Reuters:

While planning ahead to work with Democrats when they take over in January, Bush was scrambling to get the lame-duck session of Congress, which starts next week and will still be controlled by Republicans, to approve several items.

At the top of the list is to try to get Gates confirmed quickly, as well as legislation to permit wiretapping of terrorism suspects, a civilian nuclear deal with India, and Vietnam's entry into the World Trade Organization.

Confirmation hearings on Gates' nomination for defense secretary were tentatively set for the week of December 4.

What do rubber-stampers have to lose?

"Hey, Nancy, let's do lunch!"

Bangkok Post:

When asked how he would work with Ms Pelosi _ who had previously called him ''incompetent'', ''a liar'', ''the emperor with no clothes'' and ''dangerous'' _ Mr Bush shrugged the criticism off.

''People say unfortunate things at times,'' he said, with an indifference befitting a man who has bigger things to worry about.

Pelosi's response?

"I look forward to working in a confidence-building way with the president recognising that we have our differences and we will debate them, and that is what our founders intended, but we will do so in a way that gets results for the American people," she said.

She pledged to represent everyone in the House. "I understand my responsibility: of speaker of the House, of all of the House, not just the Democrats."

And she didn't say a word about the responsibility of representing constituents.

Also, it appears history will again repeat itself.

TIME:

The U.S. Congress wasn't the only place the Bush Administration suffered electoral embarrassment this week. In Nicaragua, cold-war bogeyman Daniel Ortega -- whose Marxist Sandinista government had been an obsession of the Reagan Administration -- was elected president again on Sunday despite frantic U.S. lobbying for his defeat. By most accounts, the yanqui politicking -- which included a threat to cut off U.S. aid to impoverished Nicaragua if Ortega won -- backfired miserably, actually helping boost the Sandinista leader to his first-round victory. That such U.S. pressure tends to work in favor of its opponents is a lesson Washington seems woefully unable to learn in a post-Cold War Latin America whose electorates have unexpectedly turned leftward in recent years.

And,

Forbes:

President Bush has reached back to a veteran of his father's administration to fill a top national security post and help him out of a bind. In this case, he enlisted Robert Gates, who served both as CIA director and deputy national security adviser in the first Bush presidency, to replace Donald H. Rumsfeld as defense secretary.

Bush also is looking to another Bush family loyalist, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, to help him find an exit strategy from Iraq. Baker co-chairs a bipartisan commission on Iraq that is to release its recommendations soon.

Bush has his Vietnam + O-I-L + corporate profits- people's concerns/needs/rights=????????????????????????

Feel free to guess as to the end of this equation, yours is as good as mine!