Who's In Charge?

This piece from today's Guardian newspaper in Britain is kind of fun - and somewhat alarming:

Who's in charge here - Bush or Obama?

As George Bush doesn't seem to want to be president any more, and Barack Obama can't take over until January, who is running the world's biggest economy at this crucial time?

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The difference between their two most recent news conference could not have been more marked. Outlining his treasury team, Barack Obama looked presidential and raring to go from the moment he walked in and the press rose to their feet.

George Bush by contrast looked jaded and reluctant to still be in the job as he announced yesterday's bail-out for Citigroup on the steps of the treasury department. He fumbled through the poorly recorded and low-key press conference with Hank Paulson standing awkwardly beside him.

Is Bush working any more, asked Michael Tomasky. He doesn't seem to want to - referring repeatedly to Obama in his press conference as if it was the president-elect's problem now and not in 60 days' time.

So does America have two presidents at the moment, or none?

Earlier this month, Obama refused to go the Washington summit on the financial crisis because he didn't want to tread on Bush's toes.

"The president-elect will respect the fact that we have one president at a time," his aide said.

But Obama's behaviour since has suggested he is not respecting that convention, and that he is acting as kind of co-president. Some call it a"split-screen presidency", although he has no formal power until the end of January.

As Bush "is hardly being president at the moment", others wonder whyObama can't just take over now.

A Vision Of Hope by Alexander Chow-Stuart

The CNN.com news story below, which reflects a report by the NIC (National Intelligence Council) predicting an increasingly unstable and unpredictable future by 2025, and the waning of American power, has been widely reported elsewhere.

While the world clearly faces extraordinary challenges in virtually every regard right now, whether it be financial instability,  dwindling natural resources, global warming, poverty or domestic and international conflict, the words "thus it ever was" come to mind.

I remember reading media accounts of intelligence reports in the 1970s that predicted worldwide chaos and increasing violence by now, and while sadly there is always evidence of instability and violence, I am not sure that things are so much worse now than they were in the 1970s or certainly the 1930s.

The NIC, like any intelligence agency or any think-tank, has a job to do and its own existence to justify, and while I am no pie-in-the-sky idealist, I do believe that what President-Elect Obama brought to the recent election, and will bring to the White House, is an overwhelming sense of hope: the "Audacity of Hope," to quote the title of one of his books.

If we focus on the negative, as we largely have for the past eight years, we are encouraged to live in fear and to temper our ambitions and our dreams.

If we live in hope, it doesn't mean that we deny the existence of the problems that surround us, but that we believe that we will find solutions, that together we will find greater strength, that if necessary we will shift our energy and food and manufacturing production into new directions - because we have to - and that while we may make mistakes initially, and while the balance of power, both political and financial, may change, ultimately we will make the right choices.

It is important that our new president be meticulously informed of the state of the world and of possible scenarios of the future, but my own hope is that Barack Obama doesn't lose his inspiring and empowering sense of hope amid the many challenges he will face as President and Commander in Chief.

He excited vast numbers of people - a 52% popular majority of the voters of this nation, as well as countless numbers of others around the globe - by offering, for the first time in memory, a political agenda based on a belief in our innate strengths and goodness as human beings.

As the parent of one young child, with another due in January, I pray for them and for all of us that President Obama's vision of the future will be achieved, that we will meet whatever challenges or disasters or attacks or dramatic changes in circumstance that may occur with ingenuity and imagination, with a faith in humankind and a belief that we can cherish our planet and build a better world for our children.

In the midst of the late 1930s and early 1940s in England, while Hitler was pressing Germany into an horrific war, and even as he served personally as a "watchman" during the Blitz of German bombers over London during that war, an American-born poet, T S Eliot, wrote one of the world's most beautiful and most spiritual books, reflecting on time, love, life, death, impermanence and permanence, and spirituality at its most sublime: Four Quartets.

As the world was falling into what appeared to be a vortex of destruction, Eliot wrote, among many other astonishingly beautiful passages:

"At the still point of the turning world.  Neither flesh nor

fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance

is...and there is only the dance."

