The large 8.8 undersea quake that rocked the Pacific coast of Chile late in the overnight (two hours after I stopped talking but while I was still watching the news cycle) did much damage to the city of Concepcion and mild damage to Santiago along with sending tsunami warnings across the Pacific. The damage is much, much less than in Port-au-Prince, and the loss of life looks slight in comparison, chiefly because the quake was at sea and also because most of the buildings are said to be better -- new ones built with rebar, for example. What is significant to me is that the Chile quake story will dominate the narrative for the next days, competing with the closing day of the Winter Olympics on the Pacific Rim in Vancouver (and the Canada vs. US hockey final). This illustrates what we watched for last week with the healthcare summit. Any large event steps on the story line by the Obama administration. POTUS was lucky to get his one-day gabfest in a news hollow. 

POTUS was a clear winner just because the dutiful Congress showed up and blabbed away. POTUS went into the meeting with a fixed opinion -- that he orders reconciliation from the House and Senate in order to deliver the bill to POTUS desk by Easter -- and he left the meeting having achieved his aim and redoubled his opinion. The GOP was a self-infatuated foil.  The Democrats in Congress were the audience.  The choice is the Lady (Pelosi) or the Tiger (November)?  There will be more events to distract from the main story line of healthcare at all costs, but from now till Easter the theme is established.  No business but reconciliation.  No coversation but reconciliation.  No deals, no promises, no policies, no future but reconciliation.  If rioting shuts down Athens, beggars the Greeks, spills the euro crash onto Spain and Portugal, all will be a shrug -- no story in Washington but reconciliation.  The Chile 8.8 is an appetizer.  A perfect 9.9 is coming.  The delusions of the GOP are specially entertaining.  Mike Pence thinks he will be POTUS after the midterm knocks out the Democrats.  John Boehner assumes his Speakership.  The zombie Republican senators such as McConnell and Kyl assume they will be in command of the agenda.  The lobbyists have already changed the stationery orders to reflect Republican taste.  And POTUS?  As unaware and uninterested as a sea lion with a tsunami approaching.

Speaking Adriel Bettelheim, CQ, and David Drucker, Roll Call, in re the next logical aggressive step for POTUS and his allies Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi as they go to nuclear weapons with regard the healthcare agenda. The process is called reconciliation. Bettelheim says that it begins next week and will bring civil war in DC.  Drucker agrees.  Reconciliation is a deeply strange parliamentarian maneuver between the two Houses of Congress.  With healthcare, without Republican votes, reconciliation will require flawless coordination between the Democrats in the Senate and the Democrats in the House.  

The Majority Leader in the Senate controls the parliamentarian, who rules what is and is not in order.  This means that Harry Reid commands the referee from the outset.   The chronology of the process to deliver a final bill to the POTUS is so arduous that it requires stages.  First, the House must vote with a simple majority of 218 to approve the Senate bill that was approved by the supermajority of 60 votes on Christmas Eve 2009.  Simultaneously, in order to entice the House to approve the Senate bill, the Senate Majority Leader, in coordination with the Speaker, must construct a sidecar bill that contains the adjustments to the Senate bill that please a simple majority of 218 Democrats in the House.  Importantly, this sidecar must be built so that the GOP cannot endlessly delay it with amendments and points of order.  This is why Harry Reid's control of the parliamentarian is crucial.  The ref will rule for the Democrats when at all possible.  Next, the House must vote a second time for the sidecar bill with a simple majority of 218.  Finally, the Senate must vote on the sidecar.  Here is where the rule of reconciliation applies.   In order to reconcile the two House-approved bills, the Senate needs only a simple majority of 51 votes (in this event, only 50, because Biden is the tie-breaker).  This whole batch of cupcakes then goes to POTUS for signature into law of the land.

Meanwhile, we can all pack picnic baskets and head out to Bull Run, Virginia, to watch the first battle of the war between the members of Congress and their constituents.  There will be blood.  No other business will be conducted.  The wave for Republicans will build to an expectation beyond reason.  Source tells me the liberal Democratic members of Congress with seniority and chairs are aiming to leave Congress after the GOP majority win.  The doubts and grumbling about POTUS have now become deep resignation in the House.  Senior Democrats are morose.  The plea is that POTUS shove the Chicago apparatus into the re-elect campaign and start again with adult professionals from the Hill and K Street.  Seniors John Boehner and Eric Cantor are preparing for their (undeserved, unearned) elevation with the same tiresome ideas of earmarks, petulance and grandstanding. But that is next year.  This spring, with reconciliation, the casualties will pile up like parking tickets on Fifth Avenue.

John McCain discomfits POTUS in a careful exchange during the healthcare chatfest.  McCain first goads POTUS to interrupt and then fires off an angry wit when POTUS tries to dominate the exchange with the pejorative "John," rather than the formal, "Senator McCain." POTUS excuse is that "the election is over." Everyone in the room knows that the election is never over, because there is always another election to revisit the last one. The midterms are a referendum on the Obama adminstration. POTUS and the struggling White House team know this, and that is the only reason POTUS convened the chat fest in Blair House. POTUS is campaigning for his Democratic majority by playing at being the community organizer, and he is campaigning the long way around: talk, talk, talk -- a ponderous version of VPOTUS Biden pompous. 

POTUS has not earned the condescension in his voice toward John McCain. Also, John McCain is running for re-election in Arizona, and he is welcome and correct to use the TV time on the chatfest channel to campaign against his primary opponent, the peculiarly Klingon-like J. D. Hayworth, and the unknown Arizona Democrat. McCain was careful and quick -- skills that eluded him in the presidential campaign of 2008. He scored several stinging points on POTUS with regard healthcare, and that moved POTUS to try to interrupt more than once.  What is especially lovely here is that both candidates know they are forever speaking to their voters, not to those who voted against them.  Since November 2008, John McCain has only gained in the eyes of the Independents and Republicans.  Since the election, POTUS has only weakened in the eyes of the Independents and Democrats.  

John McCain's stinging, "I'm reminded of that every day..." to POTUS is the kind of jet pilot maneuver that comes just once or twice in a lifetime of contest.  It looks like a legacy YouTube moment.  We shall see.   The Democrats will wince and snarl at the moment.  The Republicans will wince and smile at the moment. It is the bons mots test for pros.  If you make them smile, even with irony or gallows humor, you win.  If you make them frown, you lose.  Note that POTUS is disrespectful with his posture, the right hand on the chin, the grimace and stare, the louder tone, speaking to a man twenty-five years his senior who is the heir of admirals of the fleet and who possesses the history citation for the GOP nomination.  There is no treasure to be found in disrespect for seniority, no advantage at all for impatient disdain of the loyal opposition.  

