Americans Enjoy Being Shorn By Their Politicians?

According to a senior State Department official he believes Russia will lose no time in testing Obama.

I suspect a long line will develop fairly early. (See 1 below.)

More Israelis injured as Olmert and Barak twiddle their thumbs. This time a shopping center sustained a direct hit. If Olmeret and Barak intend to do nothing the least they could do is move to Sderot. I doubt Olmert has the guts to move to Sderot and live among those Israelis his government has deserted. (See 2 below.)

Eli Kavon suggests another option and writes Olmert should read the story of Ahab in the Old Testament, take the parallels to heart, and resign now. (See 3 below.)

Shas Chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai speaks out regarding continued Hamas bombing from Gaza. Yishai's logic is overwhelming but he might as well go to Jerusalem and wail at The Wall - Olmert is deaf. (See 4 below.)

Brent Budowsky sees a bail out backlash coming. Perhaps, but I disagree because Americans have become sheeplike, numb and used to being shorn by their elected officials.

The question I would pose to Budowsky is will the backlash come before or after Obama spends another trillion? (See 5 below.)

Gerard Baker writes the Fed has thrown away the rule book.

Soon we will be rolling in dough, debt and then inflation. (See 6 below.)

Dana Milbank writes, reporters expecting answers from Obama to their questions are finding it is no "slam dunk."

In due time Dana!(See 7 below.)

Dick

1) US official: Russians intend to test Obama on arms
By ROBERT BURNS

WASHINGTON – The Russian government is likely to "test the mettle" of Barack Obama and his administration by taking a tougher stance against U.S. missile defenses, a senior State Department official said Wednesday. John Rood, the department's top arms control official, told reporters he believes the Russians are waiting to size up the Obama administration before Moscow advances its position on disputed arms issues.

In discussing the state of Russian opposition to U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, Rood said it appears that Moscow has "paused" in anticipation of a new national security approach in Washington.

"My assessment is that the Russians intend to test the mettle of the new administration and the new president," he said. "The future will show how the new administration chooses to answer that challenge."

Asked to elaborate, he said, "I think missile defense and other subjects will be among those that the Russians intend to determine what the new administration's posture will be." He said he reached this conclusion on the basis of an impression gained during talks in Moscow on Monday rather than from explicit Russian statements.

He also said the Russians have been less flexible lately in talks on missile defense. In particular he cited their stance on U.S. proposals to give the Russians more assurance that a missile interceptor site in Poland and a missile-tracking radar in the Czech Republic would pose no security threat to Russia.

The U.S., with the support of the Polish and Czech governments, has proposed that Russian officials be given regular access to the interceptor and radar sites and that they be allowed to monitor activity at both sites through undisclosed technical means. Rood did not elaborate on the details in dispute.

"I don't want to spell out all the details because I think this is a high-priority dialogue for us in the United States, and I don't think that putting all the details out will facilitate a resolution to it," he said.

Rood led a U.S. government delegation in talks with senior Russian officials on a range of subjects, including efforts by both governments to negotiate a treaty to replace the 1991 START nuclear arms deal, which expires in December 2009. Rood said the talks were useful but did not achieve any breakthroughs.

In Moscow on Tuesday, Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying Moscow hopes the Obama administration will agree that the weapons limitations under START "should be preserved and strengthened, rather than weakened."

Rood said the Russians want to expand the scope of a follow-on to the START treaty to include limitations on non-nuclear strategic weapons such as long-range conventional bombers and possibly submarines. The Bush administration has resisted that, saying the restrictions should be on nuclear warheads only.

Rood said he consulted with members of Obama's transition team before traveling to Moscow and will brief them on the substance of the talks. And he said he expects additional talks with the Russians on these subjects before President Bush leaves office Jan. 20.

Brooke Anderson, the Obama transition office's chief spokesperson on national security affairs, declined to comment on Rood's remark about the Russians likely seeking to test the new president.

The missile defense issue has been one of the most divisive over the past few years. The Bush administration has argued that extending its U.S.-based defense system to Europe is important in defending Europe and the United States from a possible long-range missile strike from Iran, while the Russians dispute the immediacy of an Iranian threat and worry about U.S. military expansion near Russian borders.