Let us all make it our responsibility each day to focus at least for a few moments on that still point and to hold to it - hold to the possibility of peace, both inner and outer, in this world, and of our role in this life as something to be honored and cherished and to be grateful for.

Let us continue to live in hope.

A Dire Intelligence Briefing For Obama

New president faces increased risk of conflict, intel chief says

From Pam Benson

CNN National Security Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The global economy is tanking, U.S. forces remain tied up in Iraq, Afghanistan is on a downward spiral -- one might wonder why anyone would want to be U.S. president during these trying times.

Economic and population growth will strain resources, says National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Recently, the nation's chief intelligence officer weighed in, painting an even more somber picture of a far more complicated world.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell looked beyond the immediate future, focusing on what his analysts are telling him about the challenges the world community is likely to face by 2025. It isn't pretty.

Speaking to an annual conference of intelligence officials and contractors, McConnell said demographics, competition for natural resources and climate change will increase the potential for conflict.

President-elect Barack Obama may get a glimpse of some of those challenges on Thursday. McConnell is expected to lead Obama's first top-secret intelligence briefing, according to U.S. officials familiar with the process.

A team of intelligence briefers has been named and is ready to discuss with Obama the Presidential Daily Brief, similar to the one provided to President Bush, says a message from CIA Director Michael Hayden to CIA employees obtained by CNN.

According to McConnell's outlook, economic and population growth will strain resources. "Demand is projected to outstrip the easily available supplies over the next decade," he said at the annual conference.

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The intelligence community's forecast indicates oil and gas supplies will continue to dwindle and production will be concentrated in unstable areas, he said. And there appears to be no relief at hand.

McConnell said studies have shown that new energy technologies -- such as biofuels, clean coal and hydrogen -- generally take 25 years to become commercially viable and widespread.

The lack of access to safe, reliable water will reach unprecedented levels over the next 20 years, he said, and 1.4 billion people in 36 countries are likely to face water shortages that will have a substantial impact on food production.

"Climate change is expected to exacerbate those resource scarcities," he said.

McConnell spoke of the unprecedented transfer of global wealth from West to East. By 2025, China is projected to be the second-largest economy and on its way to becoming the largest. India will grow to be the second- or third-largest economy.

All of this adds up to an unstable future. "Given the confluence of factors from a new global international system, increasing tension over natural resources, weapons proliferation ... we predict an increased likelihood for conflict," McConnell concluded.

Among the problems that aren't going away is terrorism -- an issue that did not get as much play as it initially appeared it would during the presidential campaign. McConnell said the descendants of long-established terrorist groups "will inherit organizational structures, the command and control processes and the training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks."

He said he is particularly concerned that a terrorist group will acquire and use biological agents to create casualties greater than the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In addition, he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would "sow the seeds of instability and potential conflict" in that region on a scale that could affect the entire world.

Although the risk of a nuclear attack is "very low" over the next 20 to 30 years, McConnell said, "That possibility is grayer in the future than it is today. So what does this mean for the new president?

"After the new president-elect's excitement subsides after winning the election, it is going to be dampened somewhat when he begins to focus on the realities of the myriad of changes and challenges we are going to face in the future," McConnell said.

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Mia Kirshner's New Book About Refugees

This excellent interview with Mia Kirshner about her important new book, I Live Here, which focuses on refugees, is from the Miami Sun-Post and is written by my old Miami pal, John Hood.

Please check out John's own blog, The View From Here Now.

Refugee Stories

Mia Kirshner’s I Live Here Gives Voice to the Gone

By John Hood

The world can be an unfriendly place: famine, war, oppression, disease, crime. Other people can conspire to make it unfriendlier still. No one knows this better than the refugee, those who’ve been displaced from their homes, their country, and often their very lives, as a result of all the globe’s ugliness.

