Christine M. Flowers: As 43 leaves the stage . . .

IN A FEW short days, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. Some people, a sizable part of the electorate, can't wait. In fact, they've pretty much considered him the commander in chief since he first announced his candidacy on a cold day two years ago in Springfield, Ill.

Obama’s secret telecom advisor pushing his company’s interest

By Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist | 1/16/09 11:04 AM

A telecommunications company has confirmed for this columnist that its vice president for policy—who is also an Obama donor and a former lobbyist—is advising Barack Obama’s transition team on telecom policy.

Obama’s transition team, which has failed to disclose this executive’s involvement, happens to have proposed a significant change in telecom policy that will profit that very company, called Clearwire.

By pushing to delay the long-scheduled transition of television broadcasting from analog signals to digital signals, president-elect Obama is directly aiding Sprint and its partner Clearwire while hurting Verizon.

Interior Dept. issues offshore drilling plan

WASHINGTON — The Interior Department today issued a detailed proposal for widespread oil and gas drilling off both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts in areas that have not had energy exploration for decades.

Narada Michael Walden - White Night

Inflation in 2008 marks smallest change in a half-century

Damn that idiot Bush!

Beige Book Spurts Red Ink

Fed's survey of U.S. economic conditions shows recession firmly in place.

Exit Bush, Shoes Flying

WASHINGTON -- Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It's not just the retention of such key figures as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the last year. It's the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status of forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

Looking For Clues

Shabaab and rival Islamist group clash in central Somalia

Two commanders of the al Qaeda-backed As Shabaab were killed during heavy fighting with a government-supported Islamist militia in central Somalia.

Shabaab leaders Mohamed Mohamed Salad and Mohamed Yusuf Nur were "martyred" in the town of Guriel during clashes with the pro-government Ahlu Sunna Waljamaa, Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansour told the media. More than 30 Somalis were killed and more than 50 were wounded during the latest round of fighting in the contested central Somali town.

The Russian Threat To U.S. Security

Obama's foreign-affairs test has already begun.

Rangel to reintroduce military draft measure

Chavez looks to West for help with oil production

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — President Hugo Chavez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to unravel his efforts to establish a socialist-inspired state, is courting Western oil companies once again. Until recently, Chavez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases. But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks — including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and Total — promising them access to some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants here. Their

JUNGLE

Christine M. Flowers: A hero in scrubs

We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.

- Winston Churchill

U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of Mexico is possible

EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats.

The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.

Let's Try What Never Worked - Peter Ferrara

Thank You, Mr. President

The running joke when I got my invitation to the White House Christmas party was that the administration knew my views on the war and tax cuts but maybe not on immigration and bailouts. In reality, the festive crowd contained more than a few outright liberal media voices, from the always likable Juan Williams of Fox News to the perpetually antagonistic Helen Thomas.

Kremlin calls European gas crisis summit

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday called for a summit of states hit by the gas crisis as Russia accused Ukraine of holding Europe "hostage" by blocking efforts to resume gas supplies.

Ahhhh, the bad guys are the Ukrainians, now I understand...or maybe I don't

Oil prices tumble with US inventories bulging

Oil prices tumbled Wednesday as new government reports show crude inventories continuing to build, suggesting that demand for oil and gasoline will not rebound anytime soon.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery fell more than 4 percent, or $1.56 per barrel, to $36.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading as high as $39.45.

I get so confused, so is it good news the price is dropping?

More Than a Good Feeling - Hitchens

More Than a Good Feeling

Why are so many oligarchs, royal families, and special-interest groups giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

By Christopher Hitchens

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Here is a thought experiment that does not take very much thought. Picture, if you will, Hillary Clinton facing a foreign-policy conundrum. With whom will she discuss it first and most intently: with her president or her husband? (I did tell you that this wouldn't be difficult.) Here's another one: Will she be swayed in her foreign-policy decisions by electoral considerations focusing on the year 2012, and, if so, will she be swayed by President Barack Obama's interests or her own?

