By John Batchelor on December 31, 2009 12:40 AM
|10 Comments
Solomon Golfing.
Richard Clarke appears on GMA to launch a dart at the two targets that Rahm Emanuel has picked for blame and shame in order to explain the "failure" of Abdulmutallab. The contestants begin with Dennis Blair, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center; and the fall-back fall-guy is the CIA collectively. The White House messaging unit is till spinning fast and so this is not a settled tactic. POTUS aims to appear Solomonic in his deliberations and decisions (and golf obsession), and the report is said to be released within the next twelve hours for publication on Thursday. The White House is on all systems alert, at Defcon 3, with Rahm Emanuel working the phones to the Hill chairs and the Oahu White House. Joe Lieberman and Bennie Thomspon are the two chairs of Homeland on the Hill and the two who will matter most for the upcoming hearings. What is enough sacrifice for Lieberman and Thompson. Clarke here is leaning toward Blair. Odds in London parlors? Spend more time with the family? Shopping his resume with Xe?
Yemen.
Unanswered questions remain: What does the Obama administration know about the Yemen terror camps and when did it know it? What did the Obama team inherit from the Bush team and what has been done with the information on Yemen? Is Yemen the locus of what Al Q has become, (a much wider and looser enterprise called the International Front for Combatting the Crusaders and the Jews)? (Yes.) Does the White House believe the December 25 attack was in reaction to the December 17 and 24 cruise missile strikes on Yemen? Who is running Yemen? Does it suit Riyadh to dump its miscreants on Yemen? Does it suit Sana'a to dumps its miscreants on Hatharmouth? Does the Obama administration accede to this Devil's deal? Does POTUS make a speech about Yemen? How long until the Marines are in Yemen? What connection between Sana'a and the Houthis rebellion in the north which is a proxy war between Tehran and Riyadh? And more.
By John Batchelor on December 30, 2009 12:04 AM
|12 Comments
TIDE Troubles.
Abdulmutallab's attack scored another series of hits this news cycle as two facts emerged that make the Christmas day event into a political battlefield. One or two of the GITMO detainees who were released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 are now reported to have assumed command authority of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that likely launched the Abdulmutallab plot. Also, news arrives and looks to be confirmed that some agents of the CIA discussed Abdulmutallab with his father, the Nigerian banker and former minister of state, on November 19, 2009. The details are spare. POTUS seems to have hurried out a statement from his Hawaiian vacation address that the Obama administration believes there has been a "catastrophic failure" by intelligence organizations. We do not yet know if the CIA ascertained information was passed on to the NCTC (National Counter Terrorism Center, commanded by Dennis Blair); nor do we know if the NTCT connected this CIA report to the Visa office at State or to the NAtional Security Council (the White House). It looks as if the information stayed at the NCTC until after the December 25 attack. We also do not know how the fact that Abdulmutullab was on the TIDE list of 550,000 names connected to the fact that he had been denied a UK Visa in May, 2009. The summary from my professionals this news cycle is that what we do not know of this case far outweighs what we do know. Late news is that Abdulmuttalab is a past president of the Islamic Society of the University College London (right, a lecture series organized by Abdulmutallab in January 2007). Three previous presidents are associated with terrorism. One is awaiting retrial on charges of trying to blow up airliners in 2006. Two others have been convicted of terrorism. More and more new coming. The little rich kid has been busy, and now he is the biggest problem the Obama administration can imagine for the New Year.
POTUS, There is a Problem.
The political landscape just shifted to the GOP favor. Gone is the healthcare brouhaha in the Senate. Gone is the cap and trade utopia. Gone too is the swoon over the deficit spending. This weekend news reporting and Sunday shows, the first of the New Year, will be dominated by national security and the White House spin machine. John McCain and Lindsay Graham are calling for the GITMO closing order to be suspended and the GITMO detainees to be left in place. Peter King is demanding that Mutallab be tried in a military tribunal and not in Federal Court with laywers and Miranda rights. The POTUS statement late in the news cycle is flimsy, defensive, alarming; it invites trouble, dissent, panic and a major congressional investigation led by Joe Lieberman. The White House messaging unit now goes to Defcon 3. The GOP has its best opportunity to penetrate the media screen since the August Tea Parties. This is no longer a simple counter-terror tale of Al Q in action. This is major league American partisanship to start an election year in which the majority party on the Hill was already vulnerable on jobs and spending. POTUS and his team will aim to spread the blame to the Bush administration. It will not work. How many days has the White House had the CIA news? POTUS demands a report by Thursday 31 January. Happy New Year, Eric Holder and Leon Penetta and Janet Napolitano. Resignations drafted?
JSOC
Mention that source tells me that JSOC has been planning operations against the Yemen terror camps since at least last summer, and that the delay was not because JSOC was not ready to launch. Am careful to mention that this detail is not in the narrative yet. It will be soon if and when the White House messaging unit (Rahm Emanuel, Denis McDonough) continues to set up the CIA for under the bus on Abdulmuttalab.
By John Batchelor on December 29, 2009 12:26 AM
|23 Comments
Uninformed White House.
Janet Napolitano's performance on the Sunday shows was frightful enough to require her to perform a do-over on the Monday morning shows where she reversed her "system worked" statement. Meanwhile POTUS has delayed his statement until today. The explanation from the White House message team is that POTUS believed that any immediate comment would elevate the status of the attack and invite copycats. This spin is bottomlessly uninformed and the product of a political brain trust that does not heed what we have learned after two decades at war with Al Q and its state sponsors. In war, the first three reports are wrong. Therefore the White House is wise to assume the very worst about the incident and to respond gravely. POTUS was silent. Also, B Raman reasoned to me Sunday 27 that it is wise to assume that all terror attacks launched against the US homeland are authored and directed by the Al Q high command now camped in North Waziristan. This was an Al Q attack on the US national security on Christmas Day over the city that has more Moslems than any other in the USA. In a plane loaded with tourists and Americans on holiday adventures, therefore maximizing the terror multiple worldwide. Also, they used the conduit of one of the best airports in the EU, making clear that nothing that has been constructed since 9/11 could prevent the bomb and bomber getting to the delivery point. Al Q has a literary streak. Neat, cunning, bloody-minded package for the holidays. POTUS statement late in the day was painted by his usual passive and vague language, as if he is faking a brief to a client: Memo to POTUS, you are trying to kill Al Q in North Wazristan, and that crowd just tried to splash people all over Detroit. The important names are Bin Laden and Al Zawahiri, not "those."
"Those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the U.S. will do more than to simply strengthen our defenses."
Long Time Plan.
B. Raman also reasons that this operation was a long time plan that was started at least as early as mid 2008 when Abdulmutallab acquired his US Visa at the US embassy in London. Once the bomber had the entry point in hand, he was then moved to Yemen for training (indoctrination, preaching). The date chosen for the attack was the final element of many steps and many people preparing the way. The scouting with videotaping, the intelligence gathering, the bomb builder, the and the facts so far point to a decision to launch prior to December 24. It is not far-fetched to reason that the strike has a follow-on operation with a completely different team. There is reporting that two of the Al Q ops who handled Abdulmutallab in Yemen were released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 where they were entered into an art therapy session for rehabilitation and were then released. (You cannot make this stuff up.)
Lagos, Nigeria
Spoke to Vincent Nwanma, Bloomberg, at Lagos, who reports that the Abdulmutallab story has been big new in Nigeria since the first day because Muttallab's father is a major financial figure and this is a very prominent family. The family is offering cooperation, including traveling to Detroit.
By John Batchelor on December 28, 2009 12:22 AM
|5 Comments
Earthquake territory.
Calculated Risk's star Jim the Realtor is ready for California housing bonanza in 2010, and starts the post gloomy Christmas with a fairy tale of wealth untold. His pal the Flipper offers the above cliffside Pacific house at $2.7 million. (Warning: this is San Diego County. The San Andreas fault is a determined animal. Living on a cliff in earthquake territory is thrilling, cocky, ruminative and surprisingly like shopping for a pre-grave: all cheerful irony.) The story behind this extravaganza is that WAMU/Chase foreclosed on a mortgage worth $3.7 million last year and then made a decision to get the property off the books. How? At a trustee sale on the courthouse steps, WAMU/Chase offering the house at $1.7 million. The flipper paid cash and out the house back on sale at a million dollar mark-up. Jim says this smartie pants has flipped 271 houses this last year, at an average profit of $250k per property. The banks now get to re-mortgage the property at $2.7 plus fees, and the bankers get their bonuses out of their profit. No one gets punished for the loss except the genius who lost his job, house and bonus, and except the US taxpayers who absorbed this tomfoolery.
Pacific Cliff-Diving Living.
The puzzle is why this cliff-diving house begins the new year a hot property. Is it because it faces East Asia? Because the last days of Pompeii enjoyed a great view of Vesuvius? The predictions for 2010 are chaotic and paradoxical. All currencies will decline? Silver and gold will climb? Go long cement and steel because China is train crazy? Short GS? Long bonds? Jobless drift except the hiring in Ireland and Eastern Europe? Health insurance stocks in a new tulip-like bubble? AAPL to $400/share? And then there is the political landscape. The markets must and will discount the GOP wave as soon as March-June. The illusion of Republican challenge to the Democratic majorities will entertain the optimists. The overhang of badly built housing in poor job regions that are without means of recovery in high tax states (California) will darken part of the sky indefinitely. What vocation finds a bargain in $2.7 million for a cliffside postage stamp over a vastly dull looking ocean? A PIMCO sales trainee?
By John Batchelor on December 27, 2009 12:22 AM
|33 Comments
Burn Ward.
