What's News Tonight: November 2009 Archives

Bowing Crashing Retreating

By John Batchelor on November 30, 2009 1:47 PM | 44 Comments

The Other Side of Popular.

At the eve of POTUS speech to West Point on the Afghanistan war, the media peanut gallery suddenly starts heaving old candy wrappers at the Oval Office, after thirteen months of hagiography, and it is worth noting that there is surprising slippage in the narrative of the popular presidency -- a glimpse of the other side of the popularity coin. My professionals John Fund and Jodi Schneider both noted to me Sunday 29 that independents have moved away from POTUS and that it is not obvious what will bring them back. The core of the POTUS support is the hard Democratic base plus the near unanimous African-American vote. That is why POTUS polls will unlikely go below 40% even in the worst of times. John Fund noted that there is a surprise in that the Latino vote has sagged to 60% for a Democratic president; and the white vote overall is at 39%. What causes all this disconfort? Politicio's Mike Allen argues effectively that is it issue based following the long Asia trip and right at the eve of the Afghanistan speech. Perhaps too it is based on a perception that the White House is overwhelmed and undermanned. Karen Hooper, Stratfor.com, tells me that an explanation for the State Department's many mistakes on Honduras is that Latin America is a low priority for an overtasked Obama team. This is the same explanation I have heard when asking about the Korean peninsula and the Kim regime problem. The same explanation I have heard with regard the chilly treatment of India. And the same explanation I have heard about the unstable dollar. Excuses don't much work unless you are an infant or a puppy.

What Administration Priority?

My Mideast source tells me that the Obama team is so distracted by healthcare, by the jobless number coming every month, by the defense of the stimulus package, that it does not have focus on the Palestinian breakdown nor on the Iran prevarication. I asked what is more important that the Iran nuke threat? Afghanistan? I am told that the Afghanistan review over many months turned into an embarassment because no one was in charge of the process -- it just evolved amid the other crises of jobs and the dollar and healthcare. So what is the Administration's priority? My Mideast source tells me, "They make it up as they go along." Is the polling showing that the public perceives the spontaneity? The trivial scene of POTUS bowing to the diminuitive and wholly powerless Japanese emperor seemed a one-off. Yet now we have the trivial scene of POTUS greeting the Salahis at the White House State Dinner and the mystery of how they gained access without an invitation. Tunku Varadarajan, DailyBeast.com, told me that it is not just the vulgarity of the Salahis -- the now exposed bankrupts and deadbeats and polo playing Palestinian acitivists -- but the tenacity of the vulgarity. There is more to learn about how the Salahis arrived at the reception and enjoyed an embrace by POTUS despite the fact that they did not sit for dinner -- and Aaron Klein tells me that the Salahis are Democratic fund-raisers who may have contributed to earlier Obama campaigns (not confirmed). What is possible now is that the bowing scene combined with the gate-crashing scene is the media stepping back from the Obama administration as it checks the polls. A popular president is good for sweeps. A weak or clumsy or misstepping president is not good for sweeps (unless you are FNC).

Retreat Priority.

The single threat to the Obama polls is the jobless number for November which is due 830 am on Friday December 4. However the immediate struggle is the Afghanistan decision and the selling of the choice on national TV. My conversations to Ann Marlowe and officers of the 82nd Airborne in Zabul Province Afghanistan (LTC Dave Oclander, Cpt Dan Whitten, of Task Force Fury) alert me to the assumption over there that ISAF and the American military is about to pull back, to reposition, to reset, to retreat in Afghanistan. There will be a retreat from the 249 thousand people in deprived and aimless Zabul Province, where most public officials cannot read and where there is so little to renovate or develop that the American aid agents cannot find anywhere to spend more than $12 million. Ann Marlowe tells me that the Airborne is pulling back from the FOB Nowheres outside of Highway 1. A few Special Forces camps may be left. What do the Afghans make of the fact that the Americans are going away to the big city area of Kandahar in the south? Leave bind spotters for the F-15 fighter-bombers? Fight the Taliban from a bomb bay? Air war against guerillas is not a winning strategy. Retreat is not victory, not on the road to victory. Is President Obama retreating? The word "exit" sounds like retreat to a doubting observer.

Radioactive Bank Run

By John Batchelor on November 29, 2009 10:44 AM | 9 Comments

Regime Hygiene.

Tehran's aim is to goad and provoke the powerless propaganda of ElBaredi and the IAEA and its feckless sponsor the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5 + 1), and the plan is perfectly in place for a winter of POTUS blame-shifting, finger-pointing and pomposity. Tehran uses this confrontation to deepens its grip on the Iranian national mania for pride of place, for supremacy, even if it comes at the hands of usurpers, liars, billies and sadists such as the Ahmandinejad coup cronies. The Supreme leader is sickly and failing, and his successor is likely a reload brute, Yazdi, who commands the savage obedience of the murderous IRGC. All this regime hygiene is best handled behind closed doors and without student whiners parading in the street, and so the noise about the nukes provides wonderful media screening. That is the chief use of the IAEA. The secondary use is to frighten the opposition in the Gulf, such as the House of Saud and the Arab princelings.

Yemen Proxy War.

Note that the news tape running below the Reuters video of the Iranian TV broadcast of the Majlis includes English subtitles about Yemen. One of them mentions Houthis. This is a Shia sect living in North Yemen that is now at war both with the South Yemen government and the Saudi National Guard. More importantly, the Houthis are clients of Tehran and receive arms and Al Quds force aid from the IRGC. North Yemen civil war is a proxy war between Tehran and Riyadh. Advantage to the aggressor, that is, the Houthis. The whole of the Arab peninsula is watching the contest to know where to put the bets. Now with the Dubai World bank run, the whole Gulf is watching Riyadh to see if it will back up the deprived Yemen central government and backstop Abu Dhabi's potentate problems. Michael Vlahos, author, "Fighting Identity," and I have been studying the brittle House of Saud on-air for some weeks and know believe this is a significant moment. The National Guard is loyal to the king until and if the frustration of an insurgency war wears down the lines of control. The bank run cannot be contained. But most specially the Tehran regime is boasting about its successes with the Houthis on state TV. Military instability in the Gulf now matched by financial instability. Who is loyal to a monarch when you are not paid?

Nukes.

POTUS and the P5 + 1 will stall the game through the winter. Tehran will provoke and taunt. The fact remains that Tehran is a nuke power already and a deal of this is show-boating to captive public opinion at home (Washington, Tehran, Berlin etc). Riyadh is the new breaking point. The money is not enough to pay for the debts when and if that bank run drains the princes. The quote Friday was that a $3.5 Billion Islamic Bond, a sukuk, which was worth 110 cents on the dollar on Wednesday 25, and was worth 57 cents on the dollar on Friday 27 close. What will it open trading Monday 30 in Asia? Bank run. No one is safe. The White House is particularly uninformed about this crisis. TARP for the Gulf? Comment by Geithner? POTUS speaks in support of Abu Dhabi? Silence.

Not the Joads at the White House

By John Batchelor on November 28, 2009 10:25 AM | 55 Comments

The Swollen Swells.

It is the cranky Puritan in me, the Calvinist thought-scourge, my vain John Adams over-bookishness and practiced cynicism, yet there it is, and my first, second and third opine of the gate-crashing of the trite Virginia duo, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, is to recall the crisis of the Grapes of Wrath. Once upon a time, the economy collapsed, and the banks and confidence went cliff-diving, and the nation entered a ten-year-long slide. The deprivation was genuine. Through 1933 and into 1934, the world markets staggered. Meanwhile in New York and London and Paris, the well-to-do carried on with some success, because the national deflation phenomenon meant that stockpiles of assets grew in buying power. Steinbeck's Joads were meant to be the everyman -- who were shoved so far outside of civilization it was as if the road back from brutality and want had disappeared around them. At the same time, the swollen swells in New York and London were tipsy, racy snobs who lived in alienation and ignorance even while the nation failed west of Broadway. I have read over the newspaper clips. From the London Times, January 1, 1934: "Restaurant managers agree that that New Year's Eve business was exceptionally good. 'Everyone seems anxious to welcome the New Year which promises greater prosperity,' was the comment."

Thanksgiving at the White House, 2009.

Watching the foolishness in the warm-air-blown, glass-roofed tent raised on the South Lawn of the White House, it came to me that the elite are sure to ove interpret their good luck just because they too sense like sly predators that we are headed down, so eat faster. The prancing, the video cameos, the grinning, powdered aimlessness, the prop of the stately India PM Manmohan Singh, and the gregarious male-model POTUS, and then here comes the silly duo to pretend they were invited to a pretense of national worthiness. The dinner plate was forgettable. The crowd was a hodge-podge of Chicago wannabees mixed with Clintonist leftovers -- the predictable, glamorous, prickly Democratic swells. What warns me is that the celebration was out of time. There is nothing to celebrate. The jobless number is climbing. The banks remain unsolved. The GDP is false. Overseas markets are fragile. The dollar is a waif. There is more, but you see it all, and I go over it in many angles all the days. The scenario is remarkably similar to New Year's 1934. The next leg down is ahead of us and it will be a long trough. Within days of the pointless extravaganza on the South Lawn, we hear that the Dubai World default has ripped through markets like a chill. Gordon Brown says that Dubai's now highly suspect $80B shopping mania, using a credit card honored at Euro banks such as the rotten RBS and the rotten HSBC, that this splurge is "containable." We are told that Abu Dhabi has a $.5 Trillion rainy day fund that can bail out little cousin Dubai. Show me the money.

The Pranksters.

The Secret Service continues the investigation of how Michaele and Tareq Salahi knew they could get away with walking in on that particular checkpoint. The photos of the Salahi's greeting POTUS now deepen the game of gotcha. (The Salahis look headed to soft time, the pillory and massive fines; and what about the fact that they are not in custody yet: who is in charge of Homeland Security, a maitre-de?) The White House looks revealed as a victim of a prank. Yet the state dinner celebration itself was part of the prank. There is no checkpoint on the economy, no security for the banks, no pay-off. We are in prankland, with gold rising like helium, showing that inflation is now uncontrolled. There is no recovery. The next twelve months will be a brutal, numbing, inconsistent droning of metrics that point nowhere and expectations that come to no certainty, no spending, no hiring, no bottom. However there will be lots of happy talk, lots of chatter about POTUS leadership and Congress courage and international comity. It is a pattern. We have seen this before: Lieutenant General Sir George Macdonogh, president of the Federation of British Industries, "The improvement in British trade, which has been progressively apparent during the year which lies behind us, justifies the hope that 1934 may..." Dated January 1, 1934. Phony hope sounds. Clinking glasses at a phony state dinner. Camera clicks at a prankish phony reception. Silent dread that Dubai World is our phony world, a cheat.

Flipping Dubai World

By John Batchelor on November 27, 2009 10:46 AM | 20 Comments

Carpet-Cleaning Luck.

CALCULATED RISK'S deeply ironic real estate reporter Jim the Realtor takes his handheld robot to a high-end jungle of foreclosures at Carlsbad in San Diego County. Jim observes "A hotbed of foreclosure activity in Southeast Carlsbad..." The centerpiece of the report is a 3300 square foot new-built house that has now been successfully bought on the courthouse steps sight unseen by a flipper/speculator and then moved at a profit to a buyer. Good for everyone around. I followed the logic of the profiled flipper carefully, a pleasant, superstitious, unseen guy named Adam Rappaport. AR bought the property on the courthouse steps sight unseen in a bidding moment at $591k. The house was new built but never owned by a family; instead it was owned by a speculator/bundler who had many properties and finally let this one go to foreclosure and the bank. AR paid the back taxes, after what sounds like fighting off the county and state ceremonially trying to get the property for back taxes, and then paid $650 for carpet-cleaning. The house is not luxurious, though it is large. Jim the realtor makes much to do about what he calls the river noise of the six lane freeway backing onto the property. He also mentions the power lines and the weather. My memory is that there is nowhere in SoCal that isn't near freeways and powerlines and those rolling desert hills that tend to burn in fire season. Shrug. The summary for Adam Rappaport is that he and his partner got lucky when the tenant moved out easily in the first months, the house was in decent condition, and they found a buyer. Not the $700k plus they asked, bot not the lowball $600k they were offered. Somewhere in between for a gross of about $95k for four months risky of holding the paper. You can hear Rappapaort sign and laugh with the remembered anxiety. Lucky.

Carlsbad Jobs Summit

This may be the way the end-of-the-world of the housing collapse finally ends, with luck and smart, tense bargaining. Jim the Realtor mentions a nearby house at $800k plus, so the new owners have a deal on a block that may be underwater. Lots of short sales ahead in this semi-lux neighborhood. That 15% jobless number likely damaged everything we can see or hear in the video. The national jobless number of 10.2% will be revisited in a week's time, and the Obama administration plans a Jobs Summit to speak to the fears. Those fears look less scary and more complicated when you stare at the overbuilt schemes of SoCal. POTUS and the Obama administration didn't cause this, but their answers so far,willy-nilly TARP, futile stimulus, healthcare novelties, cap and trade delusions, seem out of step with what needs to be done, a profound reordering or real estate prices. Notice that no one talks about sub-prime or Alt-A loans. These are all high-end prime loans, and they are shaky.

Dubai World Fire.

The global question is how does the flipper adventure in San Diego County connect to the sudden news that the Dubai World house of cards has collapsed and that the whole operation, with those silly palm leaf islands, is on the brink of REO? A $65B note floating in promises and half-truths, "a day after the government said it would take charge of restructuring its corporate flagship, Dubai world, and asked creditors to accept delayed payments." In my world, delayed payments sounds a lot like missed and unlikely payments, sometimes called fools or scoundrels running away from the IOUs. In sum, right now the Euro and Asia markets have gone into war dances with risk insurance because of the possibility that the too big to fail white elephant of Dubai World just failed -- the credit default swaps have on Dubai debt have skyrocketed from 318 bps to 570 bps in forty-eight hour. Does this connect to Carlsbad? Yes. That toxic waste keeps circulating; credit is flagrantly, bottomlessly dubious for Dubai. Unknown is how this will affect worldwide credit costs. European banks are said to have $40 billion at risk. The poison sloshes toward our shores, also, and the unanswred detail right now is how much of the Dubai debt is at Citi or Bank of America and so forth? The risk that Rappaport felt in the four months between courthouse and escrow was real. What if Dubai had blown up the day after he bought the REO? Will other flipper deals blow up because of the Dubai World fire panic that just started? I do not have the answers. Neither do California realtors. This does not sound like the beginning of a simple fire:

"The banks with the greatest exposure to Dubai World are Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Emirate NBD PJSC, people familiar with the matter said. Executives at the two banks weren't available for comment Thursday. Among the international banks that have large exposure are the U.K.'s Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, HSBC Holdings PLC, Barclays PLC, Lloyds Banking Group PLC, Standard Chartered PLC and ING Groep NV of the Netherlands, the person said."

