they might put up a fight with the new administration over what in essence must be a pre-packaged bankruptcy proceeding for the Big 3 with the treasury serving as the provider of “debtor in possession” financing. My guess is that President Obama will get his way and get the support of Pelosi and company for his plan by offering a sweetened package of unemployment and job retraining benefits for displaced autoworkers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Although the selection of Senator Clinton isn’t yet a done deal and much work still needs to be done to disentangle former President Bill Clinton’s global foundation’s fundraising in a fashion that will remove the suspicion that Senator Clinton as Secretary of State will be granting based on foreign donations to it, this should not prove an insurmountable task and Senator Clinton would be confirmed by the Senate without much opposition. This is a good move for the country, for Senator Obama and for Senator Clinton. For the country it offers the prospect of a savvy and respected woman internationally whose policy postions regarding the war in Iraq and Afghanistan have been responsible since day one and sometimes at odds with her then political opponent Barack Obama. Her choice is reassuring to conservative like me who were worried that Senator Obama might not follow through with his pledge to remain committed internationally in Iraq and Afghanistan and instead heed voices in his party who would have the United States “come home” with likely disastrous consequences.

Secretary of Defense Bob Gates

After some initial speculation that Bob Gates wasn’t keen on remaining as Secretary of Defense even for awhile in the new administration that talk appears to have subsided and the inside thinking is that he will stay on and President Obama will welcome his steady leadership of the Department of Defense after the disastrous Rumsfeld reign at the Pentagon. While some on his party’s left have not forgiven Bob Gates for his alleged role in Iran-contra a generation ago, Gates has provided much-needed new thinking, in tandem with Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus, regarding inter-agency cooperation and the nexus between “soft” and “hard” power in the ongoing intractable problem of Afghanistan.

National Security Adviser James Jones

Another leaked name who appears likely to be Obama’s choice, retired Marine Lt. General Jones also brings steady, bipartisan credentials to this all-important post both as former head of the Marine Corps, former SACEUR Nato and as the Bush administration’s point man on Middle East security through the Department of State. Along with Secretary of State Clinton and Defense Secretary Gates, General Jones will be asked to cajole more NATO support from reluctant European allies for the effort in Afghanistan which President-elect Obama has promised to redouble.

NOTE: Possible odd man out with respect to the three choices above: Vice President-elect Joe Biden who I feel certain thought (and may still) he would be the primary mover and shaker of the Obama foreign and defense policy agenda.

Attorney General Eric Holder

Another Clinton administration figure who served as deputy AG under Janet Reno the only questions regarding Holder would lie in his signing off on the Clinton pardons including Marc Rich but again, as this is a president’s absolute prerogative, I would not expect much pushback from the GOP. Although Holder is on the record as opposing many of the provisions of the Patriot Act and the new FISA statute, President Obama will call the shots here and he has already signaled that there will probably be no great repeal of these laws nor will there be any political witch hunts of former Bush administration officials. A little known fact about Holder is that he was appointed to the DC Superior Court bench by Ronald Reagan and as a career prosecutor at Justice led the prosecution on corruption charges of former Democratic House member John Jenrette whose wife Rita is fondly remembered by some of us here in Washington for obvious reasons.

Commerce Secretary Bill Richardson

Commerce is an unimportant cabinet position and the department could probably be eliminated with no great harm to the country and Richardson, of whom I am not a fan had he been the choice for Secretary of State, is a safe choice here.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Daschle

The weakest of Obama’s selections from my viewpoint, Daschle is a partisan Democrat whose wife, Linda Hall Daschle, is a prominent Washington lobbyist for a variety of interests including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other airline related industries. But at HHS Daschle will be unable to exert his influence to appeal for federal pork for the farm states as he did as Senate Majority Leader the result of which was the disastrous Farm Bill of 2002. In choosing him for HHS Obama is giving a nod to the liberal wing of his party which needs something to take away from this process.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano

Another good choice for Obama in picking a red state Democratic governor who has had to balance the issue of immigration as governor of Arizona. The only fly in the ointment confirmation-wise for Governor Napolitano is her role in the Clarence Thomas confirmation process nearly twenty years ago when she was an adviser to Thomas’s accuser Anita Hill. I would not, however, expect the GOP to pick a fight on this.

A number of other key positions like CIA director, Director of National Intelligence, Labor Secretary, EPA administrator and Ambassador to the UN remain to be filled but for this conservative, President-elect Obama’s choices so far seem quite reassuring.

~cross-posted at Newsvine

Well, the wildly unpopular bailout has died in the House, with 227 no’s to 206 ayes (and one non-vote).  Malkin has her “live-blogging” interpretation of events, plus a list of the members voting for and against.  She sounds happy and pissed-off all at once. What a shocker.

CNN reports:

Investors who had been counting on the rescue plan sent the Dow Jones industrial average down as much as 700 points while watching the measure come up short of the necessary support, before rebounding slightly. The key stock reading was down more than 500 points.