On Nov. 5, the day after Obama's election, President Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russia would move short-range missiles to NATO's borders to "neutralize" any U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe if necessary.

Medvedev has since backed off slightly. He stressed on Nov. 15 that Russia would not act unless the United States took the first step and expressed hope that the new U.S. administration will be open to negotiations.

Obama has not been explicit, at least in public, about whether he would proceed with the missile defense plan in Poland and the Czech Republic. More broadly he has said he supports missile defense but wants to ensure that it is proven to be a reliable system that does not detract from other security priorities.

2)Crowded Sderot shopping center takes direct Qassam hit from Gaza, 12 injured

The 15th missile from Gaza, injured 12 people - three from shrapnel, the rest in shock - exploded in the Sderot supermarket parking area, destroying shops and cars and scattering crowds of panicky Hanukah shoppers.

The attack capped two days of a massive Palestinian missile and mortar barrage against several Israeli towns and villages without an Israeli military response. Only after the Sderot shopping center was ravaged did the Air force go into action against the Palestinians launching missiles from Beit Hanun in the northern Gaza Strip. Even then, the Palestinians kept on firing raising the day's number to 21.

This week, despite the escalating barrage from Gaza, the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi held the IDF down to one counter-attack per day. Senior officers in the Southern Command said this order had made the Israeli army and its ability to protect the Israelis living around the Gaza Strip look ridiculous. The fact that the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami missile teams have switched from mobile to stationary launchers showed they were aware that defense minister Ehud Barak had tied the Israeli military's hands and they could carry on firing safe from interference.

The defense minister had counted on Egypt to hold the Hamas in check when he accepted a six-month unwritten "truce" through its good offices in June. This strategy collapsed along with the "truce" which expires Friday.

Since then, Barak and Ashkenazi have drummed up all sorts of pretexts to duck the long-delayed effective military ground action in Gaza.They say that before embarking on a major military operation it is essential to know how it will end; to be effective, the Gaza Strip must be reoccupied; or such action would put at risk the life of the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit held in Gaza for two-and-a-half years.

More recently, the defense minister challenged the state attorney, Menahem Mazuz, to provide legal sanction for the army to go into Gaza. Mazuz tossed the buck back by withholding an opinion. He has not forgotten that Barak ignored the last opinion he was asked for, permission to demolish the home of the Jerusalem tractor-terrorist. That building is still standing. It is as glaringly obvious to the state attorney as to everyone else on both sides of the conflict that the defense minister only consulted him as an excuse to avoid action.

Former generals, including the ex-chief of Military Intelligence, Aaron Farkas, have stated publicly that every day the Palestinian terrorists get away without punishment further erodes the Israeli military's deterrent power in the Middle East at large. They strongly urge an end to procrastination and the immediate launch of a series of pinpoint strikes against the Palestinian terror organizations shooting the missiles from Gaza: Hamas, Jihad Islami, Fatah and the Popular Resistance Committees. Without a serious military campaign, the security threat emanating from the Gaza Strip will go from bad to worse.

The reoccupation of the Gaza Strip is not a serious option for any military authority and therefore should not be used as a pretext to shirk the necessary counter-action to the Palestinian missile blitz.

3) The Ahab syndrome: Why Olmert should resign now!
By Eli Kavon

If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had a better grasp of the history of the Jewish people, he would have already resigned and repented for his sins. Olmert, who has lost the trust of most Israelis - as well as the Jews in the Diaspora whom he bilked - should open up his copy of the Bible and read the sad but enlightening story of King Ahab. Perhaps he would learn the lesson of what happens when a powerful man loses sight of what is truly important in life and becomes seduced by the power of his authority.

Ahab was one of the most successful and accomplished monarchs of the ancient Middle East in the period following the breakup of David's united kingdom into two states. The descendants of David ruled the southern kingdom of Judah from the capital in Jerusalem. The Omride dynasty, although later overthrown, led the northern kingdom of Israel for many years. Ahab ruled the northern kingdom in the mid-ninth century BCE.

