Violent Bathtub.  

Spoke to Andy Revkin, NYT, and Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, re the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the growing alarm in the Gulf. Ian Talley, WSJ, reports that the estimates are raised to 25 thousand barrels a day.  Environmental technicians from Baton Rouge report that the damage to the birds will be surpassed by the killing of the plants, which will loosen the soil of the barrier islands and lead to swift erosion.  Also, the Gulf is a violent bathtub that circulates water, so the oil will spill around the perimeter, reaching the Antilles and the South American and Central American coasts.  The best estimate is 90 days for the extreme feat of drilling a second hole several thousand meters below the surface and into the seabed, then sideways to hit a hole that can be as small as twenty centimeters.  The drilling engineers are very good.  A stopgap measure is to drop vast steel boxes atop the hole that runs tubes to container ships.  No one has tried such a trick in such deep water.   No firm explanation yet as to why the remote cement seal did not work.  What becomes quickly clear is that the intramural teams in Washington that we call the government are overwhelmed and confounded by the swiftness and scale of the threat.  POTUS looks to the military.  The GOP tries out the cry, "It's Obama's Katrina!"  

My estimate is that it is more like Carter's Three Mile Island.  The 90 days will change the story for the Obama administration.  The first struggle will be to reverse the decision to permit offshore exploration off the Virginia coast.  The push-back against Big Oil will build.  POTUS has no known skills managing environmental politics.  This will require trips to the region and handholding, and POTUS is more than a dinner speaker than an outdoorsman.  This is an opportunity for POTUS to lead as Bush did not in the early days of Katrina, as Carter did not ever in Three Mile Island.  The Congress is an ATM for self-aggrandizement, not a forum to debate engineering and ecosystem management.  

 

90 Days at Least.  

Spoke Robert Lee Hotz, WSJ, and Jim Polson, Bloomberg, and Lou Ann Hammond, carlist.com, re the Big Oil catastrophe growing in the Gulf at the site of the sinking of Deepwater Horizon. The Coast Guard estimates 1,000 to 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf from the spill that is 5,000 feet deep. It will require of miracle of engineering and at least 90 days to plug the leak -- needing a new well drilled nearby down and then sideways to intercept the leaking hole. Amazing at one-mile depths. In the meantime, the light oil drifts like a blob toward the US coast from Mississippi to Louisiana and Texas. Lee Hotz mentions that this spill is in the migratory route for myriad exotic birds now traveling north. The spill already threatens the sealife and the fishing industry for some time. The preliminary explanation for the leak is that the rig had no remote control shut-off valve, which is standard issue on the deepwater rigs of Brazil and Africa. Late in the day, POTUS spoke of his concern -- less than a month after he approved of deepwater exploration and said it was safe: "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills. They are technologically very advanced." -- President Obama, quoted by Think Progress on April 2, 2010.  Star-crossed rig; bad timing White House.  The Big Ooops for BP, which is badly, badly damaged.  Big Oil may also suffer setbacks in the deep ambitions, but not for long. 

 

 

Is this the end of Gordon Brown? The extreme excitement following the YouTube nightmare of Gordon Brown disdaining a Labour voter privately after handling her careful and sincere questions publicly is a sharp turn in the road for the once and future PM. Spoke Laurence Norman, WSJ, and Alex Barker, FT, re the thrilling three-way race for the control of Parliament in the new elections scheduled May 6. Until this unscripted crisis, it was clear that the parties would divide the popular vote in a rough three portions, with all-mighty Labour taking the low end.  The word is around that this may wreck Brown's last hope to hold on.  The London papers are on the field and driving the story.  Brown's appearance at a BBC radio interview just after the Mrs. Duffy chat compounded the damage by showing the PM with his head in his left hand, struck down to the point of sincerity by the memory of the incident as he listened to a playback of his words.  Unacceptable for a major pol to make such an error this close to an election and expect to recover.  The price will be high.  Beforehand, Nick Clegg was clear that he would not join with a Labour government with Brown as leader.  The price Labour pays to stay in control of a minority government may be Brown.  As of now, Mrs. Duffy says she will not vote for Brown. The Mrs. Duffy vote emerges as the Tea Party of Britain.  And Laurence Norman asks, "What exactly about Mrs. Duffy's remarks did the PM find 'bigoted'?"

Spoke Dennis Berman, WSJ, re the Fabulous Fab Fabrice Tourre, and welcomed Dennis's remarks that Tourre looked fresh and candid in comparison to the pickled and stuffy characters on his panel who were his bosses in 2006-2007 during the CDO binge selling at GS. Tourre recognized that what he was doing - creating and marketing synthetic CDOs filled with side-bets on the housing bubble - was aimless, meaningless and silly. As Dennis Berman writes, Fabrice saw the joke that Wall Street bankers are gamblers with other people's money. When they win, they get to take a share in reward. When they lose, they get to take a share in reward. The Game. The dandy, thuggish GS players, Sparks, Birnbaum, Swenson, Blankfein, are too far inside the game to admit to the joke. They speak in vague ways about risk management and getting flat. Fun. The US Senate did not disappoint. Same old bloviators, ten years later. I asked Dennis Berman if the mess requires Lloyd Blankfein's head to roll?  Dennis responded, "Maybe." There will be blood. The Lt. Calley figure of the Fabulous Fab will not and cannot satisfy the pontificators.  The Joke continues.  This is finance?  This is campaigning?  The Democrats think their voters will be satisfied?  The GOP think their voters are following CDOs squared?  The Big Short GS took was on America.  Now Congress looks to short GS.  Meanwhile, shorting Greece is genius.  Think GS holds net short positions on the euro and the Greek bonds?  Yep.

