Archive for January, 2009
Kirsten Gillibrand will be sworn-in as the new junior Senator from New York tomorrow at 1230pm
Kirsten Gillibrand officially becomes New York’s new junior Senator tomorrow at 1230pm. Reports are, Hillary Clinton is beyond thrilled with the appointment.
Team Hillary is strongly behind Gillibrand, with members of her New York finance committee already beginning fundraising for Gillibrand’s 2010 special election bid. Also, Politico.com today reported Karen Persichelli Keogh, Clinton’s former New York state director, has become an adviser to Gillibrand.
That’s something you have to realize about Team Hillary: people stick together, and everyone has long memories. Gillibrand worked hard for Hillary Clinton back in 2000 on her Senate committee, and that loyalty and dedication’s being rewarded now.
Generation Hillary really begins, in a way, with Gillibrand…with many more great women to follow in the years ahead.
Something tells us Gillibrand will end up being the Dems’ VP pick in 2020 or 2024, depending on how things shake out in the years ahead. Some day, Clinton will need a successor, and that woman could be Gillibrand. If our champ never has another opportunity to run for president, Gillibrand’s rise could be even sooner than that.
No one can predict the future, but it’s clear a star is officially born tomorrow at 1230pm when Gillibrand’s sworn in.
Will Obama stick it to the Kennedys?
Two things will be interesting to watch for in the coming weeks:
(1) Will Obama name HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy as the new Ambassador to the Court of St. James (a position she clearly wants, and feels entitled to since her grandfather, rum-runner and opportunist Joseph Kennedy, once held that position in FDR’s administration)?
(2) Will Obama side with his close personal friend Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick over Senator Ted Kennedy in their battle over a Cape Cod wind farm near Boston.
The Kennedy family has been fighting development of wind energy in Massachusetts for 8 years now, because it will mar the scenic views they enjoy from their Hyannis Port seaside palace.
Currently wind energy accounts for only 1% of American energy needs; some experts believe wind power could generate 20% of America’s energy.
Here in Chicago, there are numerous crackpot proposals from our Mayor Daley to add wind turbines to skyscrapers in the Loop, including the Sears Tower, to generate electric power for Chicago. These come up every now and again when Da Mayor wants to distract the local press from something else he is up to. He’s never serious about actually putting wind turbines anywhere in the City. Structurally, existing skyscrapers, like the Sears Tower, were not built to withstand the drag and pressure wind turbines would put on them. Retrofitting these structures to handle wind turbines would be almost impossible, let alone financially practical. But, it’s still something Da Mayor uses to excite environmentalists, placate critics, and distract the media whenever he wants, or needs to.
We have no idea if that’s what Deval Patrick’s up to with the Cape Cod wind farm. But, considering it’s proposed location is clearly visible from the Kennedy’s palace at Hyannis Port, it sure sounds like this is all some sort of political game dreamed up by Kennedy’s opponents.
It’s like John Boehner’s cheeky proposal to reopen Alcatraz Island to house the 245 terrorists Obama and liberal Democrats want to release from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — Alcatraz is in Nancy Pelosi’s district, so she clearly does not want to bring terrorists back to San Francisco with her. It’s a test of her commitment to bringing terrorists into the continental United States once Guantanamo is closed (if that really happens), if it is only a tongue-in-cheek unrealistic dare from Boehner.
With the wind farm in Massachusetts, it seems obvious anyone proposing a site for an offshore wind farm would realize where the Kennedy nest is, and would understand locating this development less than 5 miles away from Hyannis Port would rile the lion of the Senate up. Architects, hydrologists, engineers, and other involved in planning such a wind farm are careful, deliberate people. If migration patterns of birds were researched and studied in planning a wind farm, we guarantee you developers deliberated on which wealthy coastal land owners would be able to see the almost 500 foot tall turbines once constructed in the ocean.
Someone chose to place those turbines to obstruct the Kennedys’ view from Hyannis Port.