Not every refugee achieves their status through geography, of course. In fact, some are locked up and locked out right at home, forced to slave for wages never paid, and made to endure conditions beyond in the most vivid imagination.

But whether they live in a camp or a barrio, the one thing that unites every refugee is their silence, for these are the people who not only have no say; they have no voice. 

Thankfully there are more fortunate folks among us who are compelled to give the refugee the voice they’ve been denied, folks like the Canadian-born alt-starlet Mia Kirshner, who with a little help of friends like Adbusters’ Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, award-winning non-fictionist James MacKinnon, graphic novelist Joe Sacco and award-winning writer Chris Abani, has just published a remarkable assemblage of refugee stories entitled I Live Here (Pantheon, $29.95).

Kirshner, of course, is the crazy bad girl in Showtime’s hit series The ‘L’ Word (among other endeavors), which means she’s got a voice big enough to be both reckoned with and listened to. Oh, Mia’s not in any way preachy, she’s just determined to do whatever it takes to make this world a better place to live in for those whose lives are lived in the margins.

To that end Kirshner visited refugee camps in Malawi, Ingushetia and Burma, where AIDS, oppression and war have forced untold thousands to flee, in addition to the barrios of Juarez, Mexico, where legions of youngmaquiladora-employed women have been disappearing without a trace. I Live Here, a composite of four notebooks designed to be taught, read, spoken of and remembered, not only chronicles the lives she encountered, but it gives them each a voice.

I had the great, good pleasure of interviewing the delightful and committed actress during this year’s Miami International Book Fair — here’s some of our conversation:

First the obvious: Why is the book titled I Live Here?

My partner on the book Mike Simons came up with that title and the scratched out ‘here’ on the cover, and I think it’s because all of these stories are about people who don’t have homes but they still exist. Survival is their existence.

How’d Adbusters get involved?

I was a huge fan of their work, and after Joe Sacco said ‘Yes’ to the project I wrote them a letter and they said ‘Yes’ too. 

So you didn’t know them beforehand?

I didn’t know anybody. Basically I did almost a year of research, then I put together a really crude mock book of what I wanted it to look like and what I wanted the content to be, and I wrote a passionate letter to Joe…

That you still wish you had a copy of?

Ugh, fuck, yeah, you shouldn’t…

I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. But I read somewhere that you wished you still had a copy of that letter because it was the catalyst for everything.

It was because he said ‘Yes,’ and he volunteered his time, and he sort of set the bar for the other artists.

And you thought it would take seven months, a year tops…

I thought it would take a year… Oh man, you’ve really been reading up on this.

What about Chris Abani, the Nigerian writer, how’d he get involved?

Do you know him?

Well, I know his work. Akashic has published a couple of his novellas.

Well, that was actually Amnesty International who introduced me [to Chris] and we formed a really beautiful friendship.

He’s a cool cat, right?

He’s wonderful. He wrote the curriculum for the creative writing program. And Chris is the one who really came through after Pantheon said I had to write for the book.

But what would you have been otherwise — the coordinator?

It was more than that. Because I went and I collected the material, and I was shaping the stories, and every page Mike, Paul and I designed together. They did the actual handwork.

Now, though, at least 50 percent of the book is your writing, right?

Yes, now, but back then I was really bummed out.

Really?

Yeah, and I get it. I mean, it’s their money, right? But I asked why they wanted me to do this. I wasn’t going to talk about my day job, because it’s not about that. One had nothing to do with the other. So Chris just walked me through the process. He said ‘write as if you’re writing a letter’ and I guess I just made a decision that since I’d asked people to write about such personal things, I would too.

You have to admit, though, that had you not had this ‘day job’ it would’ve been a lot more difficult to get the book published.

I know.

I read somewhere that there were four more books planned and you were thinking about Iran and Colombia and Cuba.

And Pakistan.

Are you just naturally drawn to places that are almost off the map?

I think so. I think I’ve always sort of gravitated towards the weirdoes and the outsiders and the people who sort of didn’t have the money and didn’t have the luck, so I think it’s a natural progression for me to want to do stories that are hidden. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense. But aren’t there stories right here that are equally compelling?