POTUS Tree-Rings

By John Batchelor on November 26, 2009 10:55 AM | 53 Comments

Suddenly Copenhagen.

The Obama administration suddenly reverses itself and announces, according to Simon Constable and Kelsey Hubbard, conversing with Stephen Power,, that POTUS will stop in Copenhagen to deliver an opinion on greenhouse gas emissions targets for the next decade, and the question is why the reversal. Several weeks ago, the Obama team clearly indicated POTUS was skipping Copenhagen and would make his green world remarks at Oslo for his Nobel Peace Prize. The change looks like political spin, and one presumption is that the administration is weakening to EU pressure on the fantasy of a planetary climate treaty. The US was supposed to lead on climate, but the House bill that was shoved through by Mrs. Pelosi is so gummed up with tricks and costs and obvious unenforceable taxes that the Senate will not touch it. That was why the White House initially tried to skip the warmist confab. No gain, just noise. So why the flip?

Warmist Fakes.

What has happened recently on climate is the revelation by a hacker into East Anglia University files that the warmists have been colluding for a decade to concoct or suppress data. There are 62 megabytes of emails between many players, most all of them warmists who are paid for their research, called scientists. The scandal is still emerging. We are in the denial stage. Right now, what we know is that the tree-ring data, which did not suit the anthropogenic theory, was either cooked or ignored. (Grows faster when warmer; slower when cooler.) The apologists are trying to argue that, while the emails are not good, the tree-ring stuff is minor and does not speak to the big picture. It is too early to say that the tree-ring data is all that was cooked. Ask yourself, if you are shopping for correlations to your theory that, starting with the Industrial Revolution of the mid 19th century, the greenhouses gases have risen precipitously, where do you go? Ice cores and tree rings are two metrics. Now, if the scientists handling the data are willing to fake the tree-ring data, or at least to abuse it, why would they stop? Why not the ice cores? Why not the ice cores back a million years? Why not the ocean temperatures now and over the last 60 years. Where would you stop abusing the data? Why stop? The warmist email scandal has months to go. Reputations will be wrecked, schools will be damaged, wholesale collapse of a money-raising internationalist cause. The cap and trade bill is tattered, shredded, mealy, used for a napkin at MacDonald's.

POTUS to the Rescue.

Perhaps POTUS has suddenly decided to return to Copenhagen (scene of his last defeat re Chicago Olympics) because he is looking to bolster the warmists. Perhap it is coincidence that the warmists are melting. The cocktail party unanimity at Copenhagen is probably ruined. POTUS attending does give the posse something to talk about besides how those emails really mean nothing, nothing at all, and that tree-rings are meaningless, without meaning, and that the global warming deniers are crackpots who make ice mountains out of ice in my tonic.

Din, Din, Din

By John Batchelor on November 25, 2009 12:05 PM | 23 Comments

Chilly India.

The Obama administration's recent swing through Asia, featuring Shanghai and Beijing, left behind a bad opinion of POTUS as weak or indifferent or unconfident. What was left out of the trip was India, and now there is the State Dinner at the White House for dry, no-nonsense, low-key India PM Manmohan Singh (above). Again, POTUS makes ceremonial pledges of cooperation and partnership and a new beginning. This is all hokum, and the Indians ignore it. The relationship between Delhi and Washington is touchy. The chief offense is that Richard Holbrooke approached his job as if Kashmir was part of his mission -- bring the Indians and Pakistanis to the table, find a solution. Naive hokum. Tunku Varadarajan, DailyBeast.com, told me Sunday 22 that the Indian government enjoyed such warm relations with the Bush administration that the relatively aloof tone of the new team combined with the Hokbrooke pushiness has resulted in a chill. PM Singh is not expected to make mention of the issue. It is just another of those question marks re the Obama administration's so-called reset.

India in Afghanistan.

What is especially puzzling about the chill between Washington and Delhi is that India is accustomed to working with Afghanistan, contra the rogue Pakistan, and is in a place to be most helpful to the struggle in Kabul for development and stability. India is the regional super power in development (not Iran). This is the other famous sovereign state of the BRICs. While the India discomfort with Washington knuckleheadedness continues, POTUS has started the long-form leaking of his Afghanistan decision. At this point there are no secrets, no surprises. The single metric worth watching is how may watch the spech on Monday night. It will be the headline on Tuesday. The White House has put out the tough-guy phrase, "finish the job" to explain POTUS aims. This is advert blither. The facts about the POTUS decision on Afghanistan are not glamorous. There is a limit to the combat brigades available over the next year. The Army wants to give combat teams 24 months out of theater before it rotates them back in. Right now, the Army is 12 months in theater and 12 months in the USA. It is wrecking families and lives. The 80k number was fantasy and misdirection. The airborne unit I spoke to on Saturday 21, in Zabul Province (hour helicopter ride north of Kandahar), has a mission to train an Afghan National Army unit way, way outside the wire. They are camped in a mud-built fort left by the British when they were lords. Sending in training units will free the airborne for operations.

Kandahar, Khe Sanh

Early spin says that the Army and Marines will draw a cordon around Kandahar. Don't make anymore of it than an incomplete gossip. The speech next week will be a balm to the anti-war left that wants to rationalize POTUS as a peace president who must clean-up the mess of a war president. There is no exit from Afghanistan until and if the Taliban is defeated. The Taiban is camped at Quetta in Pakistan. The Taliban is linked to the ISI at Rawalpindi. The whole Pakistan government is soaked with money from the House of Saud. The short version is that the solution to the Taliban is not at Kandahar. Now we will pretend that the cordon around the city is the first step to retake the country. As if this is Dien Bien Phu, as if this is Khe Sanh. Also, India is part of the solution. India knows how to train the Afghan National Army. Ask Din, Din, Din for help, for leadership, for weight. I am told the work in Afghanistan is a long, troubling road that would require the kind of patience that ISAF and the US do not possess. India is an empire that knows how to wear down and beat the savages. Instead we have POTUS making another sonorous, sober, moving and futile speech about war, pivoting to his left as he shields his eyes from the right. As he is deaf to the tempo of the frontier:

Din! Din! Din!	80
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Jobs Down, Gold Up, USA Nowhere

By John Batchelor on November 24, 2009 10:52 AM | 12 Comments

The Reluctant CEOs.

John Bussey, John Fund, Mona Charen, Simon Constable, Kelsey Hubbard all together repeated on Sunday 22 that the failure of the stimulus package is not the whole story as to why there is no recovery in jobs. A major factor is that the big companies will not hire because they do not know what their costs will be with the pending social legislation in Congress such as healthcare reform, cap and trade, a second stimulus package and the inability or unwillingness of the Obama administration to defend or rally the dollar. CEOs of big caps told the WSJ CEO conference last week that they will more likely hire overseas before they will hire in the US because of the overhang of new taxes and mandates. The reluctant CEOs did not keep this opinion to themselves. The White House sent Christina Romer, Ron Emanuel, Peter Orszag to the conference, and they each heard the complaints from the audience about the uncertainty of costs suppressing immediate hiring. Romer, Emanuel and Orszag claimed the Obama administration is listening. But is it responding? The collective decision from my political panels is that the first stimulus package, if it is working at all, it is not producing private sector jobs. The fresh fear at the White House is the jobs number coming on December 4.

Jobs Down.

Sho Chandra, Bloomberg, told me Sunday 22, that a combination of metric over the last week in jobs, housing starts, foreclosures and unemployment claims all point to continuing negatives in the economy over the next six months. I pointed to the fact is is the eighth straight month of more than 300,000 foreclosures. Sho Chandra sighed. The jobless claims at 505k did not change form the previous month. Chandra summarized by saying that there was no reason to believe the unemployment number on December will go down significantly if at all from 10.2%. Always a guessing game, because the Commerce Department itself does a deal of estimating. The CEOs at the WSJ conference did not indicate there will be hiring through the winter. Add in this the metric today that restaurants and hotels nationwide expect no strength through the holiday -- removing the possibility that seasonal hiring will help the jobless number.

Gold Up.

Sunday 22, while I spoke to Mary Kissel, WSJ, gold went to an all time solar system high of 1164 per ounce. Mary Kissel confirmed that Asian observers, following POTUS visit, believe that the US will not act effectively to stabilize the dollar, despite the complaints of the Asian leaders at Singapore. I spoke to Simon Constable and Kelsey Hubbard, WSJ, who confirmed that the gold spike is an illustration of inflation. Gold is the agreed upon hedge from the weakening dollar and other currencies. The only other hedge apparent is US Treasuries. But the gold run, just beginning, is evidence that the world markets do not believe the dollar will recover.

USA.

The question is, how does the jobless number connect to the gold run? Round-aboutly, the dollar weakness is because of the dollar printing presses and the statements by the Bernanke that the US monetary policy will remain on hold for some time. Dollar weakness equals gold spike and stock market spike. But it does not lead to demand and corporate profits. Without demand, there is no new hiring. Without hiring the foreclosure rate remains grim. Without a housing recovery, there is no stability for the banks. Sho Chandra told me that we are stuck in a circle of negatives. Low jobs relates to high gold and no change from the joblessness in the USA. A less cynical way to summarize is to say we are setting a new normal for jobs. "Jobless Men. Keep Going. We Can't Take Care of Our Own."

Scripts for 2010

By John Batchelor on November 23, 2009 10:49 AM | 15 Comments

Proxy Feud.

Reuters summary of the Senate vote, 60 affirmatives to move the healthcare reform bill to debate after Thanksgiving, makes the activities on the floor of the Senate appear as stately, measured, sagacious as if the European Union was debating what to tax the Russia to Europe natural gas pipeline users for the next three thousand years. The affairs of great states. The deliberations of sovereigns. In comparison, the TV Sunday show clips (above and below) demonstrate that the Senate consists of schoolmasterish/schoolmistressish burghers from semi-tough big cities who squabble over table settings while carrying on with the solemnity of a church elder. Do the Euros see us as we are or as they believe we should be? We see ourselves as bottomlessly contentious and mercifully not too smart. Is the debate in the Senate about healthcare reform? Nah. It is a proxy feud between the parties as they prepare their scripts for the 2010 mid-terms.

Democratic Script.

Majority rules are the way to get things done and to repair the damage done by the villainous George Bush and his Quasimodo Prime Minister Cheney, that is the Dem script for 2010, standing shoudler to shoulder with a youthful, charming, zealous POTUS who extends a handshake and a smile to all sovereigns without favor. Perhaps unusually so to our adversaries of the past. The domestic succeses include a rescue for the economy, the right choices between taxes and growth, and a sweeping and generational change in how healthcare is delivered and paid for by the average American family. Afghanistan? Bush's problem is better with allies and a new and invogorated leadership in Kabul. Iran? Diplomacy works. China? A trading partner and a close ally in the growth of markets in the new century. The reason to vote for your Democratic candidate in the House is to return Mrs. Pelosi's leadership to the work of reforming the damage done by a dozen years of Republican rule.

Republican Script.

Joblessness at 10% or higher for the balance of a year; housing starts and housing purchases cliff-diving despite the Treasury hand-out to buyers; inflation implicit in the asset bubble of commodites; the price of gold an inverse to the confidence and prospect of the American economy; the dollar printing presses running at high speed; the Treasury Secretary deeply involved in the AIG/Goldman payoff of November 2008; the chair of the Federal Reserve unable or unwilling to introduce proportionate reforms for the banks; the government larded with the stimulus package; zombie banks and their lesser pistoles permitted to borrow at 0% and gamble on the asset bubble while lending like Scrooge and escaping all known credible supervision. Then there is the inability of Mrs. Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate to work with or even exchange e-mails with the other side of the aisle on the simplest of tasks, such as a debate on a trillion dollar stimulus package, or a trillion dollar healthcare package, or a trillion dollar cap and trade package.

At Thanksgiving, Same As It Ever Was, Look Ahead

The Republicans enjoyed Executive and Legislative majority rule rarely in the 20th century, and the results were deeply foreboding or dire, such as the 1907 Panic, or the 1929 crash, or the Iraq war. The Democrats enjoyed the same with sluggish to damning results, such as the First War, the Great Depression after the bank failures of 1933; the Second War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War. Divided government has long been the best scenario to confront the surprises of foreign policy and domestic lunacy. It reminds of the Churchill remark about democracy, the best of a bad museums of governance. Is there a good prospect for divided government for the 112th Congress in a year's time. Negative. Long shot. The the healthcare reform debate. What can the Democrats pass aggressively that won't make the House tip GOP? A game of brinksmanship. Advantage Democratic script just now.

Don't Blame POTUS

By John Batchelor on November 22, 2009 11:11 AM | 22 Comments

King Andrew Jackson the First.

Always creatively fluent Tom Friedman, NYT, now invents a new rational explantion -- aka rationalization -- for the sluggish performance of POTUS these last 11 months. It is Washington's fault, it's Washington's dysfunction, what Friedman refers to with the old-fashioned metaphor, "paralysis." At first this sounded to me to be avoiding the question of POTUS. Is he adequate? Is he capable? Does he understand the job? Is he learning? Why does he work so distantly with Congress? Does he work with Congress? But then again, saying that Washington is paralyzed like the "failed state" of California is not afterall a new cynical recognition. Washington has been paralyzed since Tom Jefferson's accidental success of the Louisiana Purchase -- and certainly since King Andrew Jackson the First challenged and outmaneuvered Congress and the bankers to break the Second National Bank in 1832. A paralyzed Washington is what developed the Civil War, what abandoned the West to the railroad cabals, what cooperated with the rise of the monopolies and trusts and Wall Street "interests." A paralyzed Washington explains the Great Depression. What Tom Friedman has come up with is a self-assuring even narcotizing way to say to himself that it isn't President Obama's fault. Is it? Then again, it is President Obama's fault because he is part of it. It is his watch. Was it Jefferson's and Jackson's (Second National Bank, now that was dysfunction) and Lincoln's and McKinley/Roosevelt's and FDR's faults? Yes. The rules are that it is your fault if you are POTUS when it happens. However it wasprobably comforting at the time of the presidency (Jefferson, Jackson etc) to say that the president is "charismatic" and bold, and heroic and smart, however the Congress and the Washington system are so broken that even this present successful president cannot solve them.

Is Washington Paralyzed?

