China's Two Face Policy

China, China, China. With over 5 millenniums years worth of experience in the political arts, yet the lesson seems lost again about saying one thing and doing another. The Peoples Republic of China's political wunderkinds are having a collective communist mind melt over being exposed in a Pentagon report to Congress detailing their military aims and growing capabilities. China wants a more flowery emphasis placed on their economic prosperity and growing private sector. In light of their boom and owning the loan papers on a multitude of US debt, China is making a loud case to increase their role in the International monetary Fund (IMF). Popcorn & MRE's all around, this is going to take armies of diplomats to hash out between two nuclear superpowers with space satellites. (Reuters)

After 5 Chinese ships hemmed in a US warship, USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, plowed through A Tibet-belongs-to China annex anniversary without the number killed last year by the military and rolled over the Dalai Lama's freedom rhetoric, more joint military exercises with Russia, obligatory perennial warnings to Taiwan & an interfering USA that they will backup a One China policy at the point of really big guns and missiles, now with the cyber warfare the Canadians caught from deep inside the land of one time zone happening to 1295 computers in over 100 countries, pulling the camouflage over a hypersensitive world's eyes is tough to brazen out. Canada's report from The Information Warfare Monitor, "Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network" does not attribute the malware directly to the Chinese state. The US military already had suspicous hacker activity attributed to the Chinese at the Pentagon almost eighteen months ago. Those magisterial moments during the 2008 Olympics are over. It leaves China unencumbered by world community threats to showcase its military might on center stage. Only the US military preemptively released their annual assessment on the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Dalai Lama's office raised suspicions about being hacked.

Computers -- including machines at NATO, governments and embassies -- are infected with software that lets attackers gain complete control of them, according to the reports. One was issued by the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies in conjunction with the Ottawa, Canada-based think tank The SecDev Group; the second came from the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

Researchers have dubbed the network GhostNet. The network can not only search a computer but see and hear the people using it, according to the Canadian report.

"GhostNet is capable of taking full control of infected computers, including searching and downloading specific files, and covertly operating attached devices, including microphones and web cameras," the report says. (Internet map - portion)

Tuesday, President Obama leaves Washington DC for the G-20 Summit hosted in a protest-ready and poorer London after already having words with China's Ambassador to the US over US Naval ships in international waters. The Chinese ambassador made sure the press knew there were concerns about the US currency amidst a global crisis. Warfare, cyber and otherwise, is definitely practiced economically. China is spreading the wealth around and making more inroads and cyber tracks in the Western Hemisphere. France & China have a frosty relationship after President Sarkozy took a meeting with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, Thailand is pretty pissed about their computers while Austrailia is defending its ties at home with China. This summit will be like a giant Hollywood party where people were married to each other, divorced and married former friends while everybody is ensuring all is truly cordial because the cameras are on.

President Hu Jintao will warmly greet President Obama. The pictures will be pretty and the words carefully chosen to convey maximum strength on both sides as they speak as if at a tennis match. China will hear about the lack of government safety control in their manufacturing and food production environments, the US will get slammed over the health of the Dollar, return serve on the artificial price pegging of the Yuan with a volley back on the stupidity of Iraq, followed by the human rights issues in Burma and Darfur with pointed questions about China's designs on Latin America, followed by talks about climate change with the US saying new rules. And that's just Secretary Hillary Clinton's part in the meeting. President Obama will hear much mutterings on the scale and scope of the US military industrial complex's sales of armaments and delivery systems. China claims they are nowhere near able to keep up on that military scale. Um, yeah... just the end user better hope they have some quality control in the stuff they get from a booming China.



Mixing modernity with the mastery of the ancient eastern tradition makes for compelling reading about China's geopolitical growth spurts. Ralph D. Sawyer chronicles the inside political gamesmanships Chinese generals do on each other and other nonconventional means of projecting military might. China is not adverse to using every tool at their command and this China expert shows us how many means and methods they have already used in The Tao of Deception: Unorthodox Warfare in Historic and Modern China.