USMC opera material out of a combat patrol of wonderfully vigorous and immortal young men, allowing a CNN videocam to trail along and take advantage of the brilliant, spring-like sunshine. The Taliban fighters are also young men, and the contest here is sad and grim. Michael Vlahos and I have spoken often of the pointlessness of the Afghan operations and the falsehood of the pols who assert that Marine youths crawling around Helmand province are connected to the security of the homeland or the economy of North America. Operation Moshtarak is a propaganda display for the sake of the graft-soaked Karzai brothers and their posse in Kabul. The Pakistani Army watches with a shrug and a smile. The Great Game now extends to a slow wrestling match between Delhi and Islamabad. Kiyani, chief of staff of the Islamabad team, offers to train the Afghan army (that is, own it) in exchange for getting Kabul on a puppet string. Delhi offers to train the Afghan National Army (lease it) in exchange for getting Pakistan out of Kabul. Both offers are credible; however, the Obama administration has sided with the Pakistani offer because it is funded by the House of Saud, a favorite source of wisdom and comity for POTUS these days. That the House of Saud is rotten with jihadists and sinister creatures is not an interest to the White House just now.

The Interrogation of Baradar.  

Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, alerts me that the Pakistan ISI now announces that it has not really and truly arrested the Mullah Omar deputy commander Baradar -- that the Pakistani ISI has merely detained Baradar for interrogation to determine if he has broken any laws in Pakistan.   Meanwhile, an Afghan official boasts that Baradar may be turned over to Kabul.  Not so fast, says the ISI.  We may soon release this law-abiding fellow.  This charade is played out on a world stage, and the winner is certain to be the ISI, who run links to Omar and Baradar and to Al Qaeda in North Waziristan.  The Great Game.

Price War.   

Spoke Matt Murray, Roll Call, re the testimony to the House Oversight Committee this news cycle by the troubled, surly, presumptive Toyota executive James Lentz, and learned that the subcommittee on Energy and Commerce broke into regional lines. The pols with Toyota plants in their districts, such as Joe Barton of Texas, asserted that there should not be a rush to judgment, and that the Feds in the form of NHTSA must be included in the investigation of the sudden acceleration bogeyman. The pols from old-line US auto maker states, such as Bart Stupak of Michigan, pummeled Lentz and moved him to admit that the problem is not determined and not found yet. I follow this story closely with Lou Ann Hammond of Carlist.com, and it is clear that the Toyota executives have botched this scenario so badly that they cannot stop failing even now. They have committed the Error of the Third Kind, answering the wrong question precisely. The correct question is, Can we trust Toyota? The answer so far is, No. Wednesday 24 is the show-and-tell speech by Akio Toyoda, the effusively opaque grandson of the founder, who originally refused to travel to Washinngton to testify. What's in it for Washington? The real fireworks are about Toyota, not healthcare. The bargains have started already, with a Camry leasing for $179 a month for a three-year lease, no interest. A Prius 2010 is $249 a month. Sensational. Hope this starts a price war with Volvo.  The Obama administration may have caught some luck, because the Toyota scandal is so massive and sinister -- with deaths, lies, videotape, Japanese impudence, American craven behavior -- that the healthcare fiascos looks like a lecture series in comparison.  It is hard not to break down laughing at the numbing folly of the Japanese and their American lackeys.  Toyota, according to Lou Ann Hammond, went for market share, not quality control, and the drive to build cars created a corporate culture of short-cuts and denials and, in the end, self-destruction.  Will Toyota recover?  Yes, but not for a time, and not until Ford enjoys a burst of energy, and even old Government Motors will not be left out.  Lentz?  Smoke.  Akio Toyoda?  Who?

  

Spoke Steve Dennis and David Drucker of Roll Call Monday re the Obamacare posting on the White House website and learned that the Democrats do not have the votes in either the Senate or the House for what is planned -- reconciliation in the Senate (51 votes) followed by majority approval (218 votes) in the House. Dennis said the House caucus came out of the meeting with shaking-heads and grim faces. No one has a count. No one has whipped the caucus. The cross-currents are ferocious and uncharted. We tallied the lost votes since the 220 last fall. The Republican vote from Louisiana has nixed the plan.  219.  Four Democrats have retired, flipped or perished (Murtha).  215.  Five more more have gone because of their re-election problems.  As many as ten of the 39 Democrats who voted against it are needed to vote for what they found unacceptable months ago. The best hope is that the members who have retired or abandoned their re-elections will vote for Mrs. Pelosi's scheme if they are adequately compensated. Leased, not purchased. 

Train Wreck. 

Spoke to GOP source late in the evening off air and learned that the Republican caucus was also in turmoil late in the evening. This upset was because of the dominant opinion of the group that it should not participate in the President's bipartisan summit on Thursday 25. The leadership of John Boehner and Eric Cantor insist upon attending the TV show. Bohener has a list of what House members he is inviting along, but he wouldn't share it this evening with his own caucus.  Alleyways of paranoia in the halls of Congress. The GOP members were decidedly opposed to attending a sham. The result was that the GOP knows it is a train wreck coming down the tracks and yet still will not step aside.

Rahm in a Dinner Jacket.  

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, known as Rahmbo to his rivals, is the power behind the throne of the presidency. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank argues that the only way the president can solve the healthcare bill is to listen to the advice of the dapper and fiery Rahm Emanuel.  (Modest puzzle as to who was the souce for the Milbank praise of Rahm Emanuel.)  So why is there a whispering campaign that Rahm Emanuel's days are numbered at the White House? The Republicans have long refused to take Rahm Emanuel's phone calls. But now Washington think-tank New America Foundation, the Progressive brainiac behind healthcare, says that what's wrong with the White House is Rahm Emanuel. Is this the end of Rahm Emanuel? Can no one save the chief of staff? How about the president? Nope.  Rahmbo in winter. The fun new pool in Washington is to pick the day that Rahm Emanuel is thrown under the bus. Place your money and take your choice.  Gambling on the Last Days of Rahm Emanuel?... Shocked, shocked..." 

Spoke Mark Schroeder, Stratfor, Thursday 18, and speaking again Sunday 21, in re Niger coup and the turmoil for the uranium mines and the neighboring Nigeria. The uranium mines are the least of the worries, though they are a worry. The junta looks to be the property of the Chinese and French consortiums that control rights to the natural resources. It is Nigeria that is the immediate threat. Goodluck Jonathan is the Nigerian vice-president, and he has just assumed the powers abandoned by Yaradua, who is either invalid or perishing in a Jeddah hospital, out of communication for months.  Jonathan must balance his Christian South roots against the longstanding Muslim North power center.  The former Nigerian President Obasanjo is the power behind the power in the North as leader of an executive council that is the shadow oligarchy.  The balance between North and South is not stable.  Stratfor's Schroeder offered that Jonathan must condemn the Niger coup in order to maintain credibility with the nervous fellows at the Abujah capital and even in the former capital, Lagos.  All the coup masters were condemned by the African Union within hours, though the meetings started quickly between the army officers and the former Cabinet officials, with the kleptocrat go-betweens.  There may be hundred of millions of pounds of contracts, but the junta looks low-budget, all arrayed in a spare room, simple chairs, bare table with water bottles.  Now the competition begins; and one of these fellows will emerge as the strongman.  The conditions demand it.  Those uranium mines require central authority maintained by the French and Chinese and monitored by the IAEA.  

