Transition 2009

That number is so synonymous with torture when you consider the FOX series that is a hit amongst the right, but today is no exception. Right now we are 24 hours away from the swearing in of Barack Obama and the departure of George W. Bush, who is also synonymous with torture.

And what should we watch for during this last 24 hours of eight years of hell? Politico has a list of 10 pardons to watch for.

This is something we really need. It seems like, for all too long, we have had leaders worrying about their own ambitions instead of bettering the nation. Now we have a leader who thinks outside of the box.

Obama has built an enormous wealth of information from the information he collected during his historic campaign. His mailing list alone will be pivotal in reaching out to citizens in order to get their help in this new project.

Below the fold – the entire press release.

Last night Bush gave his farewell address and during it he gave himself an awful lot of pats on the back. Here’s one part that really got me:

A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled.

Really? Someone should have told the seniors and disabled about this “peace of mind”. When the new program went into effect and tons of seniors couldn’t get their medicine, a local group of seniors tried to get answers from our district’s congressman – John Boehner. When they contacted his office to hold a meeting, he flat out refused and just said “the program is working”.

Then seniors got a new wake up call a few months later – the doughnut hole. This ended up costing the seniors even more.

This program has been a colossal fuckup, much like NCLB, but it looks like Obama has recognized that and is ready to undo the hell Bush and the Republicans created for our seniors:

Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare "bargain" with the American people, saying that the nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.

That discussion will begin next month, Obama said, when he convenes a "fiscal responsibility summit" before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.

"What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further," he said. "We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else's."

Here’s hoping he can make good on this and get some sweeping new legislation past the obstructionist Republicans, who apparently don’t give a damn about the seniors of this country. A good start would be negotiating for lower prices, instead of giving the mega health corporations a sweet handout at full price from the taxpayers.

Funny how the lone Senator to vote against Hillary Clinton’s confirmation is the same one named in a prostitution scandal – David Vitter.

The dark ages are ending. In about 20 minutes, George W. Bush will give his last press conference. Wouldn’t it be funny if the entire press pool threw their shoes?

Wow – never saw this coming:

President-elect Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN and CBS, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Gupta has told administration officials that he wants the job, and the final vetting process is under way. He has asked for a few days to figure out the financial and logistical details of moving his family from Atlanta to Washington but is expected to accept the offer.{[}]lt;/p>

I wonder what CNN will do without their doctor?

This will be the first year that we have a Democrat in the White House in the modern blogging age, and with that I do have a rather dire prediction. As the year progresses and we start seeing exactly how soon to be President Obama governs, some of the groups and organizations we all cherished for their work these past several years will quickly turn into something we can’t understand, maybe even bordering on entering the wingnut-o-sphere.

I predict this will start when/if Obama decides to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. People quickly forget the key points of campaigns, and bloggers are no exception. We will hear a big out cry from some bloggers screaming that Obama is breaking campaign promises on Afghanistan, when in fact he will be doing exactly what he said.

As these groups transcend the depths, teetering on being progressive or just noise makers, make no mistake that they have some underlying drives to do so. One of the biggest is greed. We haven’t had a Democrat in the White House since blogging became an actual business and the sudden explosion of PACs. Don’t be confused on the greed though, a lot of it won’t be tied to money. Instead what we will see is a lot of greed tied to recognition and traffic. If you follow the blogosphere as closely as I do you can see this already evident, and a lot of blogs, which have transformed into a sole source of income, already fight for the almighty click. Clicks do lead to money also in the world of online advertising.

If you suddenly find yourself on opposing views of one of your favorite blogs or political action committees, the best thing to do is walk away. Giving them attention, even if it is as simple as disagreement, is the equivalent of giving a beer to a alcoholic. I also suggest the other bloggers out there simply stop linking them and even remove them from your blogrolls. If these individuals don’t get the attention they crave then eventually they will realize that their lust for fame has deeply clouded their love for blogging, and hopefully they will wake up and realize that commons sense is the best part of any blog.

And just to close this out I do want to make clear that any blog criticizing our new president isn’t being driven by greed or has some ulterior motive. I do plan on holding our new president accountable. If I see something being done I don’t agree with, and trust me, it will happen, I fully intend to call him out on it. Of course this blog isn’t my income. I don’t even break even and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I blog for the pure pleasure of sharing my thoughts and if 5 people read them, or 500,000, it doesn’t matter to me.

This week is the science edition:

There has been a lot of complaining from the left that Obama isn’t appointing enough liberals to his cabinet. To those on our side of the blogosphere I ask; when did Obama become a Liberal? I remember supporting a candidate who was pretty much a moderate, despite my own liberal beliefs. I was also very happy to support this candidate and have been very pleased with his picks so far. After the last eight years, and with all the problems facing our nation today, the last thing we need is another ideologue running the country.

He is continuing to lay out his plans for getting our economy back on track. That's much more than Bush is doing - blaming everyone else.

One thing that is a big difference between Bush and Obama is the lack of cronies we see going into our new administration.

Barack Obama’s picks for Cabinet and other senior posts are many things: centrists, veterans, rivals. Most of all, though, they’re big: big names, big intellects and big egos.

The president-elect’s national security and economic policy teams, inside the White House and out, will be led by power politics veterans, all but one of them older than the president-elect, and all accustomed to being the most important voice in the room.

No horse racers running emergency response agencies? Nope – this is the sign of a man willing to actually run the government instead of making it a clearing house for his friends that failed at everything else in life.

Change is awesome! The Obama transition team has launched a section on change.gov dedicated to healthcare reform. There are already close to 1,200 comments on it. Imagine a government letting people voice their opinion? I thought that was America’s principal, but wasn’t so sure after the last eight years. Well it looks like it may be our principal again.

But that isn’t all. John Conyers is working on a single payer healthcare package and now has a page dedicated to informing the public about it.

A core belief of the Democratic Party is starting to see life, and could become reality. How many times has that happened for the Republicans?

No big surprise here:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has agreed to stay on under President-elect Barack Obama, according to officials in both parties. Obama plans to announce a national-security team early next week that includes Gates at the Pentagon and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as secretary of state, officials said.

Retired Marine Gen. James Jones, former Marine commandant and commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, will be named national security adviser, the officials said.

I think it’s a good move. Keeping someone around who might know where the bodies are buried can be beneficial.

Ok I am impressed:

Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee from 1985 to 1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush's state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say:

Here at home there is urgent work to do to fight the historically high -- and growing -- gap between our richest and poorest citizens. While the mean income of households on the low end of the income spectrum -- the bottom 20 percent -- is just $10,655 a year, the income of the top twenty percent of households averages almost $160,000. That's 15 times as much. At the same time, according to the latest census figures, the middle class, beset with stagnant wages and mountainous debts, is shrinking. The sad fact is that one of our most cherished values as a society, namely equality of opportunity, is fading as a reality for far too many people...

More like this please?

Here’s the run down:

Tim Geithner - treasury secretary

Larry Summers - National Economic Council.

Christina Romer - chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Melody Barnes - director of the Domestic Policy Council

Heather Higginbottom - deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council.

I’ll be adding Geithner into the Cabinet 44 page later on.