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Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.

Archive | February, 2009

The Devil Is In The Details

By on 08 February 2009

Across America more and more people are cutting back on meals and then finally when desperation and gnawing hunger set in, they are swallowing their pride and applying for food stamps.

Many struggling families with children also rely on the school nutrition programs to ensure that their children get meals while they are school. The much debates stimulus package will cut “$98 million for school nutrition” when passed, leaving many needy and hungry children to struggle with hunger pangs while they’re in class trying to learn.

Many of the cuts to the stimulus package are from “reasonable uses of government funds,” as Brad DeLong points out. Looking at the long list of cuts, it’s clear to see the devil is in the details of the 778 page package.

At this point while no one seems to agree on details of the package, the consensus from many economists is that “time is of the essence,” in pushing this through Congress and getting the bill on President Obama’s desk to sign.

“Most of the things in the package, the big dollar amounts, are things that are pretty quick stimulus and need to be done,” said Alice Rivlin, who was former president Bill Clinton’s budget director and who criticized aspects of the proposed stimulus in congressional testimony two weeks ago. “Is it a perfect package? Of course not. But we’re past that. Let’s just do it.”

Somehow the House and the Senate will need to come to terms with the differences between their two packages before the final bill finds it way to the president’s desk. Meanwhile, the hungry in America will remain hungry. The jobless will still be out of work. And the despair of those struggling to hold on to what they worked so hard for, will continue.

The devil is all in the details. Only time will tell if the details will really help those who need it most. I’d like to think it will. I am however dubious.

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Thank the Centrists

By on 07 February 2009

Thank the centrists in the Senate for all those cuts in the stimulus package that have made the plan a good deal smaller and more focused on tax cuts. Paul Krugman noted this evening that, “according to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion,” and others including ”Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic.”

Krugman also points out that his feeling was the “original $800 billion plan”  was already “too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand.” And he said, “The plan should have been at least 50% larger.”

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

The bottom line on the cuts to the plan, thanks to the Senate centrists, Krugman says, “the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.”

Wasn’t the goal to put folks back to work? The editorial board of the NY Times puts the “disappearing jobs” situation into an even bleaker perspective:

The unemployment rate rose from 7.2 percent in December to 7.6 percent, which works out to 11.6 million unemployed workers. The larger the ranks of the unemployed, the harder it becomes to find a job, leading to longer stretches of unemployment and a bigger hit to families’ finances.

Those are not the only manifestation of deepening job gloom. The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who need full-time jobs and jobless workers who have given up looking because their prospects are so dim, plunged deeper into double-digit territory in January, reaching 13.9 percent — or 21.7 million workers — up from 13.5 percent in December.

Rising unemployment and underemployment means that the need for unemployment benefits and income support — such as help in paying for health care — are rising faster than Congress can get its act together to provide relief.

The Stimulus package as it stands now is a band-aid, not relief. The “time for action” may be “now,” however many of us believe that action should be broader and not filled with compromise particularly when it comes to the issue of jobs. The view of what 3.6 million jobs lost over 13 months is not a pretty sight, when you put it in perspective with other recent recessions.  

Thank the centrists. They are the ones that supported all the failed Bush administration policies and now they are the ones gumming up the works in fixing the mess that Bush left behind.

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Kerry: 42% of Stimulus Tax Cuts

By on 07 February 2009

economy

Hello from D.C. Long couple of days, details for another time. Meanwhile… Imagine my surprise when I saw the numbers out from Think Progress on the talking heads split on stimulus talk. Republicans outnumber Dems by a mile. But RG is ever the good sport:

“On the day when we learned 3.6 million people have lost their jobs since this recession began, we are pleased the process is moving forward and we are closer to getting Americans a plan to create millions of jobs and get people back to work.” – White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

There’s a deal, but it won’t be voted on until Sunday. What’s in it?

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said the proposal breaks down this way: 42 percent is for tax cuts and 58 percent is new spending.

Yeah, because tax cuts worked so well during the Bush years.

That John McCain is mad doesn’t surprised me, especially since he doesn’t understand that spending is stimulus. Dean Baker:

Spending that is not stimulus is like cash that is not money. Spending is stimulus, spending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple. There is a question of whether the spending will go to areas that will provide benefits, long-term or short-term, to the economy, but there is no question that money that is spent will create jobs and therefore is stimulus.

And sometimes you’ve just got to love yourself some Nancy Pelosi:

“Washington seems consumed in the process argument of bipartisanship, when the rest of the country says they need this bill,” the California Democrat said, seeming to sweep aside the Obama administration initial desire to have broad GOP support for the plan.