Why they did that is a mystery, but it seems like a serious challenge to one of the most liberal members of the Senate to stand behind alternative energy sources, even when they would inconvenience America’s self-proclaimed royal family.
If Kennedy believes in wind power, and doesn’t object to its development in other parts of the country, where poor people have no choice but to look at wind turbines out their own windows, then why can’t the Kennedy’s hold court in Hyannis Port with the same turbines dazzling in the distant sunset?
Because, you know, if it’s good enough for people in West Texas, Nevada or other propsed wind farm sites out west, why isn’t it good enough for the Dauphins, Dauphines, Viscounts, Marquises, and other petty royals of the east coast Kennedy clan?
Shouldn’t our lords and ladies lead us all to energy independence, by sacrificing as examples for all us lowly serfs to follow?
This sort of thing is exactly why we continue to argue Dr. Steven Chu was the most disconcerting choice Obama made in his Cabinet. Chu is a brilliant physicist who should be holed up in a lab working on cold fusion or flux capacitors. He should not be installed as Energy Secretary when he’s never exhibited the political acumen to handle situations like the Kennedy family’s personal thwarting of wind farms in Massachusetts, because, simply, the Kennedys don’t want to look at them.
Can Dr. Chu call the Kennedys out and side with Governor Patrick to get those turbines built, no matter what the royal court of Hyannis Port wants?
Does he have the chops to do this sort of thing every day for the next four years, because every last project that’s being proposed for the Energy Department has some sort of turf squabble like this inherently involved.
What people don’t seem to realize is the trillion dollar stimulus spending package Obama’s pushing is really hundreds of thousands of small local projects when all is said and done. Each one of those local infrastructure jobs has proponents and opponents, some well funded, others well connected, but all strongly vested in their own personal interests.
None are as shameless and glaring as the Kennedy family’s, but all are challenging in their own way.
Can Dr. Chu crack skulls and muscle opponents of much-needed projects to shut up and sit down for the public good? Is he someone who can bully when bullying’s needed? Can he go toe to toe with feudal ranchers controlling massive swaths of Texas? Can he battle landowners in Montana and other western states when imminent domaine issues arise, as they most certainly will in the next four years? What about water rights involving hydroelectric power versus greedy real estate developers more desperate and reaching than ever in this economy?
Maybe Dr. Chu’s really Bruce Banner, all mild-mannered and deceptive, hiding a raging Hulk inside who can pound the Kennedys, and obstructionists like them, into the pavement when need be.
Stranger things have definitely happened. We are now living in the wondrous Golden Age of Obama, so these sorts of problems and dilemmas are supposed to magically work themselves out in time for lemonade and cupcakes.
That’s why we’re especially interested in where Obama sides on this issue. Since even conservation groups are standing behind Governor Patrick and the wind farm project, Obama has to choose between a practical marquee development that could be a model for many more to come, or allowing the petulant Kennedys to have their way again.
What will he do?
What will Dr. Chu do?
If he doesn’t get his way, what will Ted Kenendy do in his last months in the Senate to get back at Obama and avenge his slighted family?
How much did Princess Caroline buy at Bergdorf’s today?
So many interesting questions.
Terry McAuliffe for Virginia Governor
This is going to be an interesting race to watch, for Virginia Governor. McAuliffe can raise A LOT of money for the primary and general election. We’d love to see him win this.
Be thankful for small favors: Tom Cruise IS NOT starring as hero pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger
Be thankful for small favors today.
The man who jumped up on a couch and tried to electrocute Oprah with his supernova-ing star power will not be playing Hudson River crash hero pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger on film.
Cruise was rambling to Entertainment Tonight last week, which made people who don’t know any better believe he was prepping a movie about Sully’s remarkable crash landing (instead of just doing what he normally does: saying crazy things to anyone who will listen, then ragging on Brooke Shields about pharmaceuticals).
Cruise said, “I was with people today and they said, ‘There’s a movie in here’. I’m thinking about that…to have done such a heroic job…I know what it’s like, because we train for emergencies and then for it to happen and to have it turn out the way it did — that’s how we want them to end.”
