Forget the Honeymoon

Getting down to bizness with Obama

A Very Good Piece
By Justin Raimondo

"....Obama has already started in on us, and he hasn't even taken the oath of office yet. I'm talking about his appointments, starting with Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.......

A Rolling Stone profile of Emanuel had this to say:

"There's the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting 'Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!' and plunging the knife into the table after every name. 'When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape,' one campaign veteran recalls. 'It was like something out of The Godfather.'"

He's mean, he's ultra-partisan, and he's a fully-paid up member in good standing of the War Party: during the Democratic primaries in 2006, when Emanuel headed up the Dems' congressional operation, he backed pro-war candidates over antiwar Democrats every time.....

With the smiling face of Don Obama serving as a front for the knife-wielding Emanuel and his "legendary intensity" – as Rolling Stone writer Joshua Green puts it – one has to wonder: what (or who) else does the Prez-elect have in store for us?

The answer is: Jane Harman – as head of the CIA! (If she doesn't get it, not to worry: she's also up for head of Homeland Security – and if she doesn't get that, she's on the short list for National Intelligence czarina).......

Combined with the foreign policy views of Dennis Ross, Obama's senior advisor for Middle East affairs – who is reportedly up for the National Security Advisor slot – what seems to be shaping up is a perfect trifecta of trouble on the horizon. The old adage that presidents rarely govern in synch with the way they campaign applies here, and in spades. Change? Not in the foreign policy realm, buster. Indeed, if any change is involved, it may well be for the worse.

By the time Obama is through making his appointments, all those Hollywood liberals over at the HuffPuffPost will be huffing and puffing with outrage: and, in true Hollywood style, they'll be screaming: "Forget the honeymoon – I want a divorce!"

But it will be too late for that. The Big O marches on, with all sorts of plans for our future, including perhaps "national service," and – for sure – a significant ratcheting-up of the war in Afghanistan. In the meantime, Iran continues to loom large as an issue......"