Looking to the Goldman Sachs day on Capitol Hill and the certain-to-be-witty revelations of the drab trading floor that scored in excess of $4 billion by betting against the US housing market in 2007.  Good for GS.  The tiny issue for the SEC is that GS sold the toxic assets at the same time that that it shorted the whole toxic waste index (ABX) to make the money.  The SEC asserts that this was "fraud."  GS replies that it is a victim.  So far, no new facts have emerged to solve the case for either side.  GS was certainly shrewd, reckless, cunning, delightfully cynical - but fraudulent?  Who does business with GS because they are nice, honest fellows?

Spoke to Aaron Task, John Tamny, Simon Constable re the pending public testimony of Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein and mortgage salesman Fabrice Tourre.  Tamny opines that the SEC is a harridan, that Goldman did good business, that the charge of civil fraud is cockeyed.  Task asserts that the derivatives market will be controlled by the Congress and will likely leave the shores.  Tamny asserts that if the Fed and Treasury had let Bear fail in March 2008, then Lehman and Goldman and Morgan would have followed in due time and the recovery would have started in late 2008 or early 2009.  The government interference in the banks extended the recession and now forces a slow recovery and molasses hiring.

Goldman in the Dock.

Revelations from Jody Shenn, Bloomberg, point to the comedy cash of Goldman principals' exchanging e-mails in 2007.  Self-aware, cagey, giddy, crude, facile, workmanlike, banal and focused.  There will be blood.  The cash is already drained. 

 

Speaking Sunday 25 Evan Ramstad, WSJ, and Gordon Chang, JBS, re the South Korean warship that was destroyed in the Yellow Sea on March 26. The story does not improve. Mrs. Clinton remarked hours ago that North Korea must not continue its aggression. "We have said time and time again that the North Koreans should not engage in provocative actions, and that they should return to six-party talks." Mrs. Clinton does not speak of the warship. Separately, South Korea indicates it will not retaliate for the attack. The dance of the non-aggressors is a measure of the music of appeasement. Important to recall that North Korea works closely with Iran and the PLA at Shanghai. All of the actions since March 26 have been orchestrated by the IRGC and the PLA working with separate agendas and a common fiend in the Kim regime. The summary of the US and South Korean position is that the way to contain the predators is to refuse combat and to maintain a fiction of negotiation ("Six-Party Talks" is the glib title of the phoniness).  Who is the audience for this arrogance? 

Spoke to Seb Gorka and Michael Vlahos on Friday 23 re containment as policy. Both emphasized that containment worked with the Soviets because the Russians proved rational actors after the Berlin crisis of 1948. Seb Gorka doubts that containment can work as well with Tehran, because it is not recognizably rational. Both Gorka and Vlahos emphasized that Tehran's stated intention to destroy Israel is in no way comparable to the Soviet polices of 1953-1989. The irrational is not idle. It is a recurring theme in modern history. Is the PLA as rational as 1945-53 Stalin? Yes. Is the Kim regime? Maybe. Is Tehran? Negative.

Special election in PA-12 produces this rookie GOP Tim Burns strike on rookie Democratic Mark Critz, turning on coal and anti-coal. The PA-12 is a gerrymandered nightmare, touching nine counties, and was constructed over five decades to suit the needs of the leonine Jack Murtha. It will likely disappear in the re-districting after the 2010 census. For now, the critical factor is that it contains most of Greene County, Pennsylvania, a coal district that has two huge mines. POTUS and VPOTUS statements do not help the beleaguered and struggling Mark Critz. The fundraiser that Mrs. Pelosi scrambled together Tuesday 20 April in a DC swells spot with PAC money mandated at $5K per wine flask did not help the Critz presentation of a man of the people from deeply conservative, Democratic Western Pennsylvania. What especially doesn't help is that Candidate Obama lost the Democratic primary in PA to Mrs. Clinton by nearly 10%. Also VPOTUS Biden does not help much by holding an event for Critz in Pittsburgh, which is not in the CD. Puzzle. Do the Democrats know this is a loser? Will the Democrats run Crtiz again in the general election in the fall? The undeserving GOP will trumpet the deserving Tim Burns victory and point to it as a national sign. Sure. But mostly the PA-12 says that young candidates with local savvy can win when not hobbled by national goof-ups like VPOTUS the anti-coal guy in a coal state.  Jack Murtha shakes his head at the White House and goes back to the roundtable with Tip O'Neill and Sam Rayburn.

Jerry Seib, WSJ, lays out the Obama administration case for "containment policy" following the failure of all the sanctions regimes and gentle entreaties to Tehran these last years by the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations. Containment is where we are going. Containment is where we are now. It does not work. Tehran is an aggressor and a predator. It is not a secret. POTUS and his Politburo know that Tehran considers the US beaten in the Middle East. Two weeks back, Ahmadinejad sent another letter to POTUS. The White House chooses not to reveal the contents. I am told that the letter is an ultimatum. POTUS does not trust the guarantees in the grand bargain. The grand bargain proposed is that Tehran grants the US a safe exit from Iraq and Afghanistan. In exchange, the US stands back while Tehran completes its mission to acquire modern industries (nuclear capabilities, such as Bushehr, below) and to pursue its Islamic reponsibilities (destroy Israel). Sound sinister? Welcome to the 21st century Great Game -- not unlike the scramble for balance between alliances at the turn of the 20th century.

More portents under the volcano (below).  