Spoke Neal Boudette, WSJ, Detroit Bureau Chief, re the detention and arraignment of the Flight 253 suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab. Earlier today, Neal Boudette called at the Ann Arbor hospital where the suspect is being held, in the burn ward. To some surprise, Neal Boudette was able to walk all the way into the ward and to the suspect's room. He reports the man was lying motionless in a darkened room, his head turned away from the door. No IV, no tent for burns. At that point, a Federal agent, likely FBI, asked Neal Boudette to leave the area. Later, a Federal judge arrived at the room and an AP and local TV reporters were invited to witness the arraignment. Suspect was charged with Federal crimes. Suspect was seated at the araignment, with a blanket over his lower body. Not sedated or unable to respond. Judge asked suspect if he understood the proceedings and the suspect answered "Yes." Judge asked if the suspect had money to hire an attorney, and the suspect answered he had "no funds." Suspect was arraigned in the hospital and is expected to remain in hospital at least another day.
Airport Security Little Changed So Far.
Later Saturday 26, Douglas Laird, retired from Northwest Airline security director, and Larry Johnson, No Quarter, explained that no airport security extant is correct to apprehend what is presumed to be the mode used by the suspect at Amsterdam's airport, where the suspect passed through three first-rate screenings. What would defeat the mode is a body scan machine, which are not in use. Possibly a full body pat down, but not necessarily. The body scan is not practical because of cost per machine (more than $250k each); and the full pat down is not practical because of time, unless you also permit profiling. In sum, the suspect defeated all the screens between Lagos, Nigeria and wheels down at Detroit airport. Later, Jeff Bliss, BlissIndex.com, reported that there was little change in security at several major California airports, SFO, Oakland, LAX, San Diego. Perhaps the TSA is catching up on the reports. Jeff Bliss did mention the report that passengers coming from overseas are reporting long lines boarding US bound aircraft. Do they know that the delays do not solve the threat? Only a full body scan can solve it, or individual full pat downs. Nothing else.
By John Batchelor on December 26, 2009 12:19 AM
|23 Comments
Richard Reid Returns from Doom.
Major news spin alert for the Obama administration on Christmas Day. Watching for the Homeland Security Team to do full pressers on Saturday 26, and for HomeSec Napolitano to get in front of the camera and repeat how the investiagtion is ongoing. The facts are scrambled and generally useless at this point. A man. Perhaps Nigerian, perhaps anything. Inbound to USA on Delta/Northwest Flight 253, an Airbus 330 with reported 278 passengers. Why the first reports of firecrackers? Anecdotes from other passengers to say that the suspect was tackled. Just like Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber of 2001. The Obama team now faced with walking backward the man's route, what airports and when, who passed him through, how he was connected to an inbound USA flight? Already there is word of increased airport security immediately, suggesting additional copy-cat attacks. You will recall that Richard Reid was sentenced to life in prison in March 2003, and that he swore eternal allegiance to Bin Laden at the time. Where does Mr. Delta Detroit go now? Not GITMO South. Not GITMO North. Federal detention in Detroit forever? We need lots of information. I will be speaking much of this incident on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 with my professionals. Everything about the suspect, said to be 23-year-old Nigerian Abdul Mutallad (or Abdulmutallab), is critical to determine, confirm and walk backwards. Especially the explosives, especially what the suspect says in the first interrogations. So far from frightening the suspect, it is useful to make him comfortable forever. What he knows is real time useful intelligence. Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, told me Wednesday 23 that the Predators and Reapers have been active in North Waziritstan since last summer because of a general sense that Al Q was on a major op prep. A Christmas Day strike on Delta inbound would have been major.
Unlucky POTUS.
Detroit terror suspect steps all over the healthcare story and wrecks the Obama Hawaii retreat. Because there are so few stories, the attack on the Pope and the Detroit terror (and now Charlie Sheen busted in Aspen) will grow and grow. The terror story trumps all others because all the vacationers must now fly home through brutal security. TSA ("Thousands Standing Around" is what Jeff Bliss reminds it is called) will now conduct a major exercise in reality airport security. With POTUS out of the White House, can White House Oahu handle the requests? Can Janet Napolitano handle the press demands in DC? Consider the scale of what we don't know, and that the Sunday morning shows may now toss aside healthcare and go with wall to wall Shoe Bomber II. POTUS is unlucky. Does this help or hurt the polling on national security. The guy was nabbed by what looks like luck, a repeat of the Millennium Bomber grab in 1999. The FBI is now saying the suspect suffered severe burns on his leg, not life-threatening. Get him a lawyer, start the interrogation with flattery and watch him chat. Lots of heroes, lots to learn:
'Flight passenger Syed Jafry, a U.S. citizen who had flown from the United Arab Emirates, said he was seated three rows behind when he saw a glow and smelled smoke. He said, "A young man behind me jumped on him (the suspect)."'
By John Batchelor on December 25, 2009 12:15 AM
|8 Comments
Coke Generation.
The new favorite because witty climate website, Watt's Up With That?, features the most strangely goofy and manipulative of Coca-Cola commercialsl, a drama of snow-sledding polar bears who overheat and need a sip of cool pop. Assume the Coke ad buy anticipated Copenhagen but not the crankiness, vagueness and flop of the POTUS Obama visit and last-moment bluster and overbearing elitism. Watt's Up is the front line just now in the investigation of the climate change warmists and their ten-year or more campaign to collude and suppress challengers to their data. Recently, Watt's Up featured the controversy of a warmist censor named William Connolley who obsessively revises Wiki entries to expunge any mention of doubt or inconsistency in the warmist theory. The center of the battle is to gain access to the raw data that is said to have produced the now famous and controversial "hockey stick" of warming since approximately 1950 and to reexamine the statistical analysis and representations. James Hansen is the leading American advocate of the warmist theory (the so-called "settled science"). Hansen now publishes a defense of his arguments and adds a peculiar "summary," in which he demonstrates puzzling persecution thoughts and even petty self-pity. We can look forward to the results of what Hanses says are 2500 FOIA inquiries for his data and e-mails. The lurid "taken out of context" moments will be like zesty arias to the polar bears swigging Pepsi:
The recent "success" of climate contrarians in using the pirated East Anglia e-mails to cast doubt on the reality of global warming* seems to have energized other deniers. I am now inundated with broad FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for my correspondence, with substantial impact on my time and on others in my office. I believe these to be fishing expeditions, aimed at finding some statement(s), likely to be taken out of context, which they would attempt to use to discredit climate science.
There are lessons from our experience about care that must be taken with data before it is made publicly available. But there is too much interesting science to be done to allow intimidation tactics to reduce our scientific drive and output. We can take a lesson from my 5- year-old grandson who boldly says "I don't quit, because I have never-give-up fighting spirit!"
By John Batchelor on December 24, 2009 12:14 AM
|7 Comments
"Back to the Drawing Board."
Spoke Thaddeus McCotter, 11th Michigan (R) re the surprise decision for Parker Griffith of Alabama to move from the Democratic caucus to the Republican caucus, and he was unhesitating in saying this is a big deal and a profound new source of energy. Also intriguing was late word that Chris Carney, 10th Pennsylvania was in consultation with John McCain and other Republicans to switch from Democratic to Republican in reaction to the overbearing management of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. I mentioned to the congressman, a member of the House GOP leadership, that John Fund had sent me a note about Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, chair of the House Oversight Committee, and a significant Pelosi lieutenant, who is quoted saying that the Harry Reid healthcare plan does not work with the House bill and that it is time "to go back to the drawing board." Finally we spoke of the reapportionment projections for the next census in 2010 that favor the GOP in Texas and disfavor the Democrats in New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio.
Supreme Court.
Also significant is that University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein told me Wednesday 23 that he expects the Harry Reid bill, when jammed together with the Nancy Pelosi bill, to face mighty challnge in the courts on the bais of past Supreme Court decisions about utilities and government interference in the right to a return on investment. The important case is the 1989 Duquesne Light vs. Barasch. What I learned is that it is not constitutional to legislate investors out of a return on the basis of stealth price controls and conflicting, destructive mandates. The rush to pass this stew of paradoxes and inventions has turned the Senate into a bad cooking class. The American voters watch and do not approve. POTUS now claims he will get involved in selling the concoction. More recklessly, Bob Casey and other Democratic senators claim they will hold town halls about the bill in the intervening holiday. This promises to be a PR meltdown not unlike Al Gore's delusion of the North Pole..
By John Batchelor on December 22, 2009 6:10 PM
|5 Comments
Max Heated.
Why is Max Baucus again struggling with his temper on the floor of the Senate during the second round of filibuster palaver between the GOP and the 60-vote-armed Senate? Why is Max heated? What does the GOP have to do with getting the bill sent from the Senate to the conference in January? This is entirely a Democratic operation. They have the votes. There was one GOP vote in the House, from a newbie from Louisiana who had no part in the writing or passing of the bill (220th vote). All the pork, all the cash and promises in the bill, are for the Democrats. The $1 trillion package favors everything the Democrats have planned and organized these last decades of being in the minority. Also, there is room for plums for the troubled pols such as Chris Dodd of Connecticut. John Fund, WSJ, was speaking Tuesday 22 in re: the newly discovered $100 million in the bill that may be for Dodd - only for a medical school of his choice. Is Baucus exercised because the GOP is negative, or because the media coverage, run by bored and cranky youths still required to file on the Senate, has started running hostile pieces about the scale of the pork? Or is it because something unattractive and unexpected has happened in the House and the whole Dem operation is cranky on Christmas cookies and too little sleep?
What Obtains 2010?
It is strange that Baucus mentions the GOP tactics of non-interference in terms of the 2010 election. The polls hint at a wave sweeping aside the Democratic majorities. The news of the day in DC is the defection of Democratic House member Parker Griffith of Alabama to the GOP -- from a district that has been Democratic since Reconstruction. This translates into much fretful noise for Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer as they face a creative challenge in the January conference with Senate Dems on the healthcare sausages. It also means that, according to Charlie Cook's measure, the Democratic prospect for 2010 is down to 217. Mrs. Pelosi is now in doubt -- officially. Best case for Mrs. Pelosi? What happens if the House is a tie? Remind that the Speaker does not have to be a member of the House. Nominees? Jay Leno?
"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man."