A Presidential Inauguration For the Ages Begins

 And so, World History begins Anew...

History books will record this day as a watershed filled with tears and a mighty river of emotion that flows

around the world. In these modern times, so will Tivo, DVDs, digital cameras, the internet, social networks and those who have the spirit of the young at heart.  For me, it is seriously o'dark thirty and my oatmeal will be nice and hot as Barack Hussein Obama Jr raises his right hand and swears upon the 16th president's store bought Bible to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.  Pennsylvania Avenue will see 13,000 people march by the Obama First Family including the Tuskegee Airmen who will also have places of honor at the Capitol, marching bands from the Aloha State. 

A friend rang me from the Adams Morgan area yesterday thrilled with the crowds and the genuine caring for their fellow citizen as they stream to all historic points in the nations capitol.  Another made me laugh as the weather has been in the eighties and nineties here in Southern California lately and her family is braving below freezing temps to be witnesses to History. The president-elects license plates will be of specific interest and whether as president will the No taxation without representation make a strong comeback.  The citizen's of the District are eager ti participate as well.

From November 4, 2008 Election Night Reaction As U2 Sings - 

It IS A Beautiful Day!

A Day for Kings, Presidents & People

Usually MLK Day has the media short changing the day into soundbitsy clips of the I Have A Dream speech to fit between commercials to do their duty and pay a quick homage. But now all is different. Twelve hours after the strike of midnight on the National Day of Service, a reparation or down payment on his Dream and last expressed wish about the Promised Land when Barack Obama puts his hand on Lincoln's smallish gilt edged Bible and swears an oath to serve as president. What makes the American heart beat remains filled with vast hopes and vital concerns to the rest of the world who will watch and hear a call to serve. Slavery's stains muted America's large bouncing check to reaching that More Perfect Union part of the program, until the morrow and the world will take note.

Odd that the Letter from a Birmingham Jail was a public oped crafted in a cell as a rebuttal against shortsighted black preachers meaning to lower the lofty aims of MLK and by extension the Civil Rights movement. Coverage of MLK Day with grainy images of the mall filled with 250,000 bus riding and marching folks from all over the nation will compare to the almost 1,000,000 who showed up for the We Are One event for the first bi-racial president. An eloquent letter of legacy, published in June of 1963, before the Dream speech that speaks across the decades to another movement filled with youthful vigor on matters of Life & death issues that shall not wait patiently. The glue that binds is based on character and courage. Maya Angelou often states without Courage none of the other Virtues can be practiced.

Martin Luther King Jr responded to a need to serve a seamstress thrown in jail for staying seated on a bus in 1955. Rosa Parks spent her spare time volunteering and serving as secretary for the Montgomery Alabama NAACP. The 21st century is in a deficit in the serving with a dearth of business leaders lapsing into lawless looting from the public funds and private market square. Now people must bridge the yawning gap, with not very many survival skills, to reach the other side except character built by service. Now another person of color with slaveholders in his past stood before Lincoln on the steps urging a call to action to serve with Courage and Characters.

Reverend King served from jail many times in the pursuit of Justice as promisedby the Founding documents and the Amendments arising out of the Emancipation Proclamation. Nonviolent with Civil Right's moral compass set on true north. The struggle for equality in the land of the free and home of the brave came via words accompanied by synchronized actions of service to the attention of those who bestow the honor of a Nobel peace prize.

In Oslo, Norway King's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (won through the blood and tears of a 35 year old) acts as another beacon on the scope of international heft focused on USA stated policies and oblivious practices. In the thousand year old Westminster Abbey, atop the Great West Door resides a robed figure carved in King's likeness from marble enshrined in a pantheon of ten Christians dedicated to Martyr's of the world from the 20th century.



In Occupied Europe, a group of flying guardian Angels, literally, had the crappiest planes they fixed themselves, yet the most distinguished of flying records by winging it on faith and serving with courage to honor the sacrifices in the 1940's. They are known as the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Regiment

Seated near the back of Mount Zion's airy sanctuary, 85-year-old William Booker of Kirkland, a surviving Tuskegee Airman, leaned on his cane and marveled. His grandchildren, Marcus and Brandon, were singing in the children's choir. A few weeks earlier, the president-elect had sent a letter inviting him to the inauguration.