The delightful detail of the coup was that the firebrand Democratic Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, who is the number one popular YouTube member of Congress, was next door to the gunfire.  Grayson scurried to the U.S. embassy, and is now in Burkina Faso.  Look forward to the YouTube account.  Perhaps Dick Cheney can send Grayson back to drink tea with the junta and learn of the uranium contracts bound for Iran? and Venezuela? and Zimbabwe?  Is this the same Alan Grayson last seen accusing POTUS Obama of suffering the Stockholm Syndrome of identifying with his aggressors?  Grayson aims to lead the Progressive Left in the House, though he is more likely leading the Media Left.  His skills include a measure of self-mocking and a whale of a grimace.  We can look forward to how Grayson and his Progressive colleagues in the House (e.g., Anthony Weiner) greet the weeks ahead as POTUS and his team attempt to twist the Senate healthcare bill into a creature that the House can vote for again.  Is Grayson star-crossed?  Is he ready to besiege the Obama administration in the same thrilling way that, last fall, he threw Molotov cocktails at the GOP: "That's what I meant when I said that the Republican plan is, don't get sick.  And if you do get sick, die quickly."

  

I am openly rooting for the Russians at the Vancouver games this winter, and I watched the cockiness of the Canadians vanish as they survived a shoot-out with the lowly Swiss team. Reed Albergotti told me last week that the Canadians and Russians are filled with superstars from the NHL. This does not mean the superstars can play as a team. Yet this lack of cohesion is true for the other rosters as well, as these games are concocted affairs.  My leaning to the Russians is sentimentality. It is thirty years since the American hockey win at Lake Placid. That was a low point in the American Cold War. Ronald Reagan was just emerging as a probable but not certain Republican nominee against a field of mini-me types that included Al Haig and George H. W. Bush. POTUS Jimmy Carter was lost in the White House with sky-rocketing inflation, a stealth embargo from the fabled RICO plan called OPEC, and without a clue what to say or do about the hostages in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. US morale was sinking like the markets. Then Team USA beat the Russians, and the all-powerful Soviet Bear did not appear careful -- especially because the Bear was two months into its invasion of frozen Afghanistan. The Summer Olympics, due at Moscow, were suddenly called off by the flummoxed Jimmy Carter. The Winter Games were the whole story. I watched the win on a GE black and white set that I found in the rubbish on West 10th Street -- no cable connection at all, not much sound in the set, but I could see the shadowy images.  I published my first novel that winter, into a book-selling marketplace that was sparse and getting worse, long before the chain stores took over, when there were still independent booksellers on Broadway and Madison Avenue. I think I had already started writing my second novel, "The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica," and I was fairly convinced, listening to WQXR classical and the NPR bulletins every day on my Panasonic clock radio, that the future was natural resource shortages, tyranny, and a kind of science fiction puzzle. I was writing book review essays now and again for the Village Voice, and I had long since left behind my rosiness at the Soho News. Former pals had married and moved on, and I had a stray cat named Pelagius who had moved in on my rooftop terrace. No telephone. An IBM Selectric that I found for the lordly sum of $125 at a local typewriter store (now a shoe store on Broadway). February 1980 -- gone with the Cold War wind. 

The Russian team is my sentimental favorite just because the intervening three decades were a journey into an alternative reality.  Now, we are back to the days of Kremlin sturdiness and Washington fussiness.  Putin is crypto-tsar, while Medvedev carries water for Gazprom, and the Russian military is cleaner, richer and re-arming. Also, Washington needs the Kremlin to reawaken the Bear and face down the Chinese predators to the East and the Chinese pirates to the South.  Meanwhile, POTUS Obama is lost in Afghanistan, with an offensive that depends upon the treacherous and Chinese-hand servant Pakistan.  The old Cold War adversaries need each other as old teammates need each other. The ummah gang is fragile and self-destructive. Beijing is a hungry beast without confidence or vision.  The Bear is a trusted shot, and now that it has discarded the fatuous Lenin and the feral Stalin, and now that it has acquired taste, tone and cash, the Bear is a future partner in orbit and to the off-world colonies.  For now, I will be satisfied with a Russian win over Canada.  The once and future Mother Russia.  Ghost of Ronald Reagan.  Jimmy Carter Mini-Me in the Oval Office.  Tehran in the hands of suicides.  Financial markets and credit markets in the hands of liars, fools, goats and Marleys.  We need another hero.  Perhaps we will do it ourselves.

Hotel Carlyle.  

Critical details from sources point to the Dubai operation as an interrogation as well as an assassination. Spoke to Larry Johnson, No Quarter, who is ex-Agency, and he underlined that the Hamas gangster Al-Mabhouh was sloppy, cocky, lazy not to travel with his bodyguards, not to choose a room with an access to an exit, not to secure a suite with no side doors. My information is that Al-Mabhouh talked and talked before he was executed. The Dubai authorities who made this CCTV thriller left out their own breaches. Where was hotel security to check on a high-profile target? Al-Mabhouh frequently stayed at this hotel, yet the CCTV does not show the TV banks in the hotel security room, nor does it include the detail that the corpse was deliberately left behind rather than being disappeared. Why? B. Raman asks the question if Dubai security was in on the operation?  Was this an inside job?  Was the mission impossible team hired by rival gun-runners?  The sweeping assumption is that it was a Mossad operation.  An operation of this exactitude could easily have been outsourced to a team that just takes assignments.  The coolness of the players suggests that this is a routine caper.  Chilling to consider that the team is for hire.  The Russians are this good.  So are the Germans.  Why use nationals when you can use internationals?  I enjoy the ceremonial protest of the British, Irish and French dignitaries.  Round up the usual suspects.  Blame the Jews.  Condemn this act of terrorism.  Scold and bloviate and blame-shift and deceive.

Silent Assassins.  

This is a half-hour silent video from Gulf News TV that is easily the most gripping, threatening, unforgettable reality TV secret agent op ever produced by robot cameras, and it would sweep the Academy Award documentary category if entered. One viewing burns the drama into your imagination. This is the assassination of a Hamas gun-running gangster named Al-Mabhouh (a/k/a Hasan). Death by unknown details at this time, and the cause of death announced in the video is not accepted (blood pressure increase to the brain). It may have been suffocation, may have been poisoning, may have been electrocution. Not determined.  Also not accurate are the identities of the so-called assassination team.  The passports were acquired in identity theft.  The names, nationalities, even photos, are all unlikely.  Many reports point to Israeli black ops (Mossad or its other names), as the warfare team most likely to benefit from Al-Mabhouh's assassination.  How so?

