Revisiting the line of so-called-presidential succession

The Man of Orange and our next man in
Vienna, Patrick Park -- Nos. 45 and 46?

Michael Flynn and Donald Trump arrive at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa last week to visit the US Central Command headquarters.

And on it goes -- yadda-yadda, more of this so-called-journalistic nattering. If you really want to read it, and/or check out the links, you'll find it here. It's like these so-called journalists have nothing better to do with their time, all the while that So-Called President Trump and his team are toiling to Make America Great Again.

by Ken

It's too soon to say that the wheels are coming off the so-called Trump administration, even if it's looking more and more like a succession of Keystone Cops shorts, which might be hilarious if this wasn't the officially empowered so-called government of the world's one and only remaining superpower.



Still, I was relieved to discover, via some behind-the-scenes DWT e-mail chatter, that I'm not the only American who's been pondering the constitutionally established (as, of course, constitutionally revised) presidential succession.

Obviously thought of the succession has to being with So-Called Vice President Pence, but can that really happen? Not because the Unspeakable Pence is an extreme-right-wing crackpot, which is constitutionally permissible (cf. R. Reagan and G.W. Bush). Not even because of the overwhelming likelihood that he's not only a seriously pickled alcoholic but a deeply closeted homosexual and, therefore, because of his deepy closeted status, highly subject to blackmail. No, the fatal obstacles to his succession can be found in the extensive Russian intelligence reports, just as soon as Bannon and Preibus can work out who's sitting on the files.

It could be, in line with a suggestion by our Noah, that those files are actually in the possession of So-Called House Speaker Paul "The Rat, and Not Just the Gym Kind" Ryan, who's way far up in that constitutional line of succession. Just watch and see if, when the so-called president finally resigns, the so-called vice president doesn't announce that, much as he'd like to oblige by assuming the office of the so-called presidency, his extensive commitment to attending Fuck Those Goddam Homos rallies all over the country make him unavailable for the job.

SO WHO DOES THIS LEAVE TO TAKE OVER
THE REINS IF/WHEN THE TIME COMES?

Don't bother dusting off your copy of The U.S. Constitution for Dummies, because the information it contains is only tedious but seriously out of date. Or perhaps you were part of the multitude of Trump-haters whose attention was diverted by the hullabaloo over the so-called president's announcement that from now the official language of the country will be Swedish and from now on underwear will be worn on the outside -- diverted, that is, from that day's official announcement of the New Rules of So-Called-Presidential Succession, which was scrawled on the "Official Stuff to Announce" whiteboard of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's office.

"Wait just a darned second!" you say? "The so-called president doesn't have the constitutional authority to change the order of so-called-presidential succession!" Perhaps you missed the announcement, "published" on the "Official Stuff to Announce" whiteboard of the chief Supreme Court spokesperson, of the opinion by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch? To the effect that "From now on, whatever So-Called President Trump says goes"?

"Now wait just another darned second!" you say? "What's this about 'Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch'? There haven't even been confirmation hearings on his nomination yet, let alone confirmation."

Once again, you probably allowed your attention to be diverted the day attention was focused on Judge Gorsuch's nattering about So-Called President Trump's slams to the body of the U.S. judiciary. Because that was the day the White House announced that Judge Gorsuch was "assuming the position," and that while the formal wheels of confirmation grind relentlessly on, the newest justice will fill his time by writing opinions both on cases that are pending on the Supreme Court docket and on cases that haven't yet been formally placed on the docket, which will be decided by the new justice's assumption about how his eight colleagues would vote.

Most of these cases will have been decided, of course, by a 5-4 vote, but a surprising number will have been decided by a unanimous 9-zip vote. Among the latter was the decision in Trump v. Nattering Naysayers, wherein Justice Gorsuch, writing for the unanimous Court, ruled, "What So-Called President Trump says, goes," with the qualification that the ruling -- in the tradition of the one in Let's Make Tiny George Bush President v. the U.S. -- applies only to the present case, and especially doesn't apply to any possibly "Democrat" future president, who will be officially described as "overreaching" and "tyrannical" anytime he or she attempts to exercise any "Democrat"-imagined powers of the presidency.

OKAY, OKAY, BUT WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE
THE SO-CALLED-PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION?

