Quick Hits

Shut the Hell Up: Ever since Barack Obama decided he wanted Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the MSM has again taken the opportunity to do their knee-jerk Clinton-bashing. It’s all about her; they are going to fight over who gets to pick the upper echelons of the department; Bill will never disclose his outside interests...wait, now he did...now is Obama going to release that information so we can pick over that; and blah blah blah. The fact that Hillary is absolutely the best person for the job of getting our good reputation back with the rest of the world after eight years of arrogance, belligerence and international lawbreaking by the Bushies gets lost in the shuffle of the usual Clintons-out-for-themselves nonsense.

A Team of Equals: The MSM theory goes that Obama is following the lead of Abraham Lincoln by neutralizing his rivals by bringing them into the administration. This assumes he has any rivals in the Democratic party right now – he doesn’t. The party is all-in on making him and the Democratic Congress a success, a process that could keep the Dems in power of the executive and the legislative branches for a generation or more, if they do it right. What Obama is doing is putting very smart, talented people at the head of the major departments and giving them all the power they need to drive his policies. It shows well-deserved confidence in himself that he is able to do so without worrying about being undercut or someone trying to foolishly take advantage of his inexperience. This will take some getting used to after eight years of the top-down politicization of all agencies by the Bushies, where nothing happened without Karl Rove’s dark approval. Obama not only needs talented, independent leaders in his governemnt -- he wants them.

Good Riddance: The biggest waste of space on cable television, Alan Colmes, is getting off his knees and hanging up his clown suit at Fox Noise, where he has played the role of pretend-liberal sub to Sean Hannity’s ubber-right dom for the past eleven years. A pathetic excuse for a liberal voice, he was the perfect stooge for the Fox parade of nut-right regulars like Ann Coulter and Dick Morris, mildly countering their outrageous lies and exaggerations with wimpy retorts and other milquetoast comments that were forgotten the minute they left his mouth. When Hannity recruited the former comedian to play his straight man, he guaranteed that the Fox faithful could always leave every H&C show knowing they won. Colmes and I actually mixed it up a couple of years ago, when I accused him of being a little too gleeful at Saddam Hussein’s execution – he said he wasn’t and I apologized. Now it’s his turn to apologize for acting as an enabler and helping to legitimize the Fox Noise propaganda experiment for all those years.

Nod to Bob Rocks the House: The Nod to Bob benefit for the Hunger Task Force at Linneman’s Wednesday night was a great success, musically and philanthropically, with a capacity crowd enjoying a night of Dylan interpretations by some of Milwaukee’s best musicians. Thanks to Jim and Marty again for letting me MC the event – always the highlight of my holiday season. Special thanks to my band members: Ken Hanson and Michael De Boer of Longacre, Ron White on drums and, on piano, the Illusory One, Tom Foley.