By John Batchelor on December 22, 2009 12:58 AM
|8 Comments
Mandates Forever.
Strikingly hasty and insincere remarks (above) by POTUS on the most preliminary and vaguest of healthcare moves by half of the story on the Hill. POTUS says, "... at a price they can afford ..." This is a selling point? We are to examine all 2,733 pages on the Harry Reid-concocted stew of mandates and fixes and evasions in the bill and conclude that it makes healthcare available to small businesses and the uninsured "at a price they can afford"? No, it does not. It mandates that everyone breathing must purchase healthcare or else. Even the unemployed, even the self-employed, even the indifferent. Or else. Mandates forever. More, the bill is not a whole animal. It is a piece of a creature. The other piece of the creature is in the House, and that aspect contains some mighty potent threats about costs and taxes. What both sides of the creature do represent is higher taxes and higher taxes, and those taxes will begin well before anyone whose job was saved by the Stimulus package can line up in a clinic to receive mandated healthcare from collectivized workers about to unionize and strike for higher wages and shorter hours. What "at a price they can afford" means is that you can afford it if you can find it. Like Canada, shortages, rationing and blackmarketeering are the future under the creature called reform. (Also handouts: this bill can be described as an insurance company bail-out.)
Reid-Pelosi Creature.
The lone delusion Rahm Emanuel offers to explain the negatives on the healthcare fiasco is to say that the public will suddenly wake up and approve of the Obama administration again in such numbers that the POTUS rating climbs back to 60%. This is a genuine landmark delusion, and it is passed on by the White House's dutiful scribe, Ben Smith, at Politico. The scale of the prediction tells a deal about the scale of the fear for 2010 in the White House. Polling shows that the Independents oppose the healthcare bill by 57%. This will not improve as we go through conference in January and watch the Democrats alone in the room knit together the Senate and House bill. This is government by one-party fiat. It resembles a dictatorship in uncomfortable ways. John Avlon, DailyBeast.com, told me Sunday 20 that the Indies reject single-party government and very much favor balance and compromise. Only POTUS the other day finds compromise in a bill that is written by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, respectively, and passed by purchasing votes from Democrats in Red States who are fretting about their retirements (such as Ben Nelson of Nebraska).
By John Batchelor on December 21, 2009 12:06 AM
|6 Comments
President Wage and Price Control.
At long last the White Houses official message unit brainiac, David Axelrod, throws out all the noise about healthcare and arrives at the core of the Obama adminisration's ambitions, which are long understood as wage and price controls. The Obama team dislikes "excessive" earnings, profits, winnings, treasures. The Obama team is down to censorship and scolding. It is reduced to the simple formula of "thou shalt not ..." Scolds, busybodies, grinches, whiners and carpers, scolds and enviers. Most decidedly not levellers -- that is a wrong-footed interpretation. No socialism in Ax's eyes, not even a nod to ideology. Ax is a class warfare commander. Ax practices the politics of cheap resentment. Listen to the easy, castigating, bench-warrant tone, "... this bill for the first time prohibits insurance companies from spending excessive amounts on CEO salaries, on administrative costs, on shareholder profits ..." The healthcare bill that the Senate now passes with the purchased votes of a few shrewd senators is not much about cutting costs for consumers; it is about cutting salaries and profits of the insurers, that is, making them profitless to unprofitable, which is an offbeat way of going about nationalizing. The public option becomes the default option when all the other options are ugly heaps. Profits are the only reason anyone would form an insurance combine. Profits gone, competition to the Feds is also gone. Shrewd, dreamy, crude, very funky.
Obama, the Faux Scold.
The lack of education, the lack of family tradition, the aimless, unclear history, the lack of friends and colleagues, the solitary poker-player at Springfield, the hen-pecked husband and the slighted, ignored local pol, all these roles collide in POTUS's unusual sense of proportion. POTUS was most of the way to a scold when he arrived at the Oval Office. Scolding is usually the condition of men and women who are overtasked and overpowered at the same time. Scolding is lazy aggression. Is the White House a team of pampered slackers? Maybe. Charlie Gasparino writes me his thinking on the big TARP banker pow-wow of Monday 21, when Mack, Blankfein and Pandit/Parsons all missed the meeting because of foggy airports (they said). Gasparino's interpretation is that the whole exercise was a sham of a sham scold. POTUS called the bankers "fat cats." Then POTUS called the bankers to his cabinet room. What was not revealed was that the bankers had been sent the questions the week before by Ax/Rahm. And that the TV scolding was a scripted burlesque turn. The three bankers who did not show were demonstrating that the meeting was not critical. Those bankers showed up in October 2008 in Hank Paulson's office at Treasury when he forced them to take the money for TARP. Showed up in person with chains on their wrists and sackcloth and shoes in the limos. In December 2009, no need to show up. Why? Because POTUS is a faux scold is one explanation, and the bankers know that he is not all that scary. Shed TARP and they are back to making profits on the carry-trade that drives banking (borrow at 0.25 and lend at 4-5%). Is it okay that POTUS is faux? Does this make Ax (above) genuine? Nope. Ax is a faux scold adviser. He doesn't much mean it either except to attract voters to his candidates. The rich don't fret faux scolds at class war; the rich get worried only when the carry trade (or coupon-clipping) gets cut back.
By John Batchelor on December 20, 2009 12:51 AM
|5 Comments
Unusual Hill Compromise.
The melodrama in Washington is the snowstorm, because the opera that is the Democratic caucus in the Senate now moves toward a triumphant vote on healthcare reform by Christmas Eve 2009. This success for Harry Reid is what POTUS Obama calls the result of "compromise." The word "compromise" is a novel interpretation of the First Article of the Constitution's legislative branch's working relationships. There was no majority Democratic party compromise with the minority party GOP. There was modest agreement only within the Democratic party. If this bill is compromise, what would a partisan bill look like? If this bill is compromise, what price republic? This is a product of power politics. Grant one party 60 votes in the Senate and a strong majority in the House, and it will make a desert and call it a compromise. And then smile. The snowstorm is all that remains to get between the White House, Harry Reid and the healthcare bill filibusters. debate and vote. Santa brings POTUS a present. Not a bill to sign. Not even a bill anyone has read. But a bill that can be pushed into chambers to weld together with the House bill in order to prepare for big new showdowns by SOTU.
Euro Storms.
Reporting from Copenhagen and Paris via Coral Davenport, CQ, and Marc Marano, ClimateDepot.com, paints the last hours of the Copenhagen Climate Summit as frantic, unscripted, spontaneous, sleepless, gloomy, argumentative, vague and usefully aimless. What was on display was the UN's governance system, which failed to realize anything written or substantive. What failed was the summit's ambition of reaching agreement on emissions targets, temperature range, money from the rich to the poor, and most of all on a protocol that will permit verification and transparency between states. The pow-wow among five states that came late in the day, Friday 18, produced no binding result, and even what it produced was rejected by the assembly (Venezuela and Sudan voted "nyet"). The UN agreed to take "note" of the five states' chit-chat. And what did POTUS Obama produce when he suddenly arrived in a side room at COP 15 to find China's Wen and Brazil's Lula South Africa's Zuma? Nothing to be certain. POTUS called it "meaningful" after three hours of chat. Coral Davenport reports that when POTUS arrived there was no chair for him. Perhaps he wasn't invited? Coral Davenport reports that POTUS was welcomed by the others -- and that POTUS said, "I want to sit next to my friend, President Lula." This put POTUS opposite Premier Wen, as you can see from the still shot. Mrs. Clinton sat to POTUS's left and opposite Wen's translator. Was the meeting recorded? Unknown. What was the only issue? China refused transparency. POTUS argued. China listened. India sat silent? Zuma was silent? (Why was South Africa a player -- a beggarly kleptocracy that endorses China in Africa?) Much confusion. (Why were not the EU and Japan present? Russia? The three contributors to the climate pot are the US, EU, and Japan.) POTUS left with language that was a misdemeanor of vagueness. The states agree to "international consultation and analysis." This was momentarily argued to be China relenting to verification. The BBC's Richard Black summarized the EU and Europeans opinion of the event, called it "No Hopenhagen." The Climate Summit collapsed just like the Tower of Babel. Many tongues, no meaning. Ban-Ki Moon condemned the whole show to laughter when he declared the chaos of promises was "an essential beginning." Those who declared "show me the money" dined on cheap talk. Those who declared "transparency" fell mute. Those who declared "the whole world is melting" shivered in the simultaneous winter storms over Northern Europe and the Eastern US.
By John Batchelor on December 19, 2009 12:42 AM
|6 Comments
Lightweight.
POTUS meeting with Medvedev looks to be going as badly in December in Copenhagen as it did last July in Moscow. Both sides claim "very close," which is diplo talk for we are lost in the negatives. Whatever comes of this showmanship, it will not alter the fundamentals established last summer that Moscow no longer looks to Washington for business or trustworthiness. Moscow genuinely disdains POTUS and his NSC. The underlying issue cannot be solved. Putin regards POTUS Obama as clumsy, uninformed, arrogant and a lightweight. VPOTUS Biden misbehaviour with regard Georgia and Ukraine last August is not for a moment out of Putin's mind. What information I have ever since July is that Moscow is fixed on Obama as a non-performer. Moscow moved to Berlin immediately afterward and that alliance is now the strength of Europe. France and the UK have since joined, though the UK is weakened by bad finance and weak politics. Merkel and Putin are partners, and Medvedev has a strong future playing to the EU. Washington is cut out except as a patsy or money-bags (promises only).
Uncertain.
The NSC is so clumsy that it continues to report to the dutiful media that the START extension (now overdue) is near at hand, within grasp, etcetera happy metaphors of stalling. What is new is that Medvedev does not gain from making nice to POTUS. Medvedev can read the American polls; he can also read Putin's polls in Russia. Why side with an unpopular and weakened president when you can side with his popular and never sturdier rival in your own Kremlin? Who is the big dog in Russia? Does America have a big dog?