The archeological record reveals Ahab as a monarch who fielded massive armies in battle and who was a master builder. A monument of Shalmaneser III, the king of the powerful Assyrian empire, reports that in a battle north of Damascus at Karkar in 853 BCE, Ahab's kingdom contributed 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers to the fight against the Assyrians. The king of Israel was successful at stopping the Assyrian advance, despite Shalmaneser's boasts of victory over the alliance rebelling against his empire.

Ahab was also a great builder, as is evidenced by the finds of archeologists in Dan, Hatzor, Megiddo and Tirza. The citadels he built and the sophisticated systems of delivering water to major cities that he developed are a marvel of ancient architecture and engineering. Ahab was an important and powerful leader in the annals of the ancient Israelites and the Middle East.

IT IS too bad for Ahab, however, that the Bible hardly mentions his great accomplishments as the monarch of the northern kingdom. In fact, the scribes and prophets who authored the books of Kings paint a portrait of Ahab as an idol worshiper and a tyrant. The king is condemned for marrying Jezebel, a princess of Tyre who promoted Ba'al worship and persecuted prophets of the God of Israel. In its most searing indictment of Ahab, recounted in I Kings 21, Elijah condemns him for stealing the vineyard of Naboth and, with Jezebel encouraging the ruler, executing this man who owned the plot of prime land near the palace. According to the Bible, "there never was anyone like Ahab, who committed himself to do what was displeasing to the Lord, at the instigation of his wife Jezebel. He acted most abominably, straying after the fetishes just like the Amorites, whom the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites." The battle of Karkar and Ahab's 2,000 chariots are never mentioned in the Bible and there is scant reference to his building projects in and around Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom.

At first glance, these omissions in the Holy Scriptures might seem unfair. Why not give Ahab the credit for his success where the credit is due? Ahab's record as a ruler was a record of accomplishment and success both in the kingdom of Israel and throughout the Middle East. Israel flourished under the Omride king. Ahab, in the face of overwhelming force of the great empire of Assyria, defended the kingdom he ruled and retained its political and military integrity. He should be commended for his leadership, not condemned.

If the books of Kings were simply a social and economic history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, perhaps Ahab would have been credited for his success. But the reality of the Bible is that it is alone interested in the relationship between God and His chosen people. Fidelity to God is the paramount concern of the most important book in Western literature and faith. For all of Ahab's glory as a strong leader, he fails miserably in the Bible as a paragon of virtue and belief.

He and Jezebel are enemies of the prophets and are lacking in the ethics required of true Israelite leaders. Elijah is the hero in the story of Ahab's reign. Ahab has always been remembered as the villain. For all of his success in realpolitik, Ahab is a moral and ethical failure. That is how he will always be remembered, no matter how many archeological finds reveal otherwise.

I HOPE Ehud Olmert takes Ahab into consideration as he repents for sins committed as mayor of Jerusalem, as a leader in the cabinet and as prime minister. All of Olmert's positive accomplishments in these roles as a public servant will be forgotten for a long, long time. In America today, Richard Nixon is remembered as a purveyor of political scandal, not the leader who revolutionized American foreign policy by opening relations with Mao's China, promoting détente with the Soviet Union and helping to arm Israel during the crisis early in the Yom Kippur War.

Too bad for Ahab. Too bad for Nixon. And too bad for Ehud Olmert. The role of a public servant is not only to promote a nation's power and wealth. He or she must act responsibly and ethically. Olmert should leave the office of responsibility entrusted to him - now. He should have thought years ago about his responsibility to the State of Israel and its citizens. Certainly he, a Jewish leader who suffers from the syndrome of the great but seriously flawed King Ahab, should remember that responsibility now.

4) Minister Yishai demands Gaza action
By Roni Sofer

Shas chair urges cabinet to make operational decisions in light of ongoing Qassam fire on south


As the rocket fire on the western Negev increases and as the election campaign accelerates ahead of February 10, the government's policy of restraint is taking center stage.


"Blood and pain have stained this ceasefire. I urged the cabinet to make operational decisions. Stop selling a virtual calm," said Shas Chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai.

Bombarded

Further escalation in south: At least five Qassam rockets fired at southern Israeli communities Wednesday afternoon. Rocket explodes in Sderot parking lot, three people sustain light wounds; eyewitness: Children were crying.



