By John Batchelor on January 31, 2010 12:56 AM
|3 Comments
KSM.
The sharp sea-change is not only that POTUS and Attorney General Eric Holder have climbed down from their presumptive and unilateral idea to stage the KSM show trial in Manhattan; not only that the Obama adminstration does not have a location picked out before it climbs down; not only that we now learn that not Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Mayor Mike Bloomberg or Governor David Paterson waa consulted or polled before the Obama/Holder decision was announced -- but also that the Obama administration is now going hat in hand to the Congress for money to stage the trial at another undecided location. Perhaps Governor's Island or West Point (below)? Does POTUS or Holder know about Governor's Island? It is in Manhattan Harbor. How does moving the trial to Governor's Island decrease the possibility of a terror attack on New York while the show trial continues for months? West Point is better -- a military reservation -- but it invites trouble along the Hudson RIver Valley, which is most burdensome to small towns and isolated and expensive real estate.
Collins Growls.
In a bad road sign for the struggling Obama administration and its troubled Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano, the soft-spoken GOP moderate Susan Collins of Maine fell in line with the GOP's soft-on-terror attack line when she growled that the handling of Abdulmutallab on Flight 253 has been dangerously inadequate and inept. When POTUS said "systemic failure," he was understating. Collins pronounced on a Saturday radio show, "Less than one hour. That's right, less than one hour. In fact, just 50 minutes. That's the amount of time that the FBI spent questioning Abdulmutallab, the foreign terrorist who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. How did the Obama administration decide to treat a foreign terrorist, who had tried to murder hundreds of people, as if he were a common criminal?"
Falling.
The failure of the KSM show-trial staging, the lingering and deepening questions about Abdulmutallab, the general sense of confusion and retreat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the aggression by China with regard cybertheft and Taiwan, all these are building to a crescendo. The Obama team still have good will from the public. But they are acting defensively and that often invites the worst case scenario. What is worst case? Unknown.
By John Batchelor on January 30, 2010 12:46 AM
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Stealth Strategy.
The Kremlin lost Cold War 1.0 for so many reasons that it wearies the imagination; however it aims to win Cold War 2.0 by securing alliances with Berlin and Tehran and Delhi and a passing working relationship with the beggar of Asia, China. The Sukhoi Stealth fighter is a catch-up, not a strategic threat, but it is in the direction of a strategic tool. The big picture is much more compelling. Spoke George Friedman, Stratfor.com and author, "The Next Hundred Years," on Thursday 28, and we looked at the strategic picture in Europe and Asia. The Kremlin alliance with Berlin is the emerging giant on the continent, a combination for banking, energy, machine speciality, software and tech, nuclear, military and industrial space. Kremlin/Berlin is a hostile power to the North American interests. It will look like a superstate, stretching from France to Siberia, but the center will be the Kremlin with the old pal German militarism in the wings.
Sleeping Asia Giant.
George Friedman also dismissed China: he regards it as a beggarly stew that cannot succeed with 300 millions living on less than $80/month and only 60 millions in the middle class of $20,00 plus per year -- cannot and will not succeed with the kleptocrats of the so-called CP and the graft games of the foreign devils. Japan is the once and future military and banking energy of Asia, with the largest Navy in the Pacific. South Korea aims to reacquire North Korea and maintain good relations with the US. Japan is hostile, however, and will dominate the Pac Rim as China disintegrates from contradictions and bad banking. Japan does need energy, and this spurs them to go all nuke energy and also to get on Russia's nat gas pipelines and liquid nat gas supply chain.
Kremlin.
What attracts about the Kremlin is that it has a grievance against Washington and means to play it out quickly. Putin pegged POTUS Obama as ill-read, indifferent and distracted when they met last summer, and the Medvedev team disregards POTUS Obama as an adversary. The Kremlin knows now it can test the Obama team in the near abroad. The reacquisition of Ukraine is first, then George, then onto Eastern Europe -- the two gems being Poland and the Czech Republic. The Kremlin is cocky. While Washington Sleeps.
By John Batchelor on January 29, 2010 12:16 AM
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Geithner Is Busy Getting Beaten Up Elsewhere.
Mr. Ben Bernanke's confirmation for his second term as Fed chair was an ugly win, 70-30, with significant opposition by senators in both parties who are facing difficult re-election races in this election year, chiefly John McCain in Arizona and Barbara Boxer in California -- and even the trendy Russ Feingold in friendly Wisconsin (who is running behind former Governor Tommy Thompson in the polls). Why did Bernanke struggle? Because he is the agreed upon one to blame for the joblessness and the doubt in the Obama administration. Tim Geithner can be blamed, but he is in so much trouble over the AIG pay-out mess to the big banks in the fall of 2008 that there is no easy shot at him despite his generallly agreed upon lackluster results. Bernanke is a Republican presidential appointee who has been in the control room of the so-called independent Fed since 2004 as a governor, and since 2006 as Fed chair. He was on the scene when the wrong things happened, and he was on scene when the wrong things were done. Blaming Mr. Ben is easy and meaningless, and if it fixed the problem everyone would join in.
The Problem.
Spoke John Bussey, WSJ, on Thursday 28, and he was careful to speculate that the Obama administration made a poor call between politics and mechanics in January 2009 and is now paying the price of unpopularity and confusion. The choice was the political excitement of using the good feeling of election to advance healthcare, energy and education with a big majority in Congress. The mechanics choice was to go for jobs growth, a jobs bill with direct investment in small private businesses with tax cuts and hiring benefits -- and also with a lifting of the onerousness of government mandated healthcare, energy tax, and increased regulation costs. Bussey mentions that it is not too late, and that there was mention in the SOTU of tax breaks for small businesses, but nothing well-shaped, nothing substantive. Instead, POTUS is pitching a trillion-dollar fast-rail plan that is fantastic, improbable, and well into the future terms of his successors. The problem in 2010 is that the Obama team does not have a solution for the joblessness, because what will work is the Obama team's getting out of the solution and taking their lavish and unlikely legislative fairy tales of universal peace and wellness and fulfillment with them.
By John Batchelor on January 28, 2010 1:57 AM
|6 Comments
Taunting.
My professionals were consistent in their remarks during and following the POTUS unusually long and workman-like SOTU: contentious, partisan, confrontational, defensive, argumentative, petty, repetitive, unoriginal, accusatory, and one more odd detail. It was unpresidential. POTUS is a first-rate partisan, and he enjoys baiting and taunting the opposition in order to gain advantage. It is the community organizer looking to raise a row in order to divide and conquer. POTUS attempted to engage the GOP and bring out a raucous rejection of his plans. He accused the GOP, grinned at the GOP, made jokes on the GOP. POTUS dragged out his banalities for seventy-five minutes. The speech was shapeless. There was talk of jobs, deficit, healthcare, and there was a gross and inarticulate attack on the banks as if the banks are the villains, the anti-Christs. None of the attacks was new; none was sophisticated. The worst moments came at the now-predictable and lazy "Blame Bush" passages.
GOP
From my brief conversation with Thaddeus McCotter, the GOP was not tempted to take the bait. No more Joe Wilsons. The GOP House sat serenely with smiles at the POTUS preachy, scolding remarks. The atmosphere of the House chamber was surprisingly jocular. No one much seemed to take POTUS soberly. POTUS assertions and declarations were regarded as rhetoric. Gone in the morning. The Luo kingship (Barack Obama's father was a Luo from Kenya) is now understood. All talk. Someone else pays the bill. The worshipful New York Times acknowledges the POTUS frailty by emphasizing in a headline the POTUS breezy appeal to the Democrats not to "run for the hills." Too late. After tonight, those additional six to ten retirements will be coming in the House purple seats held by Democrats.
By John Batchelor on January 27, 2010 12:48 AM
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Waterloo.
Spoke James Hohman, Politico, re the breakdown in communication between the Obama administration announcing a discretionary spending freeze in anticipation of the SOTU and Harry Reid in the Senate who replied quickly that he does not agree with a spending freeze. At the same time, am told that Charlie Rangel, Chair of the Ways and Means, does not agree with the freeze. Steny Hoyer, Majority Leader in the House, spoke up that the Senate was dysfunctional and that was the explanation for the healthcare fiasco and the POTUS dilemma. Harry Reid fired back that he could make some comments about the House but declined for the time. Lots of hurt feelings, though no one believes a word of any of it. In this, we watch the White House claim that POTUS is a populist who is ready to speak against the big banks and Wall Street and in favor of the little banks and Main Street. Populism is not adequate for this square dance. The Democrats have suffered a majority breakdown, and all the kings horses cannot help. The message of the day on the Hill is "Sauve qui peut!" Same as Waterloo. The Imperial Guard has broken.
Retirements Bring Retirements.
Spoke to Josh Kurtz, Roll Call, and Josh Kraushaar, Politico, and John Fund, WSJ, re the growing loss of retirements by Democrats in purple districts. The Democrats are now at a divide. Six to ten more retirements in purple seats will put the majority at risk. The pro ops are watching carefully:
If these men retire, then it is game on for the GOP to take all forty seat needed for the majority in 2010. Also add one new name as of today: Earl Pomeroy (N.C.). John Fund says these men are mightily tempted to go out winners rather than spend the next eight months raising money in a headwind and risk going out a loser. The Marion Berry (Ark.) retiremement yesterday rocked the majority when he recounted a story of his visit to POTUS. Pomeroy told POTUS that healthcare would put the party at risk such as in 1994. POTUS replied that the difference now was that POTUS is popular and is not Bill Clinton. Pomeroy is still bothered by the POTUS detachment, indifference, presumption?
By John Batchelor on January 25, 2010 5:55 PM
|7 Comments
Barbara Boxer Needs the Lakers Plus.
POTUS presenting a photo-op with the popular Los Angeles Lakers (receiving his fifteenth jersey from the ten-times world champs) is not inconsequential, because California is now at risk for the mid-term election and more specially, I am told, the Liberal Democratic icon Barbara Boxer is in trouble in Southern California. The Democrats are reorganizing from the Scott Brown win, and the tactic now sounds to be triage. In the Cannot Save box are Delaware (where Beau Biden just retreated from the field, ceding it to the popular moderate Republican Mike Castle). Also in Cannot Save are Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Harry Reid of Nevada (POTUS campaigning for Reid is a farewell kiss), and the now-open North Dakota seat where Dorgan ran away from defeat. The Michael Bennett open seat in Colorado is also said to be weak for the Democrats. The No Worries seats include Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. Then there is the Work to Save seats, and chief in this category is Boxer. Greg Giroux, CQ/Roll Call, tells me that Boxer leads first-timer and cancer survivor Carly Fiorina by only a few points (and California perennial candidate Tom Campbell is tied with Fiorina), and yet the race has not started -- there is still a GOP primary. Can the GOP pick up enough to win the Senate? Nah. But it can make a strong start for the 2012 election, when the Democrats will have twice as many senators running as the GOP and too much to protect in a presidential election year.
By John Batchelor on January 25, 2010 12:36 AM
|3 Comments
Gibbs-in-Chief.
The obtuse and vain Robert Gibbs wears his White House learning heavily, and the robes of pomposity and agitprop are especially colorful, flowing, silky, in these flimsy remarks about Abdulmutallab and Bin Laden. Gibbs asserts that the decision to arrest Abdulmutallab was made by the FBI. Gibbs asserts that Bin Laden will be "brought to justice." Gibbs uses language that is usefully inexact to get past the problem for the Obama adminsitration that it does not have a plan to win the war against Bin Laden by killing him nor does it have a plan to corral and defeat the anarchist jihadists such as Abdulmutallab, who pop up like weeds around the tireless message of resentment from Bin Laden and his kindred.