Climate Vacuum.
The noise from Copenhagen is peculiarly trivial. The unusual snowstorm across Northern Europe looks to have cowed the warmists who didn't bring gloves and boots to their campsites. POTUS Obama arrived and found that the China team also read the American polls and aims to ignore the Obama Team urgency. The issue is who is the big dog in the next twenty years of the 21st century. Thirty-nine percent of the polled in America (NBC/WSJ) say China. Thirty-seven percent say the US. Game over. POTUS Obama aims to make concessions and to play stampy-footy at the same time. China cannot and will not relent on what it calls "sovereignty." The promises made by StateSec Clinton yesterday of $100 billion to the kleptocracies does not move China. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita told me Thursday 17 that the US and China and the G-8 will be satisfied with vague, uneforced promises and a great big hug till the states meet again to agree to meet again on climate. However the G-77 nations (almost entirely kleptocracies) must have cash before they will sign anything that resembles Kyoto Green II. Nature resents a vacuum. The next best thing to an agreement is trade war between the US and China, already underway on steel, tires, chickens, pharma and now renewable energy systems. The Obama administration is as clumsy with China as it is with Russia. Impossible to say just now if this is a product of poor briefings or poor education in general. Russian proverb: Cannot go straight on a crooked path. China proverb: Digging well, don't share shovel. US proverb: Two big dogs are gonna scrap.
By John Batchelor on December 18, 2009 7:44 PM
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Jihad Geeks.
Spoke Thursday 17 with August Cole, WSJ, re the bizarre fact that the USAF UAVs that are resoundingly successful over the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan are not equipped with an encoding software in their video broadcast units. Using a Russian-built pirating software that costs $25.95 called SkyGrabber, Jihadist geeks are able to receive and record the video (and nightvision?) transmissions from the video cam(s) of the Predators and the new guy on the battlespace, the Reaper. Each UAV is a flying radio/tv broadcast station. The DoD and the manufacturer have known for many years, since Bosnia, that the video images were not secure. The explanation for not encrypting was cost. Predators costs $5m each, and the Reapers about $12m. The information is that the Air Force will devote 36% of its 2010 budget to drones. No one is now happy that the UAVs are vulnerable to Peeping Tareq's. Also, it is not certain the the UAVs cannot be taken over and flown away from the USAF controllers. Ask Cole who owns the rights to the video, and he replies that this is not yet part of the dispute. Expect to see real kill images on the Youtube and in Beyond Playstation games soon enough. Sale angle: Match wits side by side simulation with the USAF as you go searching for Bin Laden's cadre.
Mexico Needs Everything.
Also Speaking to David Luhnow, WSJ, the bureau chief in Mexico City, re the spectacular operation by the Mexican Navy in the last news cycle that targeted and KIA the notorious druglord Beltra Leyva at a Cuernevaca apartment complex after a four hour gunfight. President Felipe Calderon's 3-year long war with the drug cartels now has a major head to show; however the attitude of the Mexican population that that this is whack-a-mole. David Luhnow compares the Calderon launched war against the druglords as similar to George Bush's war against Saddam and Iraq. A war of choice. David Luhnow says that the Mexican military needs guidance and help from the US side of the borer. The drug cartels are major corporations in Mexico, upwards of $20 billion per year, and the war cannot be won in the street. Also, David Luhnow says that half the profits are smuggling marijuana to the US. Lealizing marijuana (a trite weed with only the usual carcinogenic downside to the user) would strip out the money the cartels used to may their mercenaries.
By John Batchelor on December 17, 2009 1:58 PM
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Gangsters of the Mahdi.
Report from the Tehran Twelvers that they can now test fire (or release a video of something that looks like a test-firing) of a delivery system that can reach Jerusalem is fresh warning that POTUS and the UN Security Council do not have a solution, an answer, a plan, an argument, not even a collective illusion for how to confront the gangsters of the Mahdi. The recent announcement by the US that it will test a response system to an Iranian missile attack is extreme passive-aggression. The US Missile Defense Agency (General Patrick O'Reilly) will use its Pacific operations to simulate an Iranian ICBM launched at the US -- despite the fact that Tehran does not have such a missile. The test (above) is of a medium range (IRBM) missile that Tehran claims has better range and targeting. The US is planning for a missile that does not now officially exist. In addition, the US has already displayed a test exercise in Israel, working with the IDF, called JUNIPER COBRA, in order to simulate an Iranian missile launch against US troops in the Middle East Theater. This new still-unnamed exercise, scheduled for January 2010, is about the continental US and is entirely about the future.
Twelvers Pose
"Iran's missile capabilities are strictly defensive and at the service of regional peace and stability. They will never be against any country." This statement from the Twelver missile stooge mouthpiece, Vahidi. It is strange Cold War logic to build and test a missile that will never be used -- because the first time would be the last time. The Twelvers now have a Doomsday Machine that suits their Doomsday ambitions to create chaos to invite the conditions for the Mahdi to return. Does the Obama administration find this encouraging? After ten months of shadow talks through surrogate go-betweens, after several deadlines and timelines and decision points have passed, the Obama administration is where the Bush administration left off last January -- in the fog of the Twelver paranoia and the UN obfuscation and the European double-talk. Tehran is a rogue, nuke-possessing state. Washington knows. Moscow knows. In the event that Tehran launches on Jerusalem, we can assume the warhead is a nuke; we can also assume the world is entering into the new dark ages for a decade or five.
Nuke Climate Change.
My information is that POTUS and the NSC will not make a decision until the new year on the sanctions regime against the obvious provocations of the Twelvers. Russia is said not to be onboard. China is a non-starter. The sanctions have a mild threat when attached to financial harassment. The long march to face-off with the Twelvers continues. General Petraeus moved the story slightly be declaring that Tehran (the Quds Force of the IRGC) was aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan. Not news, but it is an additional talking point when the Obama administration recommends jaw-jaw over war-war. POTUS looks to be a captive of his generals these days. New Year is a fresh clock-stalling game. Predators and combat brigades are expensive but low risk against Taliban rags and small-arms. Carrier task forces and cruise missile de-cap strikes against Tehran hard sites require another kind of weather report.
By John Batchelor on December 16, 2009 2:38 AM
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No Verification.
Speaking Wednesday 15 with John Bolton, AEI; Coral Davenport, CQ; and Bob Zimmerman, re the UN Climate Change summit that has already plunged over the cliff into Babel and blame. Bolton's remarks describe a UN World that believes only in one-world governance, describe a posse of developing nations called the G-77-China as the same old genius Third World potentates (rare to find anything but a kleptocracy in the lot) that has seized global warming as a new wedge issue to separate billions from the developed states of the G-8/G-20. Once it was World Revolution (See Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc). Then it was Ban the Bomb (with a fab movie, Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner in Nevil Shute's story, "On the Beach.") Now it is Global Warming. John Bolton argues that the utopian minded leadership of the G-20, led by POTUS Obama, aim to present a best case scenario for applause to the NGOs and G-77-China present, but that very little else will come of the two-week confab. The participants will agree to agree at a later date and then agree to meet again, hailing the result of no treaty as a success because they will continue to talk about a one-world treaty. POTUS Obama and PM Brown and other G-8 officials will enjoy the glow of no change.
What is to be Done?
Coral Davenport tells that the new turmoil at the meeting is beyond the old arguments of emission targets by 2050, of how much money to be transferred from the rich democracies to the poor kleptocracies, how much the UN will supervise the new Kyoto/Bali treaty with a new Adapation Board. The new turmoil is that the G-77-China states refuse any verification protocol. The idea of inspectors to verify that states are in compliance with emission targets and climate friendly practicies is regarded by China and its cronies as a threat to sovereignty. Correct. China is now talking about sovereignty. John Bolton remarks that during the Cold War, the necessity of inspection was the first line of discussion. Without inspections and verification, there could be no START, no ABM, no Test-Ban treaties. There would be no Non-Proliferation Treaty supervised by the IAEA. To go forward with a treaty that does not permit inspections is to entertain farce. Ed Milliband of the UK has stated that there is no transparency in China. Coral Davenport tells me that Milliband is not withdrawing his remark. The utopian minded world leaders will arrive into an arena of ill-feeling and manufactured contretemps.
Al Gore.
Bob Zimmerman will discuss the peculiar assertion by Al Gore that the North Pole ice cap will vanish in five years -- an example of the preposterous claims of the warmists now that the Climategate revelations have wrecked the "settled science" fable. Coral Davenport reports that the Al Gore remarks at the summit have no purchase and are ignored by the swarming disputers. Also, Ban Ki-Moon's anxious remarks that the "posturing" must be set aside that the members must "seal the deal" -- any deal, even for a deal to agree that the next time there will be a deal. It seems safe to suppose that the North Pole is safe for at least another two years until the next one-world crisis management team meets to correct the planet's temperature. Puzzle for the future: what is the correct temperature? "There's still time, brother!"
By John Batchelor on December 15, 2009 12:36 AM
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No Vigor.
POTUS remarks (above) to the media after his meeting at the White House with twelve big financial representatives and it is difficult to find vigor in this statement. POTUS asserts the meeting was "candid;" POTUS judges the meeting "constructive." Then again, listening to POTUS reflecting on the events of the meeting with remarks that could only have been written before the meeting, there are large, very large holes in logic. POTUS flatters the bankers: "...they are engaging in various programs, such as "Second Look" programs, hiring more folks, raising their target goals...." Yet POTUS scolds passively by urging the bankers, "go back and take a third and fourth look..." POTUS admits that he discerned disagreement in the room: "I noticed the resistance..." POTUS identifies misconduct: "...have lobbied vigorously against...there's a big gap and what I am hearing here in the White House and what I'm hearing...about Capitol Hill..." POTUS then denies that he is being harsh or hostile: "My interest isn't in vilifying..." POTUS mentions that there must be a new order of business to ban "risky speculation and predatory practices..." Finally POTUS offers unrecognizable tribute to the bankers who, he conveys, are taking "...small but positive steps..." There is also the slangy and vaguely non-presidential metaphorical language about "underwater" mortgages.