Wednesday saw at least 17 Qassam rockets fired from northern Gaza at the western Negev. One of the rockets hit a busy shopping center in Sderot, causing three people light injuries and several others to suffer shock. Other rockets landed in open areas, causing no harm.



The IAF struck a rocket launcher in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun Wednesday evening, in response to the fire.



"The terrorists are targeting Sderot and the Gaza vicinity communities like they were on a dart board, as our leaders seen to have turned into pillars of salt when it comes to making decisions, and pillars of ice when it comes to feelings," Yishai said. "Those trying to butcher us should know that we have targets of our own. No one is immune."



Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu added that the government's current policy proves conducive to the escalating rocket fire, saying that the situation will change "only when we go from being passive to taking actions that restore Israel's deterrence, which has been eroded to the point of nonexistence."



"The current policy does not contribute to peace, just to terror," he said, pledging that a Likud-led government will not agree to divide Jerusalem or to release any more Palestinian prisoners.

5) Bailout backlash
By Brent Budowsky

Americans have begun an angry backlash against bailouts that could become a national revolt in 2009.


The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by some 500 basis points. Government agencies have poured close to $8 trillion into banking bailouts. The Treasury secretary has promoted massive government support of troubled, failed and corrupted institutions.


This program is a 100 percent top-down exercise involving the largest amount of money in history.

Virtually none of this money directly helps average Americans. Virtually none of it trickles down to the people who suffer the most and pay for the program.


After $8 trillion we are still debating whether any money should be used to directly help average Americans.


The Fed has cut rates dramatically. It is shameful that after all of these rate cuts and all of these bailouts, banks continue raising credit card interest rates, lowering credit lines, refusing to lend to creditworthy businesses and allowing the Grapes of Wrath-like foreclosure crisis to continue with minimal effort to address it.


The banks don’t trust the banks. The banks don’t trust their customers. Business does not trust the banks or the government. Taxpayers don’t trust anyone.


The only trust is from the Fed and the Treasury Department that transfer huge sums of money to the large institutions that caused the problem, often in secret, often involving complicated financial derivatives that neither Congress nor many CEOs understand, based on trust that these institutions will use this money wisely, which often they have not.


The Securities and Exchange Commission is discredited. The Federal Reserve has failed in its duty as banking regulator. Congress has failed in its duty of oversight. The most wise and citizen-friendly regulator, Sheila Bair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is treated with contempt by the Treasury secretary.


The public backlash is only beginning. It will rise with every new scandal and Ponzi scheme and every new increase in credit card rates. It has already infected good judgment in the auto case, where major support is needed, tied to major plans for industry renewal.


I do not oppose bailouts, I oppose bailouts managed with banana-republic standards of secrecy and incompetence in which recipients of massive taxpayer largesse work against those who pay for this largesse.


Today the Federal Reserve Board refuses to disclose information regarding some $2 trillion provided to financial institutions. Bloomberg business news has filed a historic freedom-of-information case seeking disclosure. Congress and the president-elect should support it.


Bailout money is not a private account that belongs to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Fed governors, the Treasury secretary or the banks. It is the people’s money. It should be used to benefit the people. It should be monitored through the checks and balances of the democratic process.


Secrecy is the enemy of equity, integrity and common sense. Secrecy is the friend of negligence, misjudgment and corruption. There are probably selected instances where the Fed should not disclose, but show me $2 trillion of secretly spent money and I will show you trouble.


In the coming days I will be writing about the Bloomberg case and offering specific bailout proposals on The Hill’s Pundits Blog. The backlash is coming. Time is short. The dangers are extreme.


America needs new thinking and an informed national consensus — and we need it now.

6) Fed throws out the rulebook
Gerard Baker

The Federal Reserve yesterday threw away the monetary policy rule book it has been using for 50 years in its most dramatic effort yet to stem the global economic crisis.

In a single stroke, the US central bank in effect eliminated the cost of borrowing money between banks overnight. It promised that US rates would stay at or near zero for the foreseeable future. And, acknowledging that it now has no more room to cut rates, it announced new, unprecedented measures to stimulate the economy, namely pouring cash into almost every crevice of the financial system and massively expanding its own balance sheet.