If you’re not convinced of the urgency, see this chart from Pelosi’s office on the Republican Job Recession. It says it all.

As for all this bipartisanship ushered in by our non-ideological president, well, at least he took it to the Republicans in rhetoric, which will continue next week in a “blitz.” The problem is that the stimulus doesn’t do what it needs to do, mostly because of the weak-kneed half assers that are obviously oblivious to the F.D.R. vein running through our Democratic purpose.

The truth of the matter is that Republicans don’t know squat about the economy, see Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. Listening to John McCain on it seals that debate.

So let the economic eggheads haggle over this all they want. President Obama wasn’t brave enough, the package is too small, and in the end it was Ben Nelson center stage. How’d the Democrats let that happen?

Because the progressives didn’t run this show, while Republicans only added what hasn’t worked before, throwing every elbow they could to get to the cameras for show.

Paul Krugman:

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

Andrew Sullivan sums up the problem, though he doesn’t realize it, in a post entitled “The Presider Gets Results,” ending with this line: It is the Age of Collins, Nelson and Obama. Obama comes in last, with Collins, a Republican, leading. Ironic and likely unintended, but telling.

So, in the end a very popular president who won by a healthy margin, partly on Democratic economics, lost the talking points war with Republicans who insisted that what George W. Bush did with tax cuts was still a good idea. Even though it was his policies that helped get us in the mess in the first place. Then a deal was made to incorporate what didn’t work the last eight years time in a stimulus package that isn’t bold enough to start.

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A.Q. Khan: ‘I don’t care about the rest of the world’

By on 07 February 2009

Khan only cares “about his country.” Well, that’s obvious.

A.Q. Khan was released from house arrest on Friday.

A Pakistani court today freed nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan from unofficial house arrest, capping a rehabilitation that began almost from the moment he confessed in 2004 to providing sensitive nuclear technology to rogue regimes around the world. [...]

Clinton voiced “concern,” with the promise that more will be said on the issue at some point. But someone at State who wants to remain anonymous told AFP that there is also belief some of Khan’s network may still be active.

Yet another steaming remnant of the Bush-Cheney Musharaff policy in Pakistan.

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Tip O’Neill’s After Hours Salon

By on 06 February 2009

It after hours time and the word is the Senate has reached some sort of a deal on the Stimulus package. Earlier today Greg Sargent reported on the Plum Line that cuts to Head Start, Food Stamps, Violence Against Women and a host of other programs were in the works.

CNN reports that the bill is now pared down to $780 billion and Ted Kennedy is expected to be present for the vote.

I was hoping to put up a music video but I had a problem with the code Taylor sent me, so we’ll have to all sing a-cappella tonight while we leave all our worries and cares behind and hope the Dems in the Senate have managed to save at least something that will help the poor in America and not the rich fat cats and corporate ho’s. Otherwise we’ll all be running on faith.

So, without further ado, if you haven’t settled down to have a cold one yet, belly up to the bar, have a cold one and let us all know what’s on your mind. Me, I’ll make mine a Dark & Stormy, tonight.

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Time to Change the Stimulus Strategy

By on 06 February 2009

The latest  job loss report is the “worst since December 1974.” In the last three months, 1.8 million have been lost and to put it in a bigger perspective, that’s “half of the 3.6 million jobs that have been lost since the beginning of 2008.”

The bleak and very “gloomy job report” should ”put more pressure on Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill,” but Senate Republicans are still asking, “what’s the rush“?

Paul Krugman notes, in the past couple of weeks we should have been having a “deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits,” but instead, the debate turned “into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.”

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.  

Enough already.  It’s time to change the stimulus strategy:

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

 

One chief executive of a publicly traded company has taken an interesting stance that no doubt many of his peers may scoff at. In an OP/ED today, Reed Hastings said, “Please Raise My Taxes.” Hastings thinks President Obama should ”take half of our huge earnings in taxes, instead of the current one-third.” Given that tax raise, “the next time a chief executive earns an eye-popping amount of money, we can cheer that half of it is going to pay for our soldiers, schools and security.” Gee, what a concept.

Higher taxes on huge pay days can finance opportunity for the next generation of Americans.

Hastings will get no argument from me on that suggestion. Right now everyone is pontificating about what needs to be done to save the economy, but there really isn’t time to come up with the perfect plan, so let’s get the plan we have now passed through.

Time is a wasting and more and more jobs will be lost, more Americans will lose their homes and their savings. It’s now or never, President Obama and Senate Dems need to get it’s time to change the stimulus strategy. Now.