A sharp puzzle introduced by Salena Zito re the Special Election in PA-12 is why POTUS and the Obama flacks are fanning out in America to preach Wall Street Reform and Goldman Satanism when the trouble in the congressional districts is jobs?  What does correcting the animal spirits of billionaires and their wannabees do for folk who want work, are underemployed, believe their jobs are at risk in another downturn?  Why preach Get the Rich! when the people who vote are not rich, are not gonna be rich, do not care about the rich?  Is it the polling?  POTUS polls are said to be ghastly everywhere but in foreign policy.  Perhaps there is good polling on how popular it is to blame Wall Street.  Yet this is about votes, not Wall Street.  And mumble here that Wall Street is a major donor to POTUS and the Democrats the last two cycles, and likely again this cycle.  The numbers could not be worse for PA-12.  GOP ingenue and tyro Tim Burns leads the Murtha water-carrier Critz in even the most conservative poll.  Critz had to rush to a fundraiser in DC put together by Mrs. Pelosi, with an admission price of $5000 per PAC.  Yawn.  The Coakley moment.

Has POTUS Wrecked the Party?

The spin on the Democrats today is that they will go for immigration, Wall Street reform, cap and trade and even Hugo Chavez on SCOTUS, because in six months' time the GOP will sweep the House and rebalance the Senate.  Next year is a loss.  Lame duck games are possible.  The hint is that POTUS will go all in for change (read: Pelosi gets what she wants to end her Speakership career), because the future is now.  New best scenario is GOP picks up 90.  I hear 60 routinely.  It needs 40 or so.  

Fabulous Fab.

Word arrives that the Fabulous Fab Fabrice Tourre agrees to travel to Washington to sit on national TV and tell his tale to the woeful senatorial lynch mob looking to distract the public from jobs.  Opera turns to farce.  Tenor takes center stage, with French accent?  Heaven can wait.  There will be fake blood.  GS says that Calley did it.  Restate: GS says that Fab did it.

The Robert Gibbs noise about what the NYT did or did not see of a Gates memo before writing a story about it is both silly and peculiar. Is this the face of a presidency that launched a thousand thousand columns of praise and hardly a word of derision for the fifteen months of the administration? Is the Obama team complaining too much?   What is driving this decided turn in the road so that there are repeated stories about Gibbs and the White House media posse conferring in dissension and despair?  These are all young people, in their 30-something to 40-something, on high trajectories when and if there is a successful presidency.  There seems something new in the air.  When POTUS was hot, the White House media was dreamy, giggly, energetic, poodle happy.  The political heat has moved to the Tea Party, and the White House media cannot cover the Tea Party celebrations.  The White House media may be trapped into mocking the Tea Party.  Does this make the group ornery?  Find it impossible to figure definitely why now for this Gibbs flap.  Gibbs insists upon making himself part of the story, never a strong decision for a messenger.  Gibbs also makes it clear that he confers often with POTUS, that he has much face time.  Odd.  Gibbs is a target, and the media is shooting.  There may be blood.  It seems trivial, but it keeps going. 

  

POTUS Clinton proposes a sensible and obvious guideline that political discourse remain mannerly and in proportion to events. Mr. Clinton does seem to be speaking to an old-fashioned media, that of 1994, when major broadcast networks and big-city newspapers ruled the conversation about Washington. Gone forever.  The fifteenth anniversary of Oklahoma City is a fine time to measure what was then and what is now.  "Now" is blogging and YouTube and mashing clips and a 24-hour news cycle that cannot wait for the on-high brains of news to decide what it all means.  Mr. Clinton appears to link the militias of 1994 with the Tea Party.  It may be that I misheard him.  It is a silly linkage, even in passing.   I am told the longer interview does not link the Tea Party with McVeigh.  It is confusing, likely deliberately confusing.  POTUS Clinton provides enough wiggle room to make his remarks into anything at all.  Mona Charen tells me that Mr. Clinton always wants to be in the news as the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral.

John Paulson Genius.  

Speaking Sunday 18 to my financial roundtable John Tamny, Jon Weil, Jim McTague, Simon Constable, re the lurid opera of Goldman Sachs accused by the SEC of constructing and selling an asset that was made up of gasoline-soaked furniture in a straw-made house -- and then watching while a well-known client (John Paulson) bet the house would burn down. High comedy. The case drags in the biggest names on Wall Street, Lloyd Blankfein and the genius John Paulson. Simon Johnson also wants Hank Paulson to testify. The SEC charges are civil. No criminal is mentioned. The complaint is that GS misled its clients.  Shock.  Disbelief.  Some of the clients are German banks which were eventually bailed out by Berlin.  This makes the Germans grouchy.  The game is just beginning as more and more of the so-called victims will join in the pursuit of human sacrifice damages. The puzzle includes the infamous burned down house AIG. GS got 100 cents on the dollar of its counterparty risk asset from the New York Fed -- after the bail-out. Any of the risk include Paulson picked gasoline-soaked furniture in a straw-made house? The market took 13% out of GS on Friday, before anyone hired whole law firms to study the risk going forward. A major concern looks to be the political risk, since the Democrats will pontificate about the rich and then demand that someone, somewhere break up GS. The GOP will act annoyed and resigned.  Another major concern is what this news does to GS profit centers going forward, since any inhibition of its black box trading will trim expectations. At best, GS is a dead price for some quarters. Friday 16 I confessed to my consistent failure to be cynical enough. Why did GS ride out the financial crisis so well it made money in 2009?  Just lucky?  Just smarter than the rest?  Sure.  Satan, Sin and Death in conference (below) on asset allocation.