No. Tom Jefferson and his Virginia colleagues, the elite burgesses of Williamsburg, dreamed up the system we have today on their own, and Tom Jefferson helped transfer it to the Declaration of Independence. We call it today, liberty. It means that power is in the hands of the people who live here. The Constitution of 1789 was a lawyerly worked up version of the original concept, with a lot of hands from Virginia and Massachusetts organizing the cooking and laying on a lot of silly sauce, but what it comes to is that liberty remains in the hands of the people who live here. The founders were aware of what happens when you give back power to a king, an executive. Instead, they distributed power so broadly that almost anyone could both claim to have power and at the same time not feel powerful at all. It is called checks and balances. Friedman knows all this. He just has decided to step around the issue to make an excuse for Present Obama for the next ten minutes. Blaming Washington is the same as blaming the founders and the Constitution. Every president who runs into trouble also blamed Congress and the bankers and the previous regime and Washington in general. King Andrew the First blamed Washington so effectively that he founded a party to blame Washington, the Democracy, which promptly took over Congress and became part of the problem that Jackson blamed. Nothing fancy here. President Jackson was called the Chief Magistrate, but he was in fact just another noisy part of the government under the Constitution. Same for Lincoln and TR and FDR and Reagan. Same for Obama. The republic is not paralyzed. We long ago decided and agreed that the jeopardy of an unchallenged and uncontained chief magistrate is so great that it is just plan common sense to make sure that no one is in charge.

Power belongs to the people who live here.

We argue; we foment; we err; we overstep; and then sluggishly we make changes that work better for the moment -- always more cautious than cute. Don't like California? Don't live there. And if you do live there, you will figure it out -- it's where you live. Don't like the present state of the Union? You will figure it out. (That AIG thing was a doozy, and look here, Tim Geithner was part of the problem!) Will President Obama figure out that he is not in fact in the boss? That Congress is not in charge? That Washington is not in charge? That mandating laws to the people who live here is not successful government? Yes, but slowly. What is wrong right now -- the Obama administration is frustrated and self-conscious and reluctant and clumsy -- will all work itself out or it won't and there will be a new team. My guess? At this time my guess is that the "Don't Blame President Obama School" invented here by Tom Friedman will turn into the "Blame Obama School" before long. Same as it was for King Andrew the First, so that by the time Jackson ran for reelection, and won, no one in Washington or the banks was speaking with him; and by the time he finished his term, the country was plunged into a panic so deep that no one even noticed Andrew Jackson had left town to sit in his rustic Hermitage another few years, spitting tobacco and blaming Washington.

Last Days of the Republicans: Part 26

By John Batchelor on November 21, 2009 10:45 AM | 22 Comments

The Unsinkable Sarah Palin

.....

Sarah Palin has ignited her Twitter account: "Crossing border to Hoosier territory... Excited to meet Indiana folks who want to read about solutions to US challenges." And with that, she launched what appears to be a thousand-day campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in the summer of 2012. Her glamorously homespun book, the hip baby-blue bus branded with her online addresses, the zealous frosh staff, the scrupulous TV choice of Oprah and Barbara Walters, and especially the selection of big Blue states to begin the ground tour--MI, OH, IN, FL, NC, VA, PA--describe not just a scenario for the GOP nomination, but also a carefully constructed map of electoral votes for the presidency against Barack Obama

"The polls even in the Republican Party do not correctly speak to the power that Palin brings to the campaign trail, a mix of feverish Reagan myth and pop Fox iconoclasm."

Palin's Going Rogue book tour launch is a one-upsmanship imitation of The Audacity of Hope book tour that launched Mr. Obama in the fall of 2006. At the time, Mr. Obama was a very junior senator from Illinois on few lists for the presidency; even his publisher admitted expectations for the book were modest given the immediate non-fiction competition from John Grisham, Bill O'Reilly and Bob Woodward. Nonetheless, beginning nearly three years ago, on October 19, 2006, Obama's tour used flattering TV appearances on the Today Show and Oprah, combined with worshipful reviews--"that rare politician who can write"--and choice independent bookstore appearances in McCain territory such as Tempe, Arizona, to rocket to Number 1 on the New York Times list. By Christmastime, the senator was deep in conference with David Axelrod, planning how to jump in front of the all-world favorite Mrs. Clinton by opening an exploratory committee in January 2007--a move that sold even more books.... (more)

Fred Thompson: Who Lost Afghanistan?

By John Batchelor on November 20, 2009 11:21 AM | 6 Comments

Karzai Rots.

Fred Thompson addressed his radio audience (above) with a concise and entirely accurate measure of the Obama administration's incompetence with regard Afghanistan. POTUS has stalled and manipulated the McChrystal request for additional resources, and this peculiar commander-in-chief conduct has exasperated the public and puzzled the politicians. Why did POTUS call Afghanistant a "necessary war" as recently as August and as early as March of this year? Why has he allowed the soon to be eight strategic reviews to linger in the headlines? Why the clumsiness and tardiness? There is an explanation. What Fred Thompson says is correct. We have lost Afghanistan. Lost it to whom? Not the Taliban. Not to Karzai, whose sour second inauguration this news cycle was attended in aa surprise by HRC as if the Secretary of State was calling on the rotting regime of an enemy. Not to Pakistan. We have lost it to the Wahhabists. It is the House of al-Saud who bought Afghanistan twenty years ago, and it is the House of al-Saud that has now renewed its lease on the Pashtuns. The north and west of Afghanistan is in the hands of the Tajiks, and they are indifferent to the Wahhabists and the Saudis. Only the Pashtuns of AfPakia and the Northwest Provinces are impressed by the Wahhabist cash and temperament. Saudi Arabia has repurchased its lease on the Pashtuns. The status quo ante is to keep the Taliban attacking the Kabul government, aiming to reconvert the provinces to Sharia law. Meanwhile the Taliban from the Northwest Provinces will keep on agitating for their independence from the Pakistan army. None of this has anything to do with stability in Kabul or good government in Islamabad. It is not about democracy and transparency. We have lost Afghanistan to the savages who never really lost it to us. Did POTUS lose Afghanistan? Sure, that is, it is his watch, and he talked of a new and smart way during the campaign, and he spoke of Afghanistan as critical to his foreign policy. POTUS believed the false-tongued and deeply insane King Abdullah when he visited with him last June; he believed that the Saudis could write a check and the Taliban would obey a three-dimensional chess game that only Mr. Spock could solve; he believed that once the Taliban warlords took money, they would behave as stake-holders in Cook County real estate. All rookie mistakes, all avoidable, all ruination now. The worst damage is political here in the West. The Pashtuns knew it would end with the Pashtuns back in control of their mountains. The question now is can POTUS retain control of his administration and the Congress as the price of losing the war comes home.

POTUS Book of Jobs

By John Batchelor on November 19, 2009 1:18 PM | 6 Comments

Jobs Are the Presidency.

POTUS remarks while still in China that he is suddenly aware that the full moon flood tide of spending that his administration has enjoyed the last eleven months has now overrun the beach. What is to be done? POTUS sounds uncertain. "...without spending money, there may be some tax provisions, that can encourage businesses to hire sooner rather than sitting on the sidelines.... we're taking a look at those..." And what makes POTUS uncertain? "... if we keep on adding to the debt even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point people could lose confidence in the US economy in a way that would lead to a double dip recession...." All this lawyerly spin can be translated bluntly. The trillions spent on the stimulus package and TARP and the various housing/foreclosure/mortgages/rescue plans have not worked to stop the job losses and offer no promise at this time to start jobs growing again. POTUS is now faced with explaining why his stimulus bill didn't stimulate (in fact it transferred federal tax money to state coffers) in the first place. POTUS supposes that if he offers tax breaks to employers that this will create jobs in the private sector. However POTUS is aware (someone may have briefed him quietly) that the spending has wrecked the dollar and created an asset bubble in commodities (denominated in the shrinking dollar), and that this long term destruction of the dollar puts the economy at risk again of retracting.

What Is to Be Done II?

Alan Murray and John Bussey, WSJ, report from the WSJ CEO conference this past week (above) that, they learned, what has gone wrong is that the Obama administration has pushed companies into a job freeze because they cannot plan on costs. What costs? The costs of the shrinking dollar. The costs of the threatened healthcare reform bill. The costs of the now postponed but not rejected cap and trade. The costs of the possibility that the EPA will declare greenhouse gasses a pollutant and start to tax by fiat. The cost of the FCC declaring that all phone users and internet providers must pay for universal free access for all. The costs of the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. Enough. Alan Murray, John Bussey and Evan Newmark all reported (above) that the CEO's uniformly complained that they cannot and will not hire again until they can get firm numbers of the costs of the Obama administration's wish-list of polices. Most striking to me was that the Obama White House sent Rahm Emanuel, Peter Orszag and Christina Romer to answer polite, impatient, futile questions form the CEOs. But Congress did not show up, not Mrs. Pelosi nor Harry Reid nor their deputies. The implication is that Congress will not speculate about what it will cost to pay for what Congress mandates by Democratic majority legislation the next year. Murray and Bussey both indicate that Team Obama understands the CEO complaint. Does Congress? And who is running that trillion dollar printing press in Washington? The name on the door is Obama.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.

No evidence yet that the Obama administration understand the theory that the Federal and State budgets drain money from the economy that would be put to work growing the economy, which means jobs. No evidence that the Obama administration understands that the government intervention in the marketplace, with TARP, stimulus, mortgage bailouts, GM and Bank of America and Citi zombie status, that all this finagling and manipulating and favor-seeking and plan smoke and mirrors keeps the economy from stabilizing. You cannot hire if you do not have confidence in the housing and banks and dollar. POTUS holds yet another Jobs summit at the White House on December 3, and then departs to Allentown, Pennsylvania. No jobs in Allentown since the 1976 and Jimmy Carter. This will be a test of POTUS logic. How does he propose to stimulate job growth in a region that lost growth after Bethlehem Steel cleared out, and that hasn't sen hiring since VE Day? SEIU?

Do Nothing vs Do Something.

David Wessel, WSJ, writes that the Obama administration is uncertain what to do about the joblessness because there is another camp, outside government, that says to Do Nothing at all. To wait. (I am in the do nothing camp, with the caveat that I would undo the damage already done by shelving the fevers in Congress, the EPA, strengthening the dollar, shutting off the junk food to the zombies and so forth.) The Obama administration is in the Do Something camp. Even then, the Obama team is uncertain if it should do more and more, such as expensive tax credits for hiring (similar to what POTUS mentions above) or just tinker cheaply (the the recent $250 check to seniors for drugs). The uncertainty itself is a source of panic, because while the administration waits to make a decision, the damage already done to the dollar by the failed spending makes it difficult for the markets to stabilize and the private sector to budget and hire. In sum, I do not hear any voice in the White House remark that the problem could be (is) Congress and the White House.

John Paulson Bets on Gold

Meanwhile, the fun story of the day is that the billionaire market giant John Paulson is building a new hedge fund to start January 1 that will buy gold, gold shares, gold-mining and so forth. Paulson's opinion is that gold is just starting a bull run, hanging today at $1150. The market smiled. This isn't about gold supply. This is the dollar, the new Fifty Cent piece of Planet Earth. Buy gold now. Sunday night September 14, 2008, the night Lehman Brothers died, I can recall Jimmy Rogers in Singapore telling me that gold was up $23 an ounce. Around $770. Buy gold that night, in the panic of the next weeks 0f 2008 when Congress passed the trillion dollar TARP giveaway to the bankers and their cronies, and you are now up better than 40%. If you think the dollar is going to rally with the Obama administration's current policy, sell. If you don't, can gold go anywhere but up?

Four Decades After Nixon and Mao

By John Batchelor on November 18, 2009 11:12 AM | 15 Comments

Nixon Bows to Mao, February, 1972.

The Obama administration's political guru David Axelrod appears painfully on the defensive re the unexpected bow by POTUS to Hirohito's son Akhito during the state visit to Tokyo. Coincidentally perhaps, the deep bench of Obama supporters have ordered up a Youtube clip of Richard Nixon's foreign policy triumph on his premier visit to Beijing in 1972. Why? The Chinese film crew that covered the Nixon meets Mao audience on the first day captured a momentary bow by RMN to Mao. See for yourself. Not a deep bow. Not much of a bow. Closer to a head nod with an overripe, stagey deference to an obviously swollen, stooped, decrepit, predatory and self-conscious potentate. Nixon was in high spirits for the camera. Kissinger was right beside him. This Mao audience was not arranged for the American cameras; but later the film was passed to the White House. The bulk of the clip features historian Winston Lord and administration op Chuck (pre Watergate) Colson in what looked to have been constructed as a campaign '72 promotional film

Nixon in China 1972

What is most impressive to me is that Nixon and his team understood Mao's weakness and exploited it perfectly. China is vain. It is obsessively self-regarding. It calls itself the Middle Kingdom, the center of the Earth. For China, the world revolves around its GPS. And for the degenerate Mao, who confused his own fate with China's fate, the performance by the all-powerful Cold Warrior POTUS Nixon was blinding, persuasive, overwhelming. The brief scene we have here of Nixon and Kissinger and Mao demonstrates that Nixon understood that by traveling to the Forbidden City, by flattering and toasting Mao, by carrying on agreeably and respectfully, he was cracking open the fear and loathing that Mao's regime felt and creating an opening for the West, for the consumer culture of capitalism and individualism. It was a long play. Nixon was certainly also playing for the short term gain in Vietnam, and against the dull thugs in Moscow. Perhaps the law of unintended consequences provided the answers.

Obama In China 2009

POTUS performance the last days has demonstrated the unusually passive courtliness that marked his trips to Europe and the Middle East. It has been called apology touring. The still mysterious greeting to Saudi King Abdullah in London last Winter -- was it a bow? a stumble? -- now joins the clearly unexpected and remarkable bow to Japanese Emperor Ahkito last week as examples of peculiar POTUS conduct. To my knowledge, POTUS did not bow to President Hu of China. It was the bow to Akhito that has made the headlines. It is too close to an apology; it might be an apology; and that is unacceptable, anachronistic history. POTUS in China with Hu was not in an apologetic or even amiable temper. Late reports from the traveling media are incomplete but distinctly laced with disappointment about the visit. The final media event was a parallel appearance by POTUS and Hu, during which no questions were taken, no agreement was demonstrated, and observers believed that the two executives appeared discomfited by one another. The list of disagreements was not short: the dollar deterioration, the fixed yuan, trade balance, protectionist tariffs, internet transparency, Iran sanctions and then the raft of human rights crises in China and in the conquered territory of Tibet and Xinjiang all caused by Chinese imperialism and backwardness. Tibet and Xinjiang abuses sting especially. We are told that POTUS approached China softly, softly in order to encourage cooperation, in order to illustrate his administration's change of temperature from the Bush administration. The legend has been that the Obama team will find diplomatic successes where the Bush team found conflict and failure. The results of the first occasion are forgettable. The pugnacious Robert Gibbs tried sarcasm (and cynicism), quipping to the media that the White House hadn't expected, "the waters would part and everything would change over the course of almost 2 1/2 days in China."