The Message Is Whatever.
Bin Laden's new audio is especially aimless, prankish, defiant hyperbole. "I did it. We did it. The planes are sent to you. It is about Palestine [substitute Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen]." The mention of Gaza is choice, since he used to leave that detail out. (Gaza sees itself as a state separate from Palestine, and Gaza aims to take over Palestine on the West Bank.) The choice part of the message is the lyrical trope, "From Osama to Obama." This may amuse Bin Laden -- to match his first name with POTUS's Luo surname This will not please POTUS. Bush is out of the formula now. POTUS is in the cross-hairs. And POTUS's Luo name is in the Bin Laden rhetorical cross-hairs. Countering this is the same overtaxed and confused White House mission statement that Bin Laden will be "brought to justice." Mr. Gibbs, are we at war or are we pursuing a RICO case against a criminal enterprise called Al Q? "From Osama to Obama." This will poll grimly. What is the Obama administration reply? "Whatever"? Mr. Gibbs calls Bin Laden a "thug and terrorist." Yes, and a "thug and terrorist" attached to states who practice thuggery and asymmetrical warfare directed at their regions and at the US and its allies -- thuggish terror states that are in close conversation with the Obama administration. Such as (usual suspects). Robert Gibbs never looked flimsier (and the childish White House press corps' pet name "Gibbsy" never seemed more trite). Campaigning against what now, Mr. Gibbs? You are the USG. Whatever what? It says, "From Osama to Obama." Has the alarm bell gone off at the White House recently? Christmas Day? Three days later? January 19? Tomorrow? In time for the WHCD? A laugh line for Jay "Lazarus" Leno?
By John Batchelor on January 24, 2010 12:59 AM
|2 Comments
Terror McGuffin.
Colleague Simon Constable comments that Brits are accustomed to terror alert (if not snowy and hoarfrost landscapes mid-winter), and that the latest change in status, raising Britain to "severe" for terror attack threat, is not significant. The item is that several female bombers, using Western passports, are heading from Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (a/k/a International Front for Combatting the Crusaders and the Jews) to London or the UK targets. This is the sort of warning that was not much communicated or broadcast prior to the Christmas attack on Flight 253. Did the POTUS sinking start with the Christmas Eve healthcare passage in the Senate (60 Democrats) or with Flight 253? Spoke with Ed Hayes in re more surprising details about Abdulmutallab. The decision to arrest him was not checked with the FBI in Washington or with the DNI in Washington. Suspect was questioned before he was read his Miranda. FBI Robert Mueller does not know why he wasn't called; nor does DNI Dennis Blair know why he wasn't called. Ed Hayes and I agreed we have enough of the story now to know that we do not have the whole story of Flight 253. The mistakes continued after the arrest. The mistakes included the arrest. The Scott Brown victory included the candidate's sharp knock on the White House for Flight 253 and the arrest as a Federal prisoner. POTUS and his team most need a McGuffin (do-over) on the Abdulmutallab case. Will they arrest Ms. Jihad? Will they continued to ignore the public polling on GITMO and Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abdulmutallab? Will the Obama administration continue to campaign on the assertion that GITMO must close?
By John Batchelor on January 23, 2010 12:39 AM
|2 Comments
The Fall of the House of.
The fate of late night smutty jokes and an occasional political jibe is now a center of interest in Washington as the WHCD invites Jay Leno to do stand-up for POTUS and his court of pundits. What do Leno and POTUS have in common? Both had creative first years in prime time and are now going back to what they know best, pitching grapefruit-sized slow pitches at the audience and accepting applause. Is there significance that a slender writer of slender jokes named O'Brien has been given the hook? Nah. Is there significance that the slender writer of slender slogans named Obama has been shown the hook? Yep. The fall of the House of Kennedy, as Dan Henninger reports (and we may speak Monday 25), looks to have triggered the falling-down-the-steps of the Obama administration. Memory is that the Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy endorsement of candidate Obama in January 2008 was the start of a string of dodgy and non-transparent caucus wins (15 of 17) that gave the candidate a plurality of delegates and the edge to claim the super delegates (the machines) for the nomination. The Kennedys started it, and now the Kennedys end it by revealing they were all bluff and media memory. The Independent voters of Massachusetts ignored the senator's widow (there are two widows, but Joan is not much on the scene) and the Kennedy tribe and voted for a working class Irish kid who knows Schilling. Does Obama know Schilling? Nope. Does O'Brien know Scott Brown? Nope. O'Brien and cash traded for Schilling? And player to be named later? Player is? Brown had a much better year than O'Brien.
Leno Amuses Obama.
Jay Leno is a Boston kid, and he can speak of Schilling and the Sox openly and happily. The jokes will be useful for POTUS, who is stumped. The rumors of his marginalization are greatly exaggerated. Now he plays defense, and he is very good at defense, staying within his game. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are fouled out of the game. POTUS must hold off the GOP team. Easy, as it will make the usual mistake of cheap remarks. Still, POTUS cannot answer his own party. Leno's jokes will not make it easier. The conventional wisdom now, forty weeks to the mid-term election, is that the Democrats will lose Senate and House seats and retain a narrow, unworkable, very liberal (safer seats) majority. Sure. Lots of bumps till election day.
NBC.
The fate of NBC is meaningless. (Same for GE until and if the Immelt is replaced by a Chinese bot.) Network TV withered in the field some years ago, and the noise about late night schtick is the nostalgia. Spoke to Nancy Dewolf Smith Saturday 16 re the comics, and she was witty to remark that their jokes are smutty, teenaged clever, and vaguely misogynist, as in men in good suits who are anxious of women in good suits. Is there anything positive to say about network prime-time drama or sit-coms? Nope. Reading over the titles of the current crop, it could all be made up in a skit for Mad Magazine. The Brown election was more sit-com than anywhere on TV. If they put up a prime-time show called "Schilling Is a Yankees Fan," then they might start to connect to the game the rest of us are watching.
By John Batchelor on January 22, 2010 12:50 AM
|4 Comments
Who TARP?
Who voted for TARP in the fall of 2008? The entire Democratic majority voted for the TARP. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid stood side by side with the officious Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and supported every element of the four-page Treasury memo that grabbed $750 billion of the people's money and claimed it was to save the economy. The entire Democratic majority in the fall of 2008 included Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. The pro-TARP vote also included the House GOP leadership of Boehner and Cantor as well as large numbers of the GOP Senate, including McCain. In sum, that POTUS and his Democrats now pontificate that they will limit the banks, tax the banks, intimidate the banks, fight the banks, is vague, trendy, nervous, and sillier than Forgive All Debts. Paul Volcker did not give the message enough merit by just standing by. Where has Volcker been since the spending and forgiving spree of '09? If this is populism, it is a virtual remix. The market saluted POTUS by taking the averages negative for the year. POTUS boasted:
"Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail," Mr. Obama said Thursday
Healthcare.
The White House retreat on the Pelosi/Reid bills is aimless. There is no spin. The administration advanced to the edge of pushing out a bill to take control of 15% of the American economy and yet it had no Plan B. Peculiar and frail. The strong horse no longer lives at 1600 Pennsylvania. Where now?
Campaign Finance Reform.
Also silly was the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Act of 2004, because it was never enforceable and was always laughable. Limit corporate contributions to candidates? So instead the work-around was to form dual committee, of McCain and the Mountain Goat Lobby, so that it was possible to pour large checks into the Goats and provide access to the moola to McCain. Laughable. POTUS Obama outcry at the SCOTUS decision is deeply cynical.
President Barack Obama attacked the ruling and said it gave "a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics," particularly "big oil, Wall Street banks, health-insurance companies and the other powerful interests" that "drown out the voices of everyday Americans." He pledged to work with lawmakers to craft a "forceful response."
By John Batchelor on January 21, 2010 12:55 AM
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Rebar Crimes.
News that a 6.1 aftershock struck Haiti at 630 AM on Wednesday 20, 35 miles north of the city and 6 miles below the surface (shallow), is consistent with the report from Russell Seitz, Harvard Physics, that the Caribbean Plate is a most active region moving east while the North American Plate, where we stand in NY, moves west. The whole region is at risk routinely to shocks. The crime is to build a city without rebar, without the familiar information as to how to build for quakes. Spoke Bret Stephens Tuesday 19, and he made the argument that the $100 million of World Bank aid flowing to Haiti recently was wasted on what? Where are the earthquake-proof buildings and codes? The US Embassy remains sound because it as constructed to withstand earthquakes and assaults. It has rebar. Who is responsible at the World Bank, at the IMF, at the UN, for permitting construction in Port-au-Prince that did not anticipate major quakes? These people, these teams and review panels, are guilty of extreme negligence and a kind of institutional malpractice that resembles the Inquisition, or eugenics. Plate Tectonics was a new theory in 1966. It is an established piece of urban planning in 2010. There is no excuse. Crime of the state. Rene Preval must answer. The UN's Ban Ki Moon must answer.
Port.
SecDef Robert Gates from India is reported to have ordered the Navy to check, clear and rebuild the port asap. The puzzle is why this report came eight days after the port collapsed. The port handled 90% of the goods into Haiti before the event. The USCG has managed to jerryrig a finger pier that can take shallow-draft barges and brown-water cutters, but not the big ships that are needed. And the thousand-foot pier is said to have a 200-foot hole in it so that only one tractor trailer can get through at a time. The airport is now secured by the military and expanded to up to 120 flights per day, which is a miracle with one strip and no tower, a miracle. But still, one cargo ship can bring in the equivalent of 75 to 110 planeloads of stuffs. The USN and USCG are trying to use smaller ports to the north to get very heavy fuel oil onto the island for vehicles. The Navy and Marines are running supplies onto the beach. But without the port, the lifeline to nine million people is unsustainably fragile. The aftershocks will continue. The fault lines show the risk at all times.
Who Is in Charge?
No one has answered the governance question, and it is day 9. The UN is incapable of decision because of its unanimous rule. The Obama administration is reluctant to assert authority, I do not have the reason. The Haitian government is skilled at kleptocracy, not advocacy. Congress is half in session and surprisingly quiet about the governance failure. The news victims are the people who have been abandoned to anarchy and anecdote by the tribes gathered at the airport behind secure lines. The tribes of UN, US embassy, media, Haiti, NGOs and the usual suspect do-gooders. These tribes are safe to stand atop Haiti's airport and identify the problem, and the problem is not the fault zones; the problem is the absence of government. Draw straws would work better than the fault-shifting.
By John Batchelor on January 20, 2010 12:13 AM
|1 Comment
Governance Failure.