It was a far cry from the years of humiliation Booker and his unit had suffered during and after World War II, demeaned by their own country as inept and too intellectually inferior to be fighter pilots.

The airmen's success in combat in fact contributed to desegregating the military, bolstering a fledgling civil rights movement and broadened acceptance of blacks as leaders.

Last month, Obama wrote to Booker that he had reserved space near the front of the inaugural crowd for the retired Boeing Co. engineer because "he said he was standing on the shoulders of the Tuskegee Airmen," said Booker, whispering hoarsely.

MLK was a young man who was fired up and ready to go. The establishment was doing incremental ism and decided to upbraid the upstart, not for the last time, on what really mattered - patience. King responded with a book on Why We Can't Wait. barack Obama picked up King's message on the fierce urgency of now and the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.

Stevie Wonder put forth his patriot's soul, treasure and time and determination towards finally getting a King holiday in 1986 eighteen years after King's assassination. It is fitting that the bridge is music from Stevie that thrilled a campaign at a Jefferson Jackson dinner in Iowa six weeks before a fateful caucus at the end of an astounding speech from Barack Obama. Signed, Sealed, Delivered, he's Ours now as a president in less than 36 hours and all he is seeking to have all serve equally.


Double Pulitzer Prize winner for biographical portrayals of Martin Luther King Jr., Taylor Branch has written the trilogy for eternal reverence and reference.

Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963 - 1965 At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968

Blair House Hosts The Obamas

Emily Post would have been hard pressed to render a Solomon-worthy answer to the Head of State etiquette issue that surrounded presidential sleep overs at Blair House.  Throw in a ghost, 5,000 more square feet than the 65,000 square foot white Georgian manor caddy corner across the street, a detested ex-Australian Prime Minister getting an honor from a detestable president, two little girls that will have moved 5 times in four weeks (Chicago to Hawaii back to Chicago to the Hay-Adams to Blair House to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) to and a request to park the family at Blair House early.  One American head of state rules who stays at Blair House and the future US head of state wanted to use the presidential suite early. Hmmm.  The hopeful future head of state lost that battle and moved in to 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue on Martin Luther King's actual birthday January 15th. 

It's no secret that President-elect Obama and his family requested to move into Blair president, but were bumped by the former prime minister of Australia, John Howard. Double-booking! Incoming presidents and their families traditionally move into Blair House on January 15, five days before inauguration. The Obama family asked to move in several days earlier than the due date—before their daughters started school—but they were denied access by the Bush administration. They ended up moving into the historic Hay-Adams instead. Howard, by the way, was booked for only one night: January 12.

Lyndon Baines Johnson's administration started Blair House's acquisition of official provenance by adding it to National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Blair House is a honest to goodness National Historic Landmark (NHL) complete with signatures and ceremonies commemorating it as such during the Nixon presidency.  As Barack Obama echoes elements of Abraham Lincoln's ascendancy to the presidency, its a pertinent fact that Blair House was the residence for a Lincoln staffer.  None of Barack's staffers will be holed up in there as the State Department has control of the building.  Interestingly, competitor presidential aspirant Seward from the Empire State became Lincoln's Secretary of State as in modern times, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Secretary of State designate from New York for a President-elect Obama.  (Photo courtesy BH website)

First, it was the home of a newspaper publisher, then a family compound as hebought the house next door to house his daughter and brand spanking new son-in-law who was related to Robert E. Lee.  A century later the US government turned it into a US owned asset in 1942.  Harry S Truman camped there for almost four years after gutting the inside of the White House to restore it to the level of powerful beauty George Washington and James Hoban envisioned more than two hundred years ago.  Blair House also saw the genesis of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine.  There was No Blair House or official guest house in 1792, DC was swamp land with tobacco farms plantations sprinkled about with slave labor.  President Truman put Blair House into the public consciousness in the fifties for another reason.  Puerto Rican nationalists killed a Secret Service agent outside Blair House as they tried to rush the premises to assassinate the president.  Now Blair House is part of the security cordon covered by the White House's Secret Service protection.  