POTUS Passive Aggressive Passive.
What was the purpose of using the 60 Minutes promotion machine to brand the bankers with the class-war slang of "fat cats?" What was the purpose of sending Larry Summers on CNN to declare with the inexactitude of a latter-day Elmer Fudd that the bankers "don't get it?" ("Those wascally wabbit bankers don't get it.") Aaron Lucchetti, WSJ, will speak of the meeting and who attended at and who missed his plane to the White House. (Hint; the missing were significant pirates of yore.) And the banking roundtable of Simon Constable, Aaron Task, Joe Del Bello, will speak directly to what the meeting today looked like from the inside and the way outside of the POTUS base. Is it a coincidence that the aggressive Rasmussen poll shows POTUS approval falling to a new low of 44% at the same time the White House messaging unit discovers class warfare palaver? The Obama administration is in a bad relationship with the banks. Can't live without 'em; can't stand 'em; can't get enough of their attention; can't imagine a campaign 2010 without the hat passed at Citi and GS. Bad relationship. In Hollywood, they would not make this movie. Off-Broadway, they would call it a noir romance.
By John Batchelor on December 13, 2009 12:11 AM
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Red Dots.
Speaking soon to Evalyn Gates, author, "Einstein's Telescrope," re the spectacular Hubble image of the cosmos at 600 million years old, showing galaxies about as early as they could possibly form. Our sun, and therefore our planet and flora and fauna (us) are made up of elements cooking in early galaxies much like these -- elements that were redistributed to form our galaxy about 10 billion years ago and our solar system about 4 billion years ago. Examine the deep field closely. The oldest galaxies are the small red dots, because, being farthest from us, about 13 billion light years, they are the extreme red-shift in the infrared camera shot from Hubble. We cannot see the ancient galaxies who birthed us, because they are behind us (relatively); but Evalyn Gates tells me that the Edens with us out there about ten billion years looking back at us with their Hubble could see our proto-galaxies. What we can see in these tiny red dots is the cooling of the big bang, and with the cooling came the creation of stars into galaxes into clusters of galaxies. Evalyn Gates tells me that we may not be able to see back much farther the the 600 million year mark.
Goldilocks Galaxy.
NGC 6872 and IC 4970
Evalyn Gates also told me that the early universe was very hot with the exploding and re-exploding supernova that would blow asunder the dust clouds that were forming galaxies such as our Milky Way. This is the violent cosmos problem. A new theory is that our Milky Way was protected from these supernova waves by dark matter that acted like a blanket and shielded out the cascading gas jets of explosions. Evalyn Gates tells me that we are a product of a not-too-hot and not-too-cold part of the cosmos, like Goldilocks. The cosmos is a violent process. Our Milky Way is just right, and it has consumed lesser galaxies as it moved through our part of the cosmos. When galaxies collide, one galaxy can strip fuel from the other to feeds it super black hole center. See below as NGC 6872 and IC 4970 collide, and the smaller 4970 strips material form the larger 6872. Any and all star systems in the galaxies are now being drained as Dracula drains a victim. Violent place. How do we leave a record that we have understood what will transform us into dust and gas?
By John Batchelor on December 12, 2009 12:51 AM
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Prize for George Bush.
The American criticism of the Nobel Peace Prize event is what the TV stand-ups make of the peculiar fact of a president who campaigned on a peace platform, and who received the Nobel Peace Prize nomination just eleven days after he became POTUS, and who now makes a speech arguing the "Just War" theory about a war he has just relaunched in Afghanistan in league with the kleptocratic tyranny of Hamid Karzai. America allied with the Forty Thieves. The comics make not much of the dreary facts, though the framing of the Russian rocket test as a Christmas Star over Oslo for the coming of Obama is edgy. Jay Leno's remarks are the most class-based and subversive, citing a "peaceful" economy of joblessness and idleness. There is a general impression in this mash-up that the comics are intimidated by the facts. The counterfactual is to imagine what this lot of gifted pot-shotters would have made of George W. Bush accepting the peace prize, or even Bill Clinton the same. The facts of Iraq, now about to become the second grandest oilfield in the Gulf, support a conclusion that the Bush administration freed it of the savagery and sadism of the Anbar province gangs and their cowardly cronies in Damascus and Riyadh. (Al Qaeda in Iraq as the neighborhood Not-So-Smart weapons.) But that is an argument to be made in the revisionist histories to come. For now, the praise of POTUS Obama as a peacemaker is trite. That these comics do not directly attack POTUS Obama as a fraudulent award recipient is the measure of their timidity. And when satirists are reluctant to call POTUS Obama the "Queen of Hearts of Afghanistan" (peace prize first, then war, then surrender, then arguments, then diplomacy, then indifference, then entente with the House of Saud), the narrative is blurred, cribbed, out of time, propaganda, discount-rack muzak.
No One Laughed.
There was the absurd in Vietnam; there was the grotesque in Iraq. What is there in Afghanistan? POTUS preaching on "Just War." No one laughed. The piety is thick as dust. What I have learned about Afghanistan in 2009 does not support POTUS Obama's assumptions at Oslo of the future. The comment of "enlightened self-interest" was particularly pompous, self-serving, ahistorical, condescending, vain and fragile. Leopold of Belgium was a grand benefactor in Europe, a prince of peace and generosity to his French-speaking charges. Leopold's "enlightened self-interest" was to order the Congo River basin enslaved, plundered and depopulated. POTUS Obama read these lines without discernible humility:
"We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest--because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if others' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity."
By John Batchelor on December 11, 2009 12:27 AM
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Just War.
Impossible to walk away from the irony of the American POTUS accepting the peace prize for his aspirations to make peace while ordering the launching of fresh offensives in Afghanistan. Unironic partisans chose the speech as occasion to praise POTUS. There is also the small matter of the fuss and inconsistency of the anti-war posse over the years. If POTUS Bush was a war-mongering villain for launching Afghanistan and Iraq, how is it that POTUS Obama is a peace-loving hero for relaunching Afghanistan? That is politics. The White House speechwriter tried the just war theory to hold together a peace speech about war. I first struggled with the idea of just war during Vietnam, when I was in college and faced with the Draft. What I remember is that it is a just war if someone else is obliged to fight it, and it is an unjust war if you are obliged to fight it. This makes Afghanistan a just war if you are the White House with a volunteer army.
POTUS Discovers History.
My reading of history is that the winners not only write the history books but also get to rewrite them with what we call revisionism. POTUS was mighty clear that he regarded Iraq as a "stupid" war when he was an Illinois politician running for president. There look to be plenty of voices in the Progressive part of the Democratic party who aim to say that Afghanistan is a "stupid" war. POTUS must now not only learn from history but accept that he is powerless in its theater of war. There is no exit from Afghanistan. POTUS Obama has now made the most critical and memorable decision of his presidency. History is written by the winner, and if POTUS is unsuccessful in conducting the war and explaining his conduct, he will be written and then revised as disappointing if not disastrous. Just war vs just jihad. Not good odds. Bet on the eagle and hope for luck.
Hitler Again.
POTUS speech referred to the Nazis as evil, yes, and then argued, "A nonviolent movement could not have stopped Hitler's armies." The facts do not support this conclusion. Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany in mid-September 1938 and sat with Hitler at Bertchesgaden. The two of them and a translator. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland. Chamberlain could have told him that any aggression on Prague would mobilize the French, who had 100 divisions. We know now that the German army's Prussian officer corps was ready to rise up against the Nazis in Berlin and sweep Hitler from the city. Chamberlain only needed to say, "No, you will not have Sudetenland, and I am calling on the French right after I depart Germany," and walked away. Nonviolently. It didn't happen. Why? Because Chamberlain believed that diplomacy was superior to war, and that concessions were reasonable, and that talk-talk was the only civilized behavior.
By John Batchelor on December 10, 2009 12:47 AM
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Deniers Denied.
Spoke to Bob Zimmerman, author "Universe in a Mirror," Tuesday 8, and speaking to Robert Eshelman, Nation, on Wed 9, both re Copenhagen, yet from diverse points of view. The diversity is critical. Zimerman and I spoke the Climategate, an issue that looms in significance as the climate change warmists press their case that the hacked-emails are nothing a footnote, and as the skeptics press the case that the global warming scientists are not to be trusted, having been caught out on changing tree-ring data from mid-20th century. Why trust a falsifier? The global warming team does not provide an answer. Instead what comes across is that this has turned into a partisan boxing match. Above hosts Rachel Maddow and Andrew Mitchell, representing MSNBC cable, which is self-consciously associated with the Obama administration's team, speak of Climategate as a trivial matter and treat those who challenge the data and the conclusions as "deniers." News to me that this term is regarded as prejudicial and a smear -- as in a Holocaust-denier. What I also learn from the above colloquy of two people who are being paid sizable sums in order to speak of Climategate as insignificant, not from the facts but from their team allegiance, is that the global warmists have not yet found a defensive strategy that works. Attacking the critic is not a promising solution to a problem, just a momentary tactic. It does not answer the doubts that you have a weakness.
What Warm Problem?
I have learned to frame the story not in terms of tree-rings and ice cores but rather in terms of centuries. The warmist case argues that it is warmer now than it was 150 years ago, and that is a direct result of man-man green-house gases such as CO2 from our carbon-based energy generation. But this is not proved. We may be warmer because of natural events, such as the sun-spots that Zimmerman and I watch closely. The more important comparison is between the 21st century and the 11th century. The warmists at East Anglia know this. So do the skeptics. And what does the data support? No definite conclusions. It was warm in the 11th century. That was about the time that the Norse went a-Viking as far as Greenland and North America -- when the Vikings reached Maine. The fabled Vinland map is from that warm period, and the Greenland settlements followed. The Little Ice Age that followed int he 16th century (associated with no sunspots for decades) shut off the Greenland colonies and also froze the top of pails of milk in Shakespeare's age. Why was it warm in the 11th century? Why did it get much colder in the 16th? Was it as warm in the 11th as now. Can we get as cold as the 16th again without changing anything? Unknown at this time. Need more data. Need trusthworthy data.