Glad you asked. With the so-called vice president officially eliminated from contention, and nobody remembering who exactly the Senate candidate is supposed to be and the idea of a So-Called President Paul Ryan patently ridiculous, who's left on that magical day when the ancient Henry Kissinger is invited to the White House to fulfill his traditional role as Observer of the Forced-Out President Bouncing Off the White House Walls?

1. Vladimir Putin. [Disclosure: This was our Noah's thought, herewith shamelessly stolen. -- Ed.]

2. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen -- ha-ha, just kidding!

2. The so-called president's personal trainer -- ha-ha, kidding again!

2 for real. The so-called president's most-nearly-as-morbidly-obese adviser -- ha-ha, not kidding this time!

3 and 4. The outgoing so-called president's smart daughter and son-in-law, the order to be determined by behind-the-scenes means known, in the interest of marital privacy, only to the participants, the one stipulation being that, regardless of the outcome, all so-called-presidential appearances will include pitches for the smart daughter's product lines.

5 and 6. The outgoing so-called president's grown idiot sons, the order to be determined by a round of rock/paper/what's-the-other-one?

7. The outgoing so-called president's present wife -- but wait, she's a woman, and we can't have that, can we? So scratch this one.

7 (again) and up. The outgoing so-called president's former and future wives, the order to be determined by a round-robin series of mud-wrestling matches. Yeah, these are women too, but isn't this the way we want to see 'em?

Backup alternate. How 'bout that guy who's apparently going to be our ambassador to Austria on account of he's seen The Sound of Music 75 times? "I know every single word and song by heart," says Patrick Park -- sounds like a winner to me!




UPDATE -- A ROSTER OF TOP-TIER CANDIDATES

I didn't see this dispatch from Noah (in response to my mention that I was contemplating concocting a post more or less like the one you see above) in time for inclusion in the original post. As I've now discovered, he proposed some splendid candidates:

Well, there's a whole host of possibilities who think they are the chosen one for the job. Each just as crazy as Trumpy:

That nut in North Korea
Rudy
Alfred E. Newman
Steve Bannon
Eric Trump
Bart Simpson
Phil Robertson
Melania
Pol Pot
Elmo

Commenter Hone has already pointed out that Melania is ineligible by virtue of her country of birth, and this stricture would apply to several other of Noah's and my candidates. But as I pointed out in response, this limitation could be limited to the old-fangled Constitution.

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Ya think the president-elect got where he is today by not knowing how to duck a process server?

"In a statement, the Trump transition team said Giuliani informed Trump of his withdrawal at a Nov. 29 meeting. Giuliani delivered a letter to Trump, who declined to accept it at that meeting. On Friday, Giuliani again asked Trump to withdraw his name, and he accepted, according to a senior transition official."

-- from "Secretary-of-state candidate Rudy Giuliani withdraws
his name from consideration," yesterday on washingtonpost.com

by Ken

Wouldn't you figure that when Rudy tried to deliver that letter -- you know, the one the deliveree "declined to accept" -- at the Nov. 29 meeting, the president-elect figured that that lovable scamp Rudy had taken on side work as a process server? (Ya gotta love him, dontcha, always trying to hustle an extra buck?) Like the crazy SOB was trying to serve him papers for another of those pesky lawsuits that common people are forever filing against him? Not to be confused, naturally, with all the righteous legal actions he feels obliged to initiate to help make people who have wronged him wish they'd never been born.

Of course The Donald didn't get where he is today by not knowing how to duck some fuckwad of a process server!

Fast-forward to Friday's meeting, when Rudy explained the Nov. 29 confusion and the old pals enjoyed a hearty laugh. "You know," the president-elect chortled, "when I saw that envelope you were trying to stick me with, and figured it contained legal papers someone was paying you to serve me with, my first thought was, 'Wait, is this guy Jewish?' "

This produced further gales of laughter.

Once the confusion was cleared up, how they laughed!

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How Low Will The Donald Go? Low Enough To Hire Ted Cruz?