Bill Clinton practiced his speech, revised his speech in the suite's library, then stood next to his limo and bellowed for Hillary and Chelsea to hurry up the morning of his first inaugural.  Blair House has seen it all.  Sasha and Malia had a homework corner set up for them.  Blair House is a giant interconnected set of townhouses with a suite in the light colored one with the formal entrance with the green awning over the porch.  First, President -elect Obama and Michelle Obama will formally sign the guest book filled with the likes of Charles de Gaulle, jawaharal Nehru, Nelson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth II.  The Obamas will reside on the second floor with access to a living room, library and sitting room and a bathroom recently upgraded to a marbleized five star plus venue.  CSPAN, my favorite channel, will broadcast a special showing many of these specialized rooms inside Blair House.  This is red-letter Special because cameras and film crews are allowed in that august space about as often as a lunar eclipse combines with a meteor shower.  (Photo courtesy State Department)

Someday Malia and Sasha's memoirs will include the short stay in the sumptuous Blair House post 1980's Regan Renovations.  This story from Laura Blair Marvel chronicals the adopted daughters sojourn in Blair House before 1942 in the book, A Child in Blair House: Memoir.

Click here for more items on the Transition

New Presidential Cars & Seats

High priority is being flexed as to where the new presidential butt cheeks reside on the way to work or while in the Oval. A fully armored 2009 hermetically sealable Cadillac with CD player and access to The Google is ready for its debut on Inauguration Day. On the 20th of January, the presidential stretch limo might be the only thing GM makes that gets a two-mile solo worldwide debut this year. Professional gearheads are giving the hulked-up design an Ebert-like thumbs down. The Secret Service is giving the security accoutrements a raise the roof high five as they practice situational tactics in the non-lacquered primer version, affectionately dubbed, The Beast.

Already, spy photos of the limo -- with patches of gray primer -- have leaked out. And already, the reviews: "Ugly as sin," says one car enthusiast on an auto Web site.

"Can't we make a hotter ride for our pres?""Sheesh," says another, "why don't they just transport the president around in an Abrams tank."

One news agency, noting its 8-inch-thick doors, says the limo can withstand a "direct hit from an asteroid." But GM spokeswoman Joanne K. Krell laughed off the comments. (CNN Photo)

Considering that President Obama will have the keys to the nuclear arsenal at noon on that Tuesday, it is fitting the "car" should be able to take a Hell Fire licking and keep on trucking with the President safely tucked in his seat. The First Families' maximus glutinouses will ride upon hand sewn leather, inhaling that fresh new car smell on the first day on the job, with secure satellite phones in a moving cone of silence unless the window is down. Fat chance on that. The Secret Service is so protective of the car that upon delivery it is stripped down, checked for bugs and other creepy crawlies, then rebuilt from the tires up. Good on gas or mileage in something this fossil fuel ravenous will put a black hole in Obama's plan to green the White House. A total deficit on reducing the carbon footprint before he's even returned with the family back to 1600 and more bullet proof glass at the parade hut outside the executive mansion.

Meanwhile, as Barack gets back to the White House his chair should already be behind the desk he has chosen. And it is just not any old ergonomic chair for the Oval Office. It is named Washington. It is bulletproof and from another long time presidential vendor, Gunlocke. JFK ordered the first one to help out a bad back and 9 more presidents ordered their own to add to the unveiling of their Oval Offices. To the side of the desk are rosewood chairs, rather businesslike and straight backed for lesser mortals, that have been part of the Oval decor since 1933 and the time of FDR. Like Noah's Ark, two couches and two Parson chairs sitting as sentinels in front of the fireplace complete most of the seating for the Oval Office. The Chair closest to the Rose Garden Door is always the presidents and it is within reach of his "call" button that summons everything from a glass of water to his Chief of Staff.