Al-Mabhouh was a known, boastful, sloppy, greedy, dull killer but he was also a boss gun-runner for Hamas in the Gaza strip.  This was the supplier for the rockets, missiles, and weapons flowing into Gaza since the 2009 firefight -- and the man who supplied the arsenal to fight in 2009.  Al-Mabhouh's contacts in Dubai were with the IRGC gunrunners working for the Tehran Twelvers.   Al-Mabhouh arranged the weapons convoy that the IAF destroyed in Somalia in late 2009 as it headed to Gaza.   The assassins snipped the supply chain when they ended the portly fellow in room 230.  More.  The Tehran Twelvers who were Al-Mabhouh's contacts in Dubai are now jackrabbits for Tehran -- all of the Tehran gangsters tremble when they watch this silent video -- and the Tehran gun-runners are not likely to return to their previous splendid digs in Dubai.  Dubai is the Cold War Berlin of the ummah.  It is where Tehran does business to evade sanctions and supply its surrogates in Lebanon, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Venezuela -- and where Tehran gets its guns from North Korea and China. Terror works when turned on the bully boys who run guns.  They are generally fat, lazy, old and aimless, and they travel the world for profit and pleasure, not to end face down on January 19, 2010, in room 230.  Al-Mabhouh's death is a warning to the gangsters to retire.  Many will.  New volunteers will step over them.  Meanwhile, the chain is not intact.  Everything must be reworked for fear that the assassins have the means and knowledge to ship the more.

Dirty War.  

The talk of bombing Iran could be distraction, misdirection.  Many ways to regime-change.  Decapitation strikes work.  So does careful targeting. The term of art for this is "dirty war."     Where is the US in this?  Nowhere.  Israel does not need POTUS Obama's permission to exercise self-defense.  Also, the White House gets to view this half-hour thriller along with us.  Does Rahm Emanuel or David Axelrod have a sign-off on the dirty war?  Nope.  Does the messaging unit at the White House have a clue how to do what we are watching, win a war one room 237 at a time?  Nope.  Late in the day, Gordon Brown announces he seeks an inquiry into the ops who used UK passports.  More soon.  

 

Second Term.    

John Fund, WSJ, and Salena Zito, PRT, alerted me that the Democrats aim to bury Murtha and with him the 12th Congressional District of Pennsylvania -- eliminating the 12th in the upcoming redistricting as Pennsylvania is scheduled to lose one seat from its delegation. However I spoke to Congressman Charlie Dent, (R-15th PA), on Monday 15 and learned that the State Senate is now in Republican control and the State Assembly is likely to turn Republican - and the governor's race is heavily to the advantage of the GOP candidate. Therefore, Mrs. Pelosi's plan to eliminate the 12th is not probable.  The sudden death of Jack Murtha, followed by the abandoning ship of Evan Bayh, followed by a bizarre poll on the unwatched CNN that a majority of respondents do not want POTUS to continue to a second term, all point to the same result that the wave is building for November not only to sweep the GOP into the House majority but also to sweep the Senate to the GOP as soon as November.  Bayh's Indiana seat is likely gone, Lincoln's Arkansas is going, Boxer is on the ropes, Biden's Delaware seat is likely going, the Illinois Obama seat is likely gone, Specter's Pennsylvania seat is going, Byron Dorgan's North Dakota seat is likely going.  These seven are the easy pickings.  Add in the Sherrod Brown tough race in Ohio, the rough road for the newbie Michael Bennet in Colorado; and the bizarre uphill fight for Harry Reid in Nevada, and the GOP is in shouting distance of a majority.  What will POTUS Obama make of a Republican Senate  or working Near Republican Senate (including Red State Ben Nelson and Max Baucus, both fearful and hesitant; add New Jersey Lautenberg's frailness)?   POTUS has no experience working with the opposition.  POTUS has no good communication with the most conservative members of the GOP on the Hill.  POTUS dreams of the courts (the Supreme Court especially), dreams of energy, tax increases, spending, education, healthcare, all will need dramatic revision.  POTUS Clinton had great skills running in 1996 against a strong headwind.  POTUS Obama has the skills of an orator and a TV interviewer, not that of a retail politician nor a turncoat.

  

HRC directs her remarks against Iran. The question asked in Washington is, If POTUS declares war on Iran, will his polls improve? This is how the morale has collapsed at the White House. HRC speaks accurately about the Tehran Twelvers, but she represents an administration that will not move. The obsession for the White House remains with healthcare. The sudden quitting of Evan Bayh from the Senate race for Indiana is yet another version of the original tale, that the Obama administration has squandered its authority and credibility on facile legislation (healthcare for all, cap and trade for all, bank regulation for all) and is left without energy to fight the 2010 midterms.  Spoke to Ed Luce, Financial Times, in re his video interview with think tank guru John Podesta, Center for America Progress, and how the White House "has lost the narrative."  Luce tells me that Podesta is distressed.  Asked what he makes of the political system in DC, Podesta tells Luce on tape, "It sucks."  HRC threatening Iran is an example of the confusion, the aimlessness, the lack of moxie from the White House.  Why is StateSec threatening Iran?  Because POTUS won't or can't?

Disdain-In-Chief.   

Counterterrorism boss and guru of Flight 253 -- the veteran spook John Brennan -- is freshly identified by Lindsey Graham of South Carolina as a most endangered species at the White House, and the clock is now running as to how much longer POTUS Obama can afford to protect this rogue pencil-pusher. Spoke to Peter King Wednesday 19 who said that Brennan was a major liability who treated the chairs and rankings of the relevant House committees with "disdain." Now Graham, who carries all the street credibility on military justice in the Senate (he was JAG), delcares that Brennan is no longer welcome in Senate hearings. Graham says this in a peculiarly Senatorial fashion: "... no longer credible." Graham also remarks that anyone who says that you can treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal with Miranda rights is "crazy." 

Brennan Unleashed. 

John Brennan's mistake is not that he has colorful, creative, quarrelsome, vain, deceptive, waggish skills, and is a perfect apparatchik.  Brennan's mistake is that he forgets now and again that he works for the Second Article of the Constitution (POTUS) in a government that is dominated by the First Article of the Constitution (Congress).  The last mistake any apparatchik makes in DC is to make himself or herself a target for the Hill.  Brennan is a bull's eye now, and the White House will take incoming as long as he continues in the West Wing.  No prisoners, no surrender, no mercy; the barrage is just beginning.  The limits of Brennanizing are the bad days the Obama team will endure while the GOP uses casual opportunity to fire on the loudmouthed and feisty John Brennan.   Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Joe Lieberman (chair of Homeland in the Senate) are the wrong sort of adversaries if you get a paycheck from the Executive Branch.  VPOTUS Biden cannot provide air cover on this skirmish.  Brennan has the Predators of the Senate hanging over his cave.  No exit.

