The Liberal Journal: News & Opinion Dedicated to True American Values
Blog Details
Overall rank: 182978 Number of inbound blogs: 29 Number of incoming links: 49 ATOM: ATOM feed Author: Nelson Last update: 2007-06-10 00:09:16 GMT Estimated value: $33,201
Analytics
Incoming clicks since last reset: 265 Outgoing clicks since last reset: 830
A lot of people are blogging on this WaPo report because it shows that Obama is building a repoire with top military brass. That is very important in the long run. But this line of the report sticks out the most to me:
While some Pentagon officials believe an Iraq withdrawal order could become Obama's equivalent of the Clinton controversy over gays, several senior Defense Department sources said that Gates, Mullen and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the military's Central Command, are untroubled by the 16-month plan and feel it can be accomplished with a month or two of wiggle room.
The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.
The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in assessing the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather and analyze “industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during their working lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy process of developing standards to protect workers’ health.
[...]
The Labor Department proposal is one of about 20 highly contentious rules the Bush administration is planning to issue in its final weeks. The rules deal with issues as diverse as abortion, auto safety and the environment. One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species.
Mr. Obama and his advisers have already signaled their wariness of last-minute efforts by the Bush administration to embed its policies into the Code of Federal Regulations, a collection of rules having the force of law. The advisers have also said that Mr. Obama plans to look at a number of executive orders issued by Mr. Bush.
A new president can unilaterally reverse executive orders issued by his predecessors, as Mr. Bush and President Bill Clinton did in selected cases. But it is much more difficult for a new president to revoke or alter final regulations put in place by a predecessor. A new administration must solicit public comment and supply “a reasoned analysis” for such changes, as if it were issuing a new rule, the Supreme Court has said.
I have one question: Why? If Bush genuinely believed these rule changes were beneficial, why did he wait to the last days of his Administration to implement them? The only answer seems to be in order to sabotage the incoming Democratic Administration, which will now be putting unnecessary time and effort in reversing them. If that's not the reason, can someone give me a better one?
The real problem isn't whether we say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.
Week 13 Picks
It's a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey.
Last Week: 10-6 Season: 112-64-1 (.636)
I'm awfully nervous about a bunch of these picks and am expecting another average week of picking. I wouldn't be surprised if the Eagles bounced back at home with McNabb playing the whole game, or if the Saints or the Pats continued the momentum from last week.
Thanksgiving Day Tennessee at Detroit Seattle at Dallas Arizona at Philadelphia
Sunday Carolina at Green Bay Indianapolis at Cleveland Baltimore at Cincinnati San Francisco at Buffalo Denver at N.Y. Jets N.Y. Giants at Washington New Orleans at Tampa Bay Miami at St. Louis Atlanta at San Diego Kansas City at Oakland Pittsburgh at New England Chicago at Minnesota
After speaking to some other national security policy experts very close to Bob Gates and General Brent Scowcroft, I changed course and began to see the value of Gates staying at DoD.
My hunch is that Gates wants a chance to make the kind of leaps in the Middle East I have been writing about for some time. He wants to try and push Iran-US relations into a constructive direction. He wants to change the game in Afghanistan -- and the answer will not be a military-dominant strategy. He wants to try and stabilize Iraq in a negotiated, confidence building process that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and other regional forces. And he wants to support a big push on Israel-Palestine peace and reconfigure relations between much of the Arab League and Israel.
This is a big order. And he wants to lurk in the shadows, behind the scenes and away from cameras and let other of Obama's team get the spotlight and credit.
National Security Advisor-to-be Jim Jones is on the same page as Gates -- and the two of them will constitute a considerably strong axis of power inside the Obama White House. My hunch is that Hillary Clinton and her State Department Deputy James Steinberg will work collaboratively to achieve this vision.
It's a big gamble. There is a large chance of paralysis between big foreign policy/national security guns that don't like yielding to power rivals in an administration.
But the gamble could be a very big payoff for Obama and the country -- and would actually deliver the "change" that so many are expecting.
To the untrained eye (or the jaded one), Obama keeping on Gates and bringing on Hillary shows that Obama is somehow abandoning his principles or his platform. But there is a method to this madness. What should be clear by now is that Obama is a big thinker. The question isn't whether Obama will pull out of Iraq, it's whether he will withdraw AND help solve the Israel-Palestine situation AND help resolve the Iran situation AND streamline our military AND stabilize Afghanistan, etc., etc.
It's too early to say whether everything will work. Obama's Team of Rivals may yet turn their knives on him or each other and paralyze the entire Administration. But his objectives are big and he's going to try to build a consensus to achieve them. What his choices demonstrate so far is that, putting aside his specific domestic policy proposals, he really believed all of his lofty rhetoric about change and the urgency of now.
For me, this is not about not keeping Obama honest. It's about understanding the breadth of his vision. Right now, I'm seeing a path to bringing tangible, wide reaching change. If that path eventually leads to nowhere, trust me, it will be duly noted.
So, what is Obama doing? By taking advice from Scowcroft, leaving Robert Gates (for now) in charge of the Pentagon, and by bringing in other Realists on to his team, he is co-opting the centrist Republicans. The Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Richard Lugar, and likeminded thinkers like Chuck Hagel, are now de facto members of the Obama coalition. They are inside the tent, pissing out. This dulls McCarthyite criticisms from the neo-conservatives and from the Israeli hard-liners as it gives the appearance (and much of the reality) of a bipartisan foreign policy consensus. But Obama did not stop there. He has disarmed the Israeli hard-liners by giving them a seat at the table, as well. Nowhere is this clearer than in his selection of vice-president and chief of staff. If he goes through with the selection of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, he will further disarm the hard-liners.
Now, there is a legitimate progressive critique that Obama is staffing up with a toxic combination of people that were either wrong about the invasion of Iraq or that were right, but for the wrong reasons. After all, the Realist School might have been clear-eyed on the ill-advisability of invading Iraq, but they are myopic about their own culpability in creating the problems we face in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. What is needed is much more far-reaching change. That's true. But that change must be managed carefully, and it will come much easier if it is done with a broad coalition of support.
This Thanksgiving you will probably sit down with many of your close relatives. It is not unlikely that the subject of current events will come up, including the state of the economy and the election of Barack Obama. You may then be faced with the familiar liberal-conservative fissures in the family. The conservatives, anxious to defend their regressive views in the wake of the most anti-conservative electoral backlash in a long time, will surely be armed with whatever Rush Limbaugh said on his show while they were driving over to the house. Be prepared, liberals, with Sara Robinson's run-down of conservative myths and responses. (h/t Cernig) Here's a sampling:
1. Liberals hate America.
For the record: Liberals love America. In fact, what makes us liberals is that we actually read and believed all those pretty words in the Declaration of Independence about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and in the Bill of Rights about freedom of speech, religion, assembly, privacy, and all the rest of it.
We're idealists that way. We want to live in the country the Founders described. We believe that the nation's founding documents expressed a uniquely powerful moral contract between the people and their government, and an audaciously positive vision of people's ability and competence to shape their own future. When we get annoying and whiny, it's usually because we believe so much in America's astonishing promise—and our own responsibility for realizing it—that we're sorely disappointed when the country falls short of that standard. We really want to believe we can do better.
Conservatism, by contrast, tends to take a dim view of human nature, prefers hierarchy to liberty, and isn't completely convinced people can or should be trying to contravene the will of God or their betters by trying to arrange their own futures. This tends to lead to a selective reading of the Constitution (as well as the Bible), and—as we've seen in the Bush years—a far more flexible attitude toward its interpretation.
The proof, however, is in the history—and it's pretty irrefutable. America's greatest moments of progress, generosity, and moral strength occurred when the country stuck most closely to its progressive ideals. We loved America so much that we freed the slaves, passed child labor laws, built schools and colleges, gave the vote to women, enacted civil rights laws, rebuilt Europe after a war we helped win, and put a man on the moon. All of these were progressive projects—and all were fought tooth and nail by conservatives in their time, simply because they feared change and saw power as a zero-sum game. Yeah, we sometimes overshoot and miss—but you can't argue with the daring scope of our dreams.
Conversely, most of our worst moments—the Native American genocide, the continued justification of slavery and Jim Crow, the Japanese internment, Abu Ghraib —were conservative projects that were driven by narrow-minded xenophobia and short-term greed, and are regretted by everyone (including most conservatives) when we look back now.
Rick Perlstein has called this out as a predictable pattern: conservatives will loudly obstruct social progress for decades before finally accepting it—and then, they'll insist they were 100 percent for it all along.
Love us or hate us; but we're every bit as American as our conservative friends and relatives, and have been since the day the Declaration was written (by a liberal, in fact).
In Brief 11.25.08
Haha, we could probably meet all our energy needs with sugar water and instead we're fighting resource wars. Foolish humans! (h/t Worldwide Sawdust)
A black nationalist is looking at America differently since Obama won the election. I don't know about you, but I expect my black nationalists to be militant, not assimilationist. What's next, sponges that repel rather than absorb water? This is all too much change!
You can find out about a bunch of the ads the McCain camp didn't run here. Unsurprisingly, they were focused on the most pressing issues of the day such as: Jeremiah Wright, celebrities, and Jeremiah Wright.
John McCain held a press conference today that no one watched. McCain disclosed that he chose Sarah Palin for her qualifications. McCain then listed her qualifications as being "energizing" and "a breath of fresh air."
PoliticalWire has the latest buzz on Obama's national security team:
Sources tell ABC News that Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be staying on in the top Pentagon job, for at least the first year of the Obama administration.
Said one source: "It is a done deal."
Politico notes the entire national security team will be announced next week, including Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and retired Marine Gen. James Jones as national security adviser.
In addition, James B. Steinberg will be deputy secretary of State; Susan Rice will be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; and retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair will be named the director of national intelligence.
One name that doesn't appear here is John Brennan, who was speculated to be CIA head. This speculation was met with criticism from many quarters of the liberal blogosphere because of statements Brennan made in support of extraordinary rendition and Bush's interrogation program. It appears the criticism actually influenced Brennan's decision to pull his name from consideration. According to the AP report:
John Brennan, President-elect Barack Obama's top adviser on intelligence, took his name out of the running Tuesday for any intelligence position in the new administration.
Brennan wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs that associate him with the Bush administration's interrogation, detention and rendition policies.
"It is with profound regret that I respectfully ask that my name be withdrawn from consideration for a position within the intelligence community. The challenges ahead of our nation are too daunting, and the role of the CIA too critical, for there to be any distraction from the vital work that lays ahead," Brennan wrote.
Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over online blogs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects, including waterboarding..."
Online blogs? Seems like the netroots strikes again!
I think Obama is entitled to a lot of leeway on appointments and is entitled not to be condemned -- or praised -- other than for things he actually does. And while I have found some of his appointments questionable, Brennan was the only prospective appointment that, speaking only for myself, was completely unacceptable.
The last time I met Saif Abdallah, in the winter of 2006, he was proud to have helped kill dozens, possibly hundreds of American soldiers. Then 28, he was a geeky electronics engineer who made trigger devices for roadside bombs known as IEDs — the No. 1 cause of U.S. troop casualties. I remember the relish he took in listing his clients, most of them Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups, whom he saw as fellow patriots trying to drive out the American occupier. He had also devised triggers for al-Qaeda. "They pay me," he said then with a shrug. "Anybody who wants to kill American soldiers, if they pay me, I work for them."
Guess who pays him now? The American taxpayer.
He's now a Son of Iraq (SOI), one of nearly 100,000 Sunnis recruited by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaeda. Saif Abdallah (not his real name) is paid about $300 a month, and works with a group of 20 others somewhere north of Baghdad. His job? "Some patrols, some checkpoints," he says with a familiar shrug. "The work is not hard."
[...]
[Hadi] Al-Ameri [who heads the Iraqi parliament's security committee] says 15,000 to 20,000 SOI will be inducted into Iraqi security forces, but only after further verification. The rest will have to give up their arms and take up other jobs — as carpenters, plumbers, electricians and so on. "We'll give them training if necessary," he adds.
But it's unlikely that men like Abdallah will simply lay down their weapons and be satisfied with a menial job. Many SOI see themselves as the true protectors of their towns and provinces and have nothing but scorn for the Iraqi government, police and army. "If they don't make me at least a captain or a major in the army, I don't want any other job from them," Abdallah says. And what would he do then? "I don't know," he says. "Maybe I'll go back to what I did before." He smiles and makes the universal gesture for an explosion.
Haha, and you thought Britain were our only real partner in the Coalition of the Willing because of the historic alliance between our two nations. Nope, it was probably just your garden variety NSA blackmail.
Bush pardoned 14 people today. Bush must think that stealing government property, distributing marijuana, income tax evasion, lying to the United States, and food stamp fraud are just A-OK hunky dorey.
Obama is slated to choose Rice as UN Ambassador. NOOOOO! Oh wait, it's Susan, not Condi.
The Obamanomics Team
Obama had a presser today with his economic team. He reeled off some bullet points about each of the appointee's resumes, then answered a few questions. Among the questions he took, Obama agreed with the position of Democratic Congressional leaders that the auto industry must come up with a coherent plan for a bailout, and Obama said he would consult with his economic team over the question of whether to let the Bush tax cuts for the rich die on their own in 2010 or if he would do it sooner. Obama also appeared committed to a major stimulus to "jolt" the economy, but would not specify a figure as to how big it would be.
Obama picked four people today, Geithner for Treasury Secretary, Summers for Director of National Economic Council (two picks we knew about), Christina Romer as chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers and Melody Barnes as head of the Domestic Policy Council.
Most of the buzz has focused on the two men, but Al Giordano notes that progressives should be enthusiastic about the pick of Melody Barnes:
Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Council served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy on the Judiciary Committee from 1985 to 1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush's state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say:
Here at home there is urgent work to do to fight the historically high -- and growing -- gap between our richest and poorest citizens. While the mean income of households on the low end of the income spectrum -- the bottom 20 percent -- is just $10,655 a year, the income of the top twenty percent of households averages almost $160,000. That's 15 times as much. At the same time, according to the latest census figures, the middle class, beset with stagnant wages and mountainous debts, is shrinking. The sad fact is that one of our most cherished values as a society, namely equality of opportunity, is fading as a reality for far too many people...
Look, for people who convinced themselves that Obama was the second coming of Saul Alinsky -- wake up. He never was. He may, however, be the most progressive person we could have possibly hoped to elect as President of the United States.
Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to help keep the obstructionists off his back and push him to fulfill his campaign promises to end the war, pass health care legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act, clean up the environment, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, repair our infrastructure, create good jobs and restore the middle class.
That's what he promised us, and while I'm obviously not wild about the dearth of progressives in his administration (while anti-choicers like Hagel and Lugar are evidently a-okay), I'm less concerned with who he chooses to implement his policies than with his ability to ultimately do so.
The man who will be Treasury Secretary is Tim Geithner. When this was announced Friday, the markets seemed to respond positively. Daniel Gross says this is because “Geithner has been an extremely effective meritocratic bureaucrat for 20 years-a sort of community organizer for the financial world.” A community organizer for finances? OH MY GOD.
It appears Obama's Administration is open to a commission to look into torture and other Bush Administration abuses, but not prosecutions. It would, after all, be best for bipartisanship. Which means letting the other party get away with crimes. Or more specifically, because Republicans don't practice it, it means Democrats letting Republicans get away with crimes.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is in Iowa for whatever reason (OK, we know why). His pitch for 2012 is not that there's anything wrong with the Republican platform but rather that voters are only swayed by appearances. And he can be their young, wiry, intellectual, dark-skinned Messiah.
Candace Gingrich, GLBT activist and sister of Newt Gingrich, who is positioning himself as a GOP candidate in 2012 by denouncing equal rights advocates, wrote a letter to her big brother:
We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group -- one that looks down upon minorities and women -- when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of "traditional" marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of "historic Christianity" you claim to champion.
Again, nothing new here. This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing.
What really worries me is that you are always willing to use LGBT Americans as political weapons to further your ambitions. That's really so '90s, Newt. In this day and age, it's embarrassing to watch you talk like that. You should be more afraid of the new political climate in America, because, there is no place for you in it.
In other words, stop being a hater, big bro.
Week 12 Picks
This Week: 1-0 (Thurs. night game, Steelers over Bengals) Last Week: 11-4-1 Season: 103-58-1 (.640)
The Jets had a huge OT win at New England last week that has at least temporarily placed them atop the AFC East. They have an even tougher test against Tennessee this week. I give the Titans the nod, but I like what I've been seeing out of the Jets lately. This could even be a preview of the AFC Championship game...the Falcons, overall, have been tough at home, so I give them the edge over Carolina...I watched Ravens QB Joe Flacco play for the first time last week against the Giants, and even though the Ravens lost, I was impressed by the rookie's poise...Earlier this year Miami blew out New England and while this game will certainly be closer I get the feeling Miami will throw enough new wrinkles from their unorthodox offense...the Chargers are undefeated at home..the Pack appears to be hitting their stride, blowing out the Bears last week...and of course, the Lions will lose...
Winners in BOLD
N.Y. Jets at Tennessee Titans Philadelphia Eagles at Baltimore Ravens Houston Texans at Cleveland Browns San Francisco 49ers at Dallas Cowboys Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Detroit Lions Minnesota Vikings at Jacksonville Jaguars Buffalo Bills at Kansas City Chiefs New England Patriots at Miami Dolphins Chicago Bears at St. Louis Rams Oakland Raiders at Denver Broncos Carolina Panthers at Atlanta Falcons N.Y. Giants at Arizona Cardinals Washington Redskins at Seattle Seahawks Indianapolis Colts at San Diego Chargers Green Bay Packers at New Orleans Saints
Electing Marxist Confirms America is a Center-Right Nation
Immediately after Obama won, the GOP spinmeisters began a campaign of declaring America a center-right nation, in order to usurp any sense of a mandate for Obama and the Democrats. In the graph below, courtesy of David Sirota, we see that the "liberal" news media ran (and continues to run) with the narrative:
Mukasey Collapses
During a speech before the Federalist Society, Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed. He was taken to the hospital where he is now said to be alert. No word on what his condition was; some are speculating it was a stroke. Best wishes to him on a speedy recovery.
Financial disclosure issues have been resolved, and she'll be announced as Secretary of State right after Thanksgiving, reports Politico.
Merry Subprime Crisis
'Oh crap, Mrs. Claus is going to kill me.'
If you feel like losing brain cells, check out this from an op-ed by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal:
This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin -- fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.
[...]
It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions. The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines."
Henninger doesn't explain why merely uttering the words Merry Christmas makes people more virtuous because he can't, just like saying the words Happy Labor Day doesn't make people want to join a union.
But an even bigger folly here is the notion that not saying Merry Christmas is "dereligioning." Despite a Christian upbringing, I don't even think of Christianity when I think of Christmas. I think of hordes of people forming at the doors of retail stores in the wee hours of the morning, and the ensuing elbowing, stampeding, and the willingness to trample their fellow human to death in order to buy a material object for their selfish brat of a kid (who probably beats up on other kids at school). I don't think of Jesus, I think of the myth of the imaginary fat bearded man with his eight flying reindeer who magically circle the globe to give said selfish brat the gifts their parents trampled other people for. I think of Black Friday, not Advent, and I don't think of crosses and prayers, but rather trees and lights and all the other pagan rituals that the "holy day" is known for.
So if I were a true believer, I would not cry for "Christmas." The word symbolizes all that is unvirtuous, materialistic, commercial, and phony. It's marked by selfishness, greed, and overindulgence. Christmas itself is "dereligioned," if that's even a word.
In the last 24 hours we've learned that Tom Daschle, Janet Napolitano, and Penny Pritzker will assume Cabinet posts. All three were on this chart, although Napolitano was listed under AG, not Homeland Security.
State: Hillary Clinton Treasury: Defense: Robert Gates (likely to stay on) Attorney General: Eric Holder Interior: Agriculture: Commerce: Penny Pritzker Labor: Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle Housing and Urban Development: Transportation: Energy: Education: Veterans Affairs: Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano
Here's how I'd fill out the rest:
Defense (when Gates departs): 1. Chuck Hagel 2. Jack Reed Treasury: 1. Jon Corzine Interior: 1. Jim Leach 2. Bill Richardson Agriculture: 1. Tom Vilsack Labor: 1. Bob Reich (probably unlikely) 2. David Bonior HUD: 1. Manuel Diaz Transportation: 1. Jim Oberstar Energy: 1. Al Gore (very, very unlikely) 2. Jerry McNerney Education: 1. Linda Darling-Hammond 2. Jim Hunt Veterans Affairs: 1. Max Cleland 2. Tammy Duckworth
Mind you, these are all names I've heard or seen at one point or another--they're not picked out of thin air. (And I'd love to hear suggestions in the comments.) I'm kind of averse to naming so many politicians to high posts. It is my belief that the best person for the job should be named at each position, and it's hard for me to believe that at so many positions the best candidate for the job is an elected official. For example, Darling-Hammond has no political experience, but a wealth of actual experience.
Mitt Romney doesn't want an auto industry bailout. After all, the more unemployed disillusioned Democrats there are in Michigan, the more likely he can win in 2012. Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, continues to call Willard a phony. Because the more Mitt looks like a phony, the more likely Mike can win in 2012. Oh, why don't they both just announce they're running again?
If Hill takes the SecState position, her Senate seat is up for grabs. Who would Gov. David Paterson appoint? Brownsox runs down the list.
Of the names I'm familiar with, I like Andrew Cuomo--even though he gets mixed reviews from many quarters. I'd be fine with Nadler. Arcuri and Gillebrand's Blue Dog status takes them out of the running for me (My motto is Blue Dogs are for red states). Nydia Velazquez is underwhelming.
But what about the woman who was going to run for Senate in 2000, but stepped aside for Hillary, Nita Lowey? She has the desire and this would be payback for stepping aside earlier. You wouldn't be losing a woman in the Senate. Her seat is solidly Democratic, so Dems won't be losing a House seat. She's solidly liberal. She doesn't represent a NYC district, so it won't be too unpalatable to upstaters. The only drawback is her age (71), which means Democrats could face a challenge to that seat soon, but that's just a "could." All in all, I think she's a darn near perfect replacement.