Then there is the lush recliners and seating aboard the famous Air Force One. But I'll save that for another day. For more on the transition series.

For those who want to know more, there is a greatly detailed book, Air Force One: A History of Presidents and Their Planes, is chock full of their stories. Kenneth Walsh covers their history and dome of the latest gadgets inside the planes knows as AF1 only when the Commander in Chief is aboard. After January 20th, Renegade, is in charge.

An Obama National Security Council

Since 1947 amidst Harry S Truman's presidency, the National Security Council (NSC) was born out of the military and intelligence interagency disorganization post WWII. In 1949, the NSC became the sole province of the president. By law, the National Security Act, this creature exclusive to the White House the NSC remains unmonitored by Congress and operates as a president chooses in matters pertaining to national security and foreign policy with some mandated participation. A National Security Adviser (NSA) is appointed by the president. The role oversees portfolios of regional or specific interest depending on the president's choice and mitigates between major cabinet officers (principals) and ideas that may have jurisdictional overlap. The real power is the Deputies meetings or the surrogates sent by the main principals to get into the fine detail in the conference rooms allocated off the White House's semi-secret Sit Room.

A six foot five inch four star combat tested former marine commandant, Jim Jones, is the President Obama selection. The President-Elect has authorized Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Greg Craig as Counsel to the president and Lawrence Summers in his capacity as Assistant to the President fon Economic Policy to participate in the 2009 United States National Security Council. In spite of being part of Bush's war council, Robert gates remains atop the military industrial complex as the SecDef and a top spot on the NSC battling Clinton among others for resources and policy supremacy. General Jones is the lead arbitrator before it gets to the president's desk.

Sometimes the president is forced to "redo" his NSC in the middle of a term. Why? Because they have usually committed a terrible wrong that leaves the nation and the world aghast. Not likely one might say in Obama world -snicker. In sixty years, NOT one president escaped unscathed from not watching the NSC more closely. The bet is when, not if, Obama gets into trouble with his. History beckons and Obama's name will either be in smaller font or writ large depending on what the issue is he wrangles with and gambles on the wrong person. That's when he's going to need all the political friends he made because he will build up a reservoir of Goodwill. He is smart like that.

In the White House there are 5,000 square feet of first rate technology including cell sensors in the cieling and the best military minds dedicated to crisis management and day to day intelligence activities. CNN's show The Situation Room is named after this collection of rooms inside the White House. The Sit Room is where the president discusses domestic emergencies, planning for pending military action or response to a global crisis. Those familiar with Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing TV show will immediately recognize the room. It was beautifully rehabbed during George W. Bush's 2nd term in 2007 with wainscoting lower on sliding padded walls to receive better transmission of secure communications than the prior mahogany covered walls did during the Clinton administration. Three secure conference rooms, plastic phone booths for calls and direct communication with Air Force One increase the Sit Room complex's functionality and capabilities. There are over 33 LCD monitors and 32 hookups that allow multiple simultaneous conference call capability. All that fancy hardware is needed to manage the threats and the fast growing cyber security incursions.

The NSC has a collection of people considered principals. Getting on the permanent principals list is at the sole discretion of the president. One ofthe layers below the principals is made up of their second in commands or in DC parlance, Deputy blah blah Undersecretary of the Molehill region.Usually, the presidents are the Main Man, Vice president, Secretary of Defense,Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence or the CIA Director, and the National Security Adviser who chairs the meeting and directs traffic. Condoleeza Rice was George Bush's 1st term NSA and she was awful. Regan's second term guy who waded in and cleaned up the Iran Contra mess, was Colin Powell. Whoever gets that chair in an Obama Administration needs to be the consummate professional that cannot be pushed around by the big guns on the NSC.