Creative Attorney General.  

Eric Holder is in full spinning retreat from his creative decision to reorganize common sense and move KSM and his kindred of Cain from their GITMO tomb to Foley Square for a show trial of thrilling but mostly anti-climactic purposes. POTUS Obama is hiding in plain sight from his own obediently righteous Attorney General. The Federal trial fantasy is done along with the Manhattan or Governor's Island or West Point staging. The game is over.  Likely outcome?  Military tribunal. GITMO. Guilty pleas. Death sentences. Perhaps during POTUS Obama's first term. Perhaps never?  Who lost KSM?  The Obama administration has zero street cred now, and to get it back they need to bag a major moosehead.  Hints?  OBL?  Satan?

.

Spoke to Bill Roggio and Araf Rafiq on Friday 12 in re the ISAF offensive in Helmand Province aimed at a drug town of 100,000 named Marjah  The hardware and scale of the operation suggest that ISAF would encounter a division strength of Taliban. Instead, snipers and IEDs will pepper the route and the fighters will scurry into sanctuaries in Baluchistan. The ISAF offensive is a showplace of MRAPs, Predators, and the ground game. What will it come to? The Taliban bugs out. Roggio says a rear guard will harass ISAF and leave. The Karzai government contributes several thousand ANA to the operation as well as a lot of posturing that no one credits. Roggio does not find the operation practical. 

Imperial Walkers. 

Michael Vlahos and I spoke of the futility and predictability of the ISAF offensive against the native-born rebels. We spoke of the Imperial Walker machines in "The Empire Strikes Back" episode. The end of the offensive will be victory as the rebels flee to hyperspace. The Millenium Falcon will be the last to depart through the Empire's battlefleet. Michael Vlahos remarks with irony that POTUS Obama cannot and will not achieve the National Sacred Narrative of America Redeemed -- and POTUS certainly will make it worse for his managerial administration by conducting an insincere war on Al Qaeda.  POTUS cannot escape his own inadequacies.  Vlahos believes that the Republicans have owned the National Sacred Narrative of Redemption since Ike.

 

Angioplasty and Stents.  

Bill Clinton suffers chronic heart disease. His condition was treated in 2004 with a quadruple bypass operation using arteries from his legs. The incident this news cycle in which the patient experienced chest pain and was treated with angioplasty and stents is not unusual. What is unusual is the reminder of mortality so close to Valentine's Day. The heart is a lonely patient.  The new book, Ken Gormley's "Death of Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr," in re the Whitewater/Paula Jones/Monica Lewinsky scandals of the Clinton administrations, is a certain reminder of the troubles of the 1990s that started American government down the path of what is called hyperpartisanship. Seeing the young and ill former president today rushed to Columbia Presbyterian in Upper Manhattan is a strange reminder of the troubles of his lonely heart once upon a time.  POTUS Obama is reported to have telephoned POTUS Clinton after the procedure.  These two Democratic heroes are odd-fellows and clearly antipathetic.  It is not good to think of the fact that POTUS Obama is a heavy cigarette smoker whose mom and dad died died young of ill-health and accident.  For this moment, the vigorous and troubled POTUS Obama can comfort the cautious and troubled POTUS Clinton.  The Starr prosecution days are coming again soon in book form, after a decent interval and a certainty that Mr. Clinton has returned to full energy.  For now, this day is a marker in the long argument that one reason the Democrats veered away from HRC in 2008 and found a way -- contrived and fragile -- to choose Candidate Obama over Candidate Clinton was because of the collective worry about POTUS Clinton's lonely heart.

The thrill is gone for the captives of the White House Press Correspondents posse, and the suddenly dour-faced and puckishly obtuse Robert Gibbs begins to show age, temper, the limits of his imagination as of last Thursday 4 February -- the last day the White House worked in DC before Snowmageddon. A year ago, Gibbs was suggesting a senior Republican lawmaker, such as Kit Bond of Missouri, owes an apology to the White House over some indecipherable interpretation of who leaked what and when in re the Christmas Bomber brouhaha.  Gibbs is dull even in his pique.  This news cycle, the White House called Bond "pathetic."  The media are not sympathetic to Gibbs.  Not yet hostile to the White House.  But the giggle has left the building.  Settling in for the second year of the Obama administration stall.  No Valentine's Day gifts to be exchanged.  Meanwhile, Senator Bond's office, recognizing a huge opportunity, fired back on a snowbound day:

Spoke Homeland Security ranking member Peter King (R-3NY) in re the Christmas Bomber case.  King writes an op-ed for USA Today in which he asserts that John Brennan of the White House misled lawmakers in the original briefing on the detention of Abdulmutallab.  King tells me that Brennan is a thinks-he's-tough guy who treats everyone outside of his office with contempt and silence.  King calls Brennan "a control freak." 

Bamboo Curtain Central Asia.  

My information from best source is that the explanation for why Russia remains reluctant to cooperate on the UN Security Council with stern sanctions on the Tehran Twelvers is that Russia must now concern itself with the China threat in the energy neighborhood. China has moved into Islamabad; China has moved into Tehran; China is moving into Baghdad and Amman and Damascus. China's appetite is for energy and natural resources in order to continue to grow its imperial reach and defenses. China is the hungry predator and no concern for border wars or nuke threats will turn China away from its grab of allies and clients along the Silk Road to the Med and across the Gulf to sub-Saharan Africa.  The Bamboo Curtain now falls across Central Asia.  Why is Ahmadinejad increasingly confident of his survival?  Because Beijing endorses the status quo ante of rogue states.  Why does Russia also aim to keep Tehran in place?  Because it remains a wedge between the jihadists of the Gulf and the vulnerable Moslem populations of Central Asia that surround the energy fields.  China and Russia in a contest for Tehran's favors and approval.

China the Weakling.

 

Spoke to Leslie Hook, AWSJ, in re the Beijing jailing of Tan Zuo-ren for five years.  His crime?  Tan Zuo-ren was trying to compile a list of the estimated 5,600 children killed in the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province when their shoddy school buildings collapsed on them during class.  The Beijing CP is so frightened of its own people that the court claimed Tan was sentenced for participating in some fashion in a memorial of the banned talk of the 1989 Tiannamen Square protest.  Beijing fears the existence of the names of the dead children, because it would be a reminder of the kleptocracy that created those death-trap schools and the gangster officials in Sichuan and Beijing who profited from the contracts.