Warm Bolivia.
Rob Eshelman tells me from Copenhagen of his conversation with Evo Morales's Climate ambsssador to Copenhagen, Salon, who argues that the problem is not the climate alone but the abuse of "Mother Earth" by the developed nations of the United States and Western Europe. Bolivia advocates a"Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth" that rejects cap and trade solutions and wants the developed states to pay damages done to the planet to compensate the developing nations as they rise. In sum, Bolivia, and we can presume also Venezuela and other allies of Hug Chavez, want a planet not just cooler but also a world turned upside down. Once you begin talking about the future of the planet, there is no end to the stuff dreams are made of. The warm shall be cool; the last shall be first.
By John Batchelor on December 9, 2009 12:33 AM
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Too Big To Fail.
POTUS's routine, meandering, too-big-to-fail speech to Brookings this news cycle is like an exhibition game to a homecourt audience during a break in the long season, and he contributed no more than a video moment to the well-known facts that the jobless number is at 10% and likely to stay that high or go higher in the next months as well as remain above 8% into 2011. The Obama administration is both fraught and fickle about the economy's dreadfulness. POTUS asserts that Larry Summers warned him a year ago that joblessness would grow at a rate not seen since the 1930s, however POTUS does not explain how, if this scene is reported accurately (dubious: Summers says a lot in all directions, like a roulette wheel with many numbers), then why did the Obama administration devote the year to healthcare reform and cap and trade on the Hill and to a stimulus package that only served to fill state budget gaps and a few stand-alone construction projects? The answer is likely that the White House did not see the 10% and higher, nor the long term grinding of 8%, nor the certain damage that the jobless rate would do to POTUS ratings and the the Democratic agenda. The stimulus package is mocked, which is why POTUS has to reflexively defends it. Cap and trade is shelved or put in a drawer or just generally off track (choose metaphor) at the Senate level just because it is preposterously expensive, has no popular support, is a direct tax on a jobless public, and is now part of the legend of crooked science and global warmist doomsaying by an elite of newspaper reading ninnies. And the healthcare reform bill, freighted with the panacea of the public option, is not going to get out of the Senate before Christmas, before SOTU, and may not get out at all until and if it invents a 60th vote that doesn't exist except in string theory.
Why POTUS Jobs?
Gallup shows POTUS at a new low of 47%. This is high compared to where he is headed into the Springtime, though it is unlikely he can break 40% before the 2010 elections. The jobless rate can go to 11% when and if people start looking for work in the Spring (which drives up the rate). POTUS knows he cannot have a second stimulus package, and might not be able to appear to spend anymore of an already $12 Trillion estimate deficit. The novelty is to use unspent TARP. This is witty of them, because TARP was part of the debt already. Nonetheless, this is the latest fade from the Obama team. What they aim to do with the unspent (unclaimed) TARP (perhaps $75 Billion) is unclear. POTUS refers to something like a jobs program, which is labelled a "jobs creation" program that includes tax cuts and so forth. More big thinking for little folk. Nothing substantive about moving banks to loan to small businesses -- and the credit drought continues because the banks do not aim to risk their leverage again for fear of another down-turn and another cycle of blowing up. In all, the administration's jobs thinking is not profound -- nor designed to do more than talk the game. POTUS looks to have settled into a winter of discontent. The polls will sag; the House Democrats will sweat; the Senate will bluster; and the banks will continued to borrow at 0% and buy T-Bills (and some equities), which is a guaranteed way to make money for their bonus babies.
Biden, Biden, Everywhere.
Note that POTUS is much with VPOTUS this day. At the national security briefing at 930 am (very late for a Bush White House); and the economic briefing at 10 am, and then a few minutes with Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod on the polls (POTUS meets with senior advisers), and then off to the speech at Georgetown (above); but later POTUS and VPOTUS are together with StateSec Clinton. Much to do about VPOTUS in the room, the man with the Rolodex, the attitude and the energy. Puzzle, is this suggestive of my brother's keeper? It seems significant that POTUS went to Biden territory, the unemployed of Allentown, to make his visit to the lonely -- and to include in his dry speech to the Brookings brains. POTUS borrowing real people from VPOTUS? POTUS seems most comfortable in the bubble he complains of? POTUS is the bubble? The economy is a bubble? Has POTUS ever remarked on a bubble before? Is this Biden metaphor? Biden has been inside the Senate bubble since 1972. Neither POTUS nor VPOTUS have not worked outside of government or government fed enterprises. Does POTUS mean bubble or palace?
Cash-for-Caulkers.
My favorite new Obama administration fantasy made it into the POTUS speech, though in disguise. The best they could do with hasty language improv was call it "home retrofits." (At the NYT, where they think of Brookings as "non-partisan, the program turned up as "offering rebates to people who make their homes more energy efficient.") Home Depot and Lowe's live in the hearts of the White House team, true bourgeioise heroes, enthralled to those acress of plywood and gadgets for the do-it-yourself.
By John Batchelor on December 8, 2009 12:30 AM
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Strikingly Ironic Unintended Consequence.
Harry Reid goes viral with a labored speech of historical references comparing the outgunned, disgraced, moribund remnant of the Republican Senate to the Democratic controlled Senate of 1840 -1860; and also to the Democratic controlled Senate's resistance of Women's Suffrage from 1912 -1918. Also to the Democratic controlled Senate's resistance of civil rights legislation from 1946-1964. Suffrage is my choice for most wacky, because Woodrow Wilson the Democrat barred the door until a Constitutional amendment pushed past him. Did Harry Reid's fact-checker get furloughed? Spoke to David Drucker, Roll Call, who told me that these remarks (above), though over-the-top, are typical of the heated rhetorc that Harry Reid has tried in the past. What may be unusual is that Harry Reid compared the GOP to the slavocracy of the 1850s. This looks to be an unforced error. The clip above is likely to form the center of the opposition blogs and talk shows for the next days.
By John Batchelor on December 7, 2009 10:26 AM
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Choose Taliban.
Spoke to Candace Rondeaux, International Crisis Group, at Kabul Sunday 6, who told me that the deep thievery of the Karzai government is a profound and immovable block to the Obama administration's aim in Afghanistan. What this means is that the Afghan people choose the Taliban over the Karzai government. Rondeaux offered the example of a dispute between neighbors over property lines. She said the Karzai government officials would require bribery and permanent control of the dispute, perhaps over years, and that there never would be resolution or transparency of the decision. In contrast, she told me the Taliban was violent and abrupt but swift and final, and the dispute would be done. I asked her if Helmand and Kandahar provinces are Taliban; and after she said, yes, I asked if they would remain Taliban despite the Marines and Army surge? She said, after the US left, if the Karzai government remains in place, they would be Taliban. No victory, no future. Ask yourself: Hold another election, and open the ballot for write-ins, who wins -- President American Thief Stooge or President Shariah Taliban? Candace Rondeaux sent this briefing report along from ICG published on November 25, a week before POTUS speech:
"...The confused international response to egregious violations of electoral law reflects the dangerous fatigue that has set in among donor nations. The elections were clearly perceived by many influential international actors, including the U.S., as just another political hoop to jump through on the way to implementing a strategy that has as yet failed to make the connection between effective counter-insurgency and genuinely universal political franchise and rule of law. When the manipulation of the process and its implications for security became clear the U.S. and its international partners found themselves without a contingency plan and opted to accept a flawed outcome that may reverse efforts to stabilise the country.
The clock has run out on political obfuscation and buck passing. Without more honest assessments of flaws and missteps in the process of state rebuilding, Afghanistan will become increasingly unstable. As a Western adviser put it:
The first step to solving any situation like this is to tell the truth - at least to yourself. ... the international community is living in an environment where there's a deficit of truth. We just haven't been telling the truth. We haven't been telling the truth to our domestic constituencies. And we haven't been telling the truth to the Afghans."
White House "Whoa" Forgets.
Larry Johnson told me Sunday 6 that there is some questions as to what POTUS asked for and when he asked for it of General McChrystal. In a power point presentation between Kabul and the White House, there was a title that read that the mission is to defeat the Taliban and secure the population. No mention of standing up the ANA and handing over security and the country to the Karzai government. Suddenly the White House was stumped, asking, who told you that, General? The answer was, you did, sir. The White House NSC team, according to Larry Johnson, had no certain memory of its own order. This includes POTUS and his close advisers Axelrod, Emanuel, Rice, Jarret. Larry Johnson remarked with the voice of his colleagues in national security work, "Amateurs. It's amateur hour over there." He didn't mean Afghanistan: Read the facts as constructed by the Obama-not-unfriendly WaPo:
"...In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: "Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population."
"Is that really what you think your mission is?" one of those in the Situation Room asked.
On the face of it, it was impossible -- the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a significant part of the population. "We don't need to do that," Gates said, according to a participant. "That's an open-ended, forever commitment."
But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, and it was enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan -- the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.
"I wouldn't say there was quite a 'whoa' moment," a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. "It was just sort of a recognition that, 'Duh, that's what, in effect, the commander understands he's been told to do.' Everybody said, 'He's right.' "
The lone partisan significance of the cop-killer episode is that Huckabee's largest donors in Israel now regard him as extremely unlikely as a candidate who can be trusted to make choices between the Devil and common sense.