Richard Clarke, the upstanding hard edged intel NSC guy sets the scene here:

On the ground level of the West Wing of the White House, a dozen men and women trickle into the wood-paneled Situation Room. They balance thick briefing books and cups of hot coffee from the White House Mess next door. The meeting's chairman, a member of the National Security Council staff, brings to order this gathering of the Counterterrorism Security Group, the committee that coordinates U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Behind and above his chair is the seal of the president of the United States.


"All right, let's get going," the NSC man intones. "President Obama wants a high-level game plan for counterterrorism efforts in 2009. First, we need the intelligence picture." The NSC staffer turns to the woman sitting to his left, who works in the National Counterterrorism Center.

"Well, as we said in the recent National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, we had a break for a while after we smashed the al-Qaida sanctuary in Afghanistan after 9/11," she begins. "But now al-Qaida has reconstituted itself in the Pakistani tribal areas, right along the border with Afghanistan. The Pakistani army tries every once in a while to rein them in, but essentially, they're just too weak to gain control of the Wild West border areas. Al-Qaida is busy training terrorists up there, including Europeans and Asians, people who could slip into the United States without arousing suspicion. And al-Qaida is also developing another sanctuary in Somalia, where their local allies have been taking over Somali cities. It's not a soothing picture. We could see al-Qaida attacks in 2009 on the Arabian Peninsula, in Europe, even here at home. But of course, we have no actionable intelligence pointing to a specific plot."

Back to the trouble president's get in. Nobody likes telling a president no. Harry Truman Korea, Dwight Eisenhower is the best to date that pulled together an NSC that was stellar, but a certain pilot was shot down while spying over Russia and trainers were parachuted into Indochina in a former French colony. There was the NSC's fingerprints all over the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Kissinger & Pol Pot among others, China, Iran Contra, WHIG or Bush's White House Iraq Group an off shoot of the NSC that set up to market the war. Time will tell whether the error will be a combination of haste and sloppiness or a personal hubris on the part of his team or horrible circumstance that will bring the NSC to the public's attention in an Obama administration.

The only expert to write a book with scholarly dimensions but wickedly funny asides on the NSA came in a truly fascinating 2006 book from David Rothkopf. Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power traces the NSA from gestation to now with a look at the internecine connections amongst those who serve the public good (usually) inside the NSA.

This part of The Transition Series to the presidency of Barack Obama. (please not the posts at the link above are stored by date)

Musical Chair Derby to Audition for Transition

The White House is the scene of the best braggarts and brightest burblers competing to get one of the last seats before the dramatic Gothic music stops. The scramble is fierce. The players have the arrogance of elitists, use dumb seeking minions to sharpen their wits upon and find any means necessary to wipe out, trip or just outright legally slit the throats of their fellow professionals. Out of the mêlée comes sanguine victors who join the legions of cube rates across corporate America for a chance to sit and work in the Brady Briefing Room located in the West Wing. The latest journalistic perk is getting senior in front of the words White House reporter.

Confinement to little sections of the White House with special security passes and an itsy bitsy workspace with wifi was worth all of the professional rivalry, hidden hand backstabbing of a new administration and pontificating that goes on in millions of workplaces around the globe. But this is the White House. Barack Obama will be running the historic show. Hidden from public view is the transition to see which millionaire TV journalists and their less well paid print counterparts get to be assigned to stand outside the White House when the mosquitoes bite or the snow piles up around their ears to cover the most closely watched presidential transition in world history. Yet, because the White House during the Bush locusts and famine years was pretty much like a GOP convention - a surfeit of non-French vanilla with an arresting rare chocolate or butterscotch sprinkle for spice, more media enterprises feel a sudden need to diversify their reporting pool. Will the miracles that just the advent of a President-Elect Barack Obama can do never cease...

While The New York Times has yet to announce its White House team, sources tell Politico that it will include Liberian-born journalist Helene Cooper, previously a diplomatic correspondent. Cooper has something in common with the president-elect — her own highly acclaimed memoir delving into her familial ties in Africa, published earlier this
year.

But simply wanting to cover the White House isn't as easy as just showing up. Longtime correspondents tightly hold onto the best seats in the small work space in the basement. Coveted hard passes can take months to obtain through the Secret Service.