Nixon in China 2009.

Reviewing again the video on Nixon's first trip to visit Mao, I am astonished at the scale of the challenge. Nixon knew that he was entreating a grotesquely demonic tyrant. Still Nixon handled himself with zeal and a kind of operatic joy. We know now that Mao was defeated in a profound fashion. The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution were Apocalyptic delusions, the triggers for murder cults and a still unaccounted for mass murder. Mao's regime would destroy itself with back-stabbing, and Mao's heirs would wither, so that what is today the Standing Committee of the Politburo is a diluted rat poison made up of kleptocrats, gangsters, sharpies, whiners. What bursts with energy is the China that will shove aside the Beijing bullies. Nixon saw it, or at least Nixon deserves credit for making it possible to see. Does POTUS see it? The future of China is in the hands of those men and women POTUS denied by not speaking loudly for Tibet, for the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, for the Christians, the democrats, the bloggers, the freedom lovers. Nixon trusted freedom to win. Does POTUS?

Downfall POTUS

By John Batchelor on November 17, 2009 10:16 AM | 17 Comments

Hiroshima Again.

At Tokyo, the peculiar bow by POTUS to the diminutive Japanese Emperor Akhito elicited predictable media chit-chat on the Monday following the event, including this anchor inquiry from MSNBC, "Why was this considered by some a gaffe?" The answer is less significant to me than the speculation that the POTUS conduct may be connected to an apology or an expression of remorse with regard the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

No Doubts.

Spoke Saturday 14 with Dennis Giangreco, author, "Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan 1945-1947." The documented facts re the decision to use the first available atomic weapons on strategic targets, Hiroshima and Nagasaki," supports a general statement that Harry Truman and his military and civilian advisers, including Marshall, Leahy, Turner, King, Arnold, Hull, Grew and more, examined very closely the realtime estimates of what casualties the US would suffer in the event of an amphibious invasion of the home islands. They also looked at estimated Japanese casualties, military and civilian. The planning for DOWNFALL started in the summer 1944 and was continually updated into the Spring 1945. The Japanese suicidal resistance on Okinawa kept readjusting the ratios. The first two weeks of April 1945, US casualties were 7 thousand per week, and then continued at 35oo per week through April, May and into June. The actual number of US casualties was not the 35 thousand by June 1 but actually double that, in the 65-70 thousand range, including battle fatigue and exhaustion. All this changed the estimates on DOWNFALL. I was shocked, and you will be, too. Herbert Hoover, the ageless and timeless public servant, who was assisting the FDR and now the Truman administrations (Truman assumed POTUS mid April at FRD's death), got involved in numbers crunching in late May. Truman personally invited Hoover to the White House, and Hoover traveled from the New York Waldorf (where he lived in the penthouse) to the White House on May 28. When Hoover returned to New York, he drafted a memo that went to POTUS and presented the bald fact that a minimum casualty number was 500 thousand and that 1 million casualties was possible. Did Truman believe it? Yes. It was based upon Hoover's good, sound, field tested information from Iwo Jima and Okinawa battlefields. The draft had already started looking for 600 thousand new soldiers as replacements for the estimated casualties. The Truman administration was in preparation for a living nightmare, hence "Hell to Pay." They gave orders to prepare 500 thousand Purple Hearts. They gave orders to prepare 700 thousand hospital beds stateside to receive the wounded. The estimates of casualties kept climbing. By June 1947 the official estimate was still based upon the low number of one US combat casualty for every seven Japanese combat casualties. Using the baseline of 3.5 million combat personnel available for the defense of the homeland, that meant the half million. However by Summer 1945, the DoD believed that the Japanese were capable of fielding 5 million or more men with weapons in defense of the homeland, which would raise the estimates to three quarters of a million at best. And climbing.

What Didn't Truman Know?

Truman and his generals and admirals, chiefly General George Marshall and Admiral King, did not know that the Japanese had fully anticipated exactly how and where the US would invade and had prepared the killing fields with divisions ordered to die in place. The Japanese battle plane, Ketsu-Go, assigned 13 Divisions to southern most in the homeland chain Kyushu Island, which they anticipated would be the first target. They were correct. Operation DOWNFALL was to go in two phases, and the first was Operation OLYMPIC, with X-Day on November 1, 1945. The Japanese divisions dug in well back from the landing zones which they anticipated, and they were exactly correct in their choices. Also, Kyushu had a civilian population of ten million people, who remained in place. The US was going to launch 14 divisions against 13 Japanese divisions, a formula for disaster. The second phase of DOWNFALL was Operation Coronet, and it was to launch on Y-Day, March 1, 1946, when 40 Allied divisions were to assault the main island of Honshu. Again, Ketsu-Go anticipated correctly, and the Japanese planned to have a comparable force that was well dug in, again to fight to the death. Add to this misery that fact that the Japanese Air Force was much larger than the US figured because it had been reconfigured with wooden built Kamikzaes. The Kamikaze was the single most effective weapon the Japanese ever employed, and the US suppressed the facts of how devastating the attacks had been at Okinawa. Adding all this preparation, most of it unknown to the US command, the Japanese warlords were prepared to lose 20 million people of all types in order to drain and neutralize the Allied invasions. The Japanese warlord aim, supported by the Emperor Hirohito, was to make the invasion so costly that the US would offer a ceasefire, thereby preserving the Japanese empire for a negotiated withdrawal of all forces from the homeland.

The Decision.

The strategic bombing plan was to use four atomic weapons against four lesser cities to cow the warlords into surrender. Truman's choice was stark. Destroy several hundred thousand Japanese or commit to the credible possibility of one million or more US casualties over the next two years. The situation would likely have been much worse. After the first atomic strike on Hiroshima, August 6, the warlords sent out what was interpreted as surender messages; but after the second strike on Nagasaki, August 9, the warlords fell silent. Marshall accepted the fact that the warlords would not surrender, and he argued that the next two bombs be kept back for use later in the invasion. Marshall wanted the first seven to nine bombs dropped on Kyushu Island just before November 1. Then Marshall wanted the invasion troops to wait forty-eight hours and attack through the debris. Marshall knew what the bombs would do; he had gone to New Mexico. But no one knew what radiation would do over time. Ten million Japanese civilians on Kyushu, plus 13 Japanese divisions and 14 Allied divisions, plus the American fleet of battleships, carriers, destroyers, troop transports, all of it, under a rain of fallout. This was the eve of the horror. It didn't come, because on August 14 the warlords surrendered, to the great surprise and prayerful relief of Truman, Marshall and the admirals.

James Michener, October 20, 1945.

The novelist and chronicler James Michener wrote a letter to a comrade after the surrender to explain what he, Michener, had thought when he heard of the bombs. Aware that the progressives were already campaigning against Truman for his decision to use the bombs, Michener asked that the letter not be made public until after his death: "How did we react? With a gigantic sigh of relief, not exultation because of our victory, but a deep gut-wrenching sigh of deliverance. We had stared into the mouth of Armageddon and suddenly the confrontation was no longer necessary. We had escaped those deadly beaches of Kyushu."

Sixty-four Years Later.

The Japanese people of 1945 were obedient to an emperor and a cabinet of warlords who fully aimed to kill and wound as many Americans as possible while ordering the self-destruction of millions of Japanese civilians, especially including women and children. Does America now indulge in revisionism and fault Truman and Marshall and their cadre for choosing between Hiroshima and Nagasaki and one hundred times those losses? The whole of the Pacific and Asia was losing 400 thousand casualties a month as long as the Japanese continued to resist. Europe was starving and in ruins. Southeast Asia, Korea, the Philippines, all the islands, were desperate and in need. Wait for blockade? Wait for negotiation? Wait for what? The decision was made to bomb. And when that didn't work as of August 9, the decision was made to invade. Truman crossed the line. He accepted both scenarios, August 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Hiroshima and Nagsaki were not enough. Suddenly Truman had to live with his decision to launch fifty-four divisions into Hell. Apologize? Remorse? Bows? I await more information, but for now I am puzzled. Does the Obama administration have the facts of why Truman gave the order to use the bombs?

White House Defense Run Wild

By John Batchelor on November 16, 2009 10:30 AM | 27 Comments

Home Team Justice.

Sturdy, ancient, predictable, contentious Pat Leahy is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is a credible but not convincing excuse to call upon Leahy to offer a defense of the Eric Holder decision to move KSM and his kindred of Cain to Foley Square for a trial in a Federal Court. Leahy's remark on Face the Nation is evasive and filled with qualifications, "...I think Eric Holder, our Attorney General,is right, I think the president is right, in holding the trial of these murderers in New York City..." What "murderers" are those, Senator? You mean the accused, who must needs be Miradized for the first time and treated as innocents until proved guilty by a jury of their peers? Those murderers? And is your opinion, Senator, fresh information or the assertion of a bystander who has no part on the process whatsoever -- who voted on the military tribunal act back in 2006? David Axelrod in Singapore roused himself to appear recorded on CNN in order to assert drably that "justice will be done" in NYC. What the heck does this mean? Justice was not going to be done if the trial was in Cuba in a military court? The military court is a construction of the U.S. Congress. A military court doesn't put Foley Square and Manhattan at risk of a dozen Hasans or five Attas. What is the point of holding the trial five hundred yards from the hole in the ground? Good conduct medals for weird irony? McVeigh was tried in Denver. Also, my information is that the Democratic party is puzzled why Axelrod is doing the TV shows on this boneheaded maneuver. He is a PR guy? Where is policy? Rahm? Biden? Holder?

Hoekstra and Giuliani Blitz.

There are no hesitations in the attack lines by Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra, "This is ideology run wild..." and Mayor Rudy Giuliani, "First of all it's an unneccessary advantage to give to the terrorists. I don't know why you want to give terrorists advantages..." Hoekstra and Giuliani overrun Leahy's position and keep going straight at the White House. No polling data available yet on the Holder announcement, but it will be posted on Monday and after; and the expectation is that it will be devastating. Rudy has already done a carpet bombing on cable TV and likely will continue his airwar on the network Monday morning shows. Then comes Larry King and the FNC chorus; and even MSNBC Olbermann and Maddow will be drafted to play defense. The talkers will follow the polling and use klaxons for days on end re the Holder decision. Where is Holder?

How Holder?

The question that cannot be answered just now is why did Holder do this, why did the White House take the risk? Is it related to the decision to dump Greg Craig by leak and back-stabbing, as evidenced by the report from Nina Totenberg from NPR that Rahm Emanuel has been leaking the Craig must go stuff for weeks? Why did Craig fall on his sword the same day Holder announced Foley Square for KSM? All these answers will add up to a portrait of the Obama administration. Just a guess, but it looks disorderly.

Chicago Rules Run Wild.

Spoke Sunday 15 with my political roundtables, John Fund, Mona Charen, Jodi Schneider, Larry Johnson, James Taranto, Jeff Bliss, re the Holder decision and the mushroom cloud so far -- spreading as far as Illinois soon. (There is additional shrieking from Illinois re the rumored decision to house the KSM kindred in an unused jail in Illinois, the Thomson Correctional Facility (below). The Chicago Rules gang is playing defense by claiming this will bring jobs to Illinois -- a strange rationalization led by Blagojevich successor Pat Quinn and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dick Durbin --, and the GOP is on offense, with Senate candidate Mark Kirk attacking adroitly.). The KSM fallout may eventually spread across the globe. James Taranto made the excellent point that the Holder decision puts 9-11 back at the top of the news, a development that does not favor the Democrats in 2101; also that the appeals process of the trial will offer a lingering possibility that the trial will be derailed because of the extraordinary events that permitted enhanced interrogations of the prisoners. Larry Johnson observed that he doubts a jury can be found could be presented as impartial. Mona Charen and John Fund both puzzled who made the decision, POTUS, Holder or a committee, or none of the above, and what this lack of clarity means for the decision making in the Obama administration. Everyone was of a mind that there are too many risks and not enough answers so far. Also that Rudy Giuliani was just handed a ticket on an express train to Albany, and Mario Cumo's son Andrew was just handed a ticket to Palookaville.

New York City Speaks KSM

By John Batchelor on November 15, 2009 8:43 PM | 19 Comments

Bad Idea.

Forty hours after the news that Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cronies removed from GITMO to NYC to be tried at Foley Square in a Federal Court, the buzz is getting louder and more political in the Big Apple. Rudy Giuliani says bad idea, "This confirms my worst expectations for the Obama administration, that they would be in denial with regard the danger of Islamic terrorism." Mike Bloomberg says it is less than a bad idea but somehow does not argue that it is a good idea,since Bloomberg does not do ideology or partisanship. Former Attny General Mike Mukasey says bad idea, very bad idea. Congressman Peter King remarks, "This is as bad a decision as any president ever made."

KSM Speaks.

Ed Hayes told me Saturday 14 that the decision to move the KSM trial to New York is fraught with risk. The first risk is that the five of the cronies will be tried together, and one or more of them may escape conviction because of the abuse scenario at GITMO the last seven years. Another risk is that KSM will likely use the rial as a forum for his sadistic rubbish and whip up the jihadist groupies worldwide with exaggerated claims of being a hero for Islam who did no different than the American generals and presidents who bomb innocents overseas -- the kind of facile moral equivalency that usually excites the genius mass-murders of the world. Another risk is that the jihadists will launch a terror attack on New York. Ed Hayes regards this attack scenario as most credible. Ed Hayes also believes that the families of the 9-11 dead will be a major factor in the drama of the trial in New York. Ed believes that moving the trial from New York makes sense -- similar to McVeigh's trial moved from Oklahoma to Denver -- but is uncertain that it will happen. Ed mentioned that the defense counsel will face the dilemma of deciding if they should cooperate in KSM's possible exploitation and manipulation of the trial. Ed's sharpest concern is that the evidence int he trial will have the taint of being a product of torture, and that in the eliciting of the details of the water-boarding, the defense will both create sympathy for the accused and also put the United States on trial to the Ummah and Europe and Asia.

Intelligence Risk.

There is an additional risk that it hard to judge in that KSM and his four were detained and interrogated using unknown sources from many directions. KSM was grabbed in Pakistan by unknown agents and transported without known legal authority by US forces to be incarcerated without any known legal rights for seven years. There looks to be a mountain of information built up over this time that KSM's defense counsel could reasonably expect to examine. This is a death penalty case. Perhaps KSM will do the favor of pleading guilty for himself and his cronies (which he did last December in a military court hearing at GITMO) and then sit down and vegetate. Seems unlikely, but he might. Perhaps the Obama administration will get lucky and the trial will last two weeks in February and will go away by Mardi Gras. Perhaps all those NYPD on overtime will enjoy the hours.