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Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

By on 06 February 2009

The new boss over at the RNC, Michael Steele has sent a message to staffers there, wake up and smell the coffee, you are all out of a job. That’s right, Steele has “requested the resignations of the entire RNC staff and signaled a dramatic turnover at the party organization.” I’m wondering if he can stop the “insurgency” before the Republicans all sink in their own mire.

We all know by now that Senate Republicans are “playing politics” while the “economy burns.” Keep an eye out for the latest jobs report due out today, Robert Reich warned on Thursday. The issue right now is “how to revive the economy” and at this point Reich notes, whether the Republicans like it or not, “government has to be the spender of last resort.”

The Republicans keep complaining about the stimulus bill, calling it a “spending bill.” Speaking to House Dems last night, President Obama had a few choice words for those whiners and complainers:

“First of all I found this deficit when I showed up. I found this national debt doubled wrapped in a big bow waiting for me when I stepped into the Oval Office,” he said tonight.

Continuing in a mocking tone of critics who complain ” “this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill,’ What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously, that’s the point. Now I got carried away,” he joked. But, “Here’s the point I’m making. This package is not going to be absolutely perfect, and you can nit and you can pick. That’s the game we all play here. What I’m saying is we can’t afford to play that game.”

President Obama had a spiffy ride to the meeting with House Dems yesterday. And speaking of Obama’s presidential jet, could ABC have been any stupider?  

Now that I have had a good strong cup of coffee, it’s time to note this bombshell in the morning news:

The Bush administration received assets that were worth $78 billion less than the amount it invested as part of the massive infusion of capital into the country’s banks, congressional investigators have found.

The investigators concluded that the Treasury under the federal bailout had invested $254 billion into companies but the preferred stock it got in return had a market value at the time of only $176 billion, or 69 percent of what the government paid, according to a congressional oversight panel report scheduled to be released today.
I am neither shocked or surprised, frankly that Henry M. Paulson Jr., might have made a promise he didn’t keep. Republican Senator Richard Shelby, who is a member of the Senate Banking Committee was shocked by the news about Treasury and flustered too:
“In other words, they misled the Congress, did they not?” said a visibly flustered Shelby.
Well, yes Senator, they did. Wake up and smell the coffee.
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Pressing Ahead

By on 05 February 2009

First, I want to start out by thanking Taylor for having me back to guest post. I had a great time guest posting here the last time, so hopefully I will help keep everyone here informed and entertained.

The day is winding down, but the news doesn’t this evening (and every evening thanks to the internet[s]). Apparently, Democratic leaders in the Senate have enough of the haggling with the obstructionist Republicans over the stimulus bill and they’re talking like they are not going to take it anymore. They are now saying they have the “votes needed to approve the bill and warned that they were prepared to press ahead without much Republican support.”

“They cannot hold the president of the United States hostage,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, said of Senate Republicans. “If they think they’re going to rewrite this bill and Barack Obama is going to walk away from what he is trying to do for the American people, they’ve got another thought coming.”

 Senator Chuck Schumer said President Obama’s hope that the stimulus package would pass with ”substantial Republican support,” is well… just a “distant memory.”  And remember that talk about bipartisanship, well that’s not working either:

“So far,” he said, bipartisanship “isn’t working. . . . It takes two to tango, but the Republicans aren’t dancing.”

The economy certainly looks bleak from where I sit and I don’t think cutting vital programs from the stimulus package is the answer.

I heard Chris Matthews chattering about the possibility of Howard Dean for HHS last night. Seems the chatter is growing louder, even Senator Tom Harkin has endorsed Dean for the job. 

There was sad news today about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ginsburg “underwent surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York” today for “what was apparently early-stage pancreatic cancer.”

Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton and as everyone is no doubt aware, she’s a member of the “court’s liberal wing.” She’s down a lot to forward women’s issues, so I agree it’s time to send out a “few prayers and good thoughts.”

Finally, did you hear about the masked intruders at the White House? Too cute. But, be warned Tapper says.

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Afghanistan Supply Lines

By on 05 February 2009
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WmQTxwXrhA

If you want to see how badly the Pakistani army is doing up against the Taliban, an embedded Al Jazeera journalist chronicles the sad tale in this video. Bill Roggio’s take might interest you.

Our challenges in Afghanistan got bigger yesterday when a bridge in the Khyber pass was blown up. Then the trucks waiting to cross were set on fire.

The crucial supply line for US and Nato troops in Afghanistan was