"I think people who haven't covered the White House will be surprised how rigid they are about rules," said Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner, mentioning the assigned seating as a particular sticking point among veterans.

DC journalists notoriously protected privilege and access to their bottom line detriment. Many political bloggers, especially on the left, just moved into the wide open space left by many journalists. Scooter Libby's trial transcripts put the punctuation marks ^%#$(^ of how in the tank many top journalists were for republican agendas after their almost total meek acceptance of all things Bush led to the travesty, the Iraq War. So now people see an opening and the editors and producers have to decide who is going to get the crown jewel of a WH spot to cover this presidency. Do they keep the same people in place or shake things up? Obama decided in-house bloggers were going to get an official White House stamp of approval.

Also getting under way is a new team of official White House bloggers. One, prominent liberal blogger Michael Lux, joined the transition team this week.

He's expected to be joined by bloggers assigned to specific Obama initiatives, such as overhauling health care and conserving energy.

At the same time, McClatchy Newspapers has learned that Obama's Internet army, which is in the course of moving from his campaign communications Web site to his transition site, www.change.gov, may be asked to move again in January. (AFP)

Some media conglomerates are seeking to add more reporters to cover this White House. Just a whiff of drama is catnip to the reporters who strangely enough tell the news on Tv in virtually the same order night after night. Newspapers are hiring their own bloggers while former print magazines are folding shop and becoming web only operations. Newsrooms have a high degree of anxiety over what January 20, 2009 will bring. Media staffing decisions are fraught with peril because they have no control over how an Obama Administration plans to set up or upset current traditions the press deems dear.

Dishing the dirt and taking no guff from press or presidents is the Iron Lady of the Beltway. An eighty year plus feisty woman who famously gave JFK tough questions and every president since. Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Failed the Public, is her book outlining the press and its epic failures to fulfill their purpose of being the People's representative, not their corporations. Waves hi to the Mouse, a Lightbulb and assorted other corporate brands bringing the tarted up "news".

Part of the Transition Series.

GSA: First Stop to An Obama Administration

On July 1, 1949 the GSA was born as part of the legacy of alphabet agencies from another three letter president, FDR. Everything in the government seems to boil down to an acronym to the point of needing a translator. It comes from the time of the deepest agonies arising from the Depression as a young energetic cousin of a former president took the reigns of power in March of 1932. To get America back on its feet again a plethora of agencies under a Work Projects Administration (WPA) came from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Bill Clinton did an awkward version of this called a New Covenant with the public for the most part allowing it to die of a natural political cause, a distinct lack of interest.

GSA or the General Services Administration is tasked with the responsibility of finding the components needed to house and sustain the inner workings of government down to procuring the erasure on the desk up to completing a renovation of the White House from the inside out under President Truman's direction. Today, GSA is an civil servant army of 12,000 strong as they incorporate the quadrennial need for an inauguration into their regular duties of facilities management for 8,300 grayish nondescript hut outposts to the White House complex, procurement and contracts, the governments formal internet communication platforms and just under a quarter of a million vehicles.

Everything is transparent for the 2008-2009 Presidential Transition Resources as they list this website to see who does what and when if one is selected to serve in an Obama Administration. This site lists the branches of government in a PDF file to explaining the most commonly overused acronyms in an attempt to make it comprehensible. It breaks it down by office, roles and responsibilities and disclosure forms in text or PDF formats compiled by the GPO or Government Printing Office. For those in the know, the Plum Book, a listing of all the jobs available ought to be a big download in the coming weeks.

Senate Report 106-348 clarifies that the directory is intended to "assist in navigating the many responsibilities that fall on a new administration" that is "confronted by an overwhelming amount of material."

The Presidential Transition Act of 2000 amended the Presidential Transition Act of 1963. It authorizes the General Services Administration (GSA) to develop and deliver orientation activities for key prospective Presidential appointees, and requires GSA, in consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration, to develop a transition directory.