The two-day meeting of the Fed’s open market committee which ended yesterday must have been one of the most extraordinary in the central bank’s 95-year history. For more than a year the Fed has been deploying all kinds of weapons – traditional monetary policy implements as well as hastily-manufactured new ones – to prevent the US economy from collapsing into a deep and enduring depression.


There were three key elements to the Fed’s move – each of them dramatic in its own right.

First, it cut rates once again from the existing one per cent to something close to nothing. But, instead of announcing a target rate for the overnight interest rate – as it has done for the last decade – the Fed said it would aim to keep the rate in a range – between zero and a quarter percentage point. This unusual move reflects the fact that the federal funds rate – a market interest rate that the Fed can move only indirectly – has been volatile recently because of continuing strains in the interbank lending market.

Second, in its statement accompanying the move, it noted that the US economy had deteriorated on almost all fronts in the last few weeks, and it said that those “weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time.”

The Fed rarely commits itself to future policy decisions but those words are tantamount to saying that rates will remain at or near zero for a long time.

Third, Mr Bernanke has launched the US on an uncharted path of what economists call “quantitative easing”, emergency measures to stimulate an economy in the clutches of deflationary collapse.

With short-term interest rates now at zero, the central bank can no longer cut rates to stimulate the economy. Instead, it can in effect print money, by buying up all kinds of assets and flooding the economy with cash. The Fed’s statement said it would begin buying mortgage-backed securities on the open market. It also announced it was evaluating buying up long-term government debt.

The significance of this development is that it will push interest rates on these assets substantially lower from their already low level. That should help stimulate demand.

The key difference in yesterday’s announcement from everything the Fed has done in the last year is that it is now going to buy up hundreds of billions of dollars of these financial instruments, not simply lend money to banks secured on some of those same assets.

There are risks to the central bank’s action. Even lower interest rates on both short-term and long-term lending may still not generate much economic activity. What’s more, printing money in this way – the Fed’s balance sheet will expand significantly as it acquires all these assets from the markets – could risk an inflationary surge when the immediate crisis is past.

But Mr Bernanke and his colleagues are surely right to think that is a risk worth taking given the severity of the current crisis. Inflation right now looks like a distant dream, as prices are plummeting.

That was underlined by news that consumer price inflation in the US fell at its fastest rate on record last month. Prices fell by 1.7 per cent in November, in large part as a result of declines in oil and commodity prices, but prices were lower almost across the board.


As recently as July the annual rate of inflation was 5.6 per cent and economists fretted about the risk of so-called stagflation – a period of simultaneously rising prices and falling economic activity. Those days seem long ago now, and it is clear that the greatest threat the developed world faces is collapsing economic activity that pushes prices down.

History suggests that once deflation takes hold it can be horribly difficult to reverse. Consumers defer purchases and businesses put off investment in expectation of lower future prices. The real value of debt increases as prices fall. Since interest rates cannot go below zero, the deflationary spiral means monetary policy, even at the lowest feasible nominal interest rate, is still squeezing demand in the economy.

Mr Bernanke's move seems to have been strongly influenced by what happened in Japan in the late 1990s. Japan experienced deflation, when prices began falling in 1998 but it took the Bank of Japan far too long to begin a policy of quantitative easing similar to the one the Fed now seems to be embarking upon. The Bank did not move until 2001 and It was only in 2005 that prices stopped falling.

What is “quantitative easing”?

A clumsy term that describes a complicated but crucial process. A central bank does not directly set interest rates, but influences them through the amount of cash it injects every day into the markets, buying and selling assets such as government debt. The bank usually buys or sells just enough assets to ensure the amount of cash in the market keeps the interest rate at its desired level.

But with quantitative easing, the central bank buys up far more assets from the private sector than it needs to keep the interest rate at zero. The surplus cash does not push rates into negative territory (for all intents and purposes, impossible). Instead it results in much more cash in the economy, and a big increase in the bank’s assets.

The desired effect is more money chasing around the economy — which should help to push up prices.

7) Obama's Pressers: No Comment -- and NoDoz
By Dana Milbank


A month from now, the nation will say farewell to its sports-obsessed president who doesn't like tough questions. And it will replace him with, well, another sports-obsessed president who doesn't like tough questions.