Then again, there is no reason to believe much of Huckabee's palaver when he claims he is "less likely to run" because "I would have to see the Republicans unite behind me." Mike Huckabee is an ambitious and craven Republican politician who will do exactly what he must to exploit his effectiveness in the weakest parts of the GOP--the bullying evangelicals, the cloying faux-Confederate vote, and the cynical elitists like Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, and Rush Limbaugh, whom I think of as Republican zombies. Mike Huckabee, 54, is no one's idea of a well-educated citizen. As a youth, Huckabee was a Baptist pastor in Arkansas--mostly as a platform to exhibit his hambone one-liners on cable channels--and he wears this fleeting experience like a Harry Potter invisibility cloak to cover up his incuriosity of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. That he performed notably at all in 2008 is not a credit to Huckabee but rather a verdict on the mortification of a party that was left without more than John McCain's worn stubbornness and Mitt Romney's deaf arrogance, and that today enjoys no stronger field, staring at the exuberant glamour of Sarah Palin and the leaden Sam's Club marketing of Tim Pawlenty to add to Romney warmed over like cold liver.... (more)
patrickrlewis
He did not pardon or commute the sentence. The governor of Arkansas only has the power to review and give recommendations. The power to pardon or commute is only held by the parole board.
This is just another nothing story the press is twisting to take the pressure off the Great One and all his allies for forcing a bill down the throats of the public no one wants.
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6:55 pm, Dec 5, 2009
nortonclybourn
"a bill down the throats of the public no one wants." You're so incoherent, it's hard to tell who you're mad at. Who is the great one? What the Hell are you talking about?
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8:18 pm, Dec 5, 2009
GVidal
Ol' Huckabee is a huckster for sure - A mental midget with a sharp tounge - The GOP is hopeless...with the dumbest crop of candidates in decades - but then what would you expect of a Republican? Simple-minded-ness!!
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10:27 am, Dec 6, 2009
sjcarl
Any Republican who wants to be President should be spending their time with people other than old, angry white guys.
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8:32 pm, Dec 5, 2009
trevor3090
I think he's talking about Jackie Gleason aka The Great One. It was kinda his tagline. A Honeymooners sketch perhaps?
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11:17 pm, Dec 5, 2009
mburgh
The Republicans have embraced the unpalatable at least since the 1930's - Father Coughlin? McCarthy? When was the last Republican candidate with any vision or ideas? William Howard Taft, maybe? Teddy Roosevelt?
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8:30 am, Dec 6, 2009
nortonclybourn
There's a place for Conservatives, but the shrieking Reactionaries we could all do without.
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8:39 am, Dec 6, 2009
crypto
What brought all you stupid liberals to this post. If Huckabee is of no interest to you why bother?? Seems to me you folks just shop around on here until you can find one lone victim and try to trash them instead of having anything to contribute to an otherwise intelligent conversation elsewhere. If you were'nt so contemptable you would be pathetic.
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8:53 am, Dec 6, 2009
mburgh
Huckabee was my governor, and I had to live under his useless jurisdiction, and now I have to listen to my father-in-law talk about him, hence my interest, crypto.
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9:20 am, Dec 6, 2009
GVidal
crypto - as in crypto Nazi?? You sound as stupid as most dopes who watch Fox News - you get your facts from a comedy show FNC!!!
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10:30 am, Dec 6, 2009
BuckHuit
As governor of Arkansas, christer nut-job Mike Huckabee set in motion the steps that led to the release of Maurice Clemmons.
Not just once (before parole), but twice (after parole violation).
The parole board serves the governor, and the governor directs the parole board.
For christer nut-job Mike Huckabee, the chief executive of Arkansas at that time, to pass the buck to others to minimize his role in this tragedy is just more evidence that christers cannot assume personal responsibility in any form.
"The devil made me do it" is christer nut-job Mike Huckabee's excuse.
It was Maurice Clemmons himself that wrote christer nut-job Mike Huckabee declaring (not his innocence) but his christer beliefs.
That's all it took. christer nut-job Mike Huckabee has a soft spot in his black christer heart for fellow christers, murderers or otherwise.
And this is a stunning example of why fruit-cake christer beliefs and US government should never mix.
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8:55 am, Dec 6, 2009
crypto
And you're saying that this crapola we have now is any better??? Good gracious man. Your soul has been sold to the devil( just a play on words) but the interest you're gonna pay is beyond belief. If you're a property owner you're dead. Now after all the spending, this congress is playing with an idea of a "debt tax" to have us pay for the mess they've created..faster. And nothing we pay in is going for anything other than more spending.
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11:41 am, Dec 6, 2009
gameon
LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS ? So now you've done a hit piece on Huckabee,Dobbs and about a dozen on Palin.There's no liberal bias,it must be all in my head.For some reason though ,i'm still waiting for a story on Al Gore and Climategate.Surely you can do one article exposing the link between Gore and the criminal conspiracy to alter and effect scientific data for the purpose of enriching Gore and his cronies. You'll bend over backwards to find dirt on any conservative but when it comes to criminal acts that are taking place in plain sight in the Dem. party ,you for some odd reason have nothing to say.
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9:57 am, Dec 6, 2009
GVidal
gameon - you lost the election!!
now....take your time back at school and learn some facts. Start by being taught how to read intelligent writers, smart authors, and the real facts - you obviously are a Fox wing-nut and can't sort facts from delusional thinking like your post above!!
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10:35 am, Dec 6, 2009
crypto
That's almost exactly what Nancy Pelosi said. But the republicans didn't "lose" the election. You idiots just elected the wrong democrat.
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11:33 am, Dec 6, 2009
bcrago77
I don't like Huckabee. I'm a Republican, and I'd sooner vote for a moderate Democrat (assuming, counter-factually, that one could survive the nomination process) than Huckabee. However, Bachelor's editorial is worthless. It is a rant, designed to vent Bachelor feelings, and to bring forth similar feelings among those who already agree with him. There's about 20 adjectives and insults to every fact, or alleged fact.
It can only be an insufferable self-righteousness that would cause Bachelor to feel that he need only handle his assignment by vomiting invective, and not by attempting persuasion.
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10:13 am, Dec 6, 2009
GVidal
Christian nut job Huckabee is a joke!
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10:28 am, Dec 6, 2009
Spartan79
Gameon, I'm surprised you haven't decoded the reason why so many so-called conservative pundits like Bachelor diss Huckabee and Palin. Let me spell it out for you: Frum (Yale), Mirengoff (Dartmouth), Bachelor (Princeton), Brooks (U of Chicago), as opposed to Palin (Idaho), Huckabee (Ouachita Baptist College), Reagan (Eureka College). Only grads of elite schools can presume to aspire to the presidency. No state schools or podunk private colleges need apply. While Bachelor is not enthusiastic about any of the current GOP lineup, in 2012 you can expect him to reluctantly get behind Romney (Harvard),
By John Batchelor on December 5, 2009 11:43 PM
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No Conflict of Interest.
Spoke to John Stanton, CQ, re the Max Baucus flapdoodle re the fact that last February 2009 the senator nominated a woman, Melodee Hanes, 53, who is not his wife but with whom he has been romantically involved since 2008, to the post of US Attorney from Montana. Stanton told me that he has been working on this story for several weeks and that late Friday afternoon the senator's office finally put out a statement supporting the allegations about the nomination. The additional detail is that Baucus and the woman in question decided to withdraw the nomination last summer. Subsequently Hanes moved from Montana, where she had worked as a staffer for the senator, to Washington, where she moved in with the senator and obtained a political appointment at the Justice Department. No fresh post nightmare pics yet on Hanes, just Facebook and an office snapshot. The senator's office is claiming there is no conflict. The NRC's Michael Steele is calling for an ethics investigation. The Washington elite is laughing quietly and waiting for the press conference. However John McCain looks to have attacked first by drawing Max Baucus into a heated exchange on the Senate floor during the healthcare debate (above).
Timing.
Baucus's Senate Finance Committee has been critical in moving the healthcare bill. Baucus is also critical if Harry Reid is to reach the 60 votes he needs to break the inevitable filibuster and get the public option to the floor. POTUS is due on the Hill tomorrow to meet with the Democratic Senate caucus. The Hanes flap is the kind of distraction that is both silly and undeniable. The Sunday shows who skip the tale will lose out to the Sunday shows who cover it. The media will stake out Baucus and Hanes for a statement, and there is sure to be a push by the GOP to display the laundry. John Ensign is groaning with a smile on his lips. Larry Craig back in Idaho is hooting. And is it coincidence that John McCain, who tangled with Baucus today, suffered the blows of the so-called NYT investigation of his relationship with a shapely lobbyist during the late campaign? What of Karl Rove and the endless investigation of the US attorney offices during the second Bush administration? What of the Obama administration's aim to be transparent, beyond reproach, absent of lobbyists and cronies? What of the timing of the Baucus compromising and the lack of healthcare compromising?
Monday.
Anticipating the stakeout of the senator's and what the newspapers now call the "girlfriend"s address; anticipating Hanes flight to Montana to go into seclusion, anticipating the senator avoiding TV for a time. Hanes will unlikely retain her post at Justice. The Republican party is Montana, moribund sicne the lost of both Senate seats when Tester won, will now revive itself with a woman nominee for the '12 election. Monday brings the rest of the story. Ed Hayes told me Saturday 5 that Baucus was stupid, not unethical. Which is worse for healthcare? More, I am told Hanes is a responsible, hard-working, respectful citizen and attorney. What to make of the fact that Baucus has wrecked her career in Washington and Montana?
By John Batchelor on December 4, 2009 7:02 PM
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Cash-for-Caulkers.
Spoke Neil King, WSJ, re the White House Jobs Summit on Thursday 3 and learned incredible details about how the Obama administration is open to "new ideas" to answer the high jobless rate (November held in double digits at 10.0%) that is projected to continue another six to eighteen months. The new ideas are breath-taking. King told me that the Obama administration is passionate about Cash-for-Clunkers and regards it as one of its successes in the year, and so there is a suggestion to use the concept to revive the construction business, especially home construction, in a program now called Cash for Caulkers. I am not making this up. I asked King if Home Depot or Lowe's executives were present among the 130 dignitaries, and he didn't think so (see comment below). Another notion is to revive and remake labor by granting the unions a package of $400 billion for unnamed programs that sound to resemble the WPA. Another notion, advanced by Mrs. Pelosi, is to use the so-called unused TARP remains, about $75 billion, to revive loans to small businesses. There are no restrictions on the TARP that anyone can find, and usingt he TARP avoids the politically clumsy necessity to ask Congress for money to give more loans (grants, hand-outs, bail-out) to so-called small businesses. There were few if any small owners at the White House function. President Schmidt of Google, presidents of reps from S&P 500s, but not folk who own start-ups or independent truckers.