IDF field hospital demonstrates how to deploy in an emergency in primitive and hostile conditions. The question is asked by the Euro media now, where is the American effort? The problem of governance looks to be at the center of the regrets. The single-strip airport, the dysfunctional city beforehand, the collapsed port, the loss of the UN local leadership, the absence of First Responders in country, the collapse of the hospitals and clinics, all these blows added up to major catastrophe. However, governance is capable of reacting and revising if it is in place. The massive pipeline of people and supplies awaits leadership. From the random reports over the last days, there is still no clarity as to who is in charge at the airport, in the city, in the countryside. The US is said to be reluctant to send out aid, food and medical without security. The UN is clumsy and told countries not to send any more rescue teams last Friday; now tells countries to send more. Ban Ki Moon is slow, stately, loopy, dull and paradoxical at best (perhaps it is poor translators, perhaps it is cultural about what an emergency means). On day 8, there is no certain command and control on the ground at the airport. The US is pushing Marines into the western part of the city (the portside). The survivors are fleeing the city for the countryside, where they still need everything. The port remains severely damaged, unready for major supply; and the exception so far is special care Coast Guard delivery; there is no schedule available for when the port will reopen for the big ships that are now being diverted. The US started airdrops last evening at a secure zone 8km from the city. But the roads remain iffy, and the US still needs to clear and secure the roads. Again without command and control, everything critical is a debate each time it comes up.
Casualties.
Lt. Gen Keen of SOUTHCOM, commanding the US presence, uses the staggering number of 200,000 dead. Spoke to Dr. Nadeem Afridi, Mass General, Association of Pakistani Physicians in New England, who has experience in the quake zone of Hindu Kush in 2005, and he identified the massive numbers of injuries likely, at least 200,000 WIA, with injuries that will lead to amputations or death unless antibiotics and food available. The wounds of January 12 are now life-threatening after seven days in crisis. And this was not a healthy population to begin with -- lifelong absence of responsible medical care in-country.
Foreign Aid.
Speaking Bret Stephens, WSJ, Tuesday 19, re the money now targeted to Haiti that will deepen the century-long dysfunction. IMF and World Bank and US and EU and UN aid makes the economy fail, not succeed. Food aid wrecks the economy for farmers. Aid diverted into the hands of the kleptocrats and their clans and tribes just supports their grip on power. Haiti was and will remain a dysfunctional zone of no development and no solutions as long as it is sustained by asset transfers from charitable states. The long-term charity is the threat. The immediate problem is a crisis. But in twelve months, the crisis will be answered by the mass graves and the mortality rate of the damaged; however, the state will remain a parasite on charity creatures such as the IMF. Rebuilding Port-au-Prince without rebar is a crime of the future. Rebuilding Haiti with no change in governance is a condemnation to perpetual crisis.
By John Batchelor on January 19, 2010 12:08 AM
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Cunning Narrator.
The agitprop of Al Jazeera released a sinister and distorted video on YouTube from its broadcast, and it is an early warning that the Umma propaganda broadcasters and journos are searching for an anti-American narrative in the Haitian catastrophe. The insinuation here is that the Americans are taking care of themselves and that the Americans know only how to occupy and dominate a nation with guns and machines. ". . . more like the Green Zone in Baghdad" is the tossed reference to the emergency staging that the US Navy has started at the airport at Port-au-Prince. The narrative aim looks to be to find a quid pro quo for the visuals of the massive American assistance flowing to Port-au-Prince. The Umma's controlling argument, supported and developed by Al Jazeera out of Qatar, is that the Americans are present in the war zones only because they seek to exploit and possess the natural resources. What natural resources in Haiti? The cunning by the narrator is to jump to the possibility that Americans care only about themselves and that perhaps occupation of a de-populated half-island is the American war aim. Made the case Sunday 17 that the reporting on Afghanistan and Iraq early in the war did not leap to refute the Umma agitprop, and that was a mistake. Whenever the Qatar stooges rise up to whine that America is an exploiter and conniver, it is useful to slap the stooges down and throw them a water bottle to wash out their mouths. The agitprop narrative may be an explanation why no aid, cash or even condolences are coming for KSA and other oil kleptocracies. Iraq is about to flip to the Arab League newspeak, and it may not have room or politics to speak well of the US military or State at Haiti.
The Navy.
Spoke Sunday 17 Chuck Nash and Mike Groothausen, both USN (retired) re the Navy commitment to Port-au-Prince. The Carl Vinson and Bataan and attendant flotilla are on station for the foreseeable future to provide structure and security to the AID and other aid workers heading into the target zone. Groothausen said that the USN has exercised just such a contingency plan with its ships and crews, though not at this scale, to stand off a damaged zone and provide for a wrecked population center. The sailors will stay on board to keep the flotilla on station. The Marine MEU on Bataan will deploy to the airport to provide security for the hospitals, tent cities, distribution centers, that are under construction. Nash reported that the airport cannot be expanded, that building a new strip is unlikely. The major and darkest loss is that the port is down and will remain down for sometime. Nash reported that the Navy has ships that can dredge, such as the USS Grappler, augmented by divers, but that this will require weeks to achieve. In the meantime, the seabottom has shifted with the quake, and the whole area must be recharted. Groothausen reported that Vinson had to creep in behind a Navy vessel that was charting the bottom as it moved along.
Evacuation.
The inability of the UN or the Haitian government to reorganize after 120 hours in order to begin the evacuation that is critical has left the Haitian people to do it on their own. Reports have started that all manner of transportation is now moving out of the target zone and to the countryside. This is smart desperation. The crisis will now switch to getting food and water and health services to the dislocated who are miles from Port-au-Prince. The lack of the port makes this impossible in needed time. There are reports that the roads overland from DR or from the south coast are now under study for truck transport to the countryside. A tent city some ten or twenty miles from the target zone is credible. Many tent cities. Some distance that is walkable and secure. The city looks uninhabitable for the future -- and whatever part is now livable will quickly deteriorate with crime and lack of resources. Haiti will not be in recovery at least until summer. The port is needed at least by March. Begin the surveying and dredging and building.
(Addition: 15:48 hrs Monday 18: Reuters reporting 14:00 hrs Monday 18 that a US Army General Dana of J4 Logistics Directorate is speaking hopefully of re-opening the port "in 2 to 3 days." No details of why Dana asserts this, or what information he possesses of the sea bottom. Dana is speaking more of his orders than of his findings. The sea bottom is the risk, not the buildings or quays.)
"They have a phenomenal port, which we will get opened in two to three days, and we have a great airfield. My instructions are to move things in as fast as we can," Brigadier General Michael Dana, of the J4 Logistics Directorate, told Reuters. With the port out of operation, the huge international relief operation has had to use Port-au-Prince's congested airport, which has delayed the arrival of urgently needed medical and food supplies."
By John Batchelor on January 18, 2010 12:29 AM
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Security Missing.
Mrs. Clinton's statement to the media as she arrived at the airport at Port-au-Prince was excellent and perfectly on message for the scale of the troubles. Everything about her tone, demeanor, pacing and diplomacy suggests that she has long trained for this, long imagined how to carry on in the midst of hemispheric catastrophe. The Obama administration is delivering aid and message to Haiti and pushing hard to get to the people who need help the most right way with food, water and security. The rolling concern is for the breakdown in order as famine, thirst, fear and rage (right). The NYT reporter most on the scene since the first hours asserts that there are not large gangs or a massive threat presence, just roving bands for food. Mrs. Clinton is reported to have moved immediately to visiting the wounded and recovered and to conferring with the US. ambassador and President Rene Preval of Haiti. News on Sunday 17 is that the situation in the city is deteriorating rapidly from looting and shortages and the inability of the rescuers to establish distribution centers.
Caribbean Plate.
Spoke Russell Seitz, Harvard Physics, Saturday 16, and learned that the the Caribbean Plate tectonics explain all of the major destruction in the region since Europeans first settled towns and swelled populations with slaves and trade. A seventeenth-century quake destroyed Port Royal on Jamaica and ended the piracy capital of the planet. Quakes and volcanoes have routinely killed and rearranged, and as recently as 1946 there was a colossal 8.0 quake on the northern shore of Hispanola (DR side) that, if it came again today, would devastate millions more of the newcomers to DR pleasure cities. Everything from St. Vincent and Montserrat on the Windward Islands to Santiago and GITMO on the Leeward is at routine risk. There is a volcano named Kick-em-Jenny that is rising up to form a new island to Windward. The whole of Central America was underwater 60 million years ago when the asteroid struck at Yucatan and ended the dinosaurs on Laurasia and more. We have a dynamic planet. Planetary geology has taught me that the dynamism is why we are part of healthy environment that will change again. Mention that it is possible to build safely in the target zone of the Caribbean Plate as it moves east and the North American Plate moves west. The U.S. Embassy building at Port-au-Prince was undamaged by a 7.0. Built with rebar. Not the collapsed buildings in Port-au-Prince. No rebar (below).
Politics of Haiti.
Speaking Sunday 17 with professionals re the politics of the rescue and evacuation. The scale of the disaster is not containable. The Obama administration continues excellent, and tasking POTUS Bush and POTUS Clinton is well-managed. In the discussion at this point, thanks to the perspicacious Pundita at RBO, are what countries and regional organizations are missing from the rescue. Chiefly KSA. And the China contribution, given its experience with earthquakes, is oddly minor. Puzzling. As if Beijing has turned away from good PR -- or never understood PR to begin with and has been enjoying the presumption of a turn-around hardscrabble state, when in fact it regards itself as the awesome Middle Kingdom of mandarins and appetites. The US remains the global power that understands globalization's limits and ambitions. Michael Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, made the excellent case Saturday 16 that only the US military, the "tribal confederacy" of 30 million in uniform or in service, is able to respond to a disaster of Haiti proportions. Speaking Sunday 17 with two Navy veterans, Chuck Nash and Mike Groothausen, re the Navy task force and assets already arrived and en route.
By John Batchelor on January 17, 2010 12:41 AM
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Brown Pinstripes.
Larry Johnson, No Quarter, sends me a moment of Leonardo genius from TheNoseOnYourFace.com, that shows the SEIU how to hit the smiling Scott Brown on the one issue that will move the Independents to vote against him. Brown cannot answer this brutal Yankees charge without revealing that facts about where he was in October 1978 when the meaningless Bucky Dent swatted a hanging curveball all of 280 feet and then the profound Yaz popped out to Nettles to end a game that is best never spoken of in daylight. Where was Scott Brown that day? Fenway? No answer. Was he wearing a Yankees smile? No answer. Where was Brown's pal Curt Schilling? No answer. Also smiling? No answer.
What Does Brown Bomber Mean to Rahm Emanuel?
About the same that the Bucky Dent 15 kiloton flyball (below) meant to Fenway, forever. Why is Brown smiling? Does he smile every time he thinks of that hanging curve? Does he relive the cheers from Yankeedom that could be heard in Boston? Why is POTUS Obama moving the Air Force One cavalcade to Boston for ninety minutes on Sunday 17? Does POTUS recall the smiles on the faces of Deeds and Corzine when POTUS airdropped in to rescue their campaigns in 2009? How bad is it at the White House? Is Rahm taking calls from the SEIU? Is Axelrod on the hook for the brouhaha in Boston? Where is Duval Patrick when POTUS comes to town -- at Logan? Does Coakley get to ride in the limo? What does Coakley get if she wins? Loses? Coakley goes to the Federal bench?
A new Coakley loser scenario.
In the event that the Brown Bomber wins on Tuesday 19, the two scenarios so far, that the House endorses the Senate bill and it goes straight to POTUS without a resubmit to the Senate, or that the Senate votes on the resubmit before the Mass Secretary of State certifies the Brown win, have now been joined by a third new loser scenario, that the Senate strips out the non-revenue parts of the bill and passes it with reconciliation, which needs only fifty-one votes and not sixty, since the revenue parts (Senate rules) cannot be filibustered. All three scenarios are guaranteed to start the atomic cannons in every congressional district for 2010. Radioactive Rahm. Barney Frank claims he is ready to surrender to a Brown win. Nah. There will be atomic blood. The professionals onboard Sunday 17 to prepare for the blast crater on Tuesday 19: Mona Charen, Margaret Hoover, James Taranto, John Avlon, Larry Johnson, Simon Constable, Craig Unger, John Fund.