What sort of emergencies is Tom Cruise training for?
Who is training him?
Isn’t there SOMEONE more qualified to receive that training than Tom Cruise?
This is as bad as when, during the primaries, Obama said George Clooney was advising him on Mideast foreign policy — because Clooney learned a lot about the Arab-Israeli conflict while filming Three Kings, Syriana, The Peacemaker, and a 1987 episode of The Golden Girls (in which he played Detective Bobby Hopkins, and knows so much about police procedure and criminal justice we’re surprised he wasn’t considered for Attorney General).
Why don’t celebrities just stick to the red carpet and embarrassing themselves on Oprah? Let grown-ups with actual jobs who don’t play make-believe all day handle the emergencies, and people who know what they are talking about wax philosophically on American foreign policy.
And for goodness’ sake, somebody make Tom Hanks stop lying about Proposition-8 and blaming everything on religious people. Not everything’s like a damn box of chocolates, and Mormons aren’t the ones who passed Prop-8 (that would be Obama voters, who overwhelmingly won the state of California for him on November 4th while handily passing Prop-8, too).
No matter what Hollywood celebrities tell you.
Tee hee! We can haz press conferenz?
What's the dumbest thing Nancy Pelosi's said today?
“Alcatraz is a tourist attraction. It’s a prison that is now sort of like a — it’s a national park.” Nancy Pelosi, 1/25/08
That’s the best Nancy Pelosi can muster to argue against reopening Alcatraz Island to house the 245 enemy combatants still held in Guantanamo Bay’s detention facility, as Obama orders the prison shut down by year’s end (allegedly).
The recidivism rate of these terrorists is a least 12%, and since they are not US citizens, the course of action that will follow will be to deport them to their countries of origin, where they will most likely be released to do as they please. Which means we will be releasing terrorists back into the wilds of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia to plot and scheme and rejoin Al-Queda cells, picking up where they left off when captured during the Bush Administration.
It’s essentially like letting Charles Manson, Ted Kaczynski, and the rest of America’s domestic rogues’ gallery loose onto the streets, in the name of hope, change, lemonade, and pixie dust.
House Minority Leader John Boehner suggested moving the Guantanamo prisoners to Alcatraz, which sits in Pelosi’s Congressional district. Boehner told Meet the Press today that, “If liberals believe they ought to go, then maybe we ought to open Alcatraz. It’s very secure”.
Boehner’s obviously provoking Pelosi, and is less than serious about this, but we think it’s a fantastic idea. There are all sorts of people who belong in America’s very own Arkham Asylum for the worst of the worst. It’s ironic that one of Pelosi’s own constituents, John Walker “American Taliban” Lindh could move closer to home by being relocated to Alcatraz as well, along with all others committed to destroying America.
Even more ironic that the people who most want Guantanamo Bay closed are those who’d protest reopening Alcatraz the loudest, because they wouldn’t want these terrorists and criminals in their own backyard, so close to Knob Hill and other San Francisco wealthy liberal enclaves.
Funny how that works, huh?