Any Port in A Storm.
The jobless number today is a quiet warning that there is no growth in hiring and that the next six months are likely to be much higher jobless rates. Evan Newmark told me Wed 2 that 11% jobless with 11k on the Dow is possible. (The market rewards corporate profits, and cutting costs and workers does lead to profits for awhile.) The number I watch is average hourly workweek. It has been holding at approximately 32 hrs. It rose this month to 33. That is the correct direction, because when it gets high enough, businesses need workers. But 33 is not promising, just no longer a crater. The CEOs have consistently told the Obama administration that the overhang of healthcare, cap and trade, and the bank bailouts that have left banks richer but not in the loan business, just the borrowing from the Fed at 0% and buying T-Bills business. From the Jobs Summit reports, it appears the the Obama administration does not perceive that there has been a fundamental shift in American workplace from industrial and post-industrial to information., from large industry to guerilla shop. My information from a trusted voice is that the Obama team is treating the jobless problem as if this was FDR's America on the go, when it is the Internet's America on-line. We are fluid, borderless, competitive and truly global. Unions proposing TV versions of the WPA is satire except that it is genuine -- the Obama team thinks it might work. The detail I liked almost as much as Cash-for-Caulkers is the idea that Treasury Sec Geithner is open to the House idea of taxing Wall Street transactions to pay for jobs programs. RobinHood in the Oval Office. The administration is frustrated that nothing it has done in eleven months, -- stimulus, budget, TARP, GM and Chrysler -- has stemmed the incredible shrinking job market. It may be we are watching a secular change. The jobless rate may be above 8% for years. What does this mean for FDR's heirs? Grinding, shrugging, numbing partisan blame-shifting and perhaps a deal of misdirecting and grandstanding about climate and healthcare. And also a fierce sense of grievance against the banks and their familiars and the politicians who need them. Katrina vanden Heuvel told me Tuesday 1 that POTUS is a "reluctant war president" who often carries on as a "corporatist."
By John Batchelor on December 3, 2009 8:56 PM
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Debate from Zero.
Spoke Marc Morano, ClimateDepot.com, and Bob Zimmerman, author, "Universe in a Mirror, re the climate science scandal of the hacked-emails and the multiple investigations of distorted science data for the global warming theory. Above find a debate between Morano and a warmist, photographer James Balog, in which CNN anchor Rick Sanchez starts the debate from zero and asks both sides to assert contradictions of each other. This does not answer the current debate, but it does show Morano as pugnacious and persuasive. More it illustrates that CNN has finally decided to back off from the warmist diatribes and to challenge the endless dull "settle science" warmist talkers who appear on TV. We look forward to CNN challenging Senator Boxer and Senator Kerry, who command the cap and trade warmist agenda in the Senate, with the facts of the recent revelations of propganda, falsehood, manipulation,collusion and cowardice by the warmist princes Phil Jones and friends at East Anglia University. The warmists are feeling very warm under the new scrutiny of the data and the unearned and now suspect climate change catastr['ophe conclusions of the last decades. Marc Morano told me that Al Gore was obliged to cancel an event at Copenhagen where he was going to charge $1200.00 for a handshake with admirers. Bob Zimmerman told me that James Hansen, the warmist advocate at NASA, is under pressure of the threat of an FOIA to oblige him to release the primary data he uses for his climate model projections. Zimmerman does not know if that data has been manipulated in the same way the East Anglia University data was manipulated. No one knows until and if the data is made available to all.
Predictioneer's Game.
The most fun conversation of Thursday 3 was with Bruce Moreno de Mesquita, author, "Predictioneer's Game," who used his unique invention of statistical analysis to predict the outcome of disputes or treaty negotiations. Bruce told me that the Copenhagen meeting was an excellent example of how international agreements come to nothing and that it is very unlikely (read impossible) that anyone will work together to deal with global energy, pollutions or climate change. Kyoto and Bali were futile; Copenhagen is futile. Why would 175 nations agree to anything when there is no penalty for cheating and no referee for compliance? What I hear from this wonderful turn, is that climate change and global warming are talking points not to construct a severe governance worldwide but rather to aggrandize those who accept the necessity of constructing a total regime. The warmists are empowered because they believe in warmism -- which might explain why warmists cannot tolerate dissent, because it inhibits their unprovable sense of authority and correctness. Warmists win when they assert without response, such as the proclamation at Copenhagen that we must reduce the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million. When there is a response, such as, "Why should we believe you, because you adjusted the data for your hypothesis to be proved," the response must be disdain and disgust. After Phil Jones's disgrace, are the warmists defeated? The collective opinion of my professionals is, Nope.
By John Batchelor on December 2, 2009 11:58 PM
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No Roads.
Frank Oliveri and Bill Roggio both elaborated on the particular challenges of moving 30 thousand combat troops into Afghanistan in the next six months. The critical fact is that this is a landlocked country -- and this increases the costs, the demands on transportation, the expectations of deployment. Frank Oliveri called 10th Mountain and the Marines, and both said they were ready to go now, pending transportation. Bill Roggio presented the case that getting that many combat troops into Kandahar province and environs in this six month period, including winter, is so daunting that it isn't how well, it is at all. Spoke to Ann Marlowe at Kabul, and she reported on dinner conversation with unnamed American colonels after POTUS speech at West Point. The general opinion is that getting those troops into Afghanistan is beyond the logistics that exist now. There wasn't laughter. Just head shaking. Ann Marlowe also emphasized that once the troops reach Afghanistan, especially in the South and East, the logistics inside the country are spare. There is already a chronic shortage of aircraft. The roads except in select places are treacherous and nonexistent. The culverts built by the contractors are routine places for the Taliban to plant IEDs. Mostly, Ann Marlowe emphasized the forbidding nature of the countryside. It is moon like. It is the home court of the Taliban. She mentioned that it can take 12 hours to go 40 kilometers. Six months to deploy, eighteen months to start the handover. Not on a landlocked clock.
Middle of the No Roads.
Also spoke to Peter Wallsten, WSJ, (above) re the politics the day after the POTUS speech. He reported that neither the Left nor the Right supports the decision. POTUS is in the middle of partisan noise now, and there is no center to stand with him -- no middle of the no roads. Gallup reports that the POTUS approval on Afghanistan policy has declined from over 50% to 35%. Wallsten remarked that Democrats in primary races are running hard left, anti-war and anti-Obama policy on Afghanistan. The people who elected POTUS are now walking away, or, as Wallsten said for the elections in 2010, the base support of POTUS and the Democrats is ready to stay home. The testimony by the three chieftains, Clinton, Gates and Mullen, only reinforced the measure that only those who work for POTUS are following POTUS down that lonely middle.
By John Batchelor on December 1, 2009 7:26 PM
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Hollywood Third Act Clock.
The speech at West Point becomes a Hollywood thriller because POTUS now inserts a clock (third acts love clocks) that tells the enemy Taliban and their slavemasters Al Qaeda as well as all other Rogue States looking to try their game against Uncle Sam that in 18 months time we start home. In sum, POTUS just gave away the win and chose to kick for a tie. The critical detail is the timeline. Spoke with three different combat officers over the last ten days, all serving with the 1st Battalion, 508th Regiment, 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne in Zabul Province along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, and each of them told me that their best estimate for how long the Afghan National Army (ANA) needs to train to stand alone is 3-4 years. Not 18 months -- but 36-48 months. Can ISAF patch together a work-around? Probably. But what is the lesson to the ANA right now? That in 18 months time, the Taliban gangsters in those hills are going to come looking to settle scores just as the Americans will be looking to depart. Clock running.
What Training?
Captain Derrick Hernandez, USA, S3 of the 1st Battalion, told me of a recent air assualt operation on a remote Afghan village, about 20-30 kilometers from Highway 1, over the mountains, where Charlie Company commanded by Captain Dan Whitten worked closely and successfully with an ANA platoon. The village is suspect Taliban friendly. The air assualt put a platoon ANA in blocking positions, and then a platoon of Charlie Company along with ANA moved into the village. Smooth and satisfactory, no enemy contact, information gathered, exits. Ann Marlowe told me she accompanied the assault as an embed and witnessed a deft working relationship between the ANA and the airborne. Derrick Hernandez reported that this is the sort of operation that both trains the ANA and provides what he called force enablers to both sides -- the ANA gets air support, and the airborne gets the human terrain skill of the Afghans to read and interpret the Pashtun culture of the village.
Rogues.
What will the Rogue States such as Iran and Syria and North Korea make of POTUS decision to announce an exit before his new team takes the field? What will Al Qaeda make of the strategy? The twist is that my information for some time has been that the White House has been in negotiation through House of Saud intelligence agents with different warlords, such as the Haqqani network of Khost Province, in order to purchase a ceasefire. The negotiations are still confused. Adding to the dilemma is that instability of Pakistan, where the leadership is mysterious, secretive, fragmented. "We must keep the pressure on Al Qaeda, and to do that we must increase the stability of our partners in the region," declares POTUS at West Point. The blunt facts are that Al Qaeda is an extension of the Rogue States and that we have no partners in the region. What will the Rogues makes of POTUS inserting a clock into the region. They will understand that it is time to prepare their own plans for July 4, 2011. Game on. Time is on the enemy's side.
He did not pardon or commute the sentence. The governor of Arkansas only has the power to review and give recommendations. The power to pardon or commute is only held by the parole board.
This is just another nothing story the press is twisting to take the pressure off the Great One and all his allies for forcing a bill down the throats of the public no one wants.