Obama Without Hillary? Dull As Dishwater

After days and days of speculation, allegations, accusations and just plain gossip about Barack Obama’s pending “official” appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, today – nuttin’.  Result?  Dull as dishwater news.  Who cares if Hannity and Colmes split up?  Colmes might as well have never been there in the first place.  We already knew who Obama was going to name as economic advisers; big freakin’ deal.  So, some guy is taking Jo(k)e Biden’s old job.  Nobody’s gonna miss Jo(k)e, nobody even thinks about him until he says something stupid.  That’s why he’s veep.  Duh.  Yeah, yeah, bailouts, stocks up, Bush sucks, blah, blah, blah.  Where’s Hillary?

Okay, CNN is reporting that Bush’s scriptwriter says Obama will “own” Hillary if she takes the SOS job.   And, we should care what he thinks because…?  He’s a flippin’ Canadian neocon for Goodness’ sakes.  Fat lot I care about his opinion.

Let’s face it, Obama needs Hillary, and so do we.  Without her, Barack Obama’s presidency will be a snoozefest.  He’s boring.  They can write about his exciting, historic, rousing campaign until they’re blue in the face, the fact is, the primary campaign was only exciting when Hillary was in it.  It has always been the conflict between Barack and Hillary that made things interesting.  When she dropped out, we were stuck with unevenly matched, dueling TelePrompTer readers in the Obama/McCain powder puff slugfest, until Sarah Palin gave the media a new female subject to kick around.  And, though she provided a few giggles for news junkies, she’s no Hillary, not by a long shot.

The bottom line is, Hillary makes everybody sit up and take notice.  Love her or hate her, without her, Obama’s screwed.  The American people can tolerate a lot of things; incompetence, corruption, condescension, arrogance, etc., are all fine. We’ll even take goofy.

But bore us and you’re toast.

When Do The Training Wheels Come Off?

Straight from the office of the president-elect, the official announcement of the financial team you’ve been hearing about for weeks now!  Okay, so, either the tight ship run by the No Drama Obama Bestest Campaign/Transition Team Ever has sprung an “iceberg to the Titanic” sized leak, or, today’s chance to stand behind the shiny new podium with the cool seal was entirely gratuitous.  But, who cares?  He spoketh!  Now, if we could just figure out who he taketh orders frometh, we’d have a much better handle on just how screwedeth we areth.  Because, like The Man says, it’s going to get (much, much) worse before (we can even think about) it gets better:

With the economy in crisis, President-elect Barack Obama urged the new Congress to pass a quick economic stimulus bill, pledged help for the troubled auto industry and blessed the Bush administration’s bailout of the financial industry.

Even so, he conceded, “The economy is likely to get worse before it gets better,” a downbeat forecast, delivered 57 days before he takes the oath of office and as Americans headed into the year-end holiday season.

Barring swift action, “most experts now believe that we could lose millions of jobs next year,” he said, urging the newly elected Congress to act quickly on his plans after opening its session on Jan. 6.

I know, I know, nothing new was revealed during the desperate attempt to appease the stock market by reannouncing financial team coming out party, but, didn’t seeing our Junior President In Training standing up there behind his big-boy Fisher Price podium looking just cutely adorable make you feel better knowing that he’s going to be an absolutely darling world leader when he grows up, and the training wheels and braces come off?

Obama made his comments as he unveiled the top members of his economic team, beginning with New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner to be his treasury secretary. Geithner, 47, is a veteran of financial crises at home and overseas and has worked closely with the Bush administration in recent months.

Obama chose Lawrence Summers as director of his National Economic Council. Summers was treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton.

Obama said his newly minted economic team offered “sound judgment and fresh thinking” at a time of economic peril.

He expressed confidence the nation would weather the crisis “because we’ve done it before.”

Obama also announced two other members of his economic team in the making: Christina Romer as chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, and Melody Barnes as director of his White House Domestic Policy Council.

Isn’t that sweet?  And so smart of him to offset the sexism of Summers by appointing two chicks.  You just wait until the training wheels come off.   It’ll be, “look Ma, no hands!” before you know it.  And on that day, in our moment of shared national parental pride, we can look back at the photo above and blame ourselves be fulfilled.

Real Change For ObamaLand

I’ve just come up with a great idea for president-elect Barack Obama to consider.  Change!  Real, ballsy, “I’m not fucking around,” change!  Instead of raising taxes, or delaying tax cuts, or economic stimulus plans and/or big bloated bailouts for big bloated companies or any of those rehashed prescriptions for failure, why not try what worked so well during his campaign?  Online donations!  That way, whenever your government needed money to give to dying franchises in a futile attempt to needlessly prolong our collective agony, they could just send out spam!  Foreign governments could purchase prepaid credit cards in bulk and donate to their hearts’ content in order to protect their interests in our government’s success.  Why not put that FISA vote to good “super-email list collection” use?   Failing financial institutions convinced they would get their money back million-fold could set up PACs and other “special government fundraising alliances,” pool their money and give, give, give.  If the coffers of ObamaLand ever appeared to be in danger of becoming dry, he could give a once-in-a-lifetime TelePrompTed speech about some random topic economic racism and sell tickets offer free attendance to donors, with bonuses to attendees who solicit the most from friends and neighbors who couldn’t make the event on their cell phones.  The possibilities are endless.  T-shirt giveaways, raffle tickets, no lottery lotteries, even bake sales could all be used to replenish the nations’s coffers.  Why just make our elected officials resort to begging to get elected?  Make them all justify their continued office space occupation by bringing in quotas of donated revenue.  And, if they come up short, make ‘em borrow it from Citibank.

I think I’m on to something here.

Mikaeel Jackson

Since it’s been a slow Sunday, and gym rat Barack Obama still has not gone to church since…what, Father’s Day, I decided to write about other post-racial rock star celebrities in religious news.  The Artist Formerly Known As Michael Jackson, Jehovah’s Witness, will now be known as Mikaeel, the Muslim.  Whereas, The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, religion; Prince, is…still Prince, but he’s a Jehovah’s Witness, and as far as I know, has never been a Muslim.  But, hey, who can keep up with these guys, huh?  The UK Telegraph reports on the Michael/Mikaeel conversion:

The singer, who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, converted to Islam in a ceremony at a friend’s house in Los Angeles.

He is said to have sat on the floor and worn a small hat while an imam officiated.

According to The Sun, the ceremony took place while Jackson, 50, was recording an album at the home of Steve Porcaro, a keyboard player who composed music on his Thriller album.

Guess you never know when or how the music’s gonna move you.  Moving on, The New Yorker’s Claire Hoffman visited Prince, the “small, limping, 50 year old man,” at his new house in Los Angeles to talk about moving and religion and stuff:

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring, after spending years in Minneapolis, holding court in a complex called Paisley Park, where he made thousands of songs, far away from the big labels. Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. “I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” he said. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”

I wonder what religion “they” all have.  Anyway, both men claim that their conversions came about due to the influence of musician friends, Larry Graham (Sly and the Family Stone, Graham Central Station) for Prince, and “David Wharnsby, a Canadian songwriter, and Phillip Bubal, a producer, who have both converted” who counseled Jackson.  Jackson gave no credit to brother Jermaine, a longtime Muslim convert who claimed in 2007 that his brother would soon follow suit.

Maybe Mikaeel and Prince could team up on a new album, “The Mid-life Crises of the Rich and Famous Spiritually Evolved Artists Formerly Known as Freaky.”  With a very special guest appearance by recently divorced, Kabbahlist, Madonna.  Too bad George Harrison died; who’s gonna play sitar?

Turning fifty without drugs is hard.

Somebody better warn the new president.