Sure there are, and I [also] want to do a domestic book. There are so many people living in Canada and the U.S. who don’t speak the language and don’t have jobs and are living in packed apartments and are totally isolated. And I’m interested in their stories as well. 

Meantime we have the striking design, the foundation, a YouTube channel and you’re on a tour of support. Why so much effort?

I worked for seven years on this and I put my saving into this, so I want the book to sell. And because I think its heart is pure.

For further information about the efforts and intentions behind I Live Here, visit i-live-here.com.

Comments? E-mail lee@miamisunpost.com.

All contents copyright © 2008 Caxton Newspapers, Inc.

Obama Brings Biden Birthday Cupcakes

On a lighter note...also from CNN.com:

Obama brings Biden birthday cupcakes

Posted: 06:25 PM ET

From CNN Correspondent Jessica Yellin

Barack Obama gives Joe Biden cupcakes the day before the Vice President-elect’s 66th birthday.

CHICAGO (CNN) – The day before Vice President-elect Joe Biden turns 66, President-elect Barack Obama presented his running mate with 12 candlelit cupcakes after their weekly lunch on Wednesday. He also gave Biden Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bears hats as well as a bucket of Garrett's popcorn as presents.

“You’re 12 years old!” Obama told Biden according to a Democratic source.

“Maybe in dog years!” Biden responded, laughing.

Obama and the staff then sang Biden ‘Happy Birthday.’

Rarely did Biden make a stop on the campaign trail and not mention his age. “I want you to know,” he would tell supporters, “there are only four members of the Senate who are senior to me. But the very important thing to know is there are still 39 older than me.”

Incisive Commentary On Potential Clinton Pick As Secretary Of State

This commentary from CNN.com about President-Elect Obama's potential pick of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is extremely well argued and worth reading.

Commentary: Clinton pick would be brilliant, but risky, move

By Steve Clemons
Special to CNN

Editor's Note: Steve Clemons is director of the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation and publisher of the influential political blog, The Washington Note. He has served as executive vice president of the Economic Strategy Institute and as senior policy adviser on economic and international affairs to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico. The New America Foundation is a nonprofit institute that says it seeks "new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States."

Steve Clemons says appointing Hillary Clinton is a high-risk move that could pay off for Barack Obama.

(CNN) -- Hillary Clinton? Secretary of state? What is Barack Obama thinking?

This rock star president-elect may either be confused, deluded and self-destructive in sculpting a political and policy team that has a high probability of paralyzing itself in vicious internal skirmishes, or he may just be brilliant -- really, really brilliant.

Rahm Emanuel, considered by many to be the most thuggish (and effective) of the Democratic machine's partisans, is Obama's chief of staff.

Joe Lieberman, disloyal former Democrat who headlined the Republican National Convention calling GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin "strong. . .compelling...competent!" will keep his place in the Senate Democratic caucus -- as well as his powerful perch as Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security.

While not yet announced, indications increasingly point to Bush administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates being rewarded for out-Cheneying Cheney, having vital stewardship over America's complex Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan portfolios and thus staying on as Obama's Defense chief.

Now we may be on the verge of an announcement that Obama's "never give up, never surrender" rival to lead the Democratic Party, Hillary Rodham Clinton, may be nominated as Obama's secretary of state.

These early moves have been very difficult for the most liberal elements of the Democratic Party to digest as they feel they helped move the unlikely candidacy of Obama to triumph over the mainstream Clinton campaign. Now they are seeing their candidate "go Clinton" on them, at least in a number of his early political appointments.

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George W. Bush perhaps set the precedent of appointing his chief rival within the Republican party, Colin Powell, to secretary of state as a way to secure the shrewd general's skills and to politically neutralize him.

Obama may be doing the same with Hillary Clinton -- offering her a prize through which she may yet secure a distinctive place in history and taking from her the chance to challenge him again if the 2010 midterm elections go bad for Obama.