The next question, and I must apologize in advance for once again making it an un-strenuous one, is: Who else will be approaching Bill Clinton for advice, counsel, and "input" on foreign affairs? It appears from the donor list of the Clinton Foundation that there is barely an oligarch, royal family, or special-interest group anywhere in the world that does not know how to get the former president's attention. Just in the days since the foundation agreed to some disclosure of its previously "confidential" clients—in other words, since this became a condition for Sen. Clinton's nomination to become secretary of state—we have additionally found former President Clinton in warm relationships with one very questionable businessman in Malaysia and with another, this time in Nigeria, who used to have close connections with that country's ultracorrupt military dictatorship.

The Nigerian example is an especially instructive one. Gilbert Chagoury is a major figure in land and construction in that country and has contributed between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as arranged a huge speaking fee for President Clinton at a Caribbean event and kicked in a large sum to his 1996 re-election campaign. In return for this, he has been received at the Clinton White House and more recently at Clinton-sponsored social events in New York and Paris. This may have helped to alleviate the sting of Chagoury's difficulties in Nigeria itself. As a close friend of the country's uniformed despot Gen. Sani Abacha, he benefited from some extremely profitable business arrangements during the years of dictatorship but was later compelled, after an investigation of his transactions, to return an estimated $300 million to the Nigerian treasury in exchange for a plea-bargaining arrangement by which his bank accounts could be unfrozen.

Aha, you say, there's no evidence of any quid pro quo here. (Or, in other words, Chagoury gives a fortune to Clinton because he, too, wants to "fight AIDS.") Of course, this may only be seed money for a later "quid" or even "quo" that hasn't yet materialized. And if Chagoury or anyone else had ever received the impression that the Clintons would play for pay, it's easy to see how he got the idea. (See my Nov. 24, 2008, Slate column on the investigations of the Clinton campaign-finance scandals and the shenanigans surrounding the Marc Rich pardon.)

But does a contribution to Bill Clinton's foundation get you any traction with Sen. Clinton, at least in her political and official capacity? Let's see. A recent story in the New York Times managed to begin with some very crisp and clear and fact-based paragraphs:

An upstate New York developer donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton's foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman's mall project.

Mrs. Clinton helped enact legislation allowing the developer, Robert J. Congel, to use tax-exempt bonds to help finance the construction of the Destiny USA entertainment and shopping complex, an expansion of the Carousel Center in Syracuse.

Mrs. Clinton also helped secure a provision in a highway bill that set aside $5 million for Destiny USA roadway construction.

Why should anyone doubt, then, that in small matters as well as in large ones, the old slogan from the 1992 election still holds true? As Bill so touchingly put it that year, if you voted for him, you got "two for one." What the country—and the world—has since learned is a slight variation on that, which I would crudely phrase as "buy one, get one free."

The deal struck by the wide-eyed incoming Obama administration is that the list of donors to the Clinton Foundation will be reviewed once every year and that only the new donations from foreign states—which already include an extraordinarily large number from Gulf sheikdoms—will be scrutinized by administration lawyers. How would we react if we read that this was the rule for the Vladimir Putin government, say, or former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's regime in Germany? Before me, for example, is the report of a pledge of $100 million to the Clinton Foundation's Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative by a set of companies based in Vancouver and known as the Lundin Group. The ostensible purpose of this mind-boggling contribution is stated in the usual vacuous terms of "sustainable local economies," chiefly in Africa. All I know for sure about the Lundin Group is that it does quite a lot of business in Sudan. And all I can think to ask—as perhaps some senator might think to ask—is why such a big corporate interest doesn't just donate the money directly, rather than distributing it through the offices of an outfit run by a seasoned ex-presidential influence-peddler. What do they and the other donors suppose they are getting for their money? A good feeling?

That was another no-brainer question I just asked. So let me stop insulting you, dear reader, and pose a question to which we do not have any obvious answer. Why is Sen. Clinton, the spouse of the great influence-peddler, being nominated in the first place? In exchange for giving the painful impression that our State Department will be an attractive destination for lobbyists and donors, what exactly are we getting? George Marshall? Dean Acheson? Even Madeleine Albright? No, we are getting a notoriously ambitious woman who made a fool of herself over Bosnia, at the time and during the recent campaign, and who otherwise has no command of foreign affairs except what she's picked up second-hand from an impeached ex-president, a disbarred lawyer, and a renter of the Lincoln Bedroom. If the Senate waves this through, it will have reinforced its recent image as the rubber-stamp chamber of a bankrupt banana republic. Not an especially good start to the brave new era.