Tuesday, Trump very publicly humiliated arrogant Ivy League smarty pants Ted Cruz again. Aside from the shaken but ever self-confident Cruz-- maybe-- did anyone think the vengeful, vindictive Trump was going to make Cruz Attorney General? Not even Trump hates America that much-- although he does hate Cruz. So he summoned him the The Tower and dangled the plum just out of reach of the Texas sucker's twitchy jaws. Trump sees Cruz as a nasty, dishonorable and untrustworthy buffoon, the guy who tried implying him on "New York values," allowing Trump a moment one of his one moments of glory in the circles Trump has always looked for social acceptance from.

Tuesday Cruz met first with Trump and Pence-- Cruz and Pence never served together-- and then, separately, with Bannon. Cruz privately told his people that he wanted the Attorney General job. Two far right loons, Penny Nance, head of Concerned Women for America, and Brent Bozell, were both lobbying the Trumpists on Cruz's behalf.

The buzz got so strong that civil libertarians began to get very concerned. On Wednesday The Nation ran a piece by George Zornick warning that an Attorney General Cruz would pose a great danger to the country.

As he crisscrossed the country, Cruz would often begin his stump speech by outlining his first day as president. After promising first to rip up all of President Obama’s executive orders, Cruz would pledge that “The second thing I intend to do on the first day in office is instruct the US Department of Justice to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood and these horrible videos.”

Taken at his word, it is fair to conclude that Cruz would do the same thing as head of the Department of Justice. He is referring to the videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress, a radical anti-choice group, which purported to show Planned Parenthood officials making deals to sell fetal tissue for profit. The videos were deceptively edited and widely discredited. It’s legal and commonplace for entities to sell human tissue for research purposes, and it only becomes illegal if they turn a profit-- which Planned Parenthood didn’t do. The unedited version of the tapes repeatedly captured Planned Parenthood officials saying they did not intend to make any extra money from the sales.

But evidently Cruz would begin an investigation anyhow. Even the presence of a federal investigation would sap Planned Parenthood’s resources at a time when Congress is likely to defund the group. Moreover, it would put the Department of Justice in the dangerous territory of launching investigations with clear political motives.

Attorney General Cruz would also be a fundamentally dangerous development for the American Muslim community. Within hours of the attacks in Brussels earlier this year, then-candidate Cruz released a statement proclaiming that “We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized.”

As the top law-enforcement officer in the land, with the FBI under his jurisdiction, Cruz would have the ability to make this happen.

At the time, civil-liberties groups were highly alarmed. “Profiling people based on their religion or race is blatantly unconstitutional and violates the guarantee of religious protection and religious freedom,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s national-security project. “One way to look at it is to replace the word ‘Muslim’ with ‘Jewish,’ ‘Christian,’ ‘African American,’ or ‘Latino.’ What’s wrong in one context is wrong in others.”

...Elections have consequences, and a conservative legal thinker as attorney general is a given at this point. Cruz is certainly that, as his career as solicitor general of Texas shows. He was a rigid proponent of the death penalty, and he successfully convinced the Supreme Court that Texas had the right to execute a Mexican national. He also argued, unsuccessfully, that states should be able to execute child rapists. Cruz also successfully argued that the 10 Commandments could be placed outside the state capitol, and played a key role in the Heller case that expanded gun rights nationwide.

But Cruz’s rhetoric while running for president is a different matter, and would certainly spark an explosive confirmation battle.

Civil libertarians may be breathing a sigh of relief that Trump was just toying with Cruz and humiliating him further, but no one is excited about Klansman Jefferson Beauregard Sessions getting the gig instead. There were people who thought Trump might even give Cruz the job so that he'd give up his Senate seat and then quickly look for an excuse to fire him. It should be an interesting 4 years.

If there's no love lost between Cruz and Trump, someone who was once genuinely close with Trump, Chris Christie, has been dumped and banished. Alex Isenstadt went through the chicken bones for Politico readers Saturday. At one point Christie was the most likely elected officials the whole country to become part of the Trump administration, even though, at the time, is was just a fantasy administration. Now that Trump managed to win a couple of counties in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania to give him the presidency, even if over 2 million fewer people voted for him than Hillary, Christie finds himself out in the cold and hoping Trump will pardon will if he's convicted in the on-going Bridgegate scandals. According to Isenstadt Trump actually called Christie last week and told him that "he had become a political liability," not just because of Bridgegate but also because he loaded the transition team up with sleazy lobbyists and crooked Jersey insiders, causing the media to laugh at Trump's promises to "drain the swamp." So he drained Christie and his allies.

