Don't blame me. I voted for Palin. :-)

Obama is a Chicago politician. He wants corruption enablers in his regime. In fact that is what I want too.

Why? I'm hoping for change.

Nehemiah Scudder came 4 years early.

Obama is a disgusting vile piece of s*** that believes America deserved 9/11. Why wouldn’t he nominate anti-American scum like Gorelick?

You unfortunately dwell in an alternate and altered universe sometimes called 'the real world'. Ms. Gorelick is perfect - she's experienced at helping constrain law enforcement and is a friend to our potential new non governmental MidEast allies. She also has a host of required experience at an institution that is the model for our new business/gov't joint partnerships and mostly she'll do the same work in making sure no negative impact comes to her boss just like the 9/11 commission. She'll be filling those reeducation camps up soon enough.

But you don't have to be an Obama voter to know that this is not the sort of change Barack Obama was talking about, and hardly what his supporters voted for.

Really? Clinton wasn't Bush--that's the "change" Obama voters wanted.

I may have said this before, but Jamie Gorelick fulfills the old feminist trope that equality will have been achieved when an incompetent woman can rise as far as an incompetent man.

For people like Althouse, the words are "You are betting what you asked for."

OK, stop with the attacks on Jamie Gorelick. We all know the financial meltdown was complately the fault of the Republicans so using her tenure at Fannie Mae against her is just a smear. And besides, her whole purpose in segmenting the intelligence agencies was to undermine FISA, so the cause was just. And the cost was simply 3,000 people who didn't vote for Obama anyway. So who cares?

I figured we wouldn't see buyer's remorse until after Obama at least took office. I guess this is a too-late warning to all of those so-called conservatives who jumped ship to vote for the most leftist presidential candidate in history, hoping that he would magically govern as a centrist, despite everything he did and said prior to the election. Thanks guys and gals!

My preferred slogan is- Don't blame me, I voted for the old, sick, rich, white, crippled guy.

And if you think Gorelick is bad get a load of his economic team. How does Paula Pritzker grab you, Cuz?

I'm sure I must be wrong about this, I wish Dr Dynamite was here to straighten us out. Did his contract with Axelrod expire?

dr jill

You're in luck! All of the paid Obama blog commentators (there were thousands of us) have received official staff positions within the transition team, and in January we will all become Federal employees. The program of paying operatives making anonymous comments on ultra-influential blogs drawing literally dozens of eyes every week proved so successful that we all got a bonus: I received a pony and a special arm-band that will protect me from the bands of marauding black youths in the coming race war. It's good to be on the winning team.

Has the Palin payola stopped at this blog, or are you folks still in the bag for Miss Congeniality?

dr jill = dr kill

My apologies for the typo. They put those two keys too close together.

Re: Jamie Gorelick

I can't imagine the Law Professor in Chief would pick a political hack like Jamie Gorelick. I think he's going to go with a cerebral leftist. Gorelick is a trial balloon that will get conservatives to swallow (i.e., not filibuster) anything Obama puts out there because, at least, hey, it's not Jamie Gorelick.

Re: Secretary of State

Obama is not going to pick McCain. Sheesh, is there anyone in America with less of a diplomatic temperament? For Sec of State, Obama will choose a Senator who once ran for president. And it ain't gonna be John Kerry! Obama will get some bipartisan street-cred and pick Dick Lugar (who has been something of a mentor to Obama on foreign affairs issue).

Take that to the failing, under-capitalized bank that Jamie Gorelick made write bad loans.

More than any other single individual, Gorelick was responsible for 9/11. She established (for Clinton) and enforced the ban on CIA and FBI trading information about terrorism. Nothing CIA learned got sent to the Bureau, and vice versa. Had the CIA data been used domestically, we might have been able to jail any number of vermin. Needless to say, she ended up on the 9/11 Commission. Guess who was not criticized?
With a record such as that, it is inevitable that she will have a high position in the Obambi regime.

