DOJ Statement:

“The Attorney General is conscious, conversant and alert. His vital statistics are strong and he is in good spirits. He is receiving excellent care and appreciates all of the good wishes and prayers he has received. The doctors will keep him overnight for further observations.”

WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Barack Obama is on track to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state after Thanksgiving, an aide to his transition said Thursday.

One week after the former primary rivals met secretly to discuss the idea of Clinton becoming the nation’s top diplomat, the two sides were moving quickly toward making it a reality, barring any unforeseen problems. [Read More]

Politico: “Former President Bill Clinton authorized unprecedented disclosures about his finances to Obama’s vetting team, and transition lawyers are satisfied, officials said.”

By Humberto Fontova

Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama’s advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel.
The MSM has mentioned Craig’s role as Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig’s role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro’s shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez.
Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where the average monthly salary is $16. The high-rolling Gregory Craig worked for Washington D.C.’s elite firm, Williams & Connolly, one of America’s highest-priced law firms.
Upon accepting the case, Gregory Craig had flown to Cuba for a meeting with Fidel Castro. Craig’s remuneration, we learned shortly after his return, came from a “voluntary fund” set up by the United Methodist Board of Church and Society and “administered” by the National Council of Churches. The same reporters and pundits, who routinely erupt with snide snorts midway through any statement by a Republican press secretary, reported this item with a straight face. [Read More...]

The court will hear three issues: (1) “Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?” (2) “Does Proposition 8 violate the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution?” (3) “If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?”

From Ed Whelan:

I don’t know what significance, if any, to assign to the court’s procedural step. The three dissenters from the May marriage decision joined the court’s order, so that would suggest that the order itself doesn’t signal any predisposition on the court’s part. Further, Justice Kennard, who joined the majority ruling in May, voted to deny the petitions without prejudice, so that would seem to suggest that she’s not eager to take the extraordinary action of invalidating Proposition 8. But all of this is reading tea leaves from afar.

Some very quick thoughts on the merits of the issues: On issue 1, Eugene Volokh and Stephen Bainbridge have explained why they believe Proposition 8 is an amendment, not a revision; Dale Carpenter finds the question a closer one.

I don’t see how issue 2 has any independent force: even if one were to assume that Proposition 8 somehow implicates separation of powers, how can a constitutional amendment violate the constitution (unless, say, the constitution itself specifies that its separation of powers is unamendable)?

On issue 3, I think that there’s a lot of confusion about prospectivity versus retroactivity. Proposition 8 states: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” From the effective date of Proposition 8 forward, that rule ought to govern state actors prospectively, both as to same-sex marriages performed before its effective date and any purported to be performed after.

I make no predictions as to how the court will actually rule, as a court that can render the May marriage decision is capable of any sort of judicial malfeasance.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – City and county workers across Minnesota began a laborious recount Wednesday of more than 2.9 million ballots in the tight U.S. Senate contest between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken.They have until Dec. 5 to complete the recount.

The Minnesota recount is required under state law because the votes cast for Coleman and Franken differed by less than one-half of 1 percent. Coleman’s 215-vote lead heading into the recount translated to 0.008 percent. [Read More]

Wow, has Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger bounced back quickly from the devastation of his good friend John McCain losing the presidential election to this Democrat Barack Obama fellow. (See video below.)

Today at a climate-change summit he’s sponsoring at the Beverly Hilton, where the climate never changes, California’s GOP chief executive, who’s tangled with the nation’s GOP chief executive over environmental issues, sounded downright giddy over the impending coronation of Obama into the White House.

“I’m excited to report,” Schwarzenegger told the session, “that in January all of this will change, because now there is a new administration coming in.”

Schwarzenegger played a videotaped greeting from the president-elect and said the two men were “in sync.” The Ticket has the video greeting below, showing Obama praising several governors’ environmental work, including the Republicans heading up California and Florida.

Our colleague Michael Rothfield has a full story over on L.A. Now.

Next time, lets vote for some real conservatives.

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

I love cars, American cars. I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support — banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around — and years later at business school, they were still talking about it. From the lessons of that turnaround, and from my own experiences, I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers. First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.

That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon. Of course the Avalon feels like a better product — it has $2,000 more put into it. Considering this disadvantage, Detroit has done a remarkable job of designing and engineering its cars. But if this cost penalty persists, any bailout will only delay the inevitable.

Second, management as is must go. New faces should be recruited from unrelated industries — from companies widely respected for excellence in marketing, innovation, creativity and labor relations.

The new management must work with labor leaders to see that the enmity between labor and management comes to an end. This division is a holdover from the early years of the last century, when unions brought workers job security and better wages and benefits. But as Walter Reuther, the former head of the United Automobile Workers, said to my father, “Getting more and more pay for less and less work is a dead-end street.”

You don’t have to look far for industries with unions that went down that road. Companies in the 21st century cannot perpetuate the destructive labor relations of the 20th. This will mean a new direction for the U.A.W., profit sharing or stock grants to all employees and a change in Big Three management culture.

The need for collaboration will mean accepting sanity in salaries and perks. At American Motors, my dad cut his pay and that of his executive team, he bought stock in the company, and he went out to factories to talk to workers directly. Get rid of the planes, the executive dining rooms — all the symbols that breed resentment among the hundreds of thousands who will also be sacrificing to keep the companies afloat.

Investments must be made for the future. No more focus on quarterly earnings or the kind of short-term stock appreciation that means quick riches for executives with options. Manage with an eye on cash flow, balance sheets and long-term appreciation. Invest in truly competitive products and innovative technologies — especially fuel-saving designs — that may not arrive for years. Starving research and development is like eating the seed corn.

Just as important to the future of American carmakers is the sales force. When sales are down, you don’t want to lose the only people who can get them to grow. So don’t fire the best dealers, and don’t crush them with new financial or performance demands they can’t meet.

It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research — on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like — that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was a candidate for this year’s Republican presidential nomination.

h/t Truth Caucus

President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition.

As a US Attorney, Holder chose not to prosecute the head of Hillary Clinton’s healthcare task force. The Obama campaign attacked Clinton for the secrecy surrounding the task force during the primaries… Eric Holder facilitated that secrecy.

He also completely missed the Mark Rich pardon. During the investigation, Holder commented,”I’m done. Public life’s over for me,  I had a moment in time. That moment has passed.” Holder continues, “If I had focused on this in a way that I could have, should have, the recommendation I would have given him would have been, ‘Don’t do this, Mr. President.”

Holder was also involved in kidnapping and sending an innocent refugee child to an oppressive, tyrannical regime. Holder even argued for the use of weapons in the Elian Gonzales seizure.

h/t Campaign Spot

Three days after he announced his insurgent bid for House Republican Leader and two days before the vote by GOP lawmakers, Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Cal.) got what he wanted most next to a victory on Wednesday: a debate before the House Republican Conference between himself and the man he is challenging, Ohio Rep. and present House Minority Leader John Boehner.

A spokesman for Lungren called last night and said that, after insisting rules did not permit such a debate, “Mr. Boehner called Mr. Lungren and has agreed to debate him before the Conference on Wednesday morning at 8:30, before the vote for Leader.”

[Read More]

The ever ‘extreme’ and ‘vindictive’ Sen. Boxter voted against.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has lost his bid for a seventh term.The longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate trailed Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich by 3,724 votes after Tuesday’s count.

That’s an insurmountable lead with only about 2,500 overseas ballots left to be counted.

Stevens, who turned 85 Tuesday, also revealed that he will not ask President George W. Bush to give him a pardon for his seven felony convictions.

Michael Steele is a busy man. Between his duties as GOPAC Chairman, this past weekend Steele was keeping tabs on the Republican Governors Association meeting in Southern Florida and addressing a group at “Restoration Weekend” sponsored by David Horowitz’s Freedom Center. Steele moderated a panel with me, Rep. Mike Pence, Ward Connerly and Pat Caudell.

Last week, Steele announced he will be seeking the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. There with us in Florida, Steele began telling Republicans what we have to do to rebuild. Steele made no apologies for the ’08 elections or for conservatism.

The lessons of the losses are fresh and still coming with three Senate seats hanging in the balance in Alaska, Minnesota and Georgia. “What I learned is that you can’t please everyone, but you can certainly make them mad at you at the same time,” said Steele. “We have over the course of the last seven or eight years ticked off a lot of people in this county. Not because we’re conservatives…but because we failed to speak to those issues — because we failed to lead on these issues.” Steele asked, “So despite the results of the recent elections, do you think America is saying to itself, oh, we want to be liberals? We want to nationalize our health care system? Do you think that was the result? I’ll answer it for you, no.” Then he said, “Because we failed to speak to the realness of that, America followed the only voice they heard.”

Steele took the time to frame to 300 or so conservatives in attendance what it means for him to be a conservative Republican in America and in the African-American community. The easy thing in America is for a black man to be a liberal. But Steele will tell you that he can take you into any black church in America, save for Trinity United in Chicago, and you will think you are in a “Republican Revival.”

Steele was the Lt. Gov. of Maryland — the first black man elected to the job, and you didn’t hear the heavens open up on the other side praising the barrier being broken down. And when he lost the U.S. Senate race to Ben Cardin, there were no wringing of hands in the black community about what a great loss this was.

For Michael Steele committed the sin of being conservative while black. Even his blessed mother, who raised him without government assistance and never made more than $3.38 an hour, asked him when he told her that he had registered Republican, “Baby, why would you do that?” His answer was, “Because that’s what you taught me, Mom.”

Steele spoke eloquently about the problems in the conservative movement today and how we got there: “Over the past decade or so, conservatives seem to have lost their way. The disparity between our rhetoric and our actions has grown to the point that our credibility has snapped. People just don’t believe us.”

“We’ve become our own worst enemy,” said Steele. “We in fact as much as anyone else have become the party of big government. We lost our principles our credibility, we dishonored our nation. Frankly, we behaved like Democrats.”

“But Lincoln reminds us when he said, ‘the probability that we may fail in trying to restore ourselves, trying to move forward in this struggle, ought not to deter us from a cause we believe is just,’” said Steele, a self-described Lincoln Republican.

“The cause of the conservative movement in this country is alive and well. It is strong only if we let it be strong, only if we acknowledge its principles only if we prepare to go into the town squares and the halls of America and speak truth to power. If we are to regain the trust of the American people and restore the credibility of our ideas, we must break with that which went wrong and once again stand for what is right.”

With all this rhetoric, Steele has not lost sight of the future. He understands even some people who call themselves conservatives in the “punditocracy” of the media want to say it is the conservative ideology that lost the election — that conservatives are exclusive and out of the mainstream. Steele disagrees. He makes the case that conservatives cannot allow liberals to define them.

Steele is the face of the Republican party of Ronald Reagan. Many pundits say the Reagan era is over. Even Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota acknowledged that if Republicans are going to reach the 18-30 year olds who voted 2-1 for Barack Obama, we are going to have to update our icons. But that doesn’t mean Reagan Republicanism doesn’t work — it means that it needs a new face. Reagan was the new face for a new generation of Goldwater Republicans, and Steele is the new face for Reagan Republicans.

“If you have any interest in reviving the Republican Party you will put it in this man’s hands and not a political hack in that job who likes to represent people who like to represent themselves. People in politics. It will get you nowhere. This man [Michael Steele] I have known for years — he has vision, he has principles and more than that he is smart about politics,” said Pat Caudell, a “rogue” democrat strategist.

Haley Barbour, former RNC Chair and Governor of Mississippi, said the time to fix things is when you are out of power. It allows new ideas and new people to bubble up to the top. While I stood with Steele during a long day of politicking, he told me he was up for the battle and ready to take the message around the country.

Steele closed by saying, “Our best hope for a brighter future is in the empowerment of individuals and families; not in constraints imposed by a bloated bureaucracy. It is still morning in America because America is morning. My mother told me that. She knew that the freedoms may not reach her doorstep, but she had faith that it would reach mine…Don’t make excuses for what we believe in — that time is over, let’s get busy.”

Time of London: “Alarm grows as governments and navies are rendered legally powerless to conduct security operations on the high seas.”

WASHINGTON (AP) – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Congress on Tuesday that the administration remains firmly opposed to dipping into the government’s $700 billion financial bailout fund for a $25 billion rescue package for Detroit’s Big Three automakers, no matter how badly they need the help.”There are other ways” to help battered automakers, Paulson told the House Financial Services Committee as the bailout bill clung to life support on Capitol Hill.

Committee members grilled Paulson on the administration’s stance that the $25 billion must come from separate legislation passed by Congress in September. The measure was designed specifically to help auto manufacturers retool their factories so they can make more fuel-efficient vehicles. The $700 billion bailout plan enacted by Congress in October and signed into law by President George W. Bush did not envision that the program would be used to help rescue nonfinancial companies, Paulson said. “I believe the auto companies fall outside of that purpose.”

At the same time, he testified, “I think it would be not a good thing, it would be something to be avoided, having one of the auto companies fail, particularly during this period of time.”

Paulson said that solving the financial problems of the automakers should be done in a way “that leads to long-term sustainable viability” for the industry.

Auto executives, backed by leading Democrats, insist they need another $25 billion in emergency bridge loans—on top of the $25 billion already approved and being administered by the Energy Department—to avert a collapse of one or more of their companies. That would bring the total federal help for the industry to $50 billion this year.

The executives, along with the head of the United Auto Workers union, were making their case at a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee as auto bailout backers hunted the votes necessary to pass the plan in a postelection session. Aides in both parties and lobbyists tracking the plan privately acknowledge they are far short.

Karen Majewski, mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., said police, fire and public works departments would face major cuts if they lost tax factories from GM and American Axle plants in her city. “We’re talking about the lifeblood of our city,” she said.

She was among local officials from cities with auto plants making the rounds on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, lobbying for the $25 billion in auto-industry bridge loans.

The debate comes as the financial situation for General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC grows more precarious.

General Motors, Chrysler and Tesla Motors Inc. have already applied for loans under the existing $25 billion Energy Department program and Ford CEO Alan Mulally said the automaker plans to apply on Tuesday. GM, Chrysler and Ford have not disclosed the amount of aid they’re seeking or for what purposes. Tesla said it was seeking about $400 million in loans for two projects.

Cash-strapped GM said it will delay reimbursing its dealers for rebates and other sales incentives and that it could run out of cash by year’s end without government aid.

Mulally argued Tuesday in advance of the hearing that his company already been laboring to “transform our business” into a more profitable one that meets 21st century demands for fuel-efficient vehicles.

Interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Mulally denied that automakers resisted restructuring their companies or that it has been badly managed.

Sen. Carl M. Levin, D-Mich., an architect of the auto bailout, said that auto executives need to address the perception by some lawmakers “that there’s still some quality issues with the Big Three, and they haven’t begun to do the necessary restructuring—because they have.”

Levin’s bill would provide loans with initial interest rates of 5 percent to the U.S. automakers and suppliers in exchange for a federal stake in the companies or warrants that would let the government profit from future gains. Loan applicants would have to give the government a plan for “long-term financial viability.”

But it stops short of giving the government a say over the firms’ operations through an oversight board or hard limits on executive compensation. While taking advantage of the program, the companies could not pay dividends, award bonuses to executives making more than $250,000 a year, or give golden parachute payments to top people departing from the firms.

A vote on the measure—which includes an extension of jobless benefits—could come as early as Thursday. But Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also laid the groundwork for a straight up-or-down vote on the more widely supported unemployment measure, which is probably all that can pass this week.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

• Iranian-operated cargo ship hijacked off Somalia... Developing...

• Danish oil ship briefly seized off Nigeria... Developing...

• PIRATES CAPTURE SUPERTANKER WITH $100 MILLION CARGO...

• Open negotiations...

• Saudis brand pirates 'terrorists' ...call for international action

US Admiral 'stunned' by pirates' reach...

[Links from Drudge]

California’s State Senate district 19 is another example of County elections officials posting more up to date results than are available from the Secretary of State. The district is comprised of territory in Los Angeles County, Santa Barbara County, and Ventura County. Democratic candidate Hannah Beth Jackson led Tony Strickland in the early counts, but Strickland has now taken the lead as counting continues.

According to the Secretary of State’s website earlier this morning, Strickland leads by 1,560 votes. But numbers gathered directly from the three counties in question show that Strickland’s lead is now up to 2,141 votes. Strickland now leads 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent.

The different results from the different sources is yet another example of why one question desperately in need of review before California’s next election is how the data reporting can be improved between the counties and the Secretary of State.

If Strickland holds on to win this election, Republicans in the State Senate will avoid losing even a single State Senate seat in either 2006 or 2008, despite the national Democratic landslides in both of those elections. The net for Republicans in California this decade will remain +1 in the State Senate, as Republicans picked up a State Senate seat in the 2001 redistricting / 2002 election.

by Howard Kurtz

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

What’s troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there’s nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

“The Obamas’ New Life!” blares People’s cover, with a shot of the family. “New home, new friends, new puppy!” Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: “I Think I’m a Pretty Cool Dad.” The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle “is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!” for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed “Generation O”?

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. “OBAMAISM — It’s a Kind of Religion,” says New York magazine. “Those of us too young to have known JFK’s Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us,” Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it “BAM-A-LOT.”

“Here we are,” writes Salon’s Rebecca Traister, “oohing and aahing over what they’ll be wearing, and what they’ll be eating, what kind of dog they’ll be getting, what bedrooms they’ll be living in, and what schools they’ll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas’ tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?”

But aren’t media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

“Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not,” historian Michael Beschloss says. “Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they’re interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president.”

So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today’s front page. “Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration,” the headline said, with 65 percent saying “the USA will be better off 4 years from now.”

But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?

“We’re celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think,” says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. “Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course.”

One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. “With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations,” its lead editorial says.

Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama,” has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate’s election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.

I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a “Leave It to Beaver” era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of “I Spy” in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.

It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election — “trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president,” Beschloss says — but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.

“The Kennedy buildup goes on,” James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. “The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent.”

Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.

The media would be remiss if they didn’t reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama’s election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as “Pop Champagne for Barack.” Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up “Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints.”

A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek’s quadrennial election volume is titled “A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama.” Publishers obviously see a bull market.

MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: “Barack Obama, America’s 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America’s promise.” What are viewers to make of that?

There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town — new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?

Obama’s days of walking on water won’t last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.

With newspapers cutting back and predictions of even worse times ahead, Rupert Murdoch said the profession may still have a bright future if it can shake free of reporters and editors who he said have forfeited the trust and loyalty of their readers.

“My summary of the way some of the established media has responded to the internet is this: it’s not newspapers that might become obsolete. It’s some of the editors, reporters, and proprietors who are forgetting a newspaper’s most precious asset: the bond with its readers,” said Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive officer of News Corp. He made his remarks as part of a lecture series sponsored by the Australian Broadcast Corporation.

Murdoch, whose company’s holdings also include MySpace and the Wall Street Journal, criticized what he described as a culture of “complacency and condescension” in some newsrooms.

“The complacency stems from having enjoyed a monopoly–and now finding they have to compete for an audience they once took for granted. The condescension that many show their readers is an even bigger problem. It takes no special genius to point out that if you are contemptuous of your customers, you are going to have a hard time getting them to buy your product. Newspapers are no exception.”

The 77-year-old Murdoch, recalling a long career in newspapers that began when his father’s death forced him to take over the Adelaide News in 1952, said the profession has failed to creatively respond to changes wrought by technology.

“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news-and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”

To make his point, Murdoch criticized the media reaction after bloggers debunked a “60 Minutes” report by former CBS anchor, Dan Rather, that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.

“Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. ’60 Minutes,’ he said, was a professional organization with ‘multiple layers of checks and balances.’ By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as ‘a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.’ But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.

“Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone,” he continued. “A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”

Murdoch’s comments come at a time when the media landscape looks increasingly bleak both for print-based and online news organizations. A recent report by Goldman Sachs predicted that advertising pressure will continue because of the declines in the auto and financial industries. Online outlets are also feeling the impact. On Friday,TheStreet.com shut its San Francisco office

Despite the blemishes, however, Murdoch said newspapers can still count on circulation gains “if papers provide readers with news they can trust.” He added they will also need to embrace technology advances like RSS feeds and targeted e-mails. The challenge, according to Murdoch, will be to “use a newspaper’s brand while allowing readers to personalize the news for themselves-and then deliver it in the ways that they want.”

“The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today. But the thud it makes as it lands will continue to echo around society and the world,” he said.