In their phone call, which was relayed by three sources, Trump expressed his worry about the recent conviction of two of the governor’s former top aides, who had accused him of knowing more about the shutdown of the George Washington Bridge than he let on. Was more damaging information to come, Trump wondered?

After that discussion, the axe fell swiftly on Christie and his inner circle.

On Friday, Nov. 11, the transition team announced that Vice President-elect Mike Pence would be taking over Christie’s duties. A purge of Christie loyalists soon followed, along with a promise to cleanse the transition of lobbyists the governor had brought in to steer the new administration.

The switchover came with little warning. Richard Bagger, a former chief of staff to the New Jersey governor who had been the transition team’s executive director, found himself without access to the Trump offices where he’d been working, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Rick Dearborn, a top aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions, was brought in to replace him.

...Once the dust settled from their surprise win, the Trump team noticed that Christie had done little to vet potential administration picks or to dig into potential conflicts of interests. With Democrats eager to pounce on any early mistake, it was an oversight they simply couldn’t afford.

By Thursday of last week, Trump was telling aides that he was ready to make a change.

To some degree, Christie’s problems weren’t entirely of his making. In Trump, he was dealing with a political newcomer who didn’t understand the importance of laying the groundwork for a future administration. After being tapped to head the transition this summer, the governor met with Trump. Why, the candidate wanted to know, did he have to spend time and resources on a transition when he hadn’t yet won the election?

But Christie fumbled, failing to understand the family-driven dynamic of the Trump presidential bid. Early on, Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign chairman, urged the governor to get Trump’s children and his influential son-in-law, Jared Kushner, invested in the hires he was making. It was advice Christie didn’t seem to take.

In the months to come, Kushner, a 35-year-old New York City real estate mogul who grew up in New Jersey, would become a bigger problem for Christie, arguing forcefully against Trump making the governor his running mate. Christie, a former U.S. attorney, became convinced that Kushner was retaliating over his 2004 prosecution of Kushner’s father, Charles.

Still, while they never became close, Kushner and Christie agreed to work together. At several points, according to two sources, Trump took steps to forge a warmer relationship between them-- apparently without success.

Kushner’s allies say the idea that he’s out for personal vengeance, promoted in several recent stories, is simplistic and overblown. Rather, they argue, the Trump son-in-law has more substantive concerns-- viewing the governor as badly damaged following the Bridgegate affair. And in the days following the election, Kushner told others in Trump Tower that Christie oversaw a messy, lobbyist-filled transition operation that simply needed to be cleaned up.

Over the last week, a number of Christie hires have been replaced. In an indication of just how intense the backlash to Christie has been within the campaign, some New Jersey Republicans have been dissuaded from applying for administration jobs out of fear that they’ll be seen as close to the governor.

Within Christie’s world, the question has turned to what’s next for the embattled governor-- and whether he’ll get anything at all from Trump. At this week’s Republican Governors Association meeting in Orlando, Fla., a number of the party’s governors and top donors, in private huddles, wondered aloud about Christie’s future. Christie attended the conference for part of the week, along with Pence, his transition successor, who briefed fellow governors on the incoming administration’s plans in a private session.

It’s not out of the question that the governor, who remains in touch with Trump, will eventually win a post. Yet some senior Trump aides, including Kushner, have begun to question whether, following the Bridgegate trial, the governor is so radioactive that it will be possible for him to win Senate confirmation to a Cabinet post.

Christie’s advisers, meanwhile, speculate that the governor might exit politics entirely when his term expires in January 2018. Some of them suggest that Christie, an avid sports fan, could take a job as a sports radio host. He is an occasional guest caller to WFAN, the popular New York City-based sports talk station.

Clinton Insider Neera Tanden: Sanders Did "Significant Damage"

Top Clinton insider Neera Tanden at a Google- and Elle-sponsored DC function (source)

by Gaius Publius

Short and bitter-sweet. The primary election is mainly over (but not quite; there's still a black swan or two hovering overhead). Clinton and her camp have vanquished the challenge from the left wing of her own voting base. We've listened to call after call for "party unity."