The GSA has already turned over the secured offices near the White House in NW Washington to the Obama team. The exact address is 450 5th St, according to this source. The entire 11 story building or 482, 130 square feet is dedicated to the Obama Transition and they metaphorically got the keys and fancy cards on Wednesday. It's kind of cool symmetry that the economy is in the crapper and the location of the building is the former home of the Security & Exchange Commission - charged with regulating Wall Street. Hopefully, the SEC panhandled into a smaller place as nobody was minding the store during the Bush years as Wall Street binged and purged. The GSA has a budget of just under 5,000,000 USD to ensure the lights are on, the copiers work, the phones are secure with people cleared to use them, and the president-elect has a place to start the filing system and archives that will one day be part of his presidential papers in an Obama Presidential Library. This building will be the place tens of thousands a quarter million resumes electronically invade and many final job interviews will take place. There is a transition office in Chicago too, but the one in DC is the "secure" one meaning the FBI reports, the phones are there en masse. High-powered John Podesta is Obama's point man on the transparent transition who painted a pale red target on lobbyists' ambitions to serve in the transition.

As odd as the setting seemed, the process of presidential transition is even stranger. Obama, Podesta and their team must build a government in just 77 days, if you count both New Year's and Christmas. At the first briefing about this process Tuesday, Podesta said that he expects to spend about $12 million on the effort, most of which will be paid for by private donations from individuals who are not registered lobbyists in sums of $5,000 or less. (Congress kicks in $5.2 million to the effort.) All that money will pay for about 450 staff in Chicago and D.C. offices to do reviews of the major federal agencies, create dossiers on potential appointments, and otherwise set up the personnel for the future of the U.S. government, which included in 2004, 15 secretaries, 24 deputy secretaries, more than 275 assistant secretaries and more than 2,500 additional presidential appointees not subject to Senate confirmation.

Since there is only one president at a time, one is packing up their White House bric-a-brac contemplating what being a civilian is again as the other is packing up a private life to step into the harsh glare of the world's spotlight as Commander In Chief on a federal holiday dedicated to him, January 20, 2009. Maybe, that is why George Bush teared up as he expressed the sentiment to make this the smoothest transition in a time of war ever because terrorists were watching. Power is a visceral thing in DC. How and by whom it is wielded is the thing that consumes Washingtonians waking hours. That includes an obsessed media, Obama's professional stalkers, will watch the doors to see who goes in and out and how long they stayed. Who at the Washington Post will have the guts to say or print in one of their notorious What or Who is In/Out as administrations Change editions, Eugene Robinson In, Bob Woodward Out.

The Transition's formal website for Team Obama is called appropriately enough but without O's campaign in mind, Change with a message from President- Elect Obama.

Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

Course Correction is burgeoning as being an American and knowing how the country operates is cool once again. The most important Obama website for the next few weeks is change.gov set up by the GSA, general service administration, to list and inform about all things related for the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next. It is the must go to place for a job or data on the upcoming 44th presidency. To know how tightly interwoven it all is Obama's limited edition T-shirts use the insignia from the official government change site. Hint, Barack Obama and crew will post inaugural details at this site as well. CSPAN will become the most powerful news organization as it will provide no punditry, just an unfiltered lens to show the House of Representatives, Senate Chambers and the presidency foibles and fabulous alike. Barack Obama has steeped himself in economic details of the transition and made mention of his requests during his first and last Oval Office meeting before becoming president himself.

Presidential transitions are studied in great detail by preeminent presidential scholars as it is the foundation of how a president sets up an administration to operate the US government. As we approach the bicentennial of Lincoln, it provides a number of helpful clues for the incoming Obama Administration as perilous times escalated out of control into a Civil War. Abraham Lincoln, President Elect: The Four Critical Months from Election to Inauguration from Larry D. Mansch is about how Lincoln coped with building a government in the midst of secessions while keeping his world view of American unity.

This is part of The Transition Series to the presidency of Barack Obama

(posts at the link above are stored by date) Please leave some hints about other topics to explore through the transition!