"I did not select Arne because he's one of the best basketball players I know," President-elect Barack Obama said yesterday, introducing Education Secretary-designate Arne Duncan. "Although I will say that I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing Cabinet in American history, and I think that is worth noting."

The nominee, one of the half a dozen accomplished basketball players suiting up for Obama's inner circle, made reference to his time as a professional hoopster in Australia.

But the Chicago Tribune's John McCormick didn't want to talk basketball. He wanted to know about contacts that Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had with disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"John, John, let me just cut you off," Obama interrupted, "because I don't want you to waste your question." The president-elect said the "facts are going to be released next week" -- when he, by random coincidence, will be enjoying Christmas vacation in Hawaii -- and "it would be inappropriate for me to comment" before then. "So, do you have another question?"

McCormick tried to rephrase the question, to no avail. "John, John," Obama repeated, reproachfully. "I said, the U.S. attorney's office specifically asked us not to release this until next week."

There's no denying Obama's team has an impressive starting five: Duncan (6-foot-5), incoming national security adviser James Jones and body man Reggie Love (both 6-foot-4) all played college basketball, while Attorney General-designate Eric Holder and U.N. Ambassador-designate Susan Rice played high school ball. But Obama's response to Blagojevich questions has been decidedly junior varsity. Begging off because of an ongoing investigation? Hiding behind Patrick Fitzgerald's skirt? Warning a reporter not to "waste" a question and asking for an alternative question? All four techniques were popularized by Bush.


"We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and I will be more than happy to comment further once the investigation is completed" was President Bush's version.

"I would ask for your patience, because I do not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation" is Obama's.

McCormick's exchange in Chicago yesterday brought to mind Bush's tangle with David Gregory last year when the NBC newsman asked about an Israeli raid in Syria. "I'm not going to comment on the matter," Bush said. "You're welcome to ask another question, if you'd like to, on a different subject," the president added.

The opposition sees sinister motives in Obama's noncommittal ways. "The guy is strategically soporiferous," charges Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard. "He's trying to be so boring that no one will notice that he has avoided taking a position on virtually every issue that we've seen arise over the past three months."

The charge may be premature. Obama has proved himself to be far more willing to take questions than Bush, and if he makes good on his promise to release the full account of his aides' Blagojevich ties -- even on Christmas Eve -- it will be a major improvement in transparency over the current administration.
Still, it often seems as though Obama is choosing his words in a way that will make them the least interesting. Asked about his earlier disparagement of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama replied that "this is fun for the press to try to stir up whatever quotes were generated during the course of the campaign" -- as if the words came from a rogue word processor rather than from Obama's mouth. Asked about the Blagojevich affair on Monday, Obama again retreated deep into the passive voice: "There is nothing in the review that was presented to me that in any way contradicted my earlier statements that this appalling set of circumstances that we've seen arise had nothing to do with my office."

Yesterday, the president-elect began with opening-statement platitudes: "If we want to outcompete the world tomorrow, then we're going to have to outeducate the world today. . . . We need a new vision for the 21st-century education system."

Obama followed that by allowing the vice president-elect to deliver one of his trademark meanders: "My mom has an expression -- and you all are tired of hearing me say this all through the last couple years -- that children tend to become that which you expect of them. . . . These kids, Mr. President, are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft."

Next up in Obama's insomnia treatment was an acceptance speech by the previously unknown nominee, followed by the president-elect's own blend of convoluted and passive answers to questions: "We're going to have to work through a lot of these difficulties, these structural difficulties that built up over many decades, some of it having to do with the financial industry and the huge amounts of leverage, the huge amounts of debt that were taken on, the speculation and the risk that was occurring, the lack of financial regulation, some of it having to do with our housing market, stabilizing that."

The whole thing might have ended in snores if McCormick hadn't piped up about Blagojevich. After upbraiding the reporter for his first two attempts at a question, Obama dispatched McCormick's third try -- whether there should be a special election to fill Obama's Senate seat -- with a no-comment. "I'm going to let the state legislature make a determination," he said.


McCormick tried something more to the president-elect's liking. "Do you or Duncan have a better jump shot?" he inquired.

"Duncan -- much better," Obama replied readily."That's an easy one."