This silly three hundred foot-plus yacht "A" signals severe market inefficiencies in the Russian and European economies.  So-called billionaire Melnichenko of banking, steel and fertilizer, is better understood as a Kremlin stooge who suits the purposes of Putin and the FSB for maintaining cash flow from undercapitalized and wholly nontransparent rackets.  That Melnichenko figures it is okay to build a $300 million toy for Barbados and Cannes tells mostly that the Kremlin hasn't discovered how to do a real estate bubble in Moscow yet. The building of "A" also signals the usual civil troubles ahead for a Russian culture that is sharply divided into the handfuls of the regime and the rest of the infertile, frightened, resentful and poorly educated public.  The tsar and his mob treated the peasants and landowners in a similar fashion once upon a time, and the result was anarchists, bombs, The People's Will and Lenin.  It is good to be reminded that the tyrannies, wars, anarchies and vast turmoil of the 19th and 20th centuries in Russia -- illustrated by the Marxist delusion, the socialist knuckleheads, the Soviet monsters -- are not impossible again. I take it seriously that China and Russia are asset bubbles based upon nontransparency, greed and kleptocracy. There is no good news coming when a ship as aimless as "A" drops anchor in history.  My pessimism is awake.  There will be Russian blood.

POTUS has turned in the badge and left Asia and Europe to police themselves, which means that Russia and China are the new sheriffs in town.  The up-side of this is that all the wee states that are used to letting America clean up the neighborhood will now either do it for themselves or need the skills of vassals or heavies.  India may rumble into action.  Australia is not incapable.  And Russia does have promise as a benevolent though vain and easily offended Big Stick.  China is another mystery.  The PLA has the worldview of a warlord.  The CP in Beijing thinks like the Mafia: business is good as long as I get the first cut of the action.  What this means for the global culture is that this the the century of the Wild East.  Anything can happen.  POTUS has quit the field.  I am told that Bangkok has pitched into anarchy.  We can guess that Beijing will favor another Rangoon model of junta, kleptocrats and slaves.  "A" for trouble, and here comes the rest of the alphabet, including Cyrillic.  

The Icelandic eruption that grounds Europe also signals that there is a new metaphor to apply to the Tea Party rising and the disaster for the Democrats in the midterm.  How frightened are the Democrats?  Max Baucus is up now with TV in Montana, and he is not up for re-election until 2014.

Spoke Emily Cadei, CQ, and discovered that Dan Quayle's son Ben is raising big cash for AZ-3 primary, that Steve Pierce is raising big cash for challenging fresher Harry Teague in NM-2.  Watching all 435 races, and learning that any Democrat CD with a re-elect under 65% is vulnerable.

Klingon Hayworth.   

The could-have-been thought -- after enjoying the McCainiac whack at the Gearloose Hayworth -- is that if McCain had shown this much energy and wit during the '08 campaign against the unknown candidate Obama, the contest would have turned not on what was new but rather on what was reliable. Candidate Obama, no less than POTUS Obama, is a blend of wacky remarks and incomplete thoughts and plain nonsensical policies, yet the McCain camp permitted Obama to dance past the electorate as if he was well-informed and well-trained. Where was the Vulcan Obama to match the now-Klingon Hayworth? The McCain campaign was lead-footed. The old man let himself become an old man. The gifts of the web include mashing for YouTube whatever you think makes sense and makes us laugh. POTUS Obama is most likely a pompous and humorless radical atheist -- if he has religious and philosophical thoughts in a coherent fashion at all -- and a YouTube mash-up of POTUS as an apprentice to Doestoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor would make for a useful character to walk through the opera in the White House these days.  Grand Inquisitor, Jr., smirks at nuke terror. Laughs at Netanyahu. Makes faces at Nancy Pelosi. Sneaks up and scares Medvedev with a Hallowe'en mask of Lenin. The stock phrase is irreverence. Where was irreverent McCain in 2008? Candidate McCain was dull, self-righteous, sluggish, fake, pretentious, prideful and dull, dull, dull; did I say dull? 

You recall that the POTUS G.I. regards all belief systems as tools of the trade for crowd control and human obedience schools.  POTUS speed-read past the part where the Grand Inquisitor is revealed as squalling Ulyanov on the run with his dreary wife and mother-in-law.  The cynical fellow in me says that any ideology comes down to a man's name. McCain let his name drift from one reference to another, a little Reagan, a little Ike, a little Bush, a little Strangelove.  It is too late for McCain to get back in the game and define POTUS Obama.  New kids in town.  What most makes me laugh about POTUS is that he loves to race between events as if something is going to happen when he arrives.  His pretentiousness is like a musical introduction.  POTUS Fanfare.  POTUS G.I., Jr.  McCain disappoints,  Obama delivers.  Where is the YouTube team to repurpose POTUS as high comedy?

The nuke summit in Washington is as forgettable as the Paris Disarmament Conference of 1933 that gave the Nazis an opportunity to misbehave and not to attend.  Thaddeus McCotter asserts the matter-of-fact point that the mandarins of the Communist Party kleptocracy are routine bullies.  Hu and Wen travel with the "debt threat" to the US.  It is tiresome and insignificant and old news.  McCotter slaps Beijing kleptocrats around and dismisses them swiftly.  Good.   More useful is to speculate as to how the PLA and its little thug pal North Korea's Kim regime use the bric-a-brac of nuke terror pacifism in order to advance the extortion and protection racket that feeds cash to the gangsters of East Asia.  New work by US Marine College professor Bruce Bechtol, who identifies North Korea as "criminal sovereignty," a twisted form of a rogue state.  Beijing is part of the criminal enterprise, using the Kim thugocracy as their collection agents and smugglers.  There are no limits to the miscreance, because there is no hazard.  The UN, and by connection the US, will not arrest and jail the gangsters in the Kim regime or in the PLA.  POTUS made inexact and unsophisticated remarks in re North Korea sanctions, because of its nukes, late in the closing media conference.  The next nuke terror summit is in two years in Seoul. 