Big Apple GITMO Torture

By John Batchelor on November 14, 2009 11:07 AM | 15 Comments

Torture Debate.

The Obama administration decision just announced to transfer 9-11 Devil KSM to New York to stand trial for mass murder in a Federal court looks to be laden with risks. The Justice Department states that it will seek the death penalty. Right away, how does KSM get a fair trial in NYC? Also, in a court, KSM is presumed innocent,and he has already confessed several times to his conduct without representation: Will this confession to a military tribunal authority remain in place, will KSM change his plea, will KSM be permitted to confess presumptively without counsel in the Federal system? Then there is the torture debate. POTUS and Attorney General Eric Holder have both on several occasions remarked that KSM was "tortured," when he was subject to the so-called enhanced interrogations at GITMO. I will wait on the full thinking of the massively shrewd lawyer pool in the nation, but as an amateur reader of US history, I am confounded to think of a model for trying in a Federal court a prisoner who has been tortured to confess his crimes. It sounds like lynching. It is lynching, until someone shows me how it is acceptable to torture a man to confess and then to sentence him to death upon his confession?

GITMO Politics

The fresh partisan news is that the GOP has immediately seized on the KSM decision to highlight the differences between the parties re national security. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calls it a "Step backward." John Boehner asserts that the White House was "reverting to a dangerous pre-9/11 mentality." The major blast comes from Joe Liebermann, who uses WMD rhetoric: "It is inconceivable that we would bring these alleged terrorists back to New York for trial, to the scene of the carnage they created eight years ago, and give them a platform to mock the suffering of their victims and the victims' families, and rally their followers to continue waging jihad against America." Lieberman's point will be a rallying cry for his colleagues John McCain and Lindsey Graham. It is a fair guess that all New York lawmakers in Washington and Albany will contribute to the hissing and shrieking. Why does the Obama administration want to pick this fight? Is it because there is no one of weight in the White House from New York City? Can POTUS and his political advisers, chiefly Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, be ignorant of New York and its pols? The 9/11 families live here and exercise overwhelming political moxie. The trial will make NYC the center of the known universe for legal, moral, political, spiritual and historical firefights? Everyone can imagine the security problem. Foley Square (right) as target uno for the world's do-I-feel-lucky jihadist cell. Then there are the sicko Hasans of the planet, some of have been known to visit New York.

NYC Risk.

There is the additional puzzle as to why the process of military tribunals, which was underway for KSM as recently as December 2008, did not answer the Obama administration's concerns? KSM admitted to the court that he is guilty. He did so the last time he faced a military judge in GITMO. He was ready to be sentenced. So were his four conspirators. The Obama administration chose last January to set all that aside and proceed to this mysterious ten month review (after saying it would require six months), and the result is this confusion. Eric Holder asserts that he is confident that the prosecution will be successful in obtaining a guilty verdict and the death penalty. But this is a Federal courtroom. Anything can happen, including especially treating the accused as not guilty and then risking a failure to convict. Perhaps KSM will do us a favor and interpret his life as martydom, insisting he is guilt, shunning lawyers, and asking to be executed. I cannot now answer (because I am an amateur historian) if a court is permitted to permit a defendant to insist upon guilt and execution without examining how the evidence provided by the prosecution was obtained. That would be the torture defense. Ed Hayes has told me repeatedly that he does nto see how you can get a conviction in Federal court based upon torture or even with torture as part of the process of detention since 2002. I am eager to learn how the prosecutors maneuver through an obstacle course that is immediately crowded with three centuries of jurisprudence about the accused and with every civil libertarian alive and dead. Then there is the death penalty part. How can Uncle Sam execute a man who POTUS has declared a victim of torture by Uncle Sam? This alone will be law school debate for the next several centuries. Look at how the 1865 Federal court treated the Lincoln conspirators. Who does not squirm at reading the abuse of the prisoners -- the hanging of Mary Surratt?

GITMO Forever.

There is still the lingering problem that there are cases at GITMO that will not be tried in Federal Court and that have yet to be adjudicated. The question remains, what is to be done with a convicted terrorist who remains dangerous and cannot be jailed forever? Also, closing GITMO is a partisan political chip for the Obama administration. What of the detainees at Bagram airbase outside of Kabul, which the Obama administration has been using as a catch-all. It is filling up with terror suspects, many of whom we do not know nor will likely ever learn of. What is to be done with the New GITMO? Leave it to the next Attorney General? Is that what Greg Craig said before he was fired? We will get the story, but for now it looks that the Obama team over promised and now under delivers -- and Greg Craig was the fall guy.

Bullmoose of the NY 23rd

By John Batchelor on November 13, 2009 11:13 AM | 25 Comments

The 219th Vote.

The partisan fact that remains after the brouhaha and failure of the Republican party in the recent special election New York 23rd is that the winner was a Democrat named Bill Owen who immediately cast the 219th vote for Mrs. Pelosi's healthcare reform bill in the House, Saturday November 7. The geniuses of the Club for Growth, with octogenarian pot-shotter Jackson Stephens's checkbook, having ambushed the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava, then abandoned the 23rd to the hands of the clever Democrats. Credit to Rahm Emanuel, President Obama and the DCCC for seizing upon an opening and putting away the victory. Would Dede Scozzafava have won the special election and voted with the Republican party in the healthcare bill without the genius of the Club for Growth? The highly probably answer is "Yes."

Purer than Ceasar's Wife.

The Club for Growth is a stand-in for the timeless libertarian cause -- which can resemble a discursive and wholly entertaining celebration of Howard Roark Meets John Galt -- not a political party. In the instance of the 23rd, the Club for Growth's sophisticated, international persuasion had the effect of undermining the local Republican party and making it possible for the mundane ideology of the Democrats (status quo ante majority in Congress) to succeed. Why did the Club for Growth do this? Because bloody-minded bountiful ideology is more dear to the Club for Growth than victory or Ceasar's wife's virtue or even the wishes and needs of the district. This is of itself not a bad or good thing; it is a condition. It was not the Club for Growth that failed in the 23rd. It was the Republican party. The party failed its supporters; the party failed Dede Scozzafava. Once the party chose Scozzafava to be its nominee on the ballot, it was the party's responsibility to get her to victory. Scozzafava did nothing wrong. She was encouraged to campaign; she was endorsed; she was supported; then she was betrayed. Does she have strong feelings? Yes. Did she endorse Bill Owen in the last hours out of bitterness? Yes. Who failed?

More Genius Club for Growth Ahead.

The Club for Growth is now boosting Florida pol Marco Rubio in the Republican primary. Rubio asserts colorfully that he is a Reagan conservative, -- "It's very simple: We already have a Democratic Party in America. We do not need two Democratic parties in America." -- and he takes aim at the boastfully moderate Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Because this is a primary contest, this is all fine. If Rubio wins, then he can match his conservatism against the Democrats. If he loses, the presumption is that he will support Crist. All well and good. It would only be if Rubio launches a third party challenge in the general election that the formula of the 23rd New York would obtain. Unlikely at this point . The Club for Growth's endorsements of self-regarded conservatives against so-called RINOs is sound, cunning, cheerful political gamesmanship that keeps the GOP healthy and adroit. What happened in the 23rd NY was snooty sabotage. If the 23rd stays Democratic in 2010, it will underline the recklessness of the Club for Growth and the frailty of the Republican party. No national party has ever been successful by being the same thing all the time in all the places.

What Bullmoose Taught Us.

The six million plus males votes that elected TR in 1904 were not all or even majority the votes of progressives, and this same group split its vote wildly between the Bullmoose TR and Taft in the 1912 fiasco that let Wilson win -- a 23rd writ large. The twenty-two million male and female votes that elected FDR in 1932 were not all one thing, in fact many of them were people who voted straight segregationist their wholes lives, and a sizeable number were Republicans who had voted for Taft, Hughes, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Party's adapt or they fail. The GOP failed in the 23rd, just as it fails now nationally until it learns again that the only vote that matters is the 218th in the House and the 60th or 51st in the Senate and the 270th electoral vote.

Surge Lite

By John Batchelor on November 12, 2009 11:24 AM | 7 Comments

Very Limited Resources.

John Bussey, WSJ, reports on the latest hot version from the DoD for the Afghanistan surge. Not eighty thousand, not forty thousand, not even the ten to fifteen thousand with an air fleet of Predator robots sweeping over the Khyber Pass in pursuit of Gunga Din's heirs. Instead the new magic number is 30-35 thousand, we are told (above), however the whole of the delivery will not come until the end of 2010. Does this mean that the Obama administration has disappointed the DoD? It does not. The Obama administration is dealing with the facts of an over-extended yet sophisticated military. My information is that General Casey does not want to continue the present rotation schedule of 12 months in the combat zone and 12 months out of the combat zone. The US Army has very limited resources to put into Afghanistan over the next six months to a year. Same for the Marine Corps, which is already heavily in-country. Bluntly, we are down to the last of the trigger-pullers who are not already in either Iraq and Afghanistan. The redeployment from Iraq is critical, but it is not sufficient. Volunteer armies have natural limits.

Blame What?

AfPakia is a NATO effort with UN assistance, and the facts demonstrate that neither NATO nor the UN are contributing effectively or generously. AfPakia is also not the center of the struggle. In sum, the Obama administration is committing the US to a disproportionate combat role in a non-strategic combat theater. Afghanistan is an extension of Pakistan. The manipulation and bloody-mindedness in Pakistan mean that there can be no solution or even effective management at Kabul and in the Pashtun regions until and if Islamabad is stable and trustworthy. There is the possibility that Pakistan is now in the control of the enemy. By enemy, I mean the Wahhabists of Arabia. The one and only ally the Taliban had back into the 1990s when it overran Afghanistan was the House of Al-Saud. Nothing has changed. It is not an endgame, but it is a strong move to blame the wretchedness of Islamabad and Kabul on the House of Al-Saud.

McChrystal.

The McChrystal plan in AfPakia was never one thing or another; it is a work in progress for what can be done with the resources available. In the event of a disaster in Kabul or Islamabad (Jihadist coup), nothing will be enough. My information is that this is not about politics. It is strategy. As long as the US maintains Riyadh as an ally, we will have trouble in Jerusalem and Kabul and Islamabad. As long as the US treats Tehran as a hostile state that can be managed with diplomacy, there will be trouble in Gaza and Beirut and Baghdad and the Gulf. Surge lite in Afghanistan answers none of the critical questions. It doesn't even solve Al Qaeda. The road to Bin Laden and his kindred of Cain begins in Riyadh, at Abdullah's palace, at Abdullah's desk.

Jihad-Shopping

By John Batchelor on November 11, 2009 12:10 PM | 57 Comments

Motive Hood.

The Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan is alive and speaking and will stand trial for his crimes. In sum, all that can be known about the weapon, opportunity and motive of an accused mass-murderer who is also an officer in the U.S. Army will be known. Meanwhile, TV continues the witch hunt for Hasan's super-secret jihad cell. The FNC remarks by Michelle Malkin, "Jihad is what motivated these people to engage in bloody rampages..." are specious at best and likely the product of a showbiz thinking. Motive is critical to a crime and in this case will be known as far as it can be with reason. My information so far is that Hasan is very close to a Columbine shooter, that is, no single rational explanation will exhaust the possibilities that Hasan is a suicidal psychotic -- or simply mad. We have a living and youthful suspect, so he will talk for years, even decades, and we will learn all that he makes of himself as he grows old, irrelevant and sterile in Leavenworth. The least likely scenario at this point seems that he is a product of a jihadist Al Qaeda like murder raid operation, a shahid op. Compare Hasan's clumsy, labored, random planning for his minutes of mass murder to the planning of the Rawalpindi murder raid by a team of Punjabi Taliban in October, lead by a notorious gunman, who was captured and is under questioning. Hasan acted alone, with expensive weapons that he purchased, without disguise, without a goal, with no back up, with no plan -- not even a plan for media coverage. Also, Hasan's biography is useful to understand his motives and his state of mind -- such as the toney, radical-chic mosque he attended in Falls Church, Virginia (right), led by a posturing sharpie who is reported to behave like a Jeremiah Wright of upscale American Muslims -- but his immediate contacts in Texas before the shooting are not much use, since he is reported to have been an isolated human being. Email contact or web surfing contact is facile linkage to anything. Shahid operations are military ops, prepared, scouted, planned, rehearsed, cooked, studied. Hasan's homicidal conduct looks the rage of a selfish, vain, cowardly, deranged, doomed, trite, sadistic, unattractive creature. Hasan's defense attorney, an Army officer, John P. Galligan, has commented already that he has spoken with his client and that Hasan is "coherent." The long, grinding process of justice is well underway. Coherent is enough to get Hasan is tidy military cell for the next fifty years in Kansas in which he can try to avoid the various forms of cancer that plague the ineligible for parole types.

Why Shop Jihad?

The agenda for Malkin sounds to be to shop the we-are-surrounded-by-PC idiots trope, and so let's-get-on-the-jihad-bandwagon trope, which is yet another easy grunting review of the 20th century's debates about tolerance and freedom and loudmouths. Malkin is not the story. The story is the generally inexact and lazy way terrorism is being discussed on the air. The Al Qaeda jihadists and their kindred of Cain are not abstractions. The bad guys are cult-recruited and cult-trained anarchists who act from political assumptions and for political goals. "Jihad" is an abstraction -- a buzz word for pop attention-getting and for quick explanations of events. It is not a motive by itself unless it is connected to a political organization. (Otherwise all acts of personal defiance or rebellion become revolution or treason, which is an obvious absurdity.) The jihadists-Islamicists who are the main threat in the Middle East are not an abstraction at all. They are sophisticated and well-funded political actors. The acts of terror in the Middle East since the 1960s are political events. The attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979 was a politically organized challenge to the ruling House of al-Saud by other Arabian tribes, though it was defined hastily by the regime as an act of terrorism. The attacks in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, carried out by the jihadist-Islamicists who are also called the Taliban are political theater in regions where warlords and potentates rule until death. Hasan's self-destructive and cruel acts in Texas were none of the above. Hasan is an American citizen, born in Virginia, educated and rewarded by an American system of government. To claim what Hasan did to be "jihad" is to trivialize the threat represented by Al Qaeda and its allied anarchists and the state-sponsors of asymmetrical warfare units, such as Tehran, Damascus, Riyadh, Islamabad. The Devils in the Ummah are not crazy; they are determined, delusional tyrants who believe they must and will intimidate and subjugate and devastate their enemies. They know their effectiveness is masked and enhanced by cultish gimmicks. At the heart of their campaign, from the wanton cowards of the House of al-Saud to the wanton criminals in the IRGC and among the Twelvers, is a recognizable lust for political, economic and military power.

