Up here where I live (and work), it's two strikes and you're OUT!! Goodbye Commerce Department ...

The Department of Commerce has been checkmated!

First Bill Richardson and then Judd Gregg! Don't you get the hint P-BO?

New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg’s nomination as Commerce Secretary--followed a week later by his withdrawing his name from consideration--has drawn headlines and has the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity types gleefully ripping into P-BO's entire program.

This is in part for the political fallout, but also because Gregg, back in 1995, voted to abolish the very agency he was (for a week) slated to head. The arguments Republicans made back then, in the heady days of the Contract for America, still apply today. The Department of Commerce represents wasteful spending, and it functions primarily as a welfare agency for well-connected corporations.

Teddy Roosevelt created the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and 92 years later, when Republicans took control of both chambers of Congress, they pushed to abolish the agency.

The Budget Resolution that passed the Senate that year included total abolition of the Department. Republicans said they aimed to shift some functions and eliminate others.

If President Barack Obama and Gregg dismantled Commerce, they eliminate a source of political corruption, cutting waste, and rolling back corporate welfare. In these times, as the federal-industrial complex is growing out of control, those Republican arguments from 1995 seem well worth revisiting.

I wonder how many billions of dollars might be saved by privatizing Commerce. Just think! and put against the wasteful so-called stimulus package that passed today ... assuming If P-BO actually wakes up before President's Day and vetoes his own foolish 1100-page bill that no one in Congress even read before passing today.

Whatever, the two strikes and you're out concept makes great sense to this old curmudgeon ...