Today in History: January 26th, 2008 (Year One, Day Seven in the Golden Age of Obama)
1340 – King Edward III of England declared King of France
1500 – First European to set foot in Brazil (Vicente Yanez Pinzon)
1565 – Battle of Talikota: last Hindu kingdom falls to the Islamic sultanates of the Deccan, leading to subjugation of much of the Indian subcontinent
1700 – Magnitude 9 Cascadia Earthquake off the California coast (captured in Japanese records)
1736 – Stanislas I abdicates Polish throne
1788 – Australia Day: British fleet sails into Sydney to establish first permanent settlement in Australia
1808 – Rum Rebellion: armed takeover of the governmnet of Australia
1837 – Michigan becomes 26th US state
1838 – Tennessee enacts first prohibition laws in the US
1841 – United Kingdom formally occupies Hong Kong
1855 – Point No Point Treaty signed in Washington DC
1861 – Louisiana secedes from the Union
1863 – After disaster at Fredericksburg, General Ambrose Burnside relieved of command of Army of the Potomac
1870 – Virginia rejoins the Union
1905 – Cullian diamond found near Pretoria, South Africa in Premier Mine
1911 – Glenn H. Curtiss flies first successful American seaplane
1920 – Lincoln Motor Company launched
1934 – Apollo Theater opens in Harlem
1942 – United States forces arrive in Europe, landing in Northern Ireland
1950 – Republic Day in India; Rajendra Prasad sworn in as first president
1952 – Black Saturday in Egypt: riots burn Cairo’s central business district, targeting upper class
1961 – First female presidential physician: Janet G. Travell, who served President Kennedy
1965 – Hindi declared official language of India
1978 – Great Blizzard of 1978 strikes Ohio-Great Lakes region
1980 – Israel and Egypt establish diplomatic relations
1988 – First performance of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera at Majestic Theater on Broadway
1992 – Boris Yeltsin announces Russia will no longer target US cities with nuclear missiles
2004 – President Hamid Karzai signs new constitution of Afghanistan
2006 – Western Union discontinues telegram service
In your face, Caroline Kennedy – Part Two
Today, Governor David Paterson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Senator Chuck Schumer had lunch at the Waldorf=Astoria in Manhattan, in a fun restaurant called Oscar’s on the hotel’s ground floor (before Paterson and Gillibrand held a press conference). Thus, four of our favorite people in New York talked at length about what they could do for the Empire State, captured in a marvelous photo that is 100% Kennedy-free.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the cashmere section at Bergdorf’s, HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy wandered aimlessly in her own moral wilderness, wondering just how drafty the old buildings of London really are, and how many designer threads she could cram into a manageable number of steamer trunks, stamped “Court of St. James or bust!”.
Because if you don’t think Princess Caroline’s lobbying hard to become the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom now, you’re living in a dream world. Since this was once her grandfather’s job, in the leadup to World War II, Princess feels entitled to this position too. And after how badly she embarrassed herself in recent weeks, Princess needs a high profile face-saving position from Obama: and there is none more perfect than a diplomatic post to the United Kingdom.
Because of our strong and established relations with Great Britain, Princess will have little actual work to do in the post, and will instead preside over an endless social schedule of balls and grande celebrations as a marvelous figurehead. Ambassador to France is actually the most chic and desirable diplomatic perch, but watch that plum go to someone like Penny Pritzker, or another on Obama’s high level finance committee. Ambassadorships have long been rewards for those most loyal to the President — and in Obama’s case, they appear to be going exclusively to those who raised him $1 million or more in the past year.
It would be a stunning snub to the Kennedy family if Princess Caroline was not dispatched to London, with some sham story about a new and desperate need for her particular brand of nostalgic magic to strengthen US-UK relations. It was a surprise, frankly, that the Court of St. James wasn’t given as Princess’s reason for “withdrawing” from consideration to fill Clinton’s Senate vacancy.
That would have been a marvelous lie, actually, much better than the cockamamie story about Princess being concerned for her Uncle Ted’s health, or some other undisclosed “personal matter” that rocked Kennedy’s Park Avenue palace last Wednesday (but evidently wasn’t dramatic or demanding enough to keep her out of any of the fancy restaurants she dined in all weekend with friends in Manhattan). No one believes Princess withdrew for any other reason than she knew full well she’d never be picked.
So, why not just come out and announce Obama needed Princess to be our new Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and use that as the excuse for her abandoning the Senate quest?
Unless, of course, Obama intends to screw the Kennedys over and give that particular plum prize to one of his finance committee members, who raised far more money for him that the Kennedys did (despite all the squawking from the press, their endorsement of Obama really didn’t do much for him other than raking in a few more big headlines…for the man who made huge headlines just by waking up each morning and brushing his teeth, to deafening media applause).