And yet we see this — Neera Tanden, a major Clinton insider, current head of the prominent (and Clintonist) thinktank Center for American Progress, someone in line for a significant job in a new Clinton administration, someone currently on Clinton's transition team, takes an unprovoked backhand swipe at Sanders and the left he represented during the primary, a punch in the gut for an offense long past.

The offense? Not surrendering to Clinton early enough.

Why?

Tanden, as quoted in The Hill:

Clinton confidante: Sanders did 'significant damage'

Longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Neera Tanden in a new podcast commends Bernie Sanders for the issues he raised during his campaign but notes his attacks on the Democratic presidential nominee were harmful.

“I actually have to say, I think he brought a lot of really important issues to the floor, but Senator Sanders was prosecuting a much tougher character attack” than Barack Obama did in 2008, Tanden said during Politico’s “Off Message” podcast.

“He did do significant damage to Hillary's negatives."

During the primary season, the Vermont senator often attacked the eventual Democratic nominee on the campaign trail — at points, questioning her judgment.

“I mean, he drove a lot of those negatives, and the truth of it, I mean, just to be candid — or honest about it, I think getting those kinds of attacks from another Democrat or another liberal or another progressive is much tougher for Hillary," said Tanden, who is the president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

"If you look at her trust numbers the last six months of that primary ... those numbers took a much sharper dive and [were] hard to recover from.”

On the same story, Politico adds this:

[Tanden is] Clinton’s edgy public alter ego, whose stiletto-elbowed Twitter presence is said to closely echo the candidate’s own caustic private musings. And while Tanden respects Sanders and his staff (she helped negotiate the joint Clinton-Sanders college and health proposals and says “they were great”), she echoes Clinton’s own opinion that Sanders let the primary go on too long, too noisily and too nastily. [my emphasis]

“This primary was much tougher [than 2008]. There were many more open attacks on being 'bought and paid for' and all that stuff,” said Tanden, who didn’t like it, not one little bit.

Tanden's "stiletto-elbowed Twitter presence" — about that, more here. If you have a minute, do click. It makes a fascinating side story.

"Echoing the candidate's own caustic musings" — we'll have to take Politico's word for that, since there are no cited sources.

Clinton's opinion that "Sanders let the primary go on too long, too noisily and too nastily" — that's not hard to believe. Though it has a note of entitlement about it, I think — a note of complaining that your opponent should have quit earlier — and entitled is exactly what you don't want to be perceived as, no matter how far ahead of Donald Trump you are. So, on that score, bad move.

Which brings us back to Neera Tanden, and the question, why this slap at Sanders now? It apparently comes from nowhere, or from pique, a winner's swipe at a loser who's laying on the mat.

About that, two points. First, Tanden's comment adds credence to the perception of Clinton-camp entitlement that most Democrats think both Clinton and her team should avoid. Second, this incident has to give pause to that aforementioned Sanders-supporting base, that if this candidate and her new team can't resist unprovoked hippie-punching now, what will they do once they have real power?

Again, bad move, as I see it. This looks like an unforced error to me.

GP
 

How Horrible Will Hillary Be As President (Aside From Not As Horrible As Señor Trumpanzee)?

Towards the end of January, Elizabeth Warren penned an OpEd for the NY Times dealing with why corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct, coming to the conclusion that "weak enforcement by federal agencies is about the people at the top."

In a single year, in case after case, across many sectors of the economy, federal agencies caught big companies breaking the law-- defrauding taxpayers, covering up deadly safety problems, even precipitating the financial collapse in 2008-- and let them off the hook with barely a slap on the wrist. Often, companies paid meager fines, which some will try to write off as a tax deduction.

The failure to adequately punish big corporations or their executives when they break the law undermines the foundations of this great country. Justice cannot mean a prison sentence for a teenager who steals a car, but nothing more than a sideways glance at a C.E.O. who quietly engineers the theft of billions of dollars.

These enforcement failures demean our principles. They also represent missed opportunities to address some of the nation’s most pressing challenges.