By John Batchelor on January 16, 2010 12:28 AM
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Mars Next Time.
There is a folksy farce somewhere inside the fact that Al Gore and a handful of well-funded and trendy climatologists have convinced the G-8 and G-66 plus China that CO2 is an enemy, pollutant and planet-killer -- so that we are headed in the direction of the Martian polar region. Find this vastly Solomonic voice of Weather Channel tyro John Coleman narrating what appears to be a San Diego Bible school class on how Moses managed to part the Red Sea using tools you can make at home -- and yet the content of the multiple part video is that there is no global warming caused by Mankind's industrial folly, and that CO2 is a product, not a cause, of temperature change and climate change over the last measurable million years. Coleman speaks peculiarly; however, the chorus line of pros he presents are persuasive and not to be dismissed as cranks. The presentation is blunt: global temperature goes up and down because this is a dynamic planet in motion in a dynamic solar system and galaxy, and we homo sapiens are products of the transformation process. The simple version of this video is that Al Gore and a handful (all now associated with the Climategate investigations for fraud and collusion) have chosen a result and claimed it is the cause. Like pointing to a burned-out building and claiming that it started the fire.
Climate Change for Amateurs.
Speak to both Bob Zimmerman and Marc Marano, ClimateDepot, on Sunday 17, re the tumbling out revelations of clumsy manipulations of data by the handful of climatologists over the last twenty years in order to make their paranoid and admirably Jonathan Swift case that we are all of us doomed to a planet of sweaty jungles and Arabian wastes. The detail that is most attractive is that NOAA cherry-picked temperature stations since the mid 1980s. There will be cherry blood. Is it possible that every major science adviser has been duped by greenhouse confidential?
Cult.
The AGW posse has achieved a kind of symmetry with the voters. The majority of Americans do believe in AGW (hence the cult like nature of the argument); at the same time the majority of Americans do not believe in the Copenhagen power grab (hence the rejection of cap and trade in the polls). Underlining this paradox is the strange possibility that the AGW data is not trustworthy and that the conclusions are based upon poor quality work. An additional momentary concern is that the data was deliberately shaped or edited. I have learned that there is insufficient evidence for any such conclusion at this time, and perhaps for another several thousand years of data collection. Meanwhile, the AGW leader at NASA James Hansen has decided to get out and meet the faithful via TV and celebrity. A puzzle is why science needs to present its case on late night talk?
By John Batchelor on January 16, 2010 12:03 AM
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Win Ugly, Part 2.
The SEIU is the way to win ugly in Massachusetts, and the special ops are fully committed to drag down the vote with negative daggers at Scott Brown. The SEIU smear-Brown video is so first-rate ugly perfect, it does feel like a caricature. What is even better are the display ads that now are wall-to-wall on the websites of the Boston and local media -- using Sarah Palin's glamorous picture as a way to smear Scott Brown's grinning pleasure. The Scarlett Letter did not present better visuals than this association. The fact that this works, that this graphic actually exists, that the all powerful SEIU not only believes it will rally the Democrats but also believes it is consistent with saving the Obama healthcare plan, are loud signals that the political rhetoric for the 2010 mid-terms will be rudimentary, ruthless, a delight for tragic opera fans. The fat lady will sing and die in this donnybrook. Actually, the fat lady is joined on stage by a surprisingly charming TV celebrity named Sarah Palin, who may or may not be a politician, but who has become the wicked witch of the North to the eyes of the base Democratic vote. The Brown smear with the Palin face, and enjoy the wonderfully loopy logic that because the crypto-coven of the Tea Party, called TeaParty.org on the poster, supports Palin and Brown, therefore Palin is a Brown compadre. The TeaParty also supports Tea. Therefore... Who could have made up the fact that the anti-Tea crowd is centered in the Boston Democratic machine? Does this make Team Coakley into the Redcoats? And POTUS into distracted and vaguely not cogent King George? Nah. Too slender. And the story doesn't work out so well for the Tories.
Brown Survives Daggers.
The Boston Phoenix, a feverish Coakley endorser, publishes a strange confession piece that the Demo ops tried to stab Brown with falsehoods in his special and general elections in 2004 when he moved from the State legislature to the State Senate. This is funny. Apparently Scott Brown doesn't need help as a campaigner or truth-teller, but the Democratic machine in Massachusetts needs a re-education retreat to figure how to work in a landscape with two or more vigorous parties on the ballot. What the Coakley smears have done are accelerate Brown's popularity at home in Massachusetts (or "Massachusettes") and also make it obvious that the Special Election is now a national surrogate for healthcare as well as the Obama domestic agenda. Brown supports POTUS on Afghanistan. Coakley opposes POTUS on Afghanistan. Brown opposes POTUS on healthcare. Coakley supports POTUS on healthcare. Brown opposes POTUS on the bank confiscation (windfall profits tax). Coakley supports bank confiscation. And so forth. Who could have guessed that an endorsement of Coakley by Vicki Kennedy and POTUS Obama would be seen as unhelpful this late in the campaign? This is the New York 23rd in the Red Queen's Court. Victory, Candidates, Issues, State Machine, the Kingdom.
Brown is the Candidate.
What emerges from the details of the last months of Brown's campaign is that this is the Robert Redford characters from "The Candidate." An ex male model and now 50 year-old Dad in an ancient GMAC pick-up who can speak Boston Irish to cops and printers and retrievers. Hollywood doesn't do this better. Except that it is Boston and the SEIU, it would be time to turn out the lights and appoint Coakley to be the Deeds deputy at the DNC. The lights are mighty dim. Flickering. Power failure? Rolling black-outs in the Democratic Party. Who will be blamed for this?
By John Batchelor on January 14, 2010 3:48 PM
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Biden, Obama, Clinton in Command.
POTUS Obama is correct and focused with this well-phrased statement about the armada and military units inbound to Haiti. "We will partner with the Haitian people..." VPOTUS Biden is tasked again to " "We will partner with the United Nations... our hearts go out to the United NAtions..." "We will partner with other nations and organizations..." "We need to summon the tremendous generosity and compassion of..." "Go to WhiteHouse.gov..." "Long before this tragedy..." "Have we somehow been forsaken?" "You will not be forsaken, you will not be forgotten..." In the frame with POTUS are Biden and Clinton, the starting team for the aid supervision. Spoke Keith Koffler, Roll Call, re the Obama White House performance, and he reported that the NSS is eager to assert that it can handle the scale of the crisis. At the same time, POTUS is occupied by the healthcare negotiation, and he did also make his bank tax statement today. The domestic agenda continues, yet the friction with the Christmas Bomber and now Haiti weigh upon the people and their skills. Can they handle all of it? Yes. Is POTUS free to dash up to Boston on Sunday for Coakley? Keith Koffler says that Robert Gibbs remains unclear about that decision, day four of the Coakley collapse.
Politics of Worst-Case.
The scale of the Haiti crisis will overwhelm the news for days, perhaps the remainder of January. Port-Au-Prince is a ruin or broken, cracked unstable buildings, with the aftershocks threatening anyone inside a shelter of more than canvas; the corpses, the water, the famine, will make the city uninhabitable. We can expect fires to start along with looting for food and cash -- anything to carry to get out. The damage to the airport and port are not easily fixed. The worst is coming now, as the dead are dead, but the living are badly at risk with no certain avenue away from the dying and the possibility of chaos, riot, violence. The dogs must be dealt with. Adrenalin runs out in 72 hours, and afterward the body starts shutting down. Hunger, thirst move people to drink bad water, and then the wasting starts. In all this the politics of worst case make whatever is done not enough and slow and misdirected. This is New Orleans times twenty or thirty thousand. The airport and the media trailers will become a target. The US must get its people out, and this means the media first. CNN has pushed its people in bravely; it is time to redeploy to the airport and evacuation. The Marines must first protect the Marines and the equipment.
White House Commands Port Au Prince.
With the UN operations down, and perhaps wiped out, the authority to act swiftly now moves to POTUS and the NSS. The armada of Carl Vinson, Bataan, the Coast Guard, and now new ships mentioned, Fort McHenry, Carter Hall, Underwood, Normandy; also moving to Haiti are the 82nd Airborne and the Marines on Vinson. The hospital ship Comfort is most needed, but will need a week to get to Haiti as it does not have the flank speed of the warships. With all these units in place, with the port damaged and the one-strip airport unreliable, with the UN leadership dead or missing in place, with the other countries sending support units, the White House has inherited the wrecked city and the doomed people. POTUS makes much use of the trendy very "to partner" in his remarks (above); however the facts on the ground demonstrate that the NSS commands Haiti for the next months. There is no good plan; there is struggle and guesswork and speed. The Obama administration has the people in place, and the military infrastructure (Lt. Gen Douglas Fraser's SOUTHCOM) to solve the problem in time. How much time is there? Unknown.
By John Batchelor on January 13, 2010 1:35 PM
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BC Sings.
Scott Brown's two daughters, Ayla and Arianna Brown, leap into the contest within hours with a radio ad in order to turn the Martha Coakley attack as on Brown on women's health issues into a counter attack on Coakley's veracity and sense of decency. Ayla Brown is a local celebrity after her appearance on American Idol as a Boston College senior. The sisters read effectively and swiftly, and the audio is now aimed at the talk radio audience in Boston. (I can expect it to play during my show on WTKK Boston.) Coakley's campaign have made two fundamental errors. The negative ad was launched right after her poor showing in the Monday 11 debate, therefore emphasizing her despair. Also, the ad goes after Brown on healthcare, which is his strength, not weakness, becaue a plurality of state voters are against Harry Reid's healthcare bill (and likely against Harry Reid's mouth).
"Hell for Democrats."
Martha Coakley makes the negative ad much much worse with an unforced error during her bizarre decision to race to a faddish Washington wine bar and mix with $10,000 per plate healthcare lobbyists from every major pharmaceutical and from the usual suspects of Democratic ops (Tommy Boggs). A GOP op who got inside the wine bar, reported to Hotline that Coakley told her faithful donors, "If we don't win this, 2010 will be hell for Democrats." Coakley is speaking correctly, however it is panicky and ruinous for her to speak aloud for quote. It is easy to assume that this remark will be a headline in all the blogs of the Boston Herald and a centerpiece of editorials soon enough. How many ways is it a bad mistake. 1. It is true. 2. It is the low road. 3. It is a passive threat, almost a shakedown remark. 4. It is weak, frustrated, disoriented, futile, blame-shifting. 5. It is true. Mention that the low road almost guarantees an advantage to the other guy, who is left the high road to mention you are on the low road. A self-destructive low road.
Panic at the DNC.
Meanwhile the DNC is doing all that it can to mphasize the panic by sending its Rovian/ Richileau clone, Hari (the Hatchet) Sevugan racing to Boston to start up the attack blogs and feed the frenzy. Sevugan's best though was to ask why the Darkness Visible One Sarah Palin was not rushing to Boston on his plane in order to endorse Brown. Other genius thoughts enroute. The burlesque one Limbaugh communicated the usual philosophical monograph on his show within hours as to why he was featured in a Coakley attack ad on Brown? The question is the answer.
Crater Too Far.
Team Coakley will certainly have other genius notions as to how to drive down the turnout (negative campaigns suppress votes); but for now a favorite is that a lobbyist who attended the Coakley wine bar event in DC is said to have shoved a Weekly Standar reporter to the ground along a barrier, and there is video and a photo of the moment with Coakley in the frame. The attacker is said to have been a union supporter of Coakley. No charges filed so far. Hard to imagine a dopier idea than to attack the GOP media in front of the candidate. The wine bar escapade may have been the a crater too far for the Coakley campaign. Coakley's peculiarly tardy response is to fault GOP "stalkers" for the incident, apparently unaware (she does know this) that modern campaign requires both sides to tag along at the opponent's events with a videocam and shouted questions (below). Als, it is flattery for a Senate candiate to name a reporter a stalker.
By John Batchelor on January 13, 2010 12:32 AM
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The YouTube Moment.
Handsome Scott Brown achieved a political debate classic -- thanks to the lordly perfection of Professor David Gergen of the Harvard Kennedy School -- by swiftly and colloquially shrugging off the ancien regime with "...it's not the Kennedy seat, it's not the Democrat's seat, it's the people's seat..." The YouTube phenomenon makes it possible to encapsulate the whole of the debate with the lackluster Martha Coakley into one unrehearsed moment of passion and history. Here is a teachable moment for how to conduct an insurgent campaign against an overwhelming state machine in a change election. The modesty is salted with a tiger-like leap on the mousey assumption by David Gergen that Scott Brown is unworthy or disrespectful of the history of the Senate seat he aspires to. Brown quickly returns to the message, but a replay, and another replay, shows that Brown understood that he struck, and that Gergen understood that he had been struck, and the pose of senatorial confidence in both of them right afterwards reinforces the joy of how suddenly history changes. Brown goes from being a challenger of the once and future Kennedys to being a champion of an alternative future, a post Kennedy Massachusetts. It is mythologically deft. It is a moment that will stand up long after this contest is resolved.
Apology Tour Fizz.
The GOP vigilantes have clearly organized overnight to focus the next seven days on Massachusetts. Team Coakley launched a negative ad on Brown right after the debate, and Team Brown responded so fast that it seems as if someone has the playbook (below). There are atmospherics in Boston that are arranging to make the January 19 vote a center ring event. The Patriots are out of the Superbowl hunt, so Sunday is not an obsessive pursuit. Harry Reid's antics and endless mea culpas make the Democratic national operation, especially for the Senate, look to be clumsy folly in the hands of punchy pols from Searchlight, Nevada. The Obama White House has been caught up in the Reid Apology Tour Fizz and is clearly off its game. Long since in the gossip of the campaign (since September of this year) is that Scott Brown was a Cosmo centerfold in 1982 while he was a Boston College 22 year-old: Brown is now officially the UnKennedy stud. Robert Gibbs was peculiar to the point of delusional yesterday when he commented on why POTUS was not going to fly to Boston to campaign with Coakley. The Kennedy family may be too late to close this gap. Bill Clinton is sked to go into Back Bay on Friday for Coakley; however this is more of the gossip nightmare of "Game Change," since the first and only question the media will have to throw is about the "fetch coffee" line that Bill Clinton supposedly told Ted Kennedy about Candidate Obama.
Donnybrook
Boston loves a donnybrook. Boston is a clubby Irish salon when it wants to be. It can close the doors and dip potatoes in salt and sip beer and sing about politics till the cock crows. The mania for the Brown vs. Coakley race will overwhelm the background noise of the 60th healthcare vote. Love the rumor that Harry Reid will delay the swearing in of a Brown victory and rush through the vote with the stoogePaul Kirk for Massachusetts. Also love the rumor that the SEIU is going to get out the vote with the usual pranks and perambulating buses makes the expectation of Election Day and voter fraud much more thrilling. The smart guy ops are claiming that a low turnout favors Brown. This is hooey. Massachusetts is mostly an Independent registered state. A large turnout will indicate that the Indies have decided to have their moment after seven decades of the Kennedy Autopilot. While Massacusetts slept, a kid from BC showed up to start a new narrative.
By John Batchelor on January 12, 2010 12:34 AM
|4 Comments
Gigot to the Attack.
It is a sharp measure of how useful the Mass Special Election is to the GOP momentum right now that the magisterial Paul Gigot, boss of the WSJ editorial page and the McChrystal of the Republican surge for November, joins the pleasant and patient Kelsey Hubbard to comment the obvious with a smile about Scott Brown vs. Martha Coakley. The reason a smart CINC sends in reinforcements to exploit a sudden seam in the enemy defenses. The Democrats have so much territory to protect that there is not enough money or time to secure natural change such as the death of Kennedy. The healthcare brouhaha has exacerbated Democratic vulnerability just now; while the Harry Reid collapse, which had started before healthcare, now weakens everyone from Ben Nelson to Blanch Lincoln to Barbara Boxer. Gigot sees all this, and see that putting emphasis on Scott Brown's impossible campaign odds also shakes the whole Democratic Senate.
Independents.
The Scott Brown debate with Martha Coakley tonight will not change the melodrama: the script is written, and the next eight days will be a carnival on Boston TV. My best Boston wag tells me that his Democratic pals are ignoring Coakley; and those who are not disgusted with the economy (these are well-to-do Dems) are teasing they will vote Brown. Hard to guess what this means, but I do remind that John Avlon's discernment that Independents outnumber Dems and GOP combined is supported by the internals of the Boston Globe poll.
The Debate.
Preliminary polling on the debate - early Monday evening -- is decidedly pro Brown, at 70-25% over Coakley. Speaking to jeff Bliss, Monday 11, re the atmospherics of the exchange. Coakley remains without fizz, while Brown shows the pugnaciousness of a challenger. It is not good for Coakley that she did not win even an internet poll, given that the state is presumed so deeply blue and that this is the Kennedy seat. The noise around Harry Reid also does not assist Coakley, because the Democratic ops are big voices are spending all their energy defending a foolish remark. POTUS works much too hard (below) to prove that all the talk about Harry Reid is off the point and a waste of time. It is not shrewd for PORUS to declare gossip to be unneccessary. Gossip is the mortar of civilization.
The Republican National Commmitee chairman's failure to raise money is ruining the GOP's 2010 prospects. John Batchelor on why Steele and his entire staff need to go before it's too late.
JB, interesting thinking, but on behalf of the late (and great) Soupy Sales, please no comparison! Soupy was funny on purpose.
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4:25 pm, Jan 10, 2010
Valkyrie607
Note to Republicans: Affirmative Action: You are doing it wrong.
You're supposed to promote QUALIFIED people from groups that normally get passed over.
What you're doing is tokenism, and now you see why that doesn't work.
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4:08 pm, Jan 10, 2010
mzkitti
Is it true that Dick Cheney has been running buck naked around the White House grounds? If it is true I would pay much to see that.
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3:47 pm, Jan 10, 2010
Glenda1976
Many Repubs have stopped sending money to the RNC after that Dede debacle.
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3:20 pm, Jan 10, 2010
renegade907
The Republican's main interest is money...nothing more, nothing less
Don't care about people...health care, minimum wage (whenever it is up for vote) things that effect WELL over half of the country
If this is the way they handle their OWN future, what makes you think they are competent enough to lead anyone? or anything for that matter
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3:13 pm, Jan 10, 2010
Uncommonsense
No thought required. The Pugs did a very thorough job of screwing this country up. Karma turns it inward.
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3:48 pm, Jan 10, 2010
apparently
Michael Steele was picked for all the wrong reasons not the least of which was an attempt to look politically correct. As one who receives all the emails, solicitations, etc. from his office, there has been zero direction during his tenure and gaffs beyond comprehension.
The Republican party needed a time of rethinking, reorganizing and deciding some important issues. Instead, Steele sets off on a year of self-promotion. Embarassing at best.
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3:04 pm, Jan 10, 2010
goldengateview
Please. Michael Steele is the latest example of Republicans' own version of "affirmative action."
The Democrats had Hillary Clinton, so the Republicans came up with Sarah Palin -- McCain's "Hail Mary Pass."
The Democrats had Barack Obama so the Republicans cynically counter with . . . Michael Steele.
It ain't rocket science, folks.
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2:40 pm, Jan 10, 2010
JackHughes
Steele wasn't picked to chair the RNC in a vacuum. He was the "best" choice out of a sorry assortment of kooks, dimbulbs and has-beens -- which speaks volumes for the sorry state of today's GOP.
One can only wait in eager anticipation for the scandal/gaffe machine in-waiting with the arrival of the next RNC chairman, not to mention the circus of the selection process itself..
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12:46 pm, Jan 10, 2010
Picachu
I usually find some insight in JB's writing, but this column is laughable. I agree Steele has been ineffective on a number of levels, but let's be honest here, and as the repub's like to say let's put PC aside for a minute. Let's be honest, the demographic of the republican party is overwhelmingly white and aging. Do you think these folks are going to shove tons of cash at a black guy?
The appointment of Steele as chairman was a joke and a charade. They were trying to present the party as something it most decidedly is NOT- a place of diversity and inclusion. Further, JB sounded more like the rest of the party he usually roundly criticizes - blaming Steele for the party's problems! Let's get real here a minute folks. The republicans are in the shape they are in because of what they have become - the party of NO, the party of pure partisanship, the party of naked greed, the party whose lifeblood is a dying demographic who is destined to get smaller and smaller.
No rational person (note the qualification here) is buying into the bullshit the republicans have been selling this country for the last 35 years. They have sold people on their ideology so they could grab power and use it to allow their true constituents, the real elitists in this country - the greedy people at the top of the food chain - to have unfettered hands to loot the nation's wealth. They don't care about anybody or anything except keeping power so the rich can keep getting richer. So the RNC is exactly where it should be, and while the republican party is not going to be extinct it is headed to the nether lands where its base will be exclusively birthers and tea baggers and right wing religious hypocrites. While the democrats are far from pure and perfect they are a damn sight better than the insidious group of scum that has overtaken the republican party, and I am personally relishing its demise. They are reaping what they have sown.
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12:28 pm, Jan 10, 2010
sjcarl
I don't know why anyone would contribute to the Republican party. Their solutions to today's problems? More tax cuts for the rich, go back to torturing detainees, and encourage the migration of insurance companies to the states with the fewest consumer protections.
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12:24 pm, Jan 10, 2010
tehixe
The reason Steele is so bad at his job is because he doesn't see it as being about the party. It's about him. He's spent his entire tenure jetting around, giving interviews until he's become a household name. This would have been a good strategy if he was good at giving interviews, or making cogent points, or even if he had some Palinesque folksy charm. But as it stands, he's suffered from terminal foot in moth disease, while his continual gaffes have dragged his party down with him.
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12:16 pm, Jan 10, 2010
Mhussein
As a independent I was dismayed when he got the job.... And now he wants to be governor of Maryland,,,this is too funny....
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10:47 am, Jan 10, 2010
osea65
Michael Steele is just an extremely greedy bureaucrat. If you want something done, this is not your guy!!! Race is what blinded the GOP into selecting him as chairman, and now we're stuck with Michael Steele. Lets cut our losses and send him packing before, indeed, it's too late!!!
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11:12 am, Jan 10, 2010
westwyre
Now if this was someone on the Democrats side the first thing said in this nuts defense is the attacks on him are racist- but since it is the right all can do is say he is what they put in charge and what they need to get rid of for someone that cares more about the people and the country then their own aggrandizement. Between his lack of success and his mouth any organization would be better off without him
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10:28 am, Jan 10, 2010
Hippievet
I sense that the actual result of Steele's ineptness will be that described in the next to last paragraph. Opportunities abound for big dollar donors to merely ignore the RNC, giving instead directly to candidates. With the divide within the republican party between the big tent people and the tea baggers never broader such a result seems obvious.
Liberals can only hope the republican party stays at 20%, the tea baggers stay at 20% and the democrats win elections with 51%.
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10:25 am, Jan 10, 2010
one1main
There is a more obvious and insidious reason for selecting Steele. Look at Obama and the PC trend in the media. A culture of cocktail crowd intellectuals: everybody frontin' nobody workin'
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9:48 am, Jan 10, 2010
nortonclybourn
You may think your comment is arch and wry, but actually it is incomprehensible gibberish. I have no idea whether you are actually trying to make a point
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11:29 am, Jan 10, 2010
Glenda1976
Norton,
You didn't understand one1main?? Let me translate: He's saying Steele is not taking care of business. He's just frontin'. Comprende??
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3:20 pm, Jan 10, 2010
oaklynne
Well said, norton! There was no point to one1main's comment, just a failed attempt to divert attention away from the failing GOP under the leadership of their number1 clownish head.
By John Batchelor on January 10, 2010 12:19 AM
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Flight 253.
Leno, Letterman, O'Brian, Stewart do not need comedy writing teams, because the week in Washington was a reality Comedy Show; and all the late-nighters needed to do was read the headlines. POTUS did not come to Washington to write farce, but there it is, farce and satire and worse. "Heckuva job, Brownie," replaced by "The system worked." It is difficult to find the tragedy in the week's highlight, since all this noise was created out of nothing and to no purpose. POTUS is a lifelong blame-shifter, and this is a skill that works in Washington (see below) up until the time there is an event that requires response and remedy and reaction, such as Hasan and Flight 253 and the FOB Chapman strike at Khost. POTUS did not catch up to the scale of the threat until two weeks after Flight 253, and he still may not perceive that he has been under attack since he took the oath of office. The attack is not from the Republican Zombies or their echo chamber burlesque pals in the media. The author of the attack is AQ, and the sponsor of the attack is Riyadh and Damascus and Islamabad and Tehran. No jokes here. The Obama team suffered a week of mistakes and take-it-backs. Why? Inexperience, bad information, slackerhood, arrogance, but most of all because it does not believe it is under attack by AQ. Do the late-night comics? Yes. That's why the nervous laughter for the "underwear" jokes. That's why Napolitano, Brennan, body scanners, no-fly rules, airplane safety are not for the joke writers -- because they are not funny except in a ghoulish, trite, predictable and long-term scary way, except in the fear-of-flying way and the is-this-the-best? way. John Bolton's quip to me last week, "Good enough for government work," sums up the Obama administration. Who among them is headed to Goldman Sachs? Not Orszag, shrug. Below find POTUS remarks on the dismal jobs report. That he finds a lead-off positive in the November revision from 11k lost to 4 k gained (all estimates of estimates and meaningless for direction, also meaningless because of the long-term-unemployed and looking for work) is a measure of how empty his words. The Christmas Bomber Bumble wrecked the holiday and marred the New Year. Now, there is the healthcare blob to make the polls dive again. The late night comedy writing teams just need to rework more headlines from the Nancy Pelosi follies on the Hill. "You will take your meds and buy healthcare with higher taxes or else we will tax you higher still to pay for your meds!"
Flight 153.
One more joke for the week arrives thanks to Josh Gerstein, Politico. This was the media handout from DNI Dennis Blair before the flight number was corrected on the DNI website. More of the "Good enough for government work" morale in higher and higher rent DC.
DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE WASHINGTON, DC 20511 January 7, 2010 The following message by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair was sent to employees of the United States Intelligence Community: Colleagues: The President has completed his preliminary review and briefed the nation regarding the Abdulmutallab attempted terrorist attack on December 25. He has directed me to lead the Intelligence Community's work in improving our procedures and systems to detect and prevent a similar attempt from succeeding. That Mr. Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 153 for Detroit was a failure of the counterterrorism system. We had strategic intelligence that al Qa'ida in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) had the intention of taking action against the United States. We did not direct more resources against AQAP, nor insist that the watchlisting criteria be adjusted. The Intelligence Community analysts who were working hard on immediate threats to Americans in Yemen did not understand the fragments of intelligence on what turned out later to be Mr. Abdulmutallab, so they did not push him onto the "no fly" list. We will take a fresh and penetrating look at strengthening both human and technical performance and do what we have to do in all areas. I have specifically been tasked to oversee and manage work in four areas: • Assigning clear lines of responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats, so they are pursued more aggressively; • Distributing intelligence reports more quickly and widely, especially those suggesting specific threats against the U.S.; • Applying more rigorous standards to analytical tradecraft to improve intelligence integration and action; and • Enhancing the criteria for adding individuals to the terrorist watchlist and "no fly" watchlist. While the December 25 attempt exposed improvement needs and flaws in coordination, it did not expose weakness in the concepts of intelligence reform or suggest that its progress should be redirected. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA) and the progress of the past five years will continue to guide our future improvements. As the White House review stated, "the work by America's counterterrorism (CT) community has had many successes since 9/11 that should be applauded... On a great number of occasions since 9/11, many of which the American people will never know about, the tremendous, hardworking corps of analysts across the CT community did just that, working day and night to track terrorist threats and run down possible leads in order to keep their fellow American safe." I strongly agree. The review also recognizes the barriers to information sharing that existed just five years ago, which we have worked so hard to dismantle, have indeed been broken down. The job of collecting, analyzing, and integrating information on a global scale is difficult, and this community performs that work at high levels every day. We will sustain our dedication and professionalism to the tasks we now face. We will leverage this challenge to emerge even stronger and more able to provide the support to national security that President Obama hailed as critical to our future. We will meet this challenge. I am confident that together we will deliver to the President the improvements he has called for. Dennis C. Blair
By John Batchelor on January 9, 2010 12:24 AM
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Not Shovel-Ready.
Ten percent jobless rate is not the bad story. The bad story is that the number of job-seekers who have been without work for more than 26 weeks is now 6.13 million, or 4% of the work force. Calculated Risk is alarmed. This is the worst performance for the job rate in a recession dating back to all the craters to the 1960s. The WSJ news team of Kelly Evans and the sturdy dynamic duo of Jeffrey Berman and Evan Newmark look around for a positive in this jobs report, and they are game to seize on the revisions for November, from 11k lost to 4 k gained. However the new datat of 85k lost in December is a blow to any fairy tale of jobs recovery, and introduces the questions as to what does it mean the recession ended? It is not a comfort to hear that government and services jobs are up in the month while manufacturing and construction are down. Where is the trillion dollar stimulus of last February? Not in shovel-ready, not now; rather the hiring has been in state and city government budgets, which are bloated and underfunded by local taxes. The productive labor force is stunned and at home, searching for work for longer than back to June.
Caeser the Landlord.
Another blow to the jobs report is that news that rents in the US are down everywhere but DC and perhaps Colorado Springs (NORTHCOM hiring?). Jim McTague, Barron's, writes me from DC some startling stats on joblessness from BLS. Government jobless rate is 3.6%. Energy extraction jobless rate is 11.8% (that would include all those green jobs that are coming round the bend). Construction jobless rate is 22%. Jim McTague adds, "Hail, Caesar." It is dire when rents climb in DC and decline in Manhattan. It is a naked display of what happened in the financial crisis -- the hot hand went to Washington, where it now rambles through the vast, profitless halls of the smarter smarter smarter regulators at the Fed and Treasury and Czarships.
Stimulus Warning.
The polls were already pointing to a loss of up to 30 seats for the Democrats in the House, and four losses in the Senate. Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid regard these losses are sufferable (unless one of them is Harry Reid). But that was before the twin blow of the Christmas Bomber Bumble (why did they arrest an Al Q op if it's a war with Al Q?) and now the December job loss. The unexpected job loss. The shrewd and dry David Wessel, WSJ, remarks that the Fed, examining this new jobless stat list, will grumble that it must do nothing at all, and do that quietly. As if the Fed mattered here. We are in the gray zone of growthless growth-hunting and jobless job-hunting. The concern, such as it is, is that the Democrats will scramble to produce what Wessel calls a "stealth stimulus." Not very stealthy when we all know that the turtle is in fact a bear. POTUS must make remarks that are supportive of jobs, jobs, jobs. There is no good news to announce, not with the BLS numbers and the long-term unemployment stats. John Brennan is no help here (he has a job); and the geniuses at TSA are no help, though they could hire more air marshals and that will drive DC rents higher. The fix may be impossible for the Obama administration. What is the fix? See "Atlas Shrugged." Christina Romer is the designated commenter from the White House, and she uses the useful modifier "setback," suggesting there was an advance beforehand. Clever and unconvincing.
27 Weeks and Counting:
The lack of hiring might reflect greater caution on the part of small companies or an outright inability to respond to rising sales because of financing constraints. The number of persons unemployed for 27 weeks or longer increased by 229,000 in December to 6.1 million, or 4% of the labor force. Both the average and median duration of unemployment rose in December. The good news is that labor markets are always weakest at cyclical upturns and that the foundation for job creation and business spending gains is in place. - Aaron Smith and Ryan Sweet, Moody's Economy.com
By John Batchelor on January 8, 2010 12:11 AM
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Jihad Jr.
New Mexico-born and Colorado State-schooled Anwar al-Awlaki (Aulaqi) is at the center of the brouhaha over what did the White House know and when did it know it about the terror camps in Yemen that are actually vast campuses of Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula and International Front for Combating the Crusaders and the Jews. The short answer is that the White House knew the moment it received the national security brief after the election in 2008. Yemen is not new information. Yemen is a dumping ground for the various Arab states who collect their jihadist rascals and banish them to the wilderness of Yemen, where the Yemini government is paid by Riyadh and the US to tolerate and ignore and ineptly harass the terror camps. Club Jihad Jr.
Terror Camps.
Spoke Brooke Goldstein, Children's Rights Institute, who identified Yemen as a country that permits and even abets child soldier exploitation in the terror camps. The US now introduces Yemen as a partner in the war on Al Qaeda. Yet the US does not hold Yemen responsible for the child soldiers. At the same time, the explanation is given that the US has not attacked the terror camps because of the civilians who would likely be hit along with the killers. Yemen permitting child soldiers in order to shield Al Qaeda the in the Arabian Peninsula and the International Front for Combating the Crusaders and the Jews. Waiting to hear from the UN?
FOB Chapman.
Spoke Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, re the AQ confirm that the commander of the Shadow Army in North Wazirtstan, Mustafa Abu Yazi, was killed by a Predator/Reaper strike some weeks before. He now snacks on 72 raisins. This is a significant success for the CIA directed Predators along the Khost-North Waziristan border. Bill Roggio and I speculated that the confirmed kill might be connected to the report from December 17 of a swarm of Predators over North Waziristan raining down at least ten Hellfires. We raised the question of the possible connection between the Hellfire hits of December 17 and the December 30 attack by the triple agent Balawi on FOB Chapman. Why did AQ burn its best agent to kill CIA officers? AQ says it was revenge for Predator strikes. Does this mean it was the strikes of December 17? Did AQ act in anger? Weakness. The Predators and Reapers may be much more effective that we are told. We may be winning in the aim to decap AQ.
By John Batchelor on January 7, 2010 12:29 AM
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Playing Defense Inside the Red Zone.
The dutifully opaque Robert Gibbs preps the helpless White House media with a report on Flight 253 that is due within hours and that will blame everyone and no one, will fault every agency and no agency, with Abdulmutallab's breach of defenses. No heads will roll is the lead item. Gibbs is peculiar in referring to NSS Homeland boss John Brennan as "John," and speaking of how POTUS and "John" will continue to review changes in nationals security int he coming months. Sounds as if POTUS has become dependent upon "John:" sounds as if "John" is the big winner in the White House game of presidential facetime. It also sounds as if Gibbs is playing defense without enough linemen and with no plan no plan to stop an aerial attack of information from London or Lagos or Sana'a. The Obama administration does not have the full story on Flight 253, and it will not get the full story, chiefly because the suspect is not moved to give up his rights in the Federal courtroom.
Six Counts.
Abdulmutallab was indicted in Detroit today on six counts of Federal mayhem, and he is not entirely in the hands of his attorneys. The suspect may in the near future take advantage of his father's limitless wealth and hire his own attorneys in order to assemble a defense that turns on how he was seduced and brainwashed by the cult practices of AQ. Abdulmutallab is a cagey, sophisticated, educated, ambitious and self-destructive paradox of a person, both immature and hostile while he is flirtatious and helpless. A jury will struggle with the case. John Brennan's argument that Abdulmutallab will be moved to provide the FBI information because of a plea bargain offer is both absurd and devious. Speaking Wednesday to Ed Hayes re the Federal system plea bargaining and what it is likely to get and not get from a weall-to-do and infamous suspect.
GITMO.
Gibbs is specially unhelpful about GITMO and the Yemenis being returned to Yemen. Six of the thugs were sent home in December before the attack. Gibbs has no words for that strange decision. Gibbs also cannot provide a timeline on the next Yemen release, chiefly because he does not have one and doesn't plan on one. My best source tells me that the White House is making this up as it goes along, Yemeninzing the news as both threat, consultant, ally and needful partner. Yemenization will continue as long as the White House must play hide the facts that we do not have or that may be wrong. Another source tells me that the White House is overwhelmed with problems, people, threats and doubts. POTUS must be taught everything, and then it is necessary to present a face that is waiting for POTUS to decide based upon information he does nto have and that you just gave him -- or that someone else gave him whom you do not trust, know, hear. The rule of good intentions.
Al Q Claims Khost.
Late news out of London that Al Q is claiming credit for the suicide bomber attack on FOB Chapman by a triple agent Jordanian contractor from Zarqa, Jordan, Humam Khalil al-Balawi -- Zarqawi's old haunt. AQ has launched an offensive. Jordanizing the Yemenizing. The Obama administration is playing defense. Connect the dots of Hasan to Flight 253 to FOB Chapman. Who's winning? And is the White House media reading the hand-outs or reading the information out of Jordan, Afghanistan, Africa and Yemen?
By John Batchelor on January 6, 2010 12:33 AM
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Silent Winter.
Spoke Marc Marano, Climate Depot, Monday 4, and we puzzled at the silence of Al Gore and friends on Twitter ever since the Copenhagen snowstorms of December. Britain is struggling with its worst winter on record, back to Marley and Scrooge and before. The US is suffering a continental wide cold snap. Climatatgate scientists have retreated to ice caves to lawyer up and survive the investigations. Winter weather threatens livestock and people across the Northern Temperate Zone. The UN has fallen silent. And more than a few skeptics have come out of their hiding places to publish chilling chronicles of the abuse of science and data these last years, such as the former head of the National Hurricane Center, NeilFrank. Neil Frank reminds that the chief greenhouse gas is water vapor, that CO2 is only a small component of the greenhouse effect. Are we going to cap water vapor?
Global Warming Explains the Cold Weather.
The global warmists argue that climate change is evidence of the severe deterioration in environmental conditions that can be explained by anthropogenic warming. The warmists also argue that severe cold and winter storms are part of the overall disaster, because there will be decades that are much colder and decades that are much warmer. Desertification and severe precipitation will also follow. These are all assertions that cannot at this time be secured by a record.
Cap and Trade.
The general opinion in Congress is that Cap and Trade is moribund, because of the turmoil of healthcare and the stimulus package and the trillion dollar budget negotiations. Byron Dorgan, Mary Landrieux and Blanche Lincoln are three Democratic senators recommending that Harry Reid leave the bill passed by the House last fall in the drawer. Dorgan is suddenly retiring. Lincoln is in a dogfight in Arkansas. Landrieux is safe this year. Harry Reid is so far down in the polls in Nevada that he is fearless. Cap and trade is not about science, it is about tax revenue, so the Obama administration may well go ahead and push. The global warming narrative is very popular for the progressives and the EU Left, and the Obama administration would enjoy approval in the media, especially on cable.
By John Batchelor on January 5, 2010 12:37 AM
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On the Seventh Day.
Spoke Monday 4 with Josh Gerstein, Politico, re the sudden and omniprsent emergence of apparatchik and water-carrier John Brennan, who has assumed the spokesperson of the month role for the Obama administration with regard all aspects of national security. One the seventh day, Field Marshall John Brennan took time out in his busy TV and media schedule to meet with POTUS -- or so goes the wit in DC with regard the White House Flickr page of the Oval Office consultation between Brennan and POTUS.
TV Times Equals Face Time.
What is not happening is that anyone else in the Obama administration who wants to take advantage of a good crisis is not getting a moment to perform. It is Brennan in the morning, afternoon, evening. Soon, a Brennan talk show. It seems a transition until Congress returns, because Brennan will not satisfy the committees: they will demand the Secretaries and the brass hats.
The War Continues at the NSS.
The Obama administration has decided that a burst of energy is enough to satisfy the policy vacuum on airport security. The situation in Yemen is part of the public relations barrage. Send in David Petraeus. Close the embassy. Then direct Yemeni security to kill two of the usual suspects in the terror camps. Announce that the cruise missile strike of December 17 was against the camp where Abdulmutallab trained. Then send out StateSec Hillary Clinton to warn that unless Yemen cooperates more effectively, it will lose its counter-terrorism subsidy. Then have POTUS meet with his new vast staff, the now National Security Staff, the NSS, a new entity made up of the Homeland Security Council (Brennan) merged with the National Security Council (Jones). Pronounced Nsssss. Lots of chairs being moved around, more pronouncements to come, Spoke to Tunku Varadarajan Monday 4, Daily Beast, and he reported that the polls on the Obama team on national security are cliff-diving over the last six months. The Brennan idea is to put 14 countries on a list, and if you are from those countries you will receive extra scrutiny. Ann Marlowe, Forbes.com, asked by Venezuela was left off the list. The BBC reports that Nigeria is offended and asks why 150 million people must suffer for the delusions of one. Profiling goes intercontinental without logic. And the list of GITMO detainees who have been released and returned to Al Q grows (right).
Meanwhile the NSS.
Jeff Bliss asks the question, Did the Obama team think through what the new name sounds like? NSS?? Say it slowly. Is this wise? And must all the national security thrillers of the last sixty years be rewritten. National Security Staffeer? Nsser?
By John Batchelor on January 4, 2010 12:40 AM
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Separated at Birth?
Kurt Westergaard's 2005 genius of the exploding Muhammed turban was inspired by an illustration from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves; however it is strikingly close to the snapshot of the late Mullah Omar stooge, Haji Omar Khan, who was targeted and killed by a Predator on New Year's Eve at his safe house in South Waziristan. Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, reported Saturday 2 that Haji Omar Khan "got sloppy" and got axed; however the timing does make it look like a strike in retaliation for the Khost Province shahid bomber who penetrated FOB Chapman. The Taliban agitprop now claims that FOB Chapman was in retaliation for the Predator strikes in AfPakia. Perfect revenge cycle as suits the Land of the Pashtun (Afridi to Winston Churchill and the 4th Hussars). Any event, FOB Chapman was a sizable win for AQ, as it is said to have been launched by the allied Haqqani Network, which is the credible VIet Cong of the war, operating successfully out of AfPakia (Khost and North Waziristan) against the Sovs (predating Bin Laden's AQ) and now again ISAF.
Cartoon Taliban.
The scattershot jihadist attacks of the last weeks do comprise a series of victories for the jihadists, and they certainly mark them down on their websites as advances in their thousand year caliphate delusion: Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Anwar al-Awlaki of New Mexico now at Yemen; Omar FaroukAbdulmutallab at Detroit; FOB Chapman strike; sudden closing of the US/UK embassies at Sana'a; reengineering of airport security with body scanners at EU and soon at US; finger-pointing and blame-shifting at DNI Dennis Blair and the alphabet soup of US desks, from State to DHS to DoD. (The NSC and White House are in this mix somewhere, though not near the top; and meanwhile the cross-purposes will get sorted out when the humd Hawaiian White House returns to the dry cold DC White House; and when POTUS begins the year with a review of reviews of last year.) The Somali/Netherlands attack on Kurt Westergaard is part of the puzzle. Detail emerges that Westergaard was cut-off from his 5 year-old granddaughter by the attacker and fled into the panic room without her. Yikes. Where was security? (The security agent did have a weapon; and he used it; but where was he that this assassin get inside the house?) Why wasn't the security agent in the room or just outside the room? I attended a luncheon with Westergaard last fall, and his security was a primary focus. The imams in the Netherlands are now said to be calling for calm. Shrug. From Westergaard's remarks, the problem is obvious and uncontrollable except with vigilance. I make the debating point that the cartoon drawings of Mohammed and so forth are not in any fashion prohibited or banned or cursed by the Koran or by the religious scholar record of the last thousand years. The fever against the cartoons is entirely invented in the last years by the vanity of the stooges of Wahhabism, which itself is concocted from delusions after the storming of the mosque in Arabia in November 1979 by Abdullah's (now King Abdullah's) National Guard. Concocted. Invented. Out of nothing but ignorance, superstition, prejudice, self-loathing, a bad childhood with sadists whom they become. See Tarif Khalidi's"Images of Muhammed: Narratives of the Prophet Across the Centuries." There is nothing to this mania to kill the cartoonists but agitprop by conniving and competing ganglords and their ill-read and vigorously stupid pals, who are called imams but are better understood as volunteer shamans. Their scholarship is as accurate as their IEDs and just as self-destroying. The assault on Westergaard is a low-cost version of a hate campaign that destroys the debaters and enrages bystanders. This is a war of ideas. The jihadists have one repetitive and savage idea, which is sadism. The jihadists feature their uncivilized brainpower to keep hacking at the tree with a stone axe until the tree falls or it's supertime. We have lots of ideas, and one of them is zero tolerance for hate hawkers and their savage stooges.
By John Batchelor on January 3, 2010 12:19 AM
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Protection Money.
PGA class back-filling going on by White House messaging unit. POTUS weekly radio address is the first draft of the New-New Obama administration "War on a Far-reaching Network of Violence and Hatred," soon to be summarized (fleetingly) as the "WFNVH." POTUS is eager to remind us that there is already money going to Yemen, though not as much as there is money going to Pakistan, to combat WNVH. This is protection money for the kleptocrats and can be treated as business as usual. What may be new here is that the Obama administration is getting its lobbying wingtips off and its slogging GI combat boots on.
"I am doing everything in my power..."