  

The gamblers have shorted the euro all the way to Hades in contracts at the Chicago Merc, and the next sound you hear will be the screaming of the bankers. The reckless debt leverage in Greece is a poision that is spreading like an oil spill in the Med.  The wit here mentions that the potential downside for European bailout artists is $320 billion to save the collective rags-to-rags economies of the PIIGS -- Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain. Greece may be gone. Spain is en route to execution.  The shortside is money like drugs, and it will excite the ops.  The US dollar is rallying?  Well, the euro and the English pound are collapsing, so it makes the dollar look healthy until you peek at the yen and the renminbi.

What is striking when discussing the troubles in Greece and Europe is how there is no interest within the Obama administration or its policies.  The EU appears indifferent to Washington, which is just as well because Washington has been dismissed for the week and will not likely return until after the long holiday weekend.  Lauricella did mention that smart managers point to California as a much bigger problem than Greece -- and that no one looks to be hysterical at California's crater of debt.  It sounds as if the EU has learned that it need not confer with POTUS Obama or his team, and need not look to Washington for ideas or solutions.  Every sovereign fund for itself.  No panic yet.  Panic starts when it starts.    Aaron Task tells me that the market ops are not happy about the erosion in the EU, but they are not moving market bets yet.  Bear Stearns was a little problem, right?  Handled by selling itself to JP Morgan with Fed money, right?  Nothing bad gonna happen as long as the Feds are vigilant, right.  Greece will go away, right?

"Citty on a Hill,"  wrote the Puritan John Winthrop.

Michael Vlahos, author, "Fighting Identity," spoke Saturday 6 re the article he published at National Journal "National Security" blog in which he arged that the Republicans continue to possess the national sacred narrative of America the Redeemer Nation.  The best singer of the narrative in modern memory was Ronald Reagan.   Vlahos asserts that POTUS Obama has failed to take possession of the narrative. Vlahos notes that in the metrics on a variety of national security themes -- diplomacy, strategic position, military balance etc -- there are not significant differences between the adminsitrations and policies of POTUS Bush and POTUS Obama, and yet the presumption remains that Democrats are weak on national security and Republicans are strong on national security. Vlahos asserts that Reagan embraced the narrative of American exceptionalism in a broad and exuberant fashion. Reagan understood and utilized the big "citty on a hill" picture.  Vlahos argues that POTUS Obama has not so far appeared comfortable or especially aware of the sacred narrative that America is the heroic nation above all others, that America is the Achilles of states.  Bathed in magic.  Tragically vulnerable.  Fated.  Immortal in memory.

Michael Vlahos also argues that the politician who does understand the sacred narrative is Sarah Palin. Palin is not original, not schooled, not cosmopolitan nor ironic, and yet she presents the heroic message that America is special, solitary, necessary, blessed, destined for continuing greatness despite the present headwind. The Republican party has already endorsed her: in a new poll from CNN, 70% of the GOP has a favorable opinion of Palin. The Democrats disapprove of her by two-to one. This is another illustration of Vlahos's point that the GOP possesses the sacred narrative of America as the fated victor while the Democrats distrust the case. Vlahos also points to Palin commanding the GOP nomination in 2012 in order to oppose POTUS Obama with the same fervor of Eva Peron in Argentina in the 1950s. Vlahos argues that Palin appeals to the adult males and does not alienate the adult females of the GOP. Her endorsement by the Tea Party in Nashville places her at the front of an inchoate and as yet untested and unregistered politcal movement. It may be Huey Long. It may be the Republican Party's Wide-Awakes. Unknown. It has its star in Palin. Is she Fremont? Is she Lincoln? Is she TR? Is she Alf Landon? Unknown.  Sarah Palin does satisfy the basic criteria of a national political partisan -- every word she says, every decision she makes, attracts partisan disdain and hyperbole from the opposite side.  It worked for Nixon.  It worked for Clinton.  It worked for Obama.  It is working for Palin.  Simple, costless branding. 

Vlahos also entertains the notion that the independent voters from the Massachusetts Special Election who produced the startling Scott Brown victory on January 19 will not return to the Democratic party of POTUS Obama.  That the 2010 mid-terms will be a scene setting for the 2012 melodrama. That Sarah Palin can either capture the Republican party or split the party.  That POTUS Obama could face Sarah Palin and a Republican challenger.  Or he could face a challenge from his own party.  I mention that Meg Whitman in Sacramento is not much of a Republican partisan and could easily work to deliver the independent vote to Palin in the West.  Also, Palin has several attractive choices for her ticket, including Scott Brown.  Vlahos agrees that Palin would need national security in order to connect herself to the Achilles part of the narrative.  David Petraeus, born in New York, West Point '74, 58, is a registered Republican in New Hampshire and would appear a strong VPOTUS nominee.  Petraeus is said to have political ambitions.  Speaking to John Avlon, author, "Wingnuts," on Sunday 7, who is attending the Nashville Convention for the Daily Beast.  Will get the measure of Palin's ambition.  The national debate is in turmmoil. POTUS Obama has not defined his national mission in sixteen months -- instead he has been defined by unhappy events. Palin does not need to be fresh, original, or transforming.  She presents the well-known and comforting narrative that the New Jerusalem of America will weather the storm and triumph again. 

Trusted colleague RBO sends me the Rahm Emanuel skit from Saturday Night Live last eve, Saturday 6, and I include the video to underline the case not only that Palin has claim to the sacred narrative in marked contrast to the POTUS Obama White House but also that the Obama White House have moved in the opposite direction Reagan legend.  Rahm Emanuel is a liability without a solution.  Emanuel is a well-known vulgarian who has become the teller of the National Profane Narrative (the UnSacred Narrative).  POTUS Obama cannot solve his challenges without the sacred narrative; he cannot even solve Emanuel.   The guessing game is that Emanuel will not survive the mid-term.   Shrug.  The debate is done.  Emanuel places the Obama administration inside Troy.  Achilles approaches, mic in hand, laughing.  

 

I recall speaking to an author some years back now re the anti-whaler daredevils who pursue the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean. The human motives are various; however, the pursuit of a superior and hostile force seems to be the excitement for the anti-whalers. The mania is for, "where is the fleet?"  Do we have good GPS? The resolution of that book was that there was a source onboard the Japanese whaler who secretly gave out  very good details as to location, and the anti-whalers found the big Japanese trawler and played chicken in rolling seas at full throttle. There was a moment in which everyone almost lost reason, and then the whaler turned away. This fresh incident concocted by the anarchist Sea Shepherd looks to be a similar feat of folly and propoganda. The video is shot from the whaler. The seas are not severe this time of year (summer). There is a general sense that anti-whaling makes for a better environment.  The puzzle remains why there is a utility in risking everyone's life.  Neither side will back down.  Both sides are thrilled.  Is this not the logic of the Cold War?  Brinksmanship is the game; the players entertain risk and then assume a marmalade righteousness.  The same for our Arab-speaking adversaries -- the rag-tag hotheads and confidence men called jihadists.  The same for those apocalyptic sadists, the Tehran Twelvers.  Both jihdists and Twelvers are threatening (daring) the vastly superior skills and deadliness of the US and its kindred of order.  When Bin Laden and his posse try one of their ops (Christmas bomber), it is for the thrill of anarchy that they feel in their cause of a higher purpose, their more eccentric literalist mandate (jihad and the coming of the global caliphate).  Thrill-seekers.  Anarchists.  Ahabs.  There is no necessity to choose between the jihad and the anti-whaler anarchists.  Pequod of North Waziristan in pursuit of the white whale of America.  Moby Dick does not bargain; he does not negotiate; he does not look back; he does not wait.  The American exceptionalism is that of a behemoth of the deep.  One of a kind.  Live with it or perish.  (Same for the anti-whalers in American political tribes: mates on the Pequod, Ishmaels of the Left and Right; bystanders.)  Who doubts the legend of America will dwarf the screeching of the jihad and the pomposity of the mullahs?   Hear Bin Laden and the Ayatollahs lament: "... to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee." 

Moby Dick dives.  Smile.

The first take of the now-famous campaign video ad was to use the "Demon Sheep" graphics to the Pink Floyd classic "Sheep" from "Animals." Watch and compare, and it is quickly obvious that the Pink Floyd track for "Demon" is vastly superior to the literal-minded voice-over. Battle of the two "Demons," and the director's cut wins all hands. Genius mash-up of sheep, Campbell, dollar printing press and the kind of Floyd exultation that made the group a stand-apart for generations. Only the anarchistic  Grateful Dead, the early, Cold War-era Stones and some pieces of the gamer "Tommy" opera from the Who generated this sort of political edginess all alone in the lyrics and music.   Am told that Pink Floyd is useful for many, many scenarios, and that the mind just grabs onto the lyrics and enthusiasm and makes the images work accordingly -- a virtual opera of the mind. Mutton Rock.

Once Tom Campbell is cleared away from the underbrush, Carly Fiorina will direct her campaign against the undefeated, imperious Barbara Boxer of Los Angeles, who has gifts, moxie and a motive. The "Demon Sheep" success (with Pink Floyd) promises that the Fiorina camp have laid claim to British rock elite. How does the sometimes cranky "I am Woman" Boxer answer in music? Not folk, not surfer, not disco. Carly Simon vs Carly Fiorina?? Yikes. A Pink Floyd offensive can easily turn into a Monty Python offensive by Fiorina. With Meg Whitman running a grinding ground game against the deeply eccentric and unfocused Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, this leaves Fiorina free to use guitar chords as trademarks. Rename the state E-Cal, and rename the senate seat (R-Pink Floyd). The "Demon Sheep" costume, which already attaches to a twitter, will dominate Hallowe'en. 

It is a surprise that the Chicago Way at the White House does not see California as necessary to the polling and governance challenge. Bill Clinton travelled to California as often as possible, especially when he was in trouble after '95, and it always welcomed him as a superhero. He enjoyed media on a scale of Spielberg. But POTUS looks to ignore California for these odd dashes to Florida or New Hampshire or Ohio -- day trips, up in the morning, back in time for golf or a virtual cigarette in a securely not-photographed room (well aways from the stageset Oval Office).  Why does POTUS ignore California?  POTUS does not appear to have any interest in the Boxer vs Fiorina race, and certainly disregards Jerry Brown.  POTUS continues as if he is the only brand that is carried in the country.  Unusual.  POTUS delivered a vague and cheerful pep talk to the OFA team these last days, and he again used the old campaign rhetoric of how the hard stuff was hard, and that changing Washington was hard, and that it was hard not to give up but it was the right thing to do . . . and so forth.  The cheers were pre-fab.  POTUS appears distracted, and, if he were not POTUS, there would be the suspicion of boredom.   

The creative what-me-worry? palaver from Toyota is a catastrophe for the owners of Toyotas. Spoke to Bernard Simon, FT, from Toronto, on Thursday 4, and he said there is no one, agreed-upon confirmation process of the recalls, the investigations, the questions of the many models now under recall or perhaps about to be recalled.  The gas pedal, the car mats, and now the brakes in the Prius are all well known.  What is not clear yet is about the anecdote that Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, believes that his own Prius has accelerated suddenly and without reason.  Totota has now taken the car for testing, and Wozniak has agreed not to talk while he awaits results.  There are other random anecdotes of mistakes by Priuses.  What is significant of the Prius is that they are all built in Japan.  This is not a quality problem to be off-loaded on CTS or another American builder.  This is a problem from Toyota City in Japan. This is a problem from the head of the family, the grandson Akio Toyoda, who is now in eclipse.  Where is leadership?  Where is transparency?  Where is candor?

Lou Ann Hammond.

Speaking Lou Ann Hammond, carlist.com, on Thursday 4, who tells me that the Prius mystery is continuing.  She writes in her blog:

None of this answers the Wozniak problem, but it does point to unknown, and that is a confidence slayer.  Speaking Sunday 7 with Ian Mitroff, author, "Dirty Rotten Scandals," in re how Toyota, and its CEO grandson Akio Toyoda, are handling this problem in a way to guarentee failure.  "Answering the wrong questions precisely" is the beginning of the disaster. 

 

Tony Rezko is a RINO?  

The joy of this NRSC video is that it is all obvious, easy, correct and hilarious stuff that the sharp tongues in Chicago have known and written about for years. John Kass, sharpest of tongues, knows about all the graves, some with bodies, some waiting bodies, and he writes the morning after Giannoullias edged out two unknowns, will POTUS work for Giannoullias in Illinois?  Nah.  Alexi Giannoullias is the son of a mob bank, a long-established mob bank, called Broadway Bank (FDIC takeover), and his Democratic primary opponent David Hoffman, who had some money for TV, devastated Giannoullias with the mob link.  Worse, Giannoullias can easily be tied (see video) directly to Tony Rezko, who sits in Federal jail waiting his next trial by the Feds.  The NRSC is shooting fish poured onto cement.

This looks like a lay-up form the Republican moderate, aka RINO, Mark Kirk, who coasted to a primary win and will now stand up to Giannoullias and mention the mob in fifty different ways from here to election day.  What is peculiarly in questions in Illinois is the notion that you need conservatives to beat Democrats.  Nope.  You can beat the Cook County machine the Obama team's chosen replacement, by just sort of hanging around and sounding rational and curious to the independent voters.  Tony Rezko is now the RINO weapon of choice.  Shrug.  Who is that guy with Kirk?

Blanche Lincoln (below) recorded the classic YouTube moment this day during the POTUS chit-chat and lecture (POTUS is a smooth but dull professor who cannot get to the point: he wanders: he forgets his opened parenthesis) when she told POTUS that no one in his administration ever met a payroll.  Am waiting quotes and the YouTube clip. POTUS made the mistake of a birdge too far this day.  Last Friday POTUS scored well with Huey, Dewey and Louey in Baltimore, when he chatted on stage on camera with the GOP House trio of Boehner, Pence and Cantor.  This encouraged POTUS to keep chatting with his own team on camera.  The Lincoln remark will change the White House messaging unit's mind again.  Never met a payroll.  Yikes.  Lincoln is gone, at 27% approval rating.  She has $5 million in the bank, a huge sum for Arkansas, but the GOP is pushing in Representative John Boozman.  It is Boozman's to lose, and this is unlikely with the jobless numbers coming from now till summer.  Spoke Tuesday John McArdle, Roll Call, who also pointed to the newbie Michael Bennett (D, Colorado) as aimless, and to the huge burn rate in money for Harry Reid in Veda and the battling Democrats of Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania.  There is no state where the Democrats look secure, not even California with Boxer.  Strange doings.

Shrug.   

Excellent conversation between the wry and philisophical Faoud Ajami, author and professor, and WSJ's Alan Murray and Kelly Evans, re the Ajami op-ed on the disappointment of Barrack Obama.  The essay does not go to new places for Ajami, and his ironies are deft, sound, historically rich and useful.  The professor finds the expectations of POTUS to have been based upon illusion and imagination.  Shrug.  The professor finds that the ardent supporters of Candidate Obama were seeking a redeemer and that the candidate decided to play to the appetite rather than to define himself as a state senator and a freshmen from Illinois.  Shrug. The professor argues that POTUS Obamas has disappointed his supporters just because he left himself undefined, his supporters did not ask for clarifications, the events of the last year have required seasoned Washington talent and not a teleprompter reader who enjoys scrapping with his opponents when they are unable to answer face to face (such as in community organizing townhalls).  In sum, the professor writes the obvious with great wit and style. 

Kelly Evans characterizes some of the comments as vitriol and even hatred for the professor. I have seen much nastier in the Beast about much more volatile subjects, so perhaps the idea of hatred is relative to the WSJ comment rules that excise the vulgar and the prankish.  Those who voted for POTUS Obama have not walked away from him.  Those who voted against him were never in the room.  Those who voted against George Bush and Hank Paulson and the cranky, weary, predictably puckish John McCain are newly persuaded that there was no credible choice in 2008.  The rookie or the train-wreck?  Fourteen months later, it is more clear that the Obamanation crowd chose their idea of the UnBush, and instead what they got was an UnAware.  POTUS does not register how much polling trouble his party is in. The PPP from Arkansas is shocking.  Blanche Lincoln at 27% approval is dropped toast.  What has she done to deserve this enmity?  Lincoln is a Blue Dog senator from a Red State. This is a protest vote.  Not Tea Party, much stranger.  Independents have turned off the Obama/Dem alliance.  What does the Scott Brown win have to do with Blanche Lincoln's crater?  The Independents are voting against incumbent power.  Boxer, Feingold, Gillibrand, all in deep trouble.  

The red ink in the 2011 fiscal budget has ended all the dreams for Obamanation as well as the last-ditch McCainiacs.  The cheers of the Berliners are long gone.  POTUS will skip the May EU Summit.  No interest from the EU or from POTUS.   What remains for the US is receivership, or something like it, and a heavy-handed reorganizing of  Federal spending and paying off the debts without taking on new ones.  The debts are the end of disappointment.  Time to clean out the two-car garage called Congress. 

The Obama administration advances the weary old Democratic ceremony of taxing the rich and then taxing the richer in order to ensure fairness and also find some revenue for the deficit. The case that taxing inhibits growth and investment does not touch the Obama team. The arbitrary raising of tax rates on dividend income, from 15% to 20% for long-term (over a year) investment, is an illustration of stubborn faith that rich people don't deserve to make too much with their money and must share with all of us. The Obama team raises rates willy-nilly. The deficit is $1.6 trillion regardless of their tax schemes. What will it come to? Unknown at this time because none of this will happen until after the mid-term election in November. Spoke to David Drucker, Roll Call, and Jodi Schneider, American Banker, and Steve Dennis, Roll Call, and was apprised that the budget roll-out today was a boastful wish-list. That the so-called cuts are the same tired cuts that each administration shops. Drucker was clear that Harry Reid has no appetite or time before the election to get through the Jobs Bill and financial reform, so the idea of entertaining the White House cuts and ambitions is futile. 

What does bite in the budget is that Big Space is gone. The Ares 1 and Ares 5 rockets for manned space flight are phased out. So is Constellation. No moon colony, no Mars. All confirmed. Bob Zimmerman says that the manned missions will be bid out to private spaceflight. He also says he doesn't believe any of it, since the Congress loves Big Space and will restore the programs. David Grinspoon tells me that his Curiosity mission to Mars is intact for 2011; so is his Venus design. The robots look to be protected, so far. Still, we will need the cosmonaut corps to get to the ISS, and the next men on the moon will be Chinese.

The Obama administration's box-office-breaking budget for 2011 at $3.8 trillion does not have room to continue Big Space and will propose to kill off manned space flight, the moon mission, the shuttle and the heavy-lift rocket program called Ares. The Obama administration regards Big Space as wasteful, unnecessary, aimless and extravagant and will not again propose to finance a way to get into low Earth orbit. The asteroid mission is gone. The moon colony is gone. The Mars prep is gone. Spoke to Bob Zimmerman, author, in re the expectations from the NASA press conference on Mon 1 February, and he was grim. The shuttle will not be extended, so from now going forward, NASA must depend upon the Russian space program and the reworked Soyuz vehicle to connect to ISS. POTUS Obama will bury the shuttles. Cold War 1.0 is now to be replaced by Russia's grinning at our penury and policy in Cold War 2.0. 

Huntsville. 

Zimmerman does hold out the chance that Richard Shelby of Alabama will refuse to permit Ares and its Constellation space vehicle (Apollo on steroids) to die. The November 2010 election will change the make-up of Congress. Republicans as well as Democrats favor Big Space (and Big Astronomy), and there are several committees that will not step away despite the POTUS proposal. The deep question is why POTUS hates manned flight? Zimmerman opines it is a liberal/progressive mind (such as Hyde Park) to dismiss space as a bauble while there are domestic needs to be met. Perhaps it is because POTUS comes out of a state senate in a region without Big Space money. POTUS notion of science is the oppinion that climate science is settled. POTUS attittude toward science is expedience, indifference, inattention. POTUS talks the talk, but he does not spacewalk.