Did you know where President Bush was this weekend?  I'm sure most of you didn't really care whether he was in DC or not.

The President was at an Asia-Pacific Summit in Peru.  You probably didn't guess that.

There was so little interest in the trip from reporters evidently that there was no White House press charter for this trip.  In fact, a colleague of mine flew commercial down to Peru so she could cover the visit.

I use that as the introduction to this blog item, because right now there really seems to be a power vacuum in Washington, D.C.

Barack Obama isn't in charge yet.  George W. Bush doesn't really have his hand on the tiller at all times.

All the while, the economy seems to be going down, down, down.

It would be nice to think that we shouldn't have to wait until January 20 at high noon to get something major done on the economy by the Congress, but that's the way it looks.

Democrats and President Bush remain at odds on the right tonic for the US economy, so the Congress isn't on the verge of producing anything major. 

Whether they have truly explored some kind of deal on that seems unlikely, which is a somewhat sad commentary on the political scene in Washington, D.C.

The White House has pointed the finger at Democrats since the elections, saying they are the ones who should come up with the ideas.  In other words, don't ask us, ask those Pesky Democrats what should be done.

Then, when the Democrats punted the auto bailout issue for a couple of weeks, the White House gets up on its high horse and talks about how "appalling" it is that lawmakers would go out of town for a holiday break while the economy is going to hell.

Oh pul-eeeze.

If President Bush wanted to give the high sign to Congress on a few things that he might agree with Obama on, lawmakers would approve it lickety-split.

But we don't seem to have any of that right now.

So, to use a few hockey terms here, we're going to rag the puck for a little while, until January 20, when Obama can come of the bench on the fly for a line change.

Then, Obama aides want him to be able to sign into law a massive economic recovery bill.

In the meantime, I guess we all should just hunker down and hope to survive the next eight weeks, eh?  Sure would be nice to think the lame duck Congress could do something positive.

They'll be back the week of December 8.