POTUS seems to follow the logic that if he is doing something then we can be assured. POTUS represents one-third of the government, and a shaky one-third at that, since it comes and goes willy-nilly every two or four years. Therefore what he is doing or not doing is not of much interest. What the professionals charged with national security are doing is the point, and if he was telling us what they are doing in their power, it would be either disinformation or guesswork. Yes, he knows more than he can say. No, he cannot tell us what he knows. But still, telling us that he is doing something critical or useful or difficult about the usual suspects, such as Al Qaeda Arbian Peninsula, International Front for Combatting the Crusaders and the Jews, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen,Sana'a, Riyadh, Bin Laden, terror, Network of Violence and Hatred, North Waziristan, NCTC, DHS, DoD, CIA, USA, Saudia Arabia, Land of the Two Mosques, Land Between The Rivers, Taliban, Haqqani Network, is not clairifying or illuminating. In sum, POTUS is spinning us as much as he is spinning himself. POTUS was on vacation on an island in the Pacific, and he was asleep at noontime Eastern Time, when Abdulmutallab tried to rain people on Detroit. For three days afterward, POTUS kept playing golf and partying with his pals and flacks and servants. As a father and husband and citizen, you get a vacation if you can afford it and get away from the office. As POTUS, you do not rest, you do not drift, you do not hesitate, you are always on duty. What explains the seventy-two hour delay until the first statement about the "isolated" Abdulmutallab? What explains the additional twenty-four hours until the statement about "failure" and "unacceptable?" What explains the additional ninety-six hours until the Saturday remarks that Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula ran the op with Abdulmutallab? (Still no mention that Hasan was in contact with the same al-Awalki who prepped and mesmerized the sorry character Abdulmutallab.) (Still no mention that the unnamed Somali who attacked Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and his grand-daughter in Copenhagen is linked to Al Qaeda.) The answer to all these questions is the fact that there are these questions. It is not about what you are doing, Mr. Obama; it is about what POTUS needs to have already set in motion to light up his national security teams and find and destroy the enemy. Not what you do, POTUS, what NSC Jim Jones and Homeland Liason John Brennan and NCTC Dennis Blair and DCI Leon Panetta and JSOC and CENTCOM David Petraeus and DOD Robert Gates do.
POTUS Veers to run-over Bush/Cheney Iraq.
POTUS prepares the talking points for his return to action in Washington by swerving his escape car off the road to try, "....that's why I end the war in Iraq, which had nothing to do with Al Qaeda..." It worked during the campaign of 2008, so perhaps it will work again. Mentioning Iraq is a warning sign that the White House messaging unit needs new brainpower. POTUS went to Cairo to apologize. POTUS ignored Baghdad. POTUS took seven months to figure out the surge in Afghanistan. POTUS reached out to the EU and UN and China. Nothing worked to change the fight with AQ. Now he must try to maintain a grimace while he pivots and mutates into George Bush/Dick Cheney goes to war. Already the comments in London are anticipating how quickly Obama/Biden will invade Yemen and Somalia.
Launch on Warning.
POTUS knows the partisanship will now launch cruise missile talk shows and blogs on the White House; and he alerts his team to prepare the bunkers for his return to the Oval office with a flurry of defensively flabby pleadings -- especially irony laden from a politician who shows such skill in scorching the dull GOP when he has an opportunity:
"As we go forward, let us remember this -- our adversaries are those who would attack our country, not our fellow Americans, not each other," Mr. Obama said. "Instead of succumbing to partisanship and division, let's summon the unity that this moment demands. Let's work together, with a seriousness of purpose, to do what must be done to keep our country safe."
GITMO and Cartoons.
Rasmussen's New Year's Eve poll on waterboarding is a fair guess at how the public will poll on the Obama administration and Flight 253, on GITMO, on Yemen, on Janet Napolitano, on "Are you safer now that you were under George Bush?" The number is blunt and no doubt still climbing, and this is before the new cycle begins in the new year on Sunday January 3 (Eastern Time) and pounds the connections between Al Qaeda, Abdulmutallab, Hasan, Khost Province FOB (CIA) Chapman, and now the Somali who attacked cartoonist Kurt Westergaardin his home in Amsterdam and who is linked to Al Qaeda:
"Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.
By John Batchelor on January 2, 2010 12:31 AM
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Back to the Future 2002.
Jim the Realtor starts the new year with a heads-up that the banks have started dumping their highest end San Diego County stuff onto the market; and the banks are looking for a deal that resembles 2002-2003. Back to the future when the Afghan war was young, Iraq was a swollen irritant but not much more than a foreign affairs debating point (like Yemen now) and the noise in Washington was Alan Greenspan fighting the recession with cheap money. In 2002-3 (early Bush), Hotel California caught fire in the listings, and Jim figures the big properties got an extra 20% in a year with all that cheap money (and the hedgies flying with financial stocks). You can check out -- but, man, you can never leave. The featured McMansion here was built in 2004 with an eye on a radiant future. The tenants have recently checked out without much to show for having been here -- California vapid chambers, with a dash of movie set, memory of heat, and way, way too much house.
What Does Ten Thousand Square Feet?
The details are stunning. Not only 9891 square feet, not only six bedrooms and 6.5 baths, not only one floor on a slab, but also built in 2004 in a miasma of high-living. The kidney shaped pool is absurd and so is the ballet dance mirror and the bar. Setting aside the genius of never giving a sucker an even break, what ten thousand square feet gets you in 2010 is markdown. The $3.25 million is high side, and note that a nearby two-story hacienda moved at $2.3 million (below). No Obama adminstration tax credits; no Fannie or Freddie here; no nothing but cash and a repositioning of the high end. Why does anyone want to live in this warehouse? Six bedrooms for what? Hotel California rents to Beijing asset managers on a rehab sabbatical (this resembles the Party prison for convicted grafters)?
Now Comes the Obama Administration Guessing Game. Bush? Clinton?
Bloomberg numbers tell me, via Courtney Schlisserman Wed 30, that economists are mixed on recovery. Hiring may have already started, as the productivity numbers are way up and the inventories are way down (not enough warm bodies on staff to meet breath of demand). Big stuff, Caterpillar and capital equipment. FedEx looks to a pickup in winter. We have stopped cliff-diving. We may be over downsized. Yet the healthcare, cap and trade, tax cut reversions (high end taxes will climb after Bush tax cuts abate) and the threat to tax stocks, all threaten hiring. Also, when the Obama administration finally faces the deficits for the re-election prep in 2011, it will toy with crushing small business with taxes. How this translates into high end REOs in SoCal is a mystery. Hotel California is going through another of its cyclical renovations. What built the slab-sited ten thousand footer in 2004 may not be coming back until well after 2020. How many condo rentals can be made out of six bedrooms and a pool? The Obama/Pelosi team rolling back tax cuts to pre-Bush now has an opening to roll back property to Late Clinton.
By John Batchelor on January 1, 2010 12:33 AM
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Abdulmutallab Speaks.
Spoke Peter King, 6th NY, ranking on Homeland Security, re Flight 253, and he restated his positions of the last days. King declares that Abdulmutallab is an an illegal enemy combatant who belongs in military custody in order to be brought before a military tribunal, according to Congressional legislation, and after and during his interrogation in search of vital military information about his sponsors. Also, Attorney General Eric Holder erred badly in declaring Abdulmutallab a Federal prisoner, with lawyers appointed by the court and a presumption of innocence. Also, Peter King argues that the Obama administration makes a fundamental error to treat terrorists as criminals, and to regard the war as a policing challenge. Also, Peter King anticipates hearings by the Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Miss Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson. However in the past Bennie Thompson has refused to examine the issue of the closing of GITMO. Peter King argues that the fact that two or more of former GITMO detainees, who were returned by the Bush administration to Saudi Arabia, are now part of Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula that launched Abdulmutallab, means that Bennie Thompson must connect the dots. Peter King asserts that GITMO is a necessary and well-organized facility. Lastly, he is not yet calling for Janet Napolitano to step down after her bizarre performances on TV; but he says he is watching her closely. No comment on the NCTC (right).
Obama Back-filling.
News this cycle is that POTUS has heard the preliminary rounds (early spinning) of blame-shifting re the Flight 253 incident, reported to him over the phone by Napolitano and Dennis Blair of NTCT, among others. The White House team is shopping the idea that mid-level heads will roll and that this will satisfy POTUS and Congress. Fate is not cooperating. State has not yet provided answers about Abdulmutallab's open Visa issued June 2008. No one has explained the report from London that Abdulmutallab possessed an Italian passport (?). There is more connection between Abdulmutallab and Hasan, according to London, which reports that Abdulmutallab has told the FBI that he trained with the New Mexico born op (so-called imam) Anwar al-Awlaki. Many dots to connect, more to discover. Abdulmutallab's image is now prominent on jihadist websites. The Dutch are insisting that full body scan machines will be in place for all US bound passengers within the month, over the long-standing objections of the US. The two companies that produce full body scan equipment, OSI and L3 Communications, are both flying, finishing the year just off their 52 week high and headed much higher in January as the fast money piles on. The next big event in January will be the drama around the Congressional hearings. Dianne Feinstein and Kit Bond, chair and ranking of Senate Select Intelligence, name January 21 as the start of the partisan pitch-forking.
Offense is Defense.
B. Raman argues that the only known effective defense from terror infiltration is counter-terrorism operations -- taking the fight to the enemy. Ram argues that when the US took the fight against the Communist states that sponsored terror in the 1970s and 1980s (Moscow- KGB-sponsored Libya) that the terror networks retreated. Ram argues that the US must take the fight to the Moslem states that sponsor the International Front for Combatting the Crusaders and the Jews (IFCCJ). The Obama administration is fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan rather than a total war against the sponsoring states of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.
16. It was the realisation that no counter-terrorism fight against a foreign-sponsored terrorist organisation can be effective unless action is taken against the guilty State, which motivated the US Congress in the late 1970s to make it mandatory for the US Administration to act against foreign state-sponsors of terrorism. The post-1991 collapse of the Communist States in East Europe practically brought an end to the activities of the ideologically-oriented leftist terrorist groups. Without sanctuaries and other assistance from countries such as the then East Germany and Yugoslavia, they could not survive.
17. It was again the pressure exercised by the US against States such as Syria and the Sudan, which made organisations such as Al Qaeda shift their sanctuaries to the Af-Pak region. It is the present reluctance of successive US administrations to act as vigorously against Muslim States sponsoring or aiding jihadi terrorism in foreign territories as they used to act against communist states in the past which should account for the continuing successes of organisations such as Al Qaeda and the LET.
Khost Op
The new reports from Khost clarify that the martyr op against the CIA station left seven dead, including two Xe contractors, four CIA officers and the attacker. Critical detail is that the Taliban claims the attacker was an Afghan National Army soldier. The identity of the attacker is not confirmed. The bomber in Khost, against a secure CIA operations at FOB Chapman, adds to the message that there is a Bomber Blue Moon in the sky. Bad news comes in threes. Is Khost the third -- with Flight 253 as the second and Hasan at Fort Hood as the first? The Obama administration is correct to be reeling, to be stalling for time. The first Sunday show of the New Year is lost. The White House messaging unit must fight to gain the second and third Sundays before the Senate and House hearings fire up. This is not delight in all this lit/crit. No administration could handle this triple blow. It will be enough to survive it. The Blue Moon passes.
JB, interesting thinking, but on behalf of the late (and great) Soupy Sales, please no comparison! Soupy was funny on purpose.