Hasan's Fate.

Hasan will vanish into the sea of doomed souls as the always breaking news of killers moves on. Hasan's behavior, now reported by many who worked with him and observed him, may lead to clearer directions to military units re how to deal with noxious loners and manipulative troubled characters. Hasan's Virginia/Palestinian/Moslem/bachelor/psychiatrist self-identification is important to who he is and what he did as an accused criminal in the military justice system. But until and if other facts come out about Hasan, he is not a political actor any more than Columbine was a political event. Being a jerk is not about jihad. Being a mass-murderer is not just being a jerk.

POTUS at Hood

The President's address at the memorial service was careful and excellent. The remarks by Army Chief of Staff General Casey were also careful and determined. The soldiers and family at Ft. Hood in attendance presented a sturdy, healthy community of young people who are organized, devoted and honorable. Hasan is a disgrace. It is regretful the nature of my work requires me to devote too many words to a boor and a creep like him. The U.S. Army at Ft Hood offered the success of the republic in wartime, good people at their duty.

Sign Healthcare (smile)?

By John Batchelor on November 10, 2009 12:07 PM | 24 Comments

Unforced Error Gibbs

Chuck Todd, NBC, was very early 2008 to spy that Senator Obama's organization was moving past Mrs. Clinton's in the early primaries, especially the caucuses, and Todd was right on time with his remark that Mrs. Clinton was slipping to the point that she would accept the VPOTUS job. In sum, Todd is acutely accurate about the Obama team, and, in this brief exchange with Robert Gibbs at the White House on Monday 9, there is a large clue that all is not well at the White House with regard healthcare and the bill passed by the glamorously self-regarding Nancy Pelosi (right) and the Democratic mininimum (218) plus 1 (Bill Owen of NY 23rd) vote on Saturday 7. (The Joseph Cao Republican vote was tactically and strategically meaningless.) I cannot tell what the problem is, but the Gibbs frustration is not hidden. The prank to give out Chuck Todd's email on live news feed is unusually aimless. What Todd wants to confirm is that POTUS believes he is on schedule to sign a healthcare bill into law by year's end. Gibbs knows that his response is noise. Gibbs is said to be most critical to the White House message team. When Gibbs asks Todd, "Do you think my answer is ambiguous?" -- a fair answer is, "Yes." Better ambiguity, that is, smoke-blowing, then the zealous grimace of no comment.

Harry Reid and the Scaredy-Cat House.

It isn't just that Harry Reid cannot deliver 60 Senate votes to bring a healthcare bill to the Senate floor that contains a public option and the usual taboos of abortion funding and immigrant health insurance. It is also that of the 219 House Democrats who voted for the Saturday 7 version, there is no reason to believe there is any desire to vote again on such an exposed extravagance that cannot possibly be moved through the Senate. There is no public option ever in the Senate. And the House liberals, it is declared by 41 of the House liberals, will not permit a bill that lacks a pubic option; nor will the liberals likely again swallow the Bart Stupak amendment that forbids abortion funding. Behind all this noise and blame-shifting is the fact that polls show a small minority in favor of the healthcare reform and a majority opposed, with the strongly opposed faction in the 40s. Democratic House members who voted yes and who come from Republican or mixed districts are now exposed as never before to the anti-incumbent fever that started last week in the off-year Virginia and New Jersey elections.

How Many?

There are no good political death lists available, because the Republicans shrewdly will not give out their best stuff on the weakest seats and the Democrats are shrewdly trying to misdirect the coverage. Forty-one seats turn the House to John Boehner. The secret lists will continue to change as Mrs. Pelosi must come back to the House to vote again on the healthcare bill if and when it gets out of the Senate. That is the heart of the Todd and Gibbs snappishness. By year end? It is two weeks to Thanksgiving, and that begins the daffy holiday distraction on the Hill. Members must go home to their districts starting in two weeks to face the ire of the Tea Party and the just plain folks who see what has happened in Washington during a jobless recovery that may not be a recovery. Spend spend must be followed by tax tax, unless and until the Congress changes stripes. How many? The wave builds. Gold went to a solar system high as the dollar sank. There is no investor confidence in the US budget or tax code or regulation protocols. And that jobless number will hang around 10% through year end, just like Gibbs's crankiness and Chuck Todd's useful question, When is that bill-signing on healthcare?

Thunder Running 11%

By John Batchelor on November 9, 2009 12:30 AM | 18 Comments

Speaker Boehner.

Michael Steele makes a coy and not unuseful misspeak this morning re the healthcare vote and Mrs. Pelosi's ferocious whipping of the Democratic caucus and the 2010 election campaign now underway. "Speaker Boehner..." is the moment. What the healthcare vote showed on Saturday was that the Democratic majority has retreated to three votes, one of them a Republican rookie from Louisiana (right, freshman Joseph Cao in the Jefferson seat from New Orleans) and another Bill Owen from the 23rd New York. Thirty-nine Democrats ran and hid from Mrs. Pelosi and her enforcer Jack Murtha, and those thirty-nine will now send out their resumes for future employment opportunity in the local GM dealerships. Murtha did find a handful of Blue Dogs who failed to escape the threats (or just hid badly) and each of those members are now on the endangered list as well. What is the sum? The GOP needs 41 seats to take the majority and elect Speaker John Boehner. The last briefing I heard of the Democratic fears is that they expect to lose 28 seats -- that number is for public consumption, that number is mean to make the Democratic contributors feel better. The difference between 28 and 41 is immaterial in a runaway train, a tsunami, what is called a wave.

Forty-one Seats.

The first place the Democrats must defend is the districts won by McCain in 2008, and of the 39 Dems who voted "No" last even, all of them were from McCain districts. This means they face a primary challenge from the Left and a general challenge from an electorate that will not have the name Obama to vote against or for on the ballot. You have to imagine a Republican district that voted for the ironic double-talker John McCain and his mysterious wife that will now vote for a Democratic freshman (woman) who speaks well of Nancy Pelosi and the stimulus package and the 10% plus unemployment. Hard to imagine. My memory is that there 49 of those districts nationwide. The next batch of most vulnerable are the Blue Dogs from Democratic districts in California and the East who will be facing primary threats and then will come up against a GOP candidate with cash who keeps pounding on taxes and jobs. Jobs especially. Healthcare and cap and trade are hors d'oeuvres. Taxes are iced tea. Jobs are the barbecue.

Jobs and 11%.

The jobless official number is now 10.2% for the trailing month of October 2009. The projections now get iffy, but in 1982, it went from 10.2% in October to 10.8% in January before it moderated. We are now watching a death run for politicians, because 10.8% for December, reported on the first Friday of January, will be a pall for the Congress returning. More critically, Charlie Gasparino, author, "Sellout," reported Saturday 7 that the official jobless number is critical afterall, because the market gamblers are betting on it. The bet is simple. If it gets to 11%, all the wagers they have placed on recovery then blow up. Eleven percent is the fail point. The fail-safe point is about 10.8%. We are going to make this a near thing. The pols know it, especially the Dems. The Obama administration projections are for joblessness to remain at or above 9.5% through Spring 2010. The brutal months will be July and August. If the number declines to under 8.5%, then the Dems can protect the majority in the House. If the number stays above 9.5%, prepare Mrs. Pelosi's private cruiser for escape. The Senate is another story and not profound. The House is the battlefield. Every remark, every healthcare backtrack, the next debate about abortion and healthcare, about immigration and healthcare, all will be opening ploys to get the GOP to winter 2010 and the jobless number. Eyes on the jobs prize.

Thirty-Nine Democratic Names for the House Gallows 2010.

(right, Time cover November 1994)

Adler
Altmire
Baird
Barrow
Boccieri
Boren
Boucher
Boyd
Bright
Chandler
Childers
Artur Davis
Lincoln Davis
Chet Edwards
Gordon
Griffith
Herseth-sandlin
Holden

Kissell
Kosmas
Kratovil
Kucinich
Betsy Markey
Marshall
Massa
Matheson
McIntyre
McMahon
Melancon
Minnick
Scott Murphy
Nye
Peterson
Ross
Shuler
Skelton
Tanner
Taylor

Teague

Coincidental Washington Escalation?

By John Batchelor on November 8, 2009 12:08 AM | 12 Comments

Cantor v. Limbaugh.

The important detail in GOP politics just now is that Eric Cantor has directed his message team to broadcast Cantor's knocking Rush Limbaugh. The Limbaugh baiting is not the major message. Cantor is chiefly pointing to the stupid and nonsensical anti-Jewish signage at the Bachmann rally on Thursday 5 -- the name "Rothschilds" was misspelled as "Rothchilds" -- and also to the report that a Tea Party fan used a poster that showed a Dachau victim; but he also comments on a routine Limbaugh vulgarity from as far back as August 6, when Limbaugh compared the Obama administration to Hitler. The spin so far from the Left, chiefly Talking Points Memo, is that Cantor is taking on a bear that will eat him. And that previous attempts by GOP pols to knock Limbaugh have led to the pols apologizing, even rationalizing, as did Michael Steele. Now Cantor goes shopping for a stupid Limbaugh remark that the talker made 3 months ago. Why is Cantor doing this? and why now? There are answers but as of yet it is unclear which answer is suitable . Cantor likely feels stung by the "Rothchild" (sic) signage at a rally where he did make banal and less than brilliant remarks. But what else. Mocking Limbaugh so noisily guarantees that Cantor has now moved into the right-wing No Fly Zone.

Stewart vs. Beck.

Is there a connection between Cantor knocking Limbaugh and Jon Stewart mocking Glenn Beck (above)? Stewart is the dangerous weapon in modern politics, while Beck is a joyous novelty, the Soupy Sales of FNC who cannot be permitted to change his act from day to day. (Beck must be stranger and sillier than yesterday about the Obama administration, that is, White Fang and Black Tooth must appear everyday for a dialogue, or the fans will be disappointed. Cream pies in the face help, too.) So why is Stewart turning his very heavy weaponry on Beck? Why now? Stewart threw a cream pie at Beck on November 4 or so, and on November 6 the White House message team hosted a luncheon for POTUS and the elite journalists of the moment, from David Gergen to Jon Meacham to Josh Marshall and David Brooks and Gail Collins. A luncheon that was off the record and seems without a point, a free-floating influence operation that just so happenened to have come on a dreary Friday of news from the markets and Ft. Hood. The White House is not confident enough to say what it is after. FNC is a guess. Limbaugh is a guess. And talk radio is a guess. Lots of mockery going on in Washington, by both sides in the healthcare/Obama/stimulus debate. Signage that mocks Congress or someone; celebrity pols who mock radio celebrities; TV shows that mock TV shows. More turmoil in train. It may be that it is no longer possible for there to be rapproachment. No prisoners, not climb downs. Limbaugh is WMD. Stewart is a MIRVed Trident. Escalation? Limbaugh launches on the only Jewish member of the Republican caucus? Stewart launches on the only cable show that can do zaniness as news (Stewart does news as zaniness)? Pop the popcorn, nuke winter coming on.

Last Days of the Republicans: Part 25

By John Batchelor on November 7, 2009 2:14 AM | 41 Comments

The Tea Party's Wonder Woman Can't Tackle the GOP's Biggest Challenge

The gathering of Tea Party sorts on Capitol Hill to hear Michele Bachmann and other Republican celebrities speak harshly about speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appears as harmless as kite-flying, until you listen closely and hear the familiar obsessed sounds of cultists and cranks chanting, "Kill the bill! Kill the bill!"
From the podium, Minority Leader John Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor contributed trite trash-talk about the pending health-care reform vote in the House, but it was left to the Wonder Woman of the Tea Party, Michele Bachmann (R-MN), to cry out the over-the-top rhetoric that was cheered regardless of its incoherence: "You came. And you came to your house. And you came for an emergency house call. Are they going to listen? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, they're going to listen. It was Thomas Jefferson who said a revolution every now and then is a good thing. What do you think?"
The Bachmann star turn followed another Election Day in which the party out of power showed that it has fallen so far from reason that it can celebrate another loss of a House seat.
At noon on a workday in D.C., the 10,000 elderly, unemployed, retired curiosity-seekers, carrying creative signs such as "No!" were not a revolution, nor even the "rebellion" that Boehner claimed he saw. They were gray-haired props for more of the same posturing by what is left of the GOP on the Hill--a collection of clumsy self-promoters, talk show whiners, and impotent pols like Bachmann, as the GOP slips into the grave of a splinter party, undecipherable, unelectable, unmourned.... (more)
purplejesus
you teabaggers have no idea what a joke you've become! You do realize teabagging is having balls lowered into your mouths don't you? Pathetic racist hicks
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11:53 am, Nov 6, 2009
purplejesus
funny how all 3500 of them are white!
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12:02 pm, Nov 6, 2009
junebug08
Crazy Bachmann continues to prove the fact (yes, fact) that she is completely bonkers, and Boner follows anyone and anything that will give his fake tan some attention. Exactly why I abondoned this rediculous party 10 years ago...they are being taken over by the mentally ill.
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12:05 pm, Nov 6, 2009
Hawnzz
You hit the nail on the head. I left the party when Bush was elected. It was only too obvious where the party was headed and it was not something I could support. If Bush could get elected... Lord help us. It really made me miss Reagan. (Even with all of his flaws) (Bush Sr. wasn't nearly as bad as people made him out to be, to bad people forget that.)
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1:14 pm, Nov 6, 2009
rustyr315
I can't wait for the 2010 elections!!!
It is so much fun to watch the GOP eat itself !!!!
Hate, baby, hate !!!! is their new battle cry.
Oh, and a loss is really a win...
I wonder how all the concentration camp and Nazi imagery will will play to anyone other than the members of the tea bagger cult?
I often wonder how my grand parents would have felt seeing that type of imagery used for cheap political points when their relatives were marched into the gas chamber. I wonder ifthese tea baggers even care about the extreme disrespect they give to real people who watched their families annihilated before their eyes by the Nazis. Or are they all really that ignorant that those bodies piled up on their signs are not real people with families destroyed by the events of that time period.
Please GOP and Conservative Movement, eat yourself into oblivion!!!!
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1:13 pm, Nov 6, 2009
Hippievet
I've asked this question previously in similar forums but never got a serious response. Maybe this time...

If you actually read the health care reform language in the various bills before congress, who, outside of the insurance companies, could be opposed?

The alternative is to continue escalating premiums, continued use of the ER by the uninsured, larger profit by the insurance companies, more exclusion based on pre-existing conditions, etc.

The argument against reform is almost always based on lies. Government take-over is not in the bill. Death panels are not in the bill. Government funded abortions are not in the bill. Tax increases are not in the bill, well, except for the very wealthy.