Oh, is Obama your president? Interesting. No matter how hard I squint when looking at him, or tilt my head when listening to him, I just cannot perceive the pitiful man as my president.

Obama is the president of the US Government, not of the country known informally as America. Hint: the government is not the country. Pretty subtle, I know, but a vital piece of knowledge for anyone wanting to navigate the potentially unsettling political landscape certain to unfold over the next few years.

America, the traditional land of freedom from government oppression and place of equal opportunity, would never elect an ideologically radical, mob-connected Chicago machine politician as its president. The big union/organized crime dominated big cities of the US might find a way to wrangle an apparent victory, however.

I knew it! I knew that was you, standing in that Chicago line, waiting for your prepaid fifty dollar Visa card. Use it today, while it's still worth thirty-eight bucks.

Al Fin

"Obama is the president of the US Government, not of the country known informally as America. Hint: the government is not the country."

Who *is* the president of the country known informally as America?

Who *is* the president of the country known informally as America?

Until January 20? George Bush.

Heather

I was asking Al Fin to explain his rather cryptic post, but thanks for the input.

If the government is not the country, then let the government have the president. The country doesn't need it. Most of the country is better off without a president, emperor, or fuhrer.

The economic picture for the government is dismal with growing deficits into the future, and Peronista style populist inflation combined with strangulating taxation just a few breaths away. The country doesn't need to share that dismal picture, if its people choose a different path.

If the government is not the country, then let the government have the president. The country doesn't need it. Most of the country is better off without a president, emperor, or fuhrer.

The economic picture for the government is dismal with growing deficits reaching out into the indefinite future, and Peronista style populist inflation combined with strangulating taxation just a few breaths away. The country doesn't need to share that dismal picture, if its people choose a different path.

The Mainspring of Human Progress. Economics in One Lesson. What is Seen and What is Not Seen. And so on. These are basic lessons in the foundations of human prosperity. The government in its current form will never accept those basic lessons. That means that the current government of the US has the same glorious future that the late government of the USSR enjoyed. You can only violate basic laws of human nature and economics for so long.

Al Fin

"The Mainspring of Human Progress. Economics in One Lesson. What is Seen and What is Not Seen. And so on. These are basic lessons in the foundations of human prosperity. The government in its current form will never accept those basic lessons. That means that the current government of the US has the same glorious future that the late government of the USSR enjoyed. You can only violate basic laws of human nature and economics for so long."

I have no idea what the hell you are saying, but I like to think you're composing this gibberish from a shack in Montana with a half-empty can of beans next to the computer.

Most people are hopefully brighter than yourself, anonymous. They can either google the phrases, or more likely understand immediately that I had presented a list of some of the most important and accessible titles in understanding how the human world works.

The government is not the country. Try not to identify too closely to a government that suddenly swerves out of control, possibly irreversibly, off the tracks.

Al Fin

"The country doesn't need it. Most of the country is better off without a president, emperor, or fuhrer."

Now that is fascinating. Are you arguing that most of the country is better off without government in general, or that most of the country is better off under a government with no executive?

cr60jwz3o5lfhi23

Most of the activities of the private sector do not require the micro-management of any sort of government at all. But government has worked its way into the vital aspects of modern life anyway. Example: Barack Obama has promised to treat CO2 as a dangerous pollutant. Technically, every time one exhaled, he would be subject to EPA fines of thousands of dollars per day per incident (per exhalation). It sounds extreme, but once the EPA lawyers and tort lawyers and environmental group lawyers are given such a sledgehammer of a legal tool, they will use it to any extremes possible.

If you can imagine a way to supply the vital necessities of life without involving government, this might be a good time to start working out the details and implementing the parts of the plan as they become workable.

Not open resistance or opposition to an increasingly all-powerful state. Stealth avoidance is more the idea. Dropping the chains one by one without having to go feral. New technology is allowing that.