...Enforcement isn’t about big government or small government. It’s about whether government works and who it works for. Last year, five of the world’s biggest banks, including JPMorgan Chase, pleaded guilty to criminal charges that they rigged the price of billions of dollars worth of foreign currencies. No corporation can break the law unless people in that corporation also broke the law, but no one from any of those banks has been charged. While thousands of Americans were rotting in prison for nonviolent drug convictions, JPMorgan Chase was so chastened by pleading guilty to a crime that it awarded Jamie Dimon, its C.E.O., a 35 percent raise.

...Each of these government divisions is headed by someone nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The lesson is clear: Personnel is policy.

Legislative agendas matter, but voters should also ask which presidential candidates they trust with the extraordinary power to choose who will fight on the front lines to enforce the laws. The next president can rebuild faith in our institutions by honoring the simple notion that nobody is above the law, but it will happen only if voters demand it.

This morning, Hillary announced that conservative lobbyist Ken Salazar will be leading his transition team. Tim Kaine was a terrible choice for running mate. Ken Salazar is ten times worse.

The Salazar brothers were elected to Congress in 2004 and both totally sucked. Ken Salazar was pushed into the Democratic Senate nomination in Colorado with a boost from Wall Street-owned Chuck Schumer, the same year his elder brother, John, was elected to the House. John joined the Blue Dogs immediately and distinguished himself as a key NRA ally within the Democratic conference. One of his biggest goals was to abolish the inheritance tax, something Trump is making a cornerstone of his economic agenda right now. Remember the Stupak Amendment to undermine Choice? John voted for that. Democrats finally kicked him out of office in 2010 by boycotting his reelection bid and letting far right Republican Scott Tipton slip into his seat.

Meanwhile, Ken was distinguishing himself as one of the worst and most corporate-friendly, anti-working family and homophobic Democrats in the Senate. He happily voted to confirm both Sammy Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court and he was one of the Democrats who endorsed and campaigned for Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont-- even after Lieberman lost the primary! He came to national attention by being the primary sponsor for George Bush's unqualified Attorney General nominee, Alberto Gonzales. Salazar was best known during his short stint in the Senate for his fidelity to the pollution industry. In his first year in the Senate he voted with the GOP against increasing fuel-efficiency standards for cars and against an amendment to repeal tax breaks for Big Oil. And the following year he voted in favor of oil drilling off Florida's beaches. He was a particular enemy of anything to do with dealing with Global Warming and is considered one of the culprits in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill both before the spill and afterwards.

Salazar is widely thought to be one of the worst Interior Secretaries in modern times, immediately announcing when he took over that he would uphold Bush policies, like preventing the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. He was America's worst enemy of endangered species and is the poster child for the destruction of the polar bear and turning wild horses into dog food. After Obama appointed him Secretary of the Interior in 2009, I wrote that "Ken Salazar was always a corporate friendly kind of guy. He was especially friendly with the natural resources extraction corporations. They had no reason to feel threatened when Obama appointed him to be Secretary of the Interior, and no reason to think anything would change from the all-you-can-eat days of the Bush Regime. And, basically, nothing has . He was an embarrassment to the Obama adminsitrationand they tried to get him to run for governor of Colorado and eventually pushed him out. He soon resigned to become a lobbyist.

This morning David Sirota, writing for the International Business Times, noted that Hillary's announcement of Salazar as her transition team head, "comes as Clinton has campaigned against the so-called 'revolving door' that allows politicians to shuttle between public and private sector work." I suspect Sirota sees Salazar's appointment as a harbinger of bad things to come under President Hillary.

Salazar’s firm has lobbied for corporations who are likely to have significant business with the next presidential administration. For example, the most recent lobbying filings show the firm in 2016 has represented Cigna as it pursues a controversial merger with Anthem. Records show the firm also has represented Delta Airlines, investment firm Lazard Group, insurance giant Liberty Mutual, telecommunications behemoth Verizon and Newmont Mining.

...Over the course of the 2016 campaign, Clinton has faced questions about her ongoing ties to the influence industry: Despite her anti-lobbyist rhetoric, she has raised more than $7 million from registered lobbyists.

Want reality? click the image

Clinton has also faced questions from environmentalists about her record on pipeline construction, hydraulic fracking and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Salazar’s appointment will not allay those concerns: Since leaving government, he has made headlines promoting the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the TPP and defending fracking.