If anyone thought they’d seen a tantrum when Princess didn’t get the Senate seat she wanted, we shudder to think what she’ll do if Obama passes her over for the Ambassadorship as well.
There’ll be a lot of berated and abused employees at Bergdorf’s ducking flying china and shattering Swarovski, that’s for sure. Nobody puts Princess in a corner!
Today in History: January 25th (Year One, Day Six in the Golden Age of Obama)
1327 – Edward III becomes King of England
1494 – Alfonso II becomes King of Naples
1533 – Henry VIII secretly marries Anne Boleyn (while still married to Catherine of Aragon)
1554 – Sao Paulo, Brazil founded
1755 – Moscow University established on Tatiana Day
1787 – Shay’s Rebellion: Daniel Shays seizes federal arsenal to protest debtor’s prisons
1791 – Constitutional Act of 1791 in British Parliament splits Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada
1881 – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell form the Oriental Telephone Company
1890 – Nellie Bly completes her round-the-world journey in 72 days
1915 – Thomas Edison inaugurates transcontinental telephone service – speaks to Thomas Watson in San Francisco from New York
1919 – League of Nations founded
1924 – First winter Olympics begin in Chamonix, France
1937 – Longest running US broadcast program The Guiding Light begins: starts off on NBC Chicago radio, before moving to TV in 1952
1941 – Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu is formed
1942 – Thailand declares war on the United States and United Kingdom
1946 – United Mine Workers joins the American Federation of Labor
1949 – First Emmy Awards presented at the Hollywood Athletic Club
1955 – Soviet Union ends state of war with Germany
1960 – National Association of Broadcasters addresses Payola scandal by threatening fines for disk jockeys who accept money for playing certain records
1961 – President Kennedy delivers first live presidential televised news conference
1971 – Charles Manson and three of his followers found guilty of the Tate-LaBianca murders
1971 – Idi Amin becomes President of Uganda after overthrowing Milton Obote in a coup
1981 – Madame Mao, Jiang Qing, the widow of Mao Zedong, sentenced to death
1993 – Five people shot outside CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia
1994 – Clementine space probe launches
1995 – The Norwegian Rocket Incident: Russia almost launches nuclear war after mistaking Norwegian Black Brant XII research rocket for a US Trident missile
1998 – Pope John Paul II condemns US Cuba policy on visit to Havanna
2004 – Opportunity rover (MER-B) lands on Martian surface
2006 – First cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet orbiting main-sequence star discovered (OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb)
Today in History: January 24th (Year One, Day Five in the Golden Age of Obama)
41 – Roman Emperor Caligula assassinated by disgruntled Praetorian Guards; nephew Claudius succeeds him
1679 – King Charles II of England disbands Parliament
1742 – Charles VII Albert becomes Holy Roman Emperor
1826 – Mississippi College founded in Clinton (first college in Mississippi)
1848 – California Gold Rush begins when gold is found at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento
1857 – University of Calcutta founded as first full university in south Asia
1862 – Bucharest proclaimed capital of Romania
1916 – SCOTUS declares income tax constitutional in Brushaber v. Union Pacific
1924 – Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, is renamed Leningrad (before becoming St. Petersburg again later on)
1943 – President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill conclude Casablanca Conference
1961 – B-52 nuclear bomber crash: bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in air over North Carolina; one weapon almost detonates; uranium core still lost
1972 – Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi found hiding in Guam jungle, where he had been since WWII
1978 – Soviet nuclear satellite Cosmos 954 burns up in atmosphere, spreading nuclear material over Canada (only 1% is ever recovered)
1984 – First Apple Macintosh computers go on sale
2003 – United States Department of Homeland Security begins operations
2009 – HRH Princess Caroline of Kennedy begins lobbying President Obama to become the next Ambassador to the Court of St. James (that, or she’s laying the groundwork to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate later this year)
A Star is Born: Meet Kirsten Gillibrand, the New Junior Senator from New York
Here’s a fun Gillibrand campaign commercial. If she keeps making bits like this, 2010′s elections could have more of these catchy jingles:
