Surprised Not to See My Name

Digby has a post up about a flowchart (of questionable origin) describing the possibles at various cabinet levels.

She seems to think that the Powell listing as a possible at Defense and State is a joke, I, again, fall back on the political favors argument. Powell endorsed Obama at a time when the race seemed to be tightening, his name on the list might be payback enough. Or Obama could be signaling to moderate GOP members that if they play ball with him, he'll play it back.

On a related note, I was telling Ging about my post defending Obama's consideration of Summers and other neoliberal, corporatist swine and the trouble, if only imaginary, it caused me. I, of course, had to explain who Summers is. She immediately became outraged that Obama would consider appointing a sexist to anything and said that she wanted to retract her vote. My explanation that no one was particularly upset about Summers "sexism" did not help. My explanation that the reaction the "science and math" speech was less about sexism as it was that Summers relied on a biological determinist argument in a socially constructed world did not help.

I now join you all in fervently hoping that Summers ain't appointed to shit.

Hopefully seeing RFK, Jr.'s name at EPA and Al Gore as Climate Czar might cool her fire. And that's politics!