The measure needs 218 votes for passage, but it came up 13 votes short of that target, as the final vote was 228 to 205 against. About 60% of Democrats voted for the measure, but less than a third of Republicans backed it.

President Bush is “very disappointed” by the House vote, his spokesman Tony Fratto said.

I, like many others, am not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing.  I would like to see some government intervention–enough to keep the wheel’s moving, but I think artificially inflating a bum-market will have the reverse effect, just leading to a greater collapse later.

(more…)

One of the main problems in solving the Arab-Israeli conflict today lies in the fact that Israel and the Palestinians do not come to the negotiating table with equal rights. However, the U.S. State Department, in playing the role of mediator, has decided to treat this conflict as if two equally deserving parties are fighting over issues to which each have equal rights.

Secretary Rice and the State Department attempt to equate Israeli and Palestinian rights to the disputed territories. One of the prevalent global misunderstandings today about the Arab-Israeli conflict is that Israel occupied the West Bank after conquering it in June 1967. What ought to be made clear, is that in order for land to be occupied, it needs to have belonged to a sovereign power first. From 1948 through 1967, Jordan controlled the West Bank after having illegally annexed it (and renamed it), but they were never an internationally recognized sovereign power. The West Bank was not Jordanian sovereign land when the Israeli army conquered it in 1967.

Another misunderstanding is that Israel violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, which addresses the laws an occupying power must abide by. This claim is unfounded. Israel did not forcibly transfer its own population to the newly captured territories and allowed full freedom of movement for Palestinians who wished to leave the West Bank on their own accord, as outlined by the Convention.

Israel’s detractors have long preferred to use the politically loaded term “occupation” since it conveniently lends emotion to their argument and falsifies the reality of the dispute. Just as land disputes in Northern Cyprus, Mont Blanc and Abu Musa are not considered occupied territory, the West Bank certainly cannot be considered as such either.

B’Tselem, a left-wing Israeli NGO calling itself an “Israeli human rights organization,” wrongfully declares on its website that Israeli settlement “in occupied territory is itself a breach of international law.” It is unclear from their site what specific law, if any, Israel is violating. B’Tselem proudly quotes the Fourth Geneva Convention as one of their reliable sources for their accusations but it is due to their misinterpretation of the article that they are mistaken. In the end, their vague accusations lend credence to their followers and provide them with a false base of support for which there exists no real documentation or proof.

The State Department consistently uses reports by groups such as B’Tselem to support their positions on various issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In light of the last paragraph, this is a worrying phenomenon and Secretary Rice needs to take responsibility for the positions she maintains especially if they are based on a misunderstanding of key documents and international agreements.

It is important to remember that in negotiations after a war, the losing side always makes the concessions. In a defensive war on non-sovereign land, the winning country always has rights to the land it conquered without being considered occupying it.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice’s statement at the Annapolis Conference that she understands “what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian” and “the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness” is very worrying. This comment is ultimately misleading since it equates racist whites with non-racist Israelis and lends value to Palestinian claims that Israel violates their rights.

The civil rights movement in 1960’s America cannot be compared to the 21st century Middle East conflict by any stretch of the imagination. Israel does not prevent Palestinians from going through a checkpoint because of who they are but because of the potential danger involved.

Furthermore, Palestinians seek to destroy Israel whereas the black population and their leaders did not seek America’s destruction and did not promote the terrorization of Americans. They also did not educate their youth to hate white people nor did they send them to summer camps for hate training. Secretary Rice is mistaken if she believes that she is being “even-handed’ and “fair” by equating the conflict and comparing it to America’s south.

The Palestinians, and the Arab leaders who have led them astray, are the ones responsible for their past mistakes. There are consequences in losing an aggressive war, and the Palestinians, as the aggressors, now must face up to their obligations and recognize that they do not have equal rights in this conflict.

The Americans must realize this too and, in lieu of trying to appease the Palestinians and show even-handedness, should be talking tough and making more demands of the Palestinians – not Israel.

The Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be resolved fairly unless the U.S. State Department resolves to be impartial in approach while simultaneously recognizing the differing degree of rights between the two sides.

Can Obama win the reddest of Red States, Utah? In this land of conservative Mormon voters, it seems quite unlikely. Still, it looks like the candidate is sending volunteers to woo these unlikely voters…

This on top of the fact that even some Democrats feel that they’re too conservative for Mr. Obama. (more…)

By Ryan P. Christiano

In an address before The House of Commons, on the 1^st of March 1848, Lord Palmerston declared: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. Which theory or theories of International Relations motivated the Iraq War, and more narrowly, inspired President Bush? The President’s State of The Union Address; four short months after the attacks of September 11^th, declared that a new ‘Axis of Evil’ exists in the world after 9/11. In the 2003 State of The Union Address, the President declared that America and her allies were the only things that stand between a world of peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm; and that Iraq now threatened the world with chaos and constant alarm.

(more…)