Instahoglets for Friday, January 23rd

By BJ

Your daily hodgepodge of news and views from around the 'sphere.

A monster post by Greg Djerejian on what real change in US foreign policy would look like.

"Blessed are the peacemakers" - Pat Lang on the lack of adults in the Middle East.

Hillary Clinton arrives at the State Department and it looks like the liberation of Paris. How long has it been since they had their work appreciated?

Granted, not all is rosy with the new Obama picks. His pick for Director of National Intelligence seems to have a problem calling waterboarding torture, and Glenn Greenwald notes that there seems to be a bizarre concept of "due process" throughout the Washington establishment.

Speaking of bizarre establishment wisdom, Cernig and John Cole, among others, are both trying to figure out how Bush letting a bunch of dangerous folks go from Guantanamo is somehow Obama's fault. They might be his problem now, but it is definitely part of Bush's legacy.

Did you think there was a little too much god-talk at the inauguration? I did like that Obama's second taking of the Oath of Office didn't require a bible, but that's got some so-called conservatives in an uproar. How one longs for the days when someone like John Quincy Adams would place his hand on a constitutional law book rather than the bible since he felt it was more important to the job he was being asked to do.

Speaking of the inauguration, turns out the music people heard was a recording. I anxiously await the right's telling us all how this is slap in the face to all Americans by Obama.

Paul Krugman's worried Obama may act too conventionally during this economic crisis, while the Republican Party is acting much as expected and being obstructive. Here's hoping Obama doesn't cave with even more tax cuts when we need the dollars to actually be spent. As Kevin Drum writes:

Republicans believe they have not been treated as equal partners in the process, and that conservative ideas aren't being taken seriously. Newsflash: they're right. What Republicans seem to be missing here is that they shouldn't be treated as equal partners -- they're a small congressional minority whose economic ideas helped create the mess Democrats are now trying to clean up.

Of course, if John Robb is right, even the US federal government doesn't have the leverage to pull us all out of this.

To end on a bright note, the Senate just passed equal pay legislation to overturn the odious Supreme Court decision against Lilly Ledbetter in 2007. Once it again goes through the House, it will be one of the first bills Obama will sign into law, and good on the whole lot of them that supported it.

Comments

[Peter G.]

I've always liked Pat Lang and I agree completely with his assessment of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Time for some adults and for pity's sake someone should outfit those adults with bullet proof vests.