Those opposed to reform are either unable to read and comprehend or they believe the likes of Palin, Bauchmann and Bohner over the facts.

The only logical explanation is that those opposed to reform are being paid by the insurance industry because they are the only entity that would benefit from health care reforms demise. And if those opposed to reform are NOT being paid by the insurance industry - they're getting screwed.
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2:30 pm, Nov 6, 2009
crypto
To respond to an earlier post relating to the economics of the health care plan I have been blessed with a degree in such. The economics of this Pelosi nightmare are mostly hidden in the language . If she can get it through, the "triggers" included will change the entire face of the plan within one year of implementation. This plan, as it is now, resembles nothing that was originally presented to the american people. Furthermore this plan affects most everything that happens daily in this country. Properly manipulated the economics of this nation can be controlled through it's implementation. I don't know that this administration intends to misuse the plan for any purpose other than healthcare. But I do know that there are much better approaches to the problem of the uninsured than this plan presents. Contrary to the belief and presentations of some of you all of the contributors to the posting here are not dummies. Far from it. You would do well to critique yourselves.
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3:26 pm, Nov 6, 2009
Hippievet
@crypto,

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_healthcareproposals_ 20090912.html

Using the Wall Street Journal as a reference I know is confusing but for the sake of brevity I've included the synopsis of the proposals as of November 3.

Your self described "degree in such", considered, would you please elaborate on the specifics of your informed opinion? Where are the hidden economics? How will the "triggers" change the entire face of the plan within one year? How will reform affect most everything that happens daily? How can the economics of this nation be controlled through reforms implementation?

Further, what would you propose to control health care costs, insure the uninsured and do away with the use of "pre-existing conditions" as a reason for denial of claims?

I critique myself daily. I fully understand how the insurance industry works today and I have read three (3) of the proposals in their entirety. I don't any longer because by the time I read one it has changes. But I trust the opposition to delineate any changes that might be perceived as negatives. And, up until this point, the opposition only refers to interpretations of language I disagree with and in some cases have been proven to be faulty interpretations.

Please, enlighten me.

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5:55 pm, Nov 6, 2009
vortograph
Just when you though that the Republican party had already hit rock bottom, then comes along NY-23. When are these guys going to wake up? Where have all of the intelligent conservatives gone?
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2:56 pm, Nov 6, 2009
FatFreddy
Good question. Someone just wrote a book about that. Can't recall who. The only real fiscal conservatives I know of are the real Libertarians, but they are really just fooling themselves if they think any Republican, except maybe Ron Paul, is fiscally conservative. And Ron Paul has quite a bit of baggage. There are moderates in both parties. This is where people should focus. But unfortunately, the focus on moderates, by both parties, is mostly negative.
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3:59 pm, Nov 6, 2009
FatFreddy
Perhaps you should look at Gary Johnson from New Mexico.
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4:37 pm, Nov 6, 2009
RomeoHotel
Even by the not-too-high standards of TDB, this Batchelor article is astoundingly low. Merely stupid in the past, with this article he veers across the median to the lanes of the certifiably insane.

Just one example. Twenty thousand Americans responded to Bachman's call for people ("people" is a word Batchelor never uses, but instead calls the protestors "sorts" and other dehumanizing terms) to come to the House and buttonhole their representatives about one of the many different Democrat health care bills. He says the following statement by Bachman in her address to the crowd is "incoherent". It's not incoherent to anyone with an IQ above 70 and not delusionally psychotic. I challenge everyone here to read this statement and agree with Bachman that it is "incoherent":

"You came. And you came to your house. And you came for an emergency house call. Are they going to listen? Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, they're going to listen. It was Thomas Jefferson who said a revolution every now and then is a good thing. What do you think?"

"You came." Is that incoherent? Do you think a reasonable person could easily figure out who she meant by "You" and what she meant by "came"? I think a reasonable person could.

"And you came to your house." If the listener has discerned who she meant by "you" and "came", that just leaves "And", "to", and "your house". Can anyone here say that the meaning of those words, in part or in sum, are incoherent?

"And you came for an emergency house call." This was the eve of what was suppose to be an imminent House vote on a trillion dollar bill. (For some reason(s), the vote keeps getting delayed.) Would any reasonable person in the crowd have a bit of difficulty understanding what Bachman means here?

"Are they going to listen?" Apparently, Batchelor interprets this to mean "Is Batchelor going to listen?" and concludes, rightly so, that the answer is "No". But even that psychopathic misinterpretation of the statement doesn't make it incoherent.

"Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, they're going to listen." Again, even if she said, as it apparently sounds to Batchelor, "Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, Bachelor's going to listen", it's still not incoherent.

"It was Thomas Jefferson who said a revolution every now and then is a good thing." (Jefferson was praising Shay's Rebellion, a 1787 farmers revolt against high debt and taxes in Massachusetts, when he said, "God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.... What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion?") Again, where is the incoherence except in Batchelor's semantical reasoning?

"What do you think?" Ah, so it is in Bachman's final words that we may at last have found the source of Batchelor's angst. He thinks she asked, "What does Batchelor think?" and he answers "with incoherence".

All and all, TDB, this article reaches a new low.

P.S. You could at least teach Batchelor the difference between "vulgar" and "obscene". (Though asking him to distinguish "profane" would, I admit, be too much.)
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3:58 pm, Nov 6, 2009
stjam8
Bachman uses Thomas Jefferson quotes to stir people up to deny them the same health care plan she enjoys.
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4:34 pm, Nov 6, 2009
DeeAmbro
Capital police estimated the crown to be about 4,000. But Fake News lies to you, so their powerful owners and advertisers can deny you affordable health care and you believe it. Now that's just downright stupid and self-destructive. Let's not forget which morons got us into this hole we're in...the republicans. Why would we want to give them power again? It's insane.
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5:40 pm, Nov 6, 2009
mzkitti
It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums.

Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger.

These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return"

Sarah Robinson, Campaign for America's Future 8/7/09
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4:02 pm, Nov 6, 2009
RomeoHotel
With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy....

If you think that the GOP, with 40 Senators and 177 Representatives, can "hold up the ability for Democrats to govern this country" ... you MIGHT be a loonie leftie!

The real intraparty war in this country isn't where one party has a problem with ONE congressional candidate -- the real war is in the party that can't convince SCORES of its own party members in Congress to support its legislation!

The Democrats have split their own party and ... somehow in their severely demented minds ... it's all the Republicans' fault! It would be hilarious if not for the fact that these morons will be in power for at least 14 more months.
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5:40 pm, Nov 6, 2009
stjam8
The Center of Responsive Politics has a list of all the republicans and bluedog democrats who have received money from the insurance and pharmaceutical companes. Tell your legislators you what them to vote for H R 1826, fair Elections Act.
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6:30 pm, Nov 6, 2009
Hippievet
@Romeo

Like many other democrats I am frustrated by the inability of our party to "man-up" and pass single payer health care. Like many other democrats I'm concerned that the big tent includes some closet republicans. But your Foxworthy imitation (even with the disclaimer) does little to make the point you intended to make. Conservatives were responsible for a solid, 140 year stranglehold, republican house district going democratic.

The real intraparty war in this country is being waged in the republican party and you can make accusations and comparisons all you want but to my knowledge there hasn't been one house seat lost to the republicans because of any alleged, democratic, intraparty war.

Contrarily, blue dog democrats are, I repeat, ARE democrats.
Are conservatives republican?
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9:39 pm, Nov 6, 2009
mzkitti
After UnitedHealth Group paid fines of $1.4 billion for various frauds, they fired CEO William McGuire. McGuire took with him a golden parachute of $1.1 billion, the largest in the history of corporate America.

Stephen J. Hemsley, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, has made over $750 million in salary, bonuses, and other income in the last 4 years.

Ins. Co. & CEO With 2007 Total CEO Compensation:

* Aetna Ronald A. Williams: $23,045,834

* Cigna H. Edward Hanway: $25,839,777

* Coventry Dale B. Wolf : $14,869,823

* Health Net Jay M. Gellert: $3,686,230

* Humana Michael McCallister: $10,312,557

* U.Health Grp Stephen J. Hemsley: $13,164,529

* WellPoint Angela Braly (2007): $9,094,271

L. Glasscock (2006): $23,886,169

Ins. Co. & CEO With 2008 Total CEO Compensation:
* Aetna, Ronald A. Williams: $24,300,112

* Cigna, H. Edward Hanway: $12,236,740

* Coventry, Dale Wolf: $9,047,469

* Health Net, Jay Gellert: $4,425,355

* Humana, Michael McCallister: $4,764,309

* U. Health Group, Stephen J. Hemsley: $3,241,042
* Wellpoint, Angela Braly: $9,844,212
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4:07 pm, Nov 6, 2009
FatFreddy
That's amazing. I've been seeing a lot of Republicans bash AARP for its endorsement of health care reform. They say that they're in it for the money. But AARPs CEO only has a $1,000,000 salary. That's chicken feed compared to the numbers you posted.
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4:43 pm, Nov 6, 2009
RomeoHotel
Yes, and a government takeover of the health industry will certainly mean the end of these outrageous bonuses just like it did for the banking industry!

Um, wait a minute ... Nevermind.
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6:01 pm, Nov 6, 2009
mzkitti
MEDICAL WOES LEAD TO MORE BANKRUPTCIES
As recently as 1981, only 8% of families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem.

By contrast, a 2001 study found that illness or medical bills contributed to about half of bankruptcies.

And in 2007, 62.1% of all bankruptcies were caused by medical debt.

SOURCE: American Journal of Medicine study

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4:11 pm, Nov 6, 2009
mzkitti
Here's a statistic bound to stiffen the resolve of health care reformers: The number of yearly U.S. deaths linked to lack of health insurance is now thought to be nearly 45,000 -- about 2.5 times more than previous estimates seven years ago.

That means one person dies every 12 minutes. Why the jump? The study in the American Journal of Public Health points to an increase in the number of uninsured -- at least 46 million today -- and a fraying medical safety net.

The Harvard University-based researchers say uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts.

In 1993, that number was just 25 percent. "The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors and baseline health," says lead author Andrew Wilper, who worked at Harvard Medical School when the study was done. "We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes and heart disease -- but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications."

The party of NO.. foolish Republicans voting against their own best interests.. ranting and screaming in opposistion to reforming health care in this country.

Then again.. they have proven over and over they are really Stupid.
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4:16 pm, Nov 6, 2009
periscope
The Tea Baggers are suicidally stupid. They're being used by the Republican Party and are demonstrating on behalf of the health insurance companies that overcharge them, cherry pick them for coverage, and deny claims if the company can think up a "pre-existing condition."
These people are so stupid, they should be on suicide-watch.
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4:58 pm, Nov 6, 2009

Jobless Next Six Months

By John Batchelor on November 6, 2009 12:19 PM | 13 Comments

10% As Far As Washington Can See.

The WSJ New Hub, with the swift-reporting Kelly Evans (who joins me Sunday 8) and the ever witty and focused Berman and Newmark, conveys the financial and political gloom and doom (unless you gamble on the market rally year-end) results of the not surprising news that the jobless official rate has now moved above 10 % and will remain above 10% as far as Washington can see. "We knew it was going to happen eventually." "We're going to see 10 % unemployment probably the next six months." "This is a very clear indication that the Fed can stay on hold and stay where they are." "The actual labor numbers may be closer to stable." "The teenage unemployment rate, 27.6%." "The unbelievable productivity numbers that we got ..." "The stock market is driven by corporate profits. As far as corporate profits are concerned, productivity is what matters."

What's The Worst That Can Happen?

The first casualty may be the plan by Mrs. Pelosi to push the healthcare reform vote this weekend. Word arrives that POTUS has resked his visit to lobby on the Hill until Saturday, and that the vote is now postponed until Sunday 8. Not a strong hand signal from the Speaker's office, and the latest report from the Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, is that he does not have the magic 218 votes, even including the new Bill Owen vote from 23 NY. The worst that can happen with the 10% number is that everyone ditches the old script and starts yelling for rewrites from the White House. POTUS is departing for East Asia presently. The healthcare vote is for fuel. The Ft. Hood news is deepening the gloom at the White House. We can anticipate a lot of reporting on Hassan's background, contacts, family, computer, cell phone, colleagues, and then there is the fact that the suspect is alive, on a ventilator, and has yet to be interrogated or hire a lawyer. The early reports do not promise a clean prosecution of a deranged gunmen. This looks right now as if it may qualify for hate crime, certainly for political crime. Add the Hood problem to the GITMO problem, and there is another endless negative story to run parallel with the joblessnes. Teenaged unemployment at 27.6%, and that is the official number. The big city's and the modest suburbs must be gasping. The worst that can happen includes the fact that the worst hasn't started yet. Ten percent for another six months. The politicians are preparing their resumes to become lobbyists or barbers or some other service industry. It just became no fun to be a politician; and POTUS shows that, out of 208 Fridays in his term, this is may be one of the worst ten.

Ft. Hood Shooter WIA

By John Batchelor on November 5, 2009 11:41 PM | 86 Comments

First Three Reports.

The rolling news from Ft. Hood after 2 pm Eastern Time today was a flashback to the early days of the war with the jihadists when I would train myself not to accept the first reports. My saying to myself was "In war, the first three reports are wrong." Good example today because the sketchy early reports were of several dead, one shooter killed, two accomplices in firefights or at large. None of this stood up to the updates. As of now, the report is 12 KIA, 31 wounded, including the lone shooter. Among the wounded is the lone shooter who now becomes the mystery for the next wave of reports.

Major Malik Nadal Hassan.

The lone shooter is identified as an Army psychiatrist from Virginia, Major Malik Nadal Hassan. He is said to be 39, single, with two brothers, one of whom lives in Jerusalem. His parents emigrated from Jordan. The NYT spoke with his Imam in Virginia, who called Hassan "very serious about his religion." The Times also points to a website link on Scribld, and this information on it was written by "Nadal Hassan." It is a grim message, composed in stream of consciousness, with sloppy grammar and spelling. It is entirely about murder, self-murder, rationalization for murder, and a recognziably trite version of what Islam requires of a pious man. If this is Hassan, the attack at Ft. Hood is not the act of insane person as understand. Hassan knows the difference between right and wrong, between sin and virtue. Hassan, if this is the man who wrote this, know that he destroyed soldiers in order to protect others. Right and wrong. Hassan is alive. He will stand trial, if he lives. He will answer for his crimes. And he will speak of his rationalization for murder. Right now, with the investigation ongoing, it looks that he acted alone. Jihad. Anyone else? Email. Cellphones. Letters. Tapes. Suicide notes. All possible.