What would Obama be getting in Clinton if she is nominated?

Clinton thought Bush should boycott the opening ceremonies of the Chinese Olympic Games in order to highlight China's human rights abuses in Tibet and its lack of will to assist in pre-empting incremental genocide in Darfur.

This is tough talk when China's support is needed on nuclear nonproliferation, climate change, global economic stabilization and virtually every major issue facing the international system.

Clinton supported the congressional resolution that was the basis for the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq. She repeated this tendency to tilt toward the assertion of military force by voting in favor of the highly controversial resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.

Clinton has advocated "coercive diplomacy" and believes carrots and sticks are needed in any sensible national security strategy. That in itself is not controversial, but she tended to focus more on the sticks than the carrots.

Interestingly, when Obama and Clinton were battling each other in a neck and neck race, Israeli public opinion polls showed huge support for Clinton, followed by John McCain, with Obama in a distant third. Why? Because many Israelis, rightly or wrongly, thought Clinton would be coercive with Iran and would hug Israel closely at the expense of other Middle East Arab interests -- and Obama would not.

The Clinton we have grown accustomed to over the last year is perceived as a spear-carrier for the Madeleine Albright school of values-driven liberal interventionism. Albright proponents argue that in contrast to the reckless efforts of neoconservatives to spread democracy and promote global justice at the end of a gun, Albright got regime change right in the Balkans.

Obama is the guy who wanted to meet the world's most thuggish leaders, who wanted strategic change, and who wanted to avoid the "wrong kind of experience" -- implying Clinton's team was riveted in the past and not ready for the future. Obama strategist David Axelrod went so far as to tie Clinton to some responsibility for Benazir Bhutto's death for not doing more to stop Bush's wars in the Middle East.

Despite all of these differences, hiring Clinton may be a masterstroke of genius that has all the markings of a high-risk, high-reward move with which this political tycoon Obama has grown comfortable.

By bringing her on, Obama finally gets the keys to the Clinton political franchise, adding it to the Daley, Daschle and Kennedy Democratic party franchises he has already acquired and integrated. Obama neutralizes a potential rival for the 2012 race.

In all honesty, Clinton probably calculated that this new star in the White House won't be handed a rebuke consequential enough in 2010 -- no matter his performance -- to animate a credible challenge against him in the next round of Democratic primaries. And Clinton has never acquiesced to the dreary reality of being a perpetual senator of New York -- just not good enough to burnish her place in the history books.

Add to this that despite their differences, Clinton is one of the hardest working and most intelligent policy wonks in the business. She understands microcredits and used to hang out in the mid-1980s in Arkansas with their advocate, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.

She crusaded and lost on a universal health care plan during Bill Clinton's first term -- and regrouped during her campaign, self-critically adjusting and re-drafting her approach to health care.

Clinton deploys ideas, tears them up when they don't work and relaunches them. She's tenaciously committed to results.

If Obama wants to change the strategic game on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Russia and other challenges, he will need partners who are perceived as tough, smart, shrewd and even skeptical of the deals he wants to do. Clinton is all of these.

Clinton may be the bad cop to Obama's good cop. Because she is trusted by Pentagon-hugging national security conservatives, she may legitimize his desire to respond to this pivot point in American history with bold strokes rather than incremental ones.

Bush came into his job focused on making faith-based politics and tax cuts the hallmarks of his administration. He forfeited to Vice President Cheney and his team enormous latitude in defining Bush's national security agenda.

Obama seems like he has no intention of doing something similar. He intends to, in part, be his own secretary of state, focused on re-sculpting America's global social contract and working in partnership with a diverse team of hard-edged policy players like Clinton to make even his rivals do his direct bidding.

This could be a kind of proactive agenda-setting in foreign policy we haven't seen in decades. Obama does not want an ad hoc, reactive presidency -- and he wants to succeed.