Criminal Sovereignty.

Spoke Evan Ramstad, WSJ, in Seoul, and Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re the raising of the South Korean corvette in the Yellow Sea. No salvage yet.  Rough waters slow the process, but the big crane has moved the aft section of the ship into shallower waters.  When the winds fade, the ship will be up and we will see what caused the sinking, the explosion, the reported large hole in the aft section of a steel-made hull.  South Korean television follows this drama closely.  Looking to Thursday 15 for the revelations.

Revealing, elucidating, helpful conversation on Politics Daily, narrated by Melinda Hennenberger, with professional women who speak carefully and cogently of the Stupak retreat and what it means for the Democratic majority in the midterms. Pelosi's blunt disdain for the Stupak 12 that she needed for her healthcare victory is a startling demonstration that the Democrats cannot and will not maintain their authority and majority. One more time, the right-to-life vs the reproductive rights argument has pushed the Democrats into a container. A too-small container.  The unborn do vote.  The diversity in abortion is entirely on the Republican side.  The Democrats are unready to fight for right-to-life Democrats.  It is that simple.  The Stupak 12, if it is to be judged by the tone and direction of this Hennenberger-led confab, are abandoned by their party, either in the 2010 GOP wave or in the 2012 presidential firefight.

John Boccieri

Note that frosh John Boccieri (OH-16) is suddenly in play after the healthcare vote and the Stupak quitting.  Boccieri voted No on healthcare before he voted Yes; he has no constituency, just an explanation of expedience.  The Rust Belt Democrats are all in play now, because the healthcare took the party too far away from the jobs story that is fundamental to the region. 

 

Unusual behavior by the perky Alan Grayson of FL-8 (Orlando). What is the tie? Grayson is colorful, cheerful, wacky, good for fundraising on both sides and peculiarly vain -- all good assets when you are a freshman in the House from the Great State of Disneyworld. The puzzle is why he insists upon being aggressive?  Is this related to the Stupak panic and exit?  (Salena Zito, PTR, tells me that the Stupak 12 are all taking a look at their careers, even Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, a 72% re-elect to Stupak's 65%.) To the highly suspicious number of first-rate candidates for the Democrats now dropping out of challenges?  This is not a product of GOP organizing or plotting.  The GOP is as lackadaisical and clubbish as ever.  There may be an explanation in the Tea Party, but that isn't organized either, it is spontaneous.  The best working guess is that the members of the Democratic caucus are acting out (Stupak, Grayson) because they are under unbearable pressure from sources they cannot name or answer.  An uprising that has no name other than taxpayer, homeowner, worker, citizen?  It is a guess.  The rising is building as the weather improves.  Long seven months to elections, but still, this is striking.  Is there a clue in that tie?  Grayson has doubts he is recognizable as a member of the US Congress? 

Pouring Sand.  

Newt Gingrich looks tan, rested, ready, trim and especially white-haired as he rumbles into attack mode for the 2010 cycle and his bald ambitions to run for the presidency in 2012. Newt Gingrich's program is the usual self-aggrandizing coach talk for a losing team after a losing season, and the ceremonial cheering by the youthful losers makes for sentimental theater. Gingrich's grand plan is for the GOP to win a modest majority in the House and Senate and then pour sand in the gears of the Executive for two years while Gingrich recalls how to ride a white horse and lead the charge for repeal of Satan's Rules for Hell on Earth. Hilarious. Gingrich is permanently predictably creative (this is his charm), though the point always comes back to Let Newt Do It.  Hooray for the GOP if it has so modest a goal as to empower Newt's delusions.  The attack of the Zombie Republicans now turns into a light opera.  Uncle Newtie is about to solo on Idol?

Bart Stupak's sudden announcement that he is looking forward to new opportunities after 18 years in MI-1 is at once surprising and logical.  The wave that is overwhelming the Democrats for the midterm is only just now hitting the safe Blue districts.  The purple stuff, such as North Dakota at large or TN-6 and TN-8, that is already gone.  Now the safe seats are backing out before they are drowned.  The Tea Party sends in a three-bus caravan to MI-1 to raise money to defeat Stupak, and before it arrives Stupak retires.  Coincidence?  Those Tea Party buses will reproduce like bunnies.  The Tea Party becomes the juggernaut without a candidate other than "Anybody but You."  Stupak suddenly reverses field and stages a Stupak love conference that FNC carries live.  Coincidence?  Who is producing this wacky opera?  Would like the transcripts of the phone calls Stupak made to Mrs. Pelosi and Steny Hoyer: "Hello, Bart; what?  What!?"  It is far better than the Gingrich Zombie opera.  Vote 'em all out!  Empty Congress!   De-Federalize?  Bart, we hardly knew you, and you still have that State Trooper steadiness even in retreat.

POTUS and President Medvedev sign the delayed "New START" agreement at the unusually garish Prague Castle in the Czech Republic; and the explanation for the production is that relations between the White House and the Kremlin have reached a new low. Not since the dark, paranoid days of Andropov vs. Reagan has the tension between Moscow and Washington matched the present scale. Putin disdains POTUS. Medvedev plays the part of a chief executive so well that he enjoys how POTUS beams as if he is delighted with his own achievements. The START treaty is unacceptable on its face as it asserts that the US will not use nukes if attacked. The exceptions are Iran and North Korea. Shrug. What is most significant about the Prague event is that it occurred even as Putin recognized the opposition government in Bishkek that has thrown out the US-backed maffiya thug Bakiyev. Did Putin mean for the timing to be so precise? Yes. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, is the last air outpost the US possessed for an air bridge into Afghanistan. Game, set, match: Putin. POTUS gets to sign a meaningless and aimless treaty (that may not be ratified by the Senate before election day, and perhaps never), and Medvedev gets to smile while his Evil Twin Putin gets to assert Russian power by dispatching a contingent of Russian paratroopers into the Kyrgyz capital to support the Putin stooges now in charge.