Commander-In-Chief

Note that the White House and the Congress handled the news carefully and with grace. POTUS made a heavy accurate statement about the tragedy. POTUS did go out of his way to call himself "commander-in-chief." It is a small detail to observe how the White House handles the facts of Hassan -- the Jordanian and Islam heritage, the notes about suicide and Allah and self-murder. If this is jihad, then it is correct to speak succintly and correctly. If this is jihad, the fighters of the Ummah are nodding in the cafes as they read and hear the news.

Westchester Tax Revolt

By John Batchelor on November 4, 2009 2:26 PM | 48 Comments

What If It's Not About Healthcare?

The smart people are speaking of a genuine tremble in the Democratic ranks after the election results from the down ticket races in the states of Virginia, New Jersey and even New York. A stunning reversal of fortune to be found in most plush, liberal, Democratic Hillary Clinton country of Westchester County, New York. The roles have over 500k registered voters, all of them devoted to HRC, the Yankees and Mets, the Jets and Giants, and the Democrats, and generally split 3 to 2 or 2 to 1 for the Democrats -- until last eve. A low turnout saw the long time County Executive Andy Spano, 73, tossed out by an unknown Rob Astorino, 42, (right in debate with Spano) who inherits a patronage system so reverentially crony Democrat that it will be years cleaning out the cousins and nephews of the Spano posse. Perhaps it was low turnout. The Democratic House can stare at the results in the gubernatorial Virginia and New Jersey and shrug, but Westchester stolen by the GOP? Stolen by a landslide of 58% to 42%?? No explaining it other than anti-incumbent rage that brought out the negatives and kept the regulars home. It was a vote against the Democrats, not a vote for the GOP, which doesn't much exist in Westchester. This is where Hollywood East and the UN elite and the Wall Street bankers live. Bill and Hillary Clinton vote here. To vote for a Republican youth? Ground movement. But what if it's not about the helter-skelter pace of healthcare reform (above)? What if it's the deficit and all those trillion dollar packages and the dead certainty that taxes must rise to pay for the debt? What if the general disdain for government and this leap into turmoil and anarchy has transformed itself into a tax revolt? Perhaps Mrs. Pelosi can get the subject of healthcare reform back on the table, perhaps Harry Reid can deliver the United States of Olympia Snowe; however both would be ignoring what Westchester represents, a complete negation of business as usual. It was a tax revolt. The Democrats stayed home. What will bring them out next year? Healthcare? No. Deficit? No. Joblessness at 9.5 projected? No. Taxes? No. Will there be a credible challenger with muscle to long time liberal Democrat Nita Lowey for the House?

Westchester's Astorino Landslide Close-Up Tax Revolt.

Examining the campaign promises of the newly elected Astorino, there may be a template for the coming assault on incumbency. Astorino is young, wiry, sympathetic, engaged, schoolmaster-like, but his promises are aggressive austerity to counteract what he claims has been 12 years of Spano spending (doubled the country spending) and taxes (raised taxes 60%.) Astorino claims that Westchester is "the highest taxed country in America." His brochure announces, "It's time for tax relief." Astorino promotes a library of cost-cutting that starts from the top. No more county executive car and driver and bodyguard. "Rob will drive himself to work." Cut the county executive's staff size by 10% on "Day One." Also, "Require all managers and appointed employees to contribute to their health care costs." Also "End travel junkets disguised as county 'business.'" And "Post online all County contracts, key documents, invoices, etc." Does look like a genuine tax and spend revolt. How does this fit into the healthcare debate and the cap'n'trade bill? Both bills are higher taxes for the people of Westchester. Is Nita Lowey reading though Astorino's hand-out? I found the circular tucked in an empty free newspaper dispenser. By itself, no fanfare, forgotten. Astorino had no vivid profile in the campaign. The Republican party in Westchester is theoretical. What Astorino pitched was blunt and routine: "Rob Astorino's 15 Point Tax Relief Plan." Will it work on a national scale? POTUS is committed to Pelosi's plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire. POTUS is committed to what Tim Geithner says is "getting revenues and expenditures more in line," which means higher taxes. The healthcare reform bill and the cap'n'trade can be treated as two giant tax increases. Tax cuts? Is that the magic potion to slow the Obama administration? Unknown. Drive yourself to work and be obliged as a public official to contribute to your healthcare costs and to post your budgets, bills, invoices online? Unknown. Modest, humble, Astorino commented modestly and humbly the day after: "I was surprised at the margin of victory. The message was very simple: Enough was enough. This was a referendum on property taxes."

ELECTION DAY LIBERTY

By John Batchelor on November 3, 2009 11:41 AM | 56 Comments

Entrail-Stirring.

The smooth and sanguine Gerald Seib, WSJ, succinctly argues that the elections in New Jersey, Virginia and New York 23rd are like entrails to be stirred for the portents of next year's Apocalype Lite between the GOP right-wing and the White House. All the spin is spun, all the smears are tossed, all the TV time and robo-calling is committed. What starts now with the poll closings is the repetitive gabbing by the parties and by the actors to make sense of what does not actually represent a coherent result. Three blue states are no measure of reality, and one of them an obsession for Washington because it is across the river and the traffic is terrible. New Jersey is everyone's favorite stale joke. Upstate New York, the North Country, is the most fun here just because of Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Fred Thompson, Joe Biden, Andrew Cumo and Jackston Stephens of the Club for Growth all claim to know where it is. Smile. Dede and Doug are headed to OprahFoxMaherRoseBordersAmazon, and good for them, a perfect new partisan couple, the Bickersons reborn.

What's the Worst that Can Happen?

The Republicans are looking for a break in the weather. The party is demoralized and decommissioned. Casting a telegenic man with a drawl named "Not So Old" McDonnell to please Northern Virginia for one term is not worthy of lengthy comment: eventually everyone who is not actually paranoid gets a chance to run for governor in Virginia. There are a few pockets of red in the North and West, but the blunt fact is that GOP is only credible inside the Old South and Texas, and those regions are untouched by what happens in Jersey to Goldman Sachs Corzine or the Ichabod Crane of the Adirondacks, Hoffman. What's the worst for the GOP? Losing Jersey after coming close will bite, not much, since the state is out of reach in a presidential year and there are no scandal-exposed incumbents to hoot about for next year. The national Democrats have so much under cultivation that their problems are those of the rich landowner -- how to protect almost everywhere all the time? Losing Virginia in an off year's off-year points to little more than that the Democratic party did not pull the minority vote without a spectacular minority candidate like POTUS on the ballot. Next year will present the same question of voter enthusaism without Obama on the ticket, but all Congress will be in motion with lots of heavy-lifting by POTUS and celebrity surrogates such as Oprah and Bill Clinton. What's the worst for the Democrats? A sweep will look to be significant, but it would be a mistake to treat it as weighty. Using a sweep to gain cash and interest for next year would be useful for both parties, so perhaps the insider's game at the White House, with Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod commanding the legions, will be to manufacture a crisis over Democratic losses just to take full advantage of the rallying next summer. Small cynical details to be filled in. A trusted blue informant writes me, "Republican sweep, false dawn." Unknown.

Bloomberg.

Deserving a note is that Mike Bloomberg is coasting to his third term. It is a non-story. New York City is in credible shape despite the crash, and the credit goes to Bloomberg and his ace police boss, Ray Kelly. Bloomberg doesn't believe in partisan politics. He has opinions, but mostly he just does a job in a low-key, zestful way. Credit to him. If results were enough, Bloomberg would be governor and headed to the White House in time. This is the age of posturing and blame-shifting, and Bloomberg is weak on the former and ignores the latter in public. Bloomberg has no private voice: all business, all the time.

War of the Worlds, The Early Years

By John Batchelor on November 2, 2009 3:26 PM | 25 Comments

Russian Defeat.

The facts of the end of the Cold War support the short and astonishing version that Ronald Reagan's imagination and style won out over American and Allied doubt and the sadistic and stupid Soviet empire. I learned from Martin and Annalise Anderson, Hoover, that Ronald Reagan carried his entire Cabinet and National Security team across the threshold and into the house of Star Wars just because he believed that Star Wars -- a theoretical extravagance against incoming ballistic missiles, never proved at the time -- would demoralize and defeat the Soviet hawks. Ronald Reagan was correct. The Soviets started to crumble when Stalin died. There was no coherent plan for succession, and the regime staggered through Khurshchev and hit the status quo ante of Patriotic War thugs with Brezhnev and Kosygin. Brezhnev's slow, ignorant death left the state to the KGB, which shoved in its grotesque apparatchik Andropov, who prompltly died of kidney failure and ignorance. Reagan's presidency confronted Andropov's sinister paranoia (a thrilling version of this tension in David Hoffman's "Dead Hand)", a state so rotten and blind that the senior apparatus convinced itself that Reagan was going to launch a first strike and piously prepared for Armageddon for the nomenklatura. Chernenko inherited a failed state, and then Gorbachev was handed the keys to an empty state. Reagan challenged the ill-educated Gorbachev to give up his nukes at Iceland. Star Wars overwhelmed the Soviets as a threat they could not to counter. One year after Iceland, Ronald Reagan spoke at the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Wall, delivering the ringing 20th Century verdict on the Soviet novelty, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" One year later, Gorbachev tore down the Soviet Empire by shaking Reagan's hand in Moscow and standing idle, in 1989, while the client states abandoned Moscow in a rush of resentment, the clients collapsing from the top as the Soviets would not send troops to prop up the hollow regimes -- Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Caucuses and the Stans and then Ukraine all quitting in a helter-skelter of drunken nihilism. Iceland beat the Soviets. Star Wars beat the Soviets. Reagan beat the Soviets. Berlin beat the Soviets. The War of the Worlds, the early years, ended with American World success and Russian World dejection.

Twenty Years Later.

Ronald Reagan's speech is a critical moment in the old war of the worlds, yet it has no place or utility in the new war of the worlds. The defeated Soviet Union is a museum piece that is rarely discussed outside of the academies. The ambitious Russia is an energy superpower that now commands attention and financial obedience in Western Europe, especially Berlin, and also spans Asia as a military superpower. Russia is master of the energy supply to the EU and that means there is no Euro unless Russia continues to deliver. At the same time, Russia wants investment from Europe and Asia, and right now has started bargaining for investors without strings, such as demands for transparency. There is a new Russia that is fresh and savvy, called the civiliki, and it aims to ease out the old and clumsy KGB crowd that came in with Putin, called the siloviki. Medvedev is the center of civiliki, but the brains of the operation is said to be Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. Long struggle to follow, the uniforms and spooks and thugs vs the technocrats and managed oligarchs. What this means for the US is that the Obama administration is not well positioned to deal with the strength and aggression of Moscow. National Security Adviser Jim Jones was in Moscow last week, negotiating about sanctions and Iran. He played a weak hand. Moscow knows that Tehran has nukes. Moscow wants Tehran to remain a wedge between the Stans and the defeatist jihadist luddites of the Gulf. Moscow also wants to grow to outshine the United States in the 21st Century. In sum, the war of the worlds, the later years, is now rejoined, and Moscow has the advantage of geography and resources and alliances. The Berlin Wall is a patriotic exhibit. Berlin and Moscow are a sturdy alliance. Ronald Reagan freed the people of Eastern Europe and the Caucuses who are now all beholden to the energy pipelines from Moscow. Washington is in the hands of a young and poorly foreign policy schooled team that does not look to regard Moscow as a potent adversary. Leslie Gelb, foreign policy wiseman, judges POTUS as an inexperienced actor who "hasn't done worse than Bush, but who hasn't accomplished much either." Gelb is arguing about Afghanistan, Iraq and the Ummah. My eye fixes on Moscow. I was trained to confront the Russians. I see them now as sophisticated and innovative adversaries and also as very useful comrades in the struggle with the Devils. "There is the right way, the wrong way, and the Russian way," is the proverb. Washington would do well to go along the Russian way in Europe, in the Middle East, in Central Asia. America needs an enforcer, at least someone who can wield a club and guard a pipleline, No evidence so far that Washington is ready to ally with Moscow, as in, enemy of my enemy is not my enemy. How long till the Obama administration comprehends that Moscow is a virile threat unless and until it is regarded with respect and cooperation? Unknown.

Limbaugh Goes Afghanistan

By John Batchelor on November 1, 2009 2:50 PM | 38 Comments

Fox Agitprop Perfection.

Fox's resident pompous lite news-reading anchor Chris Wallace, son of pompous pop Mike Wallace, travels to Palm Beach and what appears the Limbaugh de Medici manque mansion to chat with Rush Limbaugh on his diet, himself, the weather, himself, and also the election and Afghanistan. No surprises but a deal of iconoclastic joy when an archly casual Limbaugh, wearing loafers but no socks, leaps into declaring that POTUS "doesn't care about Afghanistan." Son of Mike Wallace is non-plussed. Recall, this is TV; there are no surprises, just a script. Witness the file film on Afghanistan to illustrate the surprise. Limbaugh proceeds to rationalize his tritness. None of this is debatable, since it is not news that Limbaugh needs attention and the only avenue he has, from his Palm Beach hang-out, is to continue ad hominem on Barrack Obama. The formula is routine. It works.

Why Now Afghanistan?

Limbaugh and FNC are momentarily out of new scripts, so they are going over what worked last summer. Until the election Tuesday, there are no new stories, just loops of the banter and shibboleths and agitprop of the campaigns. Limbaugh goes shopping in Afghanistan, a subject he looks at entirely from the point of view of a burlesque act regard Ike's decisions on Korea, that is, always asking the question, "What's in it for my act?" What is in Afghanistan for Limbaugh is not much. He can score the same debating point with a buffet table of subject lines. "...doesn't care about me, my diet, my radio show or even the 57 states of unemployment," would all suit the performance. I mention the Limbaugh act on Afghanistan today just because this is a new low for the right-wing of the Republican party. There is no more a policy on Afghanistan in the GOP than there is in the White House. George Bush ignored Afghanistan for six years while he labored to buy off Iraq with cash and muscle. The success in Iraq is a credit to the US military and the facts of major powers in Iraq, the Arab Shias and the Kurds. Kabul today is a powderkeg. The Taliban has determined to murder the foreigners with belts and VBIED. This is a nightmare of Pashtun savagery and Wahhabist fantasy. There is no best solution; there is management. The jihadists worldwide are sitting around waiting to win in Afghanistan in order to launch their schemes elsewhere. Pakistan cannot survive a loss in Kabul, nor can several broken capitals in Africa and Asia. Limbaugh? He speaks for his diet and his interior decorator (if it is his Palm Beach House) with more caution than he speaks about the fate of the Afghans and the genuinely heroic ISAF and UN forces now at war with the Taliban. Fox? Doing its job, always ready for its close-up, always DeMille Lite.

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