I really appreciate the Charles Homans discussion being held here on TPMCafe but nobody involved has mentioned a third alternative -- we don't investigate (or do) but at the same time we sign on with the International Criminal Court.

The immediate effect of that would be a long overdue indictment against Henry Kissinger.  But the court would eventually catch up with Bush administration officials as well.  None of them, including the former president, would be able to travel outside of the United States.

Maybe just the threat of this would be enough to compel some former Bush administration officials to speak openly before congress.

One major drawback to this is that we'd be relying on the international community for our own justice needs.  But, that's kind of the point of the ICC.  They step in because local systems are too entangled to sort out their own messes.  It also means that likely only the human rights violations -- the detentions, torture and renditions would be heard about.  The domestic laws that were broken, like the domestic spying, would likely be of less interest to the ICC.

But, you never know.

Let's at least threaten to join if these people won't talk.

...and I'm pretty sure that Bush himself is anxious to end the Bush era.  But why is Tom Friedman on my television saying that we should move up the transition date and basically swear Obama in right now and why is CNN treating that idea like it makes any sense at all?

One problem with it is that Obama actually thinks before he acts, so he'd probably not be for it.  Obama  is working on a transition plan that has him taking over the reigns on January 20th.  Moving that date up by more than a month will needlessly complicate his transition, one that looks like it's going to be the smoothest in history if Obama is allowed to follow his plan.

Another problem is that it's illegal and congress is unlikely to act to change the laws on such short notice so it's a silly thing to be talking about.

A third problem is that all of this talk is unfair to Obama.  This "get in there and save us" rhetoric puts enormous pressure on him as a president.  But he is not going to wave his hand and fix the economy.  He is going to start us on a process that will likely lead us to a better future.  But he needs time to do that.  At the very least we can wait until January 20th for him to take over.

Now that Barack Obama has been elected president he must do 10 things right now!

1) Push ups.  He won't stay the most in-shape politician in the country without doing push-ups.

2)  Eat.  He must not starve to death.

3)  Drink plenty of fluids.  He must not become dangerously dehydrated.

4)  Not drink so much that he drowns.

5)  Read this list of things that he must do!  Otherwise, how will he know?

6)  Do the things on this list!  Reading is not enough.

7)  Realize that there is no 7th thing.

8) Skip to the 8th thing because there is no 7th thing.

9)  Get Michelle Obama to do all these things too.

10)  Do, like, a hundred other things.

Glad I could be of service.  Without this list, this presidency will be a shambles.

It's been suggested a few times already that Barack Obama should hand over some, or at least one, cabinet posts over to Republicans.  Retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense is one idea and it's the most, er, defensible since there's a war on and there's something to be said for not changing everything at once when we have troops deployed.  Also, Bill Clinton set this precedent by appointing Republican William Cohen to the post and Cohen went on to reasonable successes in Kosovo.  If Gates isn't retained, I've seen Chuck Hagel's name floated as a possibility.  This would basically duplicate Clinton's move with Cohen.

Dean Baker suggested that Republican Sheila Bair take over the Treasury.  She is Bush's appointed head of the FDIC.  Jason Everett Miller, a frequent poster at TPM, has praised these ideas because the people being floated for the jobs are undeniably competent and he sees this as a way of building unity across parties.  I don't want to present a week version of Jason's argument here: he is for competence above all but also believes that Obama needs to make some unifying, bipartisan moves.

As you can tell by the headline to my post, I hate this idea, even though the names floated are reasonably competent for the jobs they might do.  In my experience, the Republican party does not graciously accept attempts at unity.  Bill Clinton gave some cabinet appointment to Republicans and the Republicans still tried to destroy his presidency.  Having people like Cohen and David Gergen on the Clinton team did not create a climate of bipartisan cooperation -- Republicans engaged in the "politics of personal destruction" in spite of Clinton's efforts.

Further, George W. Bush squeaked into the White House twice and yet claimed such a mandate that he virtually shut the Democrats out of the national discussion until he was forced to pretend to listen to them in 2006.  Obama's victory was far more decisive.  So why are we talking about making gestures towards unity that, if the experiences of the Clinton administration is to be our guide, won't work anyway?  The people have elected a Democratic government in the White House and both legislative chambers.  So let's have a Democratic government.

One might object that this is just the old spoils system at work and that these jobs should go to the most qualified candidates, regardless of party.  But I see holding a few cabinet posts open for Republicans is akin to the very kind of affirmative action that Republicans hate. There is no cabinet position open where you can't find a Democrat who is most qualified to do the job.  Are we really to believe that Robert Gates is more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than any Democrat in the country who would accept the position?  I'd at least need to be convinced of that, and I'm not.

I understand that people have strong feelings about names being floated for various Obama posts.  So do I.  Maybe, in some cases, Obama is looking at the wrong Democrat.  Josh Marshall, Dean Baker and Jim Sleeper all think Larry Summers isn't the right Democrat.  Fine, I think I agree.  But that doesn't mean that a Republican is the answer.

Can we find the right Democrats, or at least demonstrate that they don't exist.  I really want Obama's administration to start some new job programs, but should we really be focusing on employing Republicans first?

So an aide for Joe Lieberman wants to absurdly claim that if the Democrats don't give Traitor Joe his committee chairmanship in the next congress that they're putting politics before national security.  Forget whether or not the presence or absence of Joe Lieberman affects our national security in any way.  The real problem with this argument is that there's nothing wrong with putting politics ahead of national security.

Indeed, that is the natural order of things.

Through our political process we determine what our national security needs are and how they should best be dealt with.  The last time somebody told me not to put politics ahead of national security we were on the road to invading Iraq.  That the Iraq War even happened was a failure of politics.  It represents exactly the kind of security blunder that the deliberative bodies of our government are meant to prevent.

I'm through using the term "politics" as a pejorative.  Good, responsible politicking is the way that we're going to clean up the messes caused during the last 8 years of impulse.  The American system relies on checks and balances to prevent tyranny.  Those checks and balances only work if people practice politics proudly.

A good start would be to deny a committee chair to an inscrutable incompetent who feels entitled to it.

One TPM reader says that John McCain's refusal to look Obama in the eye last night is the "behavior of a low ranking monkey."  Our friend is also a real monkey scientists, so I'm ready to believe.

But, if you're skeptical about comparing monkeys to humans (and I know most of you aren't, but just in case) I'd say that McCain's refusal to look Obama in the eye is quite the same as hoping that the bully who roamed the halls in your middle school couldn't see you if you didn't look at him.  Monkey or bullied midschooler, McCain did reveal his own feelings about his chances last night.

I think that Obama turned the phrase "Let's talk about that..." into a verbal assault.  Every time McCain tried to distort Obama's positions, Obama just calmly said "let's talk about that," and then he explained himself, in pret5ty clear language.  The bit about talking to Ahmadinejad was a good example.  Obama does really seem to think that voting aged Americans can process and explanation and make the right choice.  I sure hope he's right.

So the verdict is that there were no game changing moments last night.  I disagree.  The only thing McCain had going for him, heading into this debate, was his stature as a leader with a long record and I think that's diminished now for anyone who watched the debate.  There's no way an undecided voter turned off the TV thinking that McCain proved he had the greater stature.

No one debate is going to decide the election but last night was not a good night for John McCain.  If, at 847 years old, you're still the low ranking monkey, face it -- you're not climbing higher.

The lame duck President said we have to give $700 billion to Wall Street because if we don't even people with good credit won't be able to get loans for cars, college and housing.

Um...

Why in the Hell do people who work every day need loans to by simple things like cars, education and housing?

The real failure here doesn't have anything to do with any capital markets, the failure is that our government allowed an economy to develop where the totally reasonable wishes of everyday workers have been priced to the point where those workers have to go into debt to get them.

Personal transportation, education, housing. Those all strike me as reasonable desires that any person might have. If they perform labor in the service of others on a daily basis, seems to me like those three things should be givens.

The crisis right now is not a credit crisis, it's a compensation crisis. People who work day in and day out  shouldn't have to borrow in order to meet basic needs. The problem is that managers and executives take too much and they pay too little to the people who do all the work.  Credit shouldn't be considered liquidity.  Cash should be.  For that, workers need to be paid more.

The avatars are back!

That means I'm a jet flyin', limo ridin', kiss stealin', wheelin' dealin' sonfoagun, once again!

The Nature Boy was very sad to learn that the pick of Sarah Palin had so overloaded TPM's servers that you all were no longer able to see my bleach blonde au naturale look!  Whoooo!

Now we got a new server on the way.  And then we can correct our typos.  Whoooo! 

But don't thank Josh and the server.  This is because the Nature Boy took the Concorde (the only way to fly) to Wasilia and showed that Tina Faye look-a-like why they call him the 60 minute man.  Because whether ya like it or ya don't, learn ta love it.  Diamonds are forever, just like destor23!  Whoooo!

(Sorry... we need an avatar party).

Joe Biden?  Joe (D-MBNA) Biden?  The architect of the bankruptcy "reform?"

More than anyone, I'd expect John Marshall to be outraged by this.  During the bankruptcy reform debate, TPM tried to rally the opposition, the same way it rallied opposition to social security privatization.  It's one reason that the Warren Reports are featured here at TPMCafe.  So I'd expect some outrage from professor Warren, too.

It's really depressing and insulting that Obama would pick such a conservative Democrat as his running mate. When he allowed his campaign to be associated with anti-gay bigot Donnie McClurkin during the primaries, I was angry and got shouted down around here for it.  I shouldn't demand purity, I was told.  Fair enough.  I don't demand it. I can forgive missteps like that and I did.  Then there was the FISA about-face.  I was really angry when our nominee not only broke a promise but voted to expand the government surveillance powers.  But again, I got over it.  It's not right to demand purity, after all.

Then he spoke out basically in favor of faith based initiatives, implying not that the Bush policies are wrong on this, just that they're badly run.  I disagree.  But it's a disagreement I can live with.

Now... Biden?  I'm having a tougher time with this one.  I would never vote for Biden for president, so why would I want him to be veep?  This choice also raises a deeper question about Obama.  Accepting that he's not a pure lefty and that a pure lefty wouldn't make a credible candidate I still have to wonder if this ever takes the liberal side when deciding on a big issue.  I don't demand purity, but I do demand that the guy sides with me at least some of the time.

Biden is a terrible choice.  In isolation, he's a terrible choice that I can live with.  But Obama's consistent disregard for the liberal wing of the party has gotten really old.

"I never much liked Edwards as a politician," writes Time Magazine's Joe Klein.

Here at TPM, Josh Marshall argues that Edwards was reckless to run for the nomination because his affair definitely would have come out and it would have hurt his chances had he won the nomination.

Well, it's hard to argue with Josh's point.  But... Edwards was never going to win the nomination and this had nothing to do with his personal life or his political style.  The fact is, he wasn't even taken that seriously at TPM.  It was mostly about Obama and Hillary from pretty much day one.  In the rest of the media, Edwards was left out almost entirely.  Heck, before people like me who really liked Edwards' populist message could even get excited about his candidacy we were having to argue that he had the right to stay in the campaign.  Indeed it was Joe Klein over at Swampland who I first saw argue that Edwards had a moral obligation to drop out so that voters could get down to the serious business of choosing between Hillary and Obama.

I hope we don't forget that Edwards' campaign was not torpedoed by this affair.  Edwards was a totally legitimate candidate with a message that differed from both Hillary and Obama who was basically pushed out of contention by a media that for whatever reason didn't like him.  I think they're happy about the affair because it'll keep Edwards from making a comeback anytime soon, or from getting an appointment in an Obama administration.  Which is too bad because he'd make a great attorney general, affair or no.

According to TPM, Eli Pariser was meant to post here to discuss MoveOn.org's 10th year and its past and future impacts on the progressive movement.  Since the debate this week was largely about whether MoveOn is a genuine movement that empowers individual progressives or is a typical, top down marketting or lobbying organization, having Pariser here to join the discussion and to engage with TPM's readers was of paramount importance.

I understand that Pariser is busy.  It's an election year.  MoveOn is a big organization.  But, come on.  If MoveOn wants those of us in the netroots or in the wider progressive world to believe that it can or will be responsive to our ideas than Pariser should make darned sure to not only show up in forums like this one but that he engages with the readers and not just the writers that TPM invited to dicuss his organization on the main page.

Absent a good explanation (and maybe there is one) it seems like Pariser dissed us.  What gives?

Jason Everett Miller proved that where FISA divides us, poetry can unite us in the first ever TPMCafe haiku thread.  Now, at the risk of starting a trend that will make Time's Swampland label all Democrats a bunch of latte-drinking poetry book sniffers, I offer you...

The John McCain Limerick Thread!

I also declare that slant rhymes and syllable mistakes are okay for this one.  A lot of us are at work and should be, you know, working.

Okay, I'll go first:

There once was a man named McCain,
Dumber than dirt and older than rain,
He’s the first guy Rove routed
Way back in 2000
And he’s running for president again?

Okay, your turn.  And as the Irish say: mazel tov.

The discussion about The New Yorker’s Obama cover has revealed a lot of prejudices about people that seem to be shared by a good portion of the TPM commentariat community.

There are some criticisms of the cover that I disagree with but can accept as legitimate.  If you think the cover is tasteless well, that’s by definition a matter of taste.  There’s no sense in arguing about it.  If you think it’s not funny, well, there’s another thing  not worth arguing about.  You didn’t laugh.  It’s over.  I can’t convince you that you did.

But those aren’t the only arguments.  The big one I see is that, no matter what the The New Yorker’s  intentions, and we all seem to agree that the intention was to poke fun at the right wing’s caricature of Obama, that the cover is unhelpful to Obama’s campaign.

But for that to be true, you have to assume that the American people are idiots who won’t be able to understand a joke that all of us, on both sides of the issue, do indeed understand.  You have to believe that a factory worker in Michigan won’t get the joke that we all get.  They will simply see the cover on a newsstand or on TV and they will take it literally.  They will subconsciously, or perhaps consciously, process the image and then in November they’ll vote for John McCain because he’s not a fist-bumping Muslim terrorist like in the drawing on that magazine.

Obviously to make the assumption that your average American won’t understand a joke that we all understand is the height of elitism.  The irony is that it’s The New Yorker that’s being pilloried for elitism, or for being the voice of New York’s chattering classes and for just not getting that it can’t go around making whatever joke its artists and editors want to make because the rest of the country just won’t understand.

Maybe editor David Remnick has a higher opinion of the American public than we have here at TPMCafe.  Maybe he thinks that fully functioning adults from all walks of life are quite capable of getting the joke.  Maybe he thinks they’re smart enough not to pull the lever for McCain because of a cartoon they saw on a newsstand cover months before the election.  Maybe he’s giving people a bit more credit than they get from TPMCafe commenters.

This whole line of argument rests on the assumption that Americans are either stupid, easily led and confused or are, at best, not as smart as TPMers.  So who are the elitists in all of this?

We’ve probably wasted too much ink already about a magazine cover that will soon be forgotten.  But it’s been quite revealing because a lot of people’s arguments rest on the assumption that the average American is a flippin’ moron.  I really don’t think that’s the case.  I actually think that most people will absolutely understand what The New Yorker cover means – even if they only see it at a glance.  Those that don’t will probably not care about it any more than they’d care about any other New Yorker cover.  Very few people will behave as I’ve seen described here on the site today.  As for the folks here at TPMCafe – tackle the elitist in the mirror before trying to take on Remnick.

Everyone at TPM should donate money to John McCain if he does what Joe Klein is speculating about here and makes Jeb Bush his running mate.

It would be a delightful disaster.  John, are you listening?  If you agree to take Jeb onto your ticket, I will give you money!  Heck, Obama himself would probably donate.

Could you imagine?

Sigh, McCain is probably just shy of senile enough to fall for this.

I just got off the phone with a nice representative in Senator Clinton's office.  She confirms that Senator Clinton opposes the current FISA bill and any retoractive immunity for telecoms.  I asked if she would appear in the Senate to oppose or filibuster and they said her schedule hasn't been released.  I pointed out that she has agreed to a joint campaign appearance with Senator Obama on Friday June 27th and the representative did confirm that Senator Clinton isn't unavailable on vacation or anything like that.  So, no promises.  But they admit that she isn't away on some post election seclusion retreat as some have implied.

Might be a good idea if more called Clinton and really push on the issue of her making a campaign appearance with Obama.  I'd like to see them make a far more important appearance together on the Senate Floor.

(202) 224-4451
Don't be afraid to call, they're nice.

Of course, Senator Obama (202) 224-2854 needs to take the leadership role on this since he's our leader as we head into battle with the McCaininites.

But, there were also two other Senators who ran for president who promised to oppose telecom immunity.  Chris Dodd (who made it an issue in the first place and can be thanked at (202) 224-2823) and Joe Biden (202) 224-5042.

Let's get the Democratic Primary Class of 2008 together in the Senate! That's true party unity.