The Obama administration has so badly handled the Kremlin relationship that my informants give no chance to a repair in the first term.  POTUS has effectively ended a dialogue with Putin when he calls the rogue genius Saakashvili of Tbilisi and chats about democracy.  Putin reviles Saakashvili.  The US/Kremlin conversation is reset to 1984.  I am told there is no hope of repairing the damage -- and that the Obama administration would improve its position only if it could depart instantly from Washington.  Mention that Medvedev and Merkel meet near Petersburg to seal the deal on the Nord Stream pipeline that will carry natural gas directly from Russia to Germany.   The Kremlin also can rely upon German support in the ongoing putsch in Bishkek.  Medvedev and Merkel, after conferring, will depart for the nuke terrorism confab in Washington, a united front in the face of POTUS incoherence.  The reset is done.  Germany and Russia confidently astride Europe.  US nowhere.  What can go wrong?  What ya' got?

 

Diplo Not.  

The United 663 episode of Wednesday 7 teaches that the systems are in place for rapid reporting and correcting of terror-linked incidents, and this is a decided advance over the early years of the jihad against America. The Qatari genius diplo Modadi, 27 or 28, a graduate of Georgetown systems technology, decides he is entitled to smoke on a 757 inbound for Denver. What follows are a farce and a lesson. The air marshals on any aircraft outbound from Reagan are primed for trouble. The genius Modadi only had to make a remark, or not make a remark, when confronted with his creepy behavior of smoking in violation of the obvious rules, and the rest was textbook, including the two warplanes scrambled from nearby.  Nicely handled.  Good real-time training,  NORTHCOM works, so does United, and so do the passengers on board United 663. The genius Modadi does not work and needs re-education in common sense and adult behavior.  See below for the apologist face of Daddy-O from the Qatari embassy.  Think they don't get it?

The ABC News internal news flash (it is audio direct to us) reached my staff at 10:02 Eastern time from ABC News, and we had the news copy report at 10:04 pm Eastern -- which is two minutes before I am on mike again after the top-of-the-hour break.  I reminded the audience as I reported of the important lesson I have learned over the years of the jihad: In war, the first three reports are wrong.  The initial details said "shoe bomber" and mentioned the jets, the air marshals and the details of United 663, Reagan to Denver, on the ground, with man in custody.  I was speaking directly to my WMAL Washington audience and was cautious about conclusions.  I recommended anyone with people on the flight to make sure of the details from all available.  The detail was not on the critical websites (WSJ, BBC, CNN, NYT) until well after 11 PM Eastern time.  We proceeded carefully and with new details for the next hour.  By 11:15 PM Eastern, we had confirmation of no explosives, no fluid, no testing, no irrational behavior suggested other than of a prank or petulant, unlucky fellow.   What I learned in all this, and summarized with Jeff Bliss at 12:50 AM Eastern, is that the old lesson is a new lesson - in war, the first three reports are wrong.  Give out what you have, keep updating, do not get ahead of what is reported and confirmed.  Mention my staff (Lee Mason and David Goodman) is matter-of-fact excellent, and it is reported to me now that we were on air with the reporting and corrections so early that the first CNN report was approximately 10:44 PM Eastern -- more than half an hour after we were able to translate and report.  FNC did not beat CNN.  The major websites did not start to update until about 11 PM Eastern.  There is an inarguable advantage to live news analysis on a radio watchtower connected to the major US cities and to everywhere via the web.  We were able to discuss the story with reports from Beijing, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, NYC, Hong Kong -- from the already-assembled team of correspondents who were on air to discuss other stories at the same time - the Geithner meeting in China, the Pennsylvania polls, the death threat to Pelosi, the Whitman campaign, the terror attacks in India, the Hamid Karzai quandary.  Thanks to Jamil Anderlini, FT; Salena Zito, PTR; Jeff Bliss; Carla Marinucci, SFC; Ed Hayes; Mary Kissel, WSJ; Arif Rafiq, Bill Roggio, and co-host Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.

The California Chamber of Commerce creates a small smile when it mashes together the many faces of Jerry Brown into a tax message, from the Howard Jarvis Museum of stories that always work. The ad makers claim this is not an attack on Jerry Brown. A Jerry Brown flack remarks that this claim is "ludicrous on its face. The poisonous partisan attack is an utter betrayal of the Chamber's mission to represent the business community, not just do the bidding of one billionaire running for governor." Silly season in California. Jerry Brown, running well behind in the polls even without an opponent yet, is a laughable, trite, vague, sentimental sweetheart. The lone campaign issue that Jerry Brown can find is that Meg Whitman is a billionaire. All true. And how did she become a billionaire? By paying taxes in California? Nah. By making jobs and creating wealth in California? Yep. Meg Whitman is a self-made success. Meg Whitman is not asking lobbyists and PACs and Hollywood for cash. Meg Whitman is using the apparatus of political celebrity to achieve the governorship. No secrets. No influence-peddling. No favors. Turn the state into eCal. What Meg Whitman does with the governorship is the critical detail. First, she must get past Poizner and then Brown. Then she must get lucky. Again.  Speaking Wednesday 7 with Carla Marinucci, SF Chronicle; Jeff Bliss, BlissIndex; Bill Whalen, Hoover, re the Whitman juggernaut.  SF Chronicle Colleague Joe Garofoli is detached to the DeVore-Campbell debate in Marin County.  Joe writes that there are conservatives in Marin County!