In November, Salazar authored a joint oped with former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt saying "The TPP is a strong trade deal that will level the playing field for workers to help middle-class families get ahead. It is also the greenest trade deal ever." Politico reports that Salazar is now opposing a ballot measure designed to restrict fracking in his home state of Colorado. He has previously asserted that "there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone."

No one is allowed to be a Naderite though, so watch your step... Trump is under the bed-- and he bites (and has rabies). No, really. She's 100% the lesser of two evils. No question about it. None. None. None.

Al Kamen, back from vacation (finally!), is thinking ahead to the mechanics of the presidential transition

"The personnel chief needs to be someone who's working 'totally below the radar,' said Colby College professor G. Calvin Mackenzie [right]. 'Otherwise he becomes a magnet for resumes.' The best pick would be 'not a political person,' but someone who 'knows government, the pitfalls, the ethics,' and someone who can answer 'what are the key positions for our constituencies that we're going to get a lot of pressure on. Vacuum invites all kinds of pressure.' Not to mention lengthy infighting."

--from Al Kamen's "In the Loop" column in today's Washington Post

I've leaned to live with Paul Krugman's seemingly limitless vacation days, which sometimes appear to verge on the Chimpy-esque.

(Say what you will about Chimpy Our Prez, the man knows how to vacation. Even under what most people would consider the most adverse circumstances, like that spell of rain that fell on New Orleans a few years back.
Did he let it spoil his fun? No, he took the attitude "Let me -- and my snackin' buddy McCranky -- eat cake!")

But when Al Kamen goes on vacation, he takes, you know, real vacations, and I get really antsy. Thank goodness he's back today!

The item that interests me in today's "return" column is one that isn't intended to be humorous. He's thinking ahead to the transition to a new presidential administration, and has gathered some interesting thoughts.

What's Won, Lost in Transition

The Washington chatter is all about whom Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are going to pick as their running mates. (Yes, we've got your Loop "Pick the Veep" contest entries pending.)

Obama calls it "the most important decision I'll make before I'm president" -- a bit strange when you consider Bush I's pick of Dan Quayle.

But there's another job that both candidates should focus on fairly soon: transition director. Sure, some snarky columnists will gig them for presuming victory by gearing up preelection. But solid transition planning -- and initial personnel decisions -- are simply too important to put off until after the election.

McCain, who would be engaged in a mostly friendly takeover, probably could wait a bit before focusing on this. Obama, looking at a hostile takeover and the need to quickly get his picks in place, will want to move rapidly.

Transition experts single out as the model to follow Ronald Reagan's transition operation, run by former Nixon attorney general Edwin Meese, and the personnel planning of former Nixon aide Pendleton James, who was later a professional headhunter. (The Bush II transition, run by Dick Cheney, with a personnel shop run by Clay Johnson, comes in a close second.)

The personnel chief needs to be someone who's working "totally below the radar," said Colby College professor G. Calvin Mackenzie. "Otherwise he becomes a magnet for resumes." The best pick would be "not a political person," but someone who "knows government, the pitfalls, the ethics," and someone who can answer "what are the key positions for our constituencies that we're going to get a lot of pressure on. Vacuum invites all kinds of pressure." Not to mention lengthy infighting.

Most observers cite Bill Clinton's operation as the worst transition. The Clinton White House, transition expert Paul C. Light observed, would pass potential candidate lists from one official to another, instead of having a joint review, prolonging the process endlessly. Then came the "bean-counting" exercises over appropriate percentages of women and minorities in each department.

The incoming president, Light said, should also "limit the number of transition teams to a bare minimum, if they have any at all." In addition, he should "put someone in charge of transition planning who's going to move into the White House with him . . . and who'll oversee the personnel process." Someone whose decisions would rarely, if ever, be overturned.

McCain, as it turns out, has a solution to at least part of the problem. He joined with Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) in the 1990s to sponsor legislation that would cut in half the bloated number of presidential appointees -- 3,000 -- which could save taxpayers more than $100 million in salaries and benefits.

In addition, as Light points out in his new book, "A Government Ill Executed," the government would actually work more efficiently, with fewer political hacks in federal jobs.

Maybe McCain could get Obama to sign on to the bill?

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