When suspicion was cast on the recently impeached Governor of Illinois, he remained optimistic about his prospects. “I don’t believe there’s any cloud that hangs over me, I think there’s nothing but sunshine hanging over me,” he said. Over the past 5 weeks, and through his own impeachment hearing, he’s remained not only positive, but downright poetic. View the one man train wreck that is Rod Blagojevich.
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
From TPM Reader D(K) …
Doesn’t it seem a little odd that when you have a ball player (Roger Clemens) who lies to Congress about steroid use in baseball, the U.S. Attorney for DC convenes a grand jury to consider a perjury indictment, but when an official of the Justice Department (Bradley Schlozman) lies to Congress about trying to politicize the civil service within DOJ, the U.S. Attorney fo DC passes on further investigation or prosecution? Which really seems like the more significant problem for the country?
From a pool report …
The PEOTUS departed Hay-Adams at 6:17 p.m. and at arrived at 6:34 p.m. at No. 9 Grafton St., Chevy Chase (right off the circle). Thanks to the good work of Hans Nichols (of Bloomberg and “Daily Show” fame), Montgomery County property tax records showed this is the home of conservative columnist George Will (valued at $1.9 million, according to the 2008 levy).
We’re still awaiting confirmation that this is indeed Will’s house from the transition, but your pool is satisfied with the documentation.
Your pool has been told it’s a dinner party.
And, thanks to an enterprising photographer, a shot through a window showed op-ed stalwarts William Kristol and David Brooks are also part of this unlikely gathering of tight, right suits.
Transition mouthpiece Tommy Vietor was also spied inside the manse.
Republicans roll out new plan to revive the economy by destroying Social Security …
Mr. Obama has told Republicans he is open to suggestions, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said his conference would urge Mr. Obama to consider a two-year suspension of payroll taxes to benefit individuals and corporations.
Mr. McConnell said Senate Republicans were intensely interested in the idea, which was presented at their own weekly lunch by Lawrence B. Lindsey, who was President Bush’s top economic adviser from 2001 to 2002, and John H. Makin, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
You’ve likely heard some brief mention of Marcus Schrenker, a penny-ante Bernie Madoff, who tried for the spectacular getaway as his life of scheming and defrauding began to crumble around him.
With defrauded investors coming from one side and state investigators closing in on the other, Schrenker hatched the idea of faking his own death in a plane crash.
Flying from Indiana to Florida, he radioed in a distress call from his single engine plane, telling air traffic controllers a cockpit window had imploded leaving him bleeding profusely. He then donned his parachuted and jumped out of the plane at roughly 2500 ft. (Just jumping out of ten story building and being done with it is so passe.) Waiting for him not far from his landing zone was a motorcycle he’d prepositioned in the Alabama pine barrens.
The plan hit a fatal flaw when the military jets scrambled to intercept Schrenker’s plane noticed that there was no one flying it and that the door to the cockpit was open.
After a few days on the run, officers from the Gadsden County Sheriff’s office caught Schrenker tonight.
Real change almost always comes in the face of crisis. So if you believe that Global Warming is real and that sometime soon will have to be confronted in a big way … and if you believe that our reliance on oil is not only an environmental threat but a threat to our economic security and national security as well … and if you believe that we need to start manufacturing
things that people in other countries want to buy, when else do you expect real change to come on these issues — a real start on the big changes — if not now?
It’s a lot to expect early in an administration. But look through a couple centuries of our history and you’ll see that there are just no examples of administrations that started small and did big things in year 2 or 4 or 6. That doesn’t happen. Look at Roosevelt, Johnson, Reagan, presidents pack their biggest punch on day one. And even though many big things can happen in subsequent years, the presidencies are almost always defined at the beginning. Later triumphs and reforms grow from the changed political terrain created at the outset.
A lot I’ve written over the last few weeks that’s been critical of what seems to me like a too little ambitious approach from Obama. But I base that on a belief that the current economic crisis is just the immediate hole we find ourselves in, perhaps the immediate manifestation of these other deep and critical challenges I noted above — all tied to unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, financialization of the US economy and decline of US manufacturing. I don’t think we have much time to spare.
The Geithner nomination seems to be basically still on track — housekeeper and tax issues notwithstanding. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
bin Laden no longer for negotiations over Gaza. Calls for outright jihad.