Clinton has a lot of reasons to pull cooperatively with Obama and may want to help America achieve a new strategic direction and establish a new global equilibrium -- securing Obama's place in history, and her own.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Steve Clemons.

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Clinton To Accept Secretary Of State Offer

While the New York Times, CNN and other media outlets are reporting that Bill Clinton's global financial and foundation activities may pose conflict of interest blocks to the potential appointment of Hillary Clinton as President Obama's Secretary of State, Britain's The Guardian newspaper is reporting it as more of a done deal:

Clinton to accept offer of secretary of state job

• Ewen MacAskill in Washington
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 00.01 GMT
• The Guardian, Tuesday November 18 2008
• Article history

Barack Obama and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton prepare to board a plane. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty images

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats believe the vetting will be straightforward.

Clinton would be well placed to become the country's dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops.

Clinton, who still harbours hopes of a future presidential run, had to weigh up whether she would be better placed by staying in the Senate, which offers a platform for life, or making the more uncertain career move to the state department.

As part of the coalition-building, Obama yesterday also reached out to his defeated Republican rival, John McCain, to discuss how they could work together to roll back some of the most controversial policies of the Bush years. Putting aside the bitter words thrown about with abandon by both sides during the election campaign, McCain flew to meet Obama at his headquarters in the Kluczynski Federal Building, in downtown Chicago.

Obama, speaking before the meeting, said: "We're going to have a good conversation about how we can work together to fix up the country." Asked by a reporter whether he would work with Obama, McCain, who favours a bipartisan approach to politics, replied: "Obviously".

Sources on both sides said Obama did not offer McCain a cabinet job, but focused on how the senator for Arizona could help to guide legislation that they both strongly favour through Congress.

Given Obama's status as president-in-waiting, the two met in a formal setting, a room decked out with a US flag, and were accompanied by senior advisers. Although the two clashed during the election campaign over tax policy and withdrawal from Iraq, they have more in common than they have differences. They both favour the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, an increase in US troops to Afghanistan, immigration reform, stem cell research and measures to tackle climate change, and oppose torture and the widespread use of wire-tapping.

After the meeting, they issued a joint statement saying: "At this defining moment in history, we believe that Americans of all parties want and need their leaders to come together and change the bad habits of Washington so that we can solve the common and urgent challenges of our time. We hope to work together in the days and months ahead on critical challenges like solving our financial crisis, creating a new energy economy and protecting our nation's security."

Although Democrats made gains in the Senate in the November 4 elections, they fell short of the 60 seats that would have allowed them to override Republican blocking tactics and will need Republican allies to get Obama's plans through. This was highlighted yesterday when the Democratic leadership in Congress announced that a broad economic stimulus package Obama sought was not likely to be passed because of Republican opposition.

Obama confirmed at the weekend that he would offer jobs to some Republicans. One of the names that crops up most often is Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator who is a specialist in foreign affairs and a critic of the Iraq war.

Look To The Future

We have all worked and hoped so hard for this incredible change that has occurred.  The fact that President-Elect Obama is ushering in a truly new dawn for America and the world is a sea change after the past eight years of darkness, fear-mongering and division.  But we should not stop now.

We should look to Obama's energy, focus and commitment and take our cue from him and his beautiful family.  We should all play our part to ensure that America continues to change and to grow more tolerant, more open-minded and to give everyone truly equal opportunity in healthcare, education, work and throughout our lives.

We should work hard to make America the powerhouse of ideas, enthusiasm and application that it always has been.  And we should not for a moment believe that those who opposed Obama during this election will sit back and let it all be...we need to continue working diligently to keep Obama in the White House until 2016.  Believe in a brighter future!

A New Dawn

I believe that President Barack Obama will prove to be one of the greatest presidents the United States has known: transformational yet also measured and highly focused.

He has already made many millions of Americans (including me) proud.  I think he will meet the complex challenges of both the present and the future with grace, with wisdom, with his customary highly inclusive approach and with the truly inspirational quality that has made 2008 such an historic election year.

All love and good wishes to President Obama and his family.