Happy Birthday, Jerry.

Today, 7 April, is Jerry Brown's seventy-second birthday.  All the best.  If and when elected, Jerry Brown will be the oldest serving governor.  Is this a problem?  Nah.  Jerry remembers Jarvis just like yesterday.  Jerry is ready for Howard Jarvis this time.  Four decades late.

Glows and Glowers.    

Brown lumbers into action by calling a May election that puts Labor's 12-year run against the telegenic and schoolboyish Cameron. What significance this face-off holds is that POTUS has dropped the pretense that the Obama administration has knowledge of or interest in or credibility in Old Europe, or even New Europe.  POTUS meets with Eastern European leaders while Putin dines with Chavez.   POTUS rearranges the nuke posture while Putin secures bilateral energy deals with Berlin and Paris.  POTUS looks for an exit in Kabul while Putin hand-signals Delhi on cooperation and mutual interests.  London would be foolish to continue to gaze affectionately at Washington.  The London glow of energy and commerce is eastward, toward Berlin and the Kremlin and Tehran and Delhi and Shanghai.  The POTUS glower from Washington is the new new thing in Europe.

Speaking Gideon Rachman, FT, soonest re the Isolationism of the Cameron Tories.  The puzzle in US now is what to make of the Obama administration isolationism from allies?  The hugs and kisses toward Tehran and Beijing and Kim and Gaza and Caracas are strangely futile and eerily consistent.  Embrace thine enemy and reject thine ally?  This bears irony.  As London goes, so goes NATO.

Spoke Rufus Phillips, Bill Roggio, Arif Rafiq Friday 2, and speaking again Sunday 4, re the cunning prankster Hamid Karzai and the credible Diem Brothers option now available for history and gamesmanship.  Hamid Karzai sticks his finger in Uncle Sam's eye when he accuses the US of bullying him, of corrupting the Afghanistan elections, of colonialism.  All accurate, but then again, the Karzai brothers were carried to Afghanistan and installed by the Bush administration, and they owe their wealth and status to US military power.  Mark Twain reminds us that the only creature who bites the hand that feeds him is Man.  Karzai's mercurial demonstration is most effective.  Pakistan aims to acquire Afghanistan from the hands of the US.  Karzai is unneeded by Pakistan.  Therefore, in the closing months of his usefulness, Karzai is free to castigate POTUS in order to gain credibility and/or leverage with the Pakistanis.  The odd man out is POTUS.  The dash to Kabul on March 28 appears foolish, futile -- and worse: it didn't work.  Karzai reports that POTUS devoted two and one-half hours to scolding Karzai for being a crook.  Karzai's answer is in.   Stick in the eye.   POTUS move?

Diem Brothers.

Asked Rufus Phillips, author, who was present in Saigon during the US coup against the Diem brothers on November 2, 1963, if a trip by JFK to Saigon in the September/October 1963 period to visit with Diem and scold him for ineptitude and arrogance would have changed the outcome of the Vietnam tragedy.  "It might have."  These are perilous days for the Obama administration.  Its ally has turned petulant.  Is Karzai going rogue?   Karzai's incredible protest is that the Taliban is attacking the Afghan government because of US interference.  The AfPak conflict is Washington's fault?  Recall that the Eisenhower administration empowered Diem.  The Kennedy administration murdered him.  

Code Pink Hearts Karl.  

Karl Rove returns in a fresh partisan role of pundit and bestseller, and good for him. Rove was lucky to attract the hearts of freshly sentimental Code Pink at his book speech in Lafayette, California, to a ferociously playful audience.   Old spilled milk to review the laziness and deafness of the second Bush administration, and how much of it was Rove, how much of it was the weariness of the war-fighting, will be debated by revisionists for the next forty or eighty years.  Rove's up-to-date role is that of a spright and woozy-making hammer of the Obama administration and its loony pals in the majority on the Hill.  Easy fishing for Rove.  Having shed the mask of neo-Rasputin, Rove is getting comfortable with the mask of neo-anarchist.

It is peculiar to observe POTUS mentioning Karl Rove's finest creation of Limbaugh for the Defense.  I realize Limbaugh was on the scene before Rove; however, those Clinton years were easy in comparison to the heavy lifting that Limbaugh performed during the Bush war years.  Rove used Limbaugh and the partisans of talk effectively and routinely.  Now Rove has climbed into the wise man's chair, leaving the field to Limbaugh and his acolytes.  Why does POTUS return the trash talk of show biz?  One theory is that when POTUS punches back, the rudeness of the Limbaugh crowd is identified and isolated.  Another theory is that POTUS just enjoys punching back as he is punched.  Trash-talking POTUS?  Cool?  Odd.

March jobs show predictable growth from the winter snap-back and the early census hiring. The tough guys are calling it "weak."  The best-case scenario posse regards the plus-162,000 as a positive start to growth, to the potential of growth. No one is arguing this is a strong growth. Instead, the term of art is the "new normal." POTUS remarks, "beginning to turn the corner," which is obligatory leadership language in a crisis of long standing. The political debate for the next few decades will be if the Fed/TARP/stimulus remedy was worse than the wrecker-banker illness. White House guru Larry Summers was especially clever in commenting on the jobs numbers: "I think the economy appears to be moving towards escape velocity. You hear a lot less talk of W-shaped recoveries and double-dips than you did six months ago." Lowering the bar to Death Valley will get the White House past the summer doldrums, but it will not answer the problem for the midterms. The White House looks to be playing 'possum, figuring that the Democratic majority in one or both chambers of Congress will hold and that the jobs will return to the new "new normal" of perhaps under 8% jobless by 2012. It is a plan. Better than the stimulus plan, Mr. Joe.  Smile.

Spoke John McArdle, Emily Cadei, Bob Benenson, all CQ-Roll Call, re the many surprising CDs in play in a strange year of lurid turmoil in both major parties. The Democratic hero Tanner retirement after 22 years in TN-8 (NE Tennessee) puts the GOP heavily into favor with a farmer/gospel singer, Stephen Fincher (above), who is adept at fundraising and inspiration, with the usual gorgeous family and showy deep roots.  In the open Flordia 12th, after Adam Putnam's retirement, GOP candidates are running strongly after a first-rate recruit for the Democrats failed to show much fundraising talent. All districts await the first quarter results soon, because the way the game is played is that the cash buys the confidence of the party with or without a primary. The favorite GOP candidate in the retiring Shadeqq Arizona 3rd, Vernon Parker, is also raising money easily against an underfunded (so far) Democratic opponent. Spoke to Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, re the Special in the PA-12 (Murtha's empty seat) to learn that both candidates are now up on air, Tim Burns vs. Mark Critz, and that the only poll so far shows the race tied to the May 18 election.  We mentioned the facts that newcomer Jim Renacci is already up on air against freshman and yes vote John Boccieri in OH-16, the troubled and conservative Roman Catholic Youngstown region.  We also spoke of the surprisingly charismatic show by newcomer Ashland County prosecutor Sean Duffy against the House supercardinal David Obey (chair, Appropriations, the Mr. Earmark of the Democratic Caucus) in the northern Wisconsin 8th. Salena Zito's observation is that this is not a normal year, and that the voters are not pleased by earmark kings and seniority perks. This means Tanner and Shadeqq were right to get out, and that Obey will remain in trouble unless he finds energy.  The trouble for the veteran pols is the joblessness and the lack of answers from the Hill and the White House.  Hill business as usual is gone.  The middle-aged voters seek second careers.  The young voters seek a foothold anywhere close to their minimal expectations (see below).  And then there is the underlying mass resentment of the super-rich wrecker-bankers and their lords on Wall Street mixed with the government union jobs with their endless benefits and permanent pensions.  (Mention that the CDO games are back with the hedgies; that the SEIU and kindred of perks are threatening WMD against any municipality that tries for give-backs.)  Evolution in the air.  The routine first step is to vote out the old gang no matter the party.  Any pol who survives 2010 will face the the still -angry electorate again in 2012.

Spoke Greg Giroux, Roll Call, re the unusual fact that an attractive young prosecutor from Ashland County, Wisconsin, Sean Duffy, is mounting an effective, attractive challenge to the longstanding powerhouse of Wisconsin's 7th CD, David Obey. Strange, unpredictable year that the GOP can attract so sturdy and compelling a candidate in a race that is decidedly Obey's to lose, since this is the end of his 21st term in office. Obey runs House Appropriations, which means he is the cardinal of cardinals. This lot installed Nancy Pelosi as speaker after the 2006 takeover. Sean Duffy is challenging the authority of the machine. Can Duffy win? In a year like this, it remains improbable but not impossible. Obey won the last term with 56% of the vote, in a district that is not overwhelmingly Democratic registered voters. In a midterm year, with a Tea Party component and many twists to go until election day, Duffy is a win-win. Giroux tells me he is raising money, and the campaign website is storybook; so are the children and the lumberjacking.  Duffy is so attractive and skillful that his strenuous and earnest effort alone demonstrates the promise of renewal in the GOP.  We are going through a period of creative destruction not only in Detroit but also with the major parties.  Obey represents the 20th Century's confidence in Federalism above localism. Duffy represents a fresh face on a home-based Republicanism, from the people who brought us Joe McCarthy, Harold Stassen, Eugene McCarthy and Paul Wellstone.

Doug Blackmon, WSJ, speaks to colleague Simon Constable, WSJ, re the Rand Paul Senate race in Kentucky, and how the GOP is slipping under the enthusiasm of the newcomers.  The GOP wave is so strong it is making winners out of the unusual and the unpredictable and at the same time is intimidating the traditional Democratic candidate from getting into a race.  Concentrating on the House, spoke to John McArdle, Roll Call, of the unusual success in Tenn-6, where longtime Democratic strongman Bart Gordon, chair os House Space and Technology, chooses to retire rather than face the gamut.  Chris Van Hollen of the DCCC boasted about a first-rate candidate in the CD until recently, where all prospects chose to back out.  Now the GOP looks confident to pick up the district running against an unfunded newcomer.  Also, in South Dakota, the first-termer Herseth Sandlin, who voted No in Healthcare, escaped a primary from the Left but now faces a gang of Republican challengers, the strongest of which are self-funded in a very Red state.   The wave is still building.  The election is not soon, and there are certain to be major shifts in national sentiment.  For example, it may be true that the Voyeur Club scandal, based upon the non leadership of the unusually arrogant Michael Steele, will sweep the Republican Party's Republican National Committee into the ash heap of history.  More decidedly for the November election, what is happening right now is that the the recruiting and fund-rasing are in earnest, and the window is shutting for the strongest players.  The healthcare shades the morale of the two parties.  Shade the RNC trashy; shade the no-nonsense conservative GOP very fast-paced; shade the Democrats nowhere.