LIGHTNING ROUND: A LEGACY OF CORRUPTION.

LIGHTNING ROUND: A LEGACY OF CORRUPTION.
As Barack Obama is fond of saying, there can only be one president at a time. And right now, that might as well be Obama himself. While the president-elect is successfully injecting some confidence into the financial markets with a series of well-timed press conferences and leaks designed to unveil his economic team piece by piece, George W. Bush is pardoning turkeys, installing cronies in the federal bureaucracy, and making it easier for polluters to pollute and enrich themselves. Heckuvajob. I don't know why Bush hates our country, but he's certainly letting us know how he truly feels in his final days in office.
Obama and Joe Biden are heading to Philly next week for a National Governors Association-sponsored event where the president-elect and vice president-elect will meet with governors from both parties and address the effect the economic crisis is having on state budgets. The Wall Street Journal notes that Sarah Palin and Obama will meet for the first time at the event.
The Minnesota state Canvassing Board has denied a request by the Franken campaign that rejected absentee ballots be included in the recount, even as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has expressed concern over the sheer volume of challenged ballots by both candidates.
Sam takes a look at the internal politics of filling Barack Obama's Senate seat in Illinois and navigating the Daley machine.
This weird op-ed in The Washington Post that argues Bill Clinton should take Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. John Quincy Adams went to Congress with lasting effect after losing his presidential reelection bid, the authors insist, so, ipso facto, Clinton could have the same success! It's airtight!
I hope Newt Gingrich isn't just jerking me around about a 2012 presidential run.
This conservative obsession with the supposed dominance of "The Historic Victimhood Narrative" in public schools (and rewriting history) is both bizarre and morbidly compelling. Yglesias is similarly fascinated, but puts our chosen national heroes in the proper historical context: "Similarly, the much-bemoaned-by-rightwingers greater attention given in recent decades to the contributions of women and ethnic minority groups is about trying to expand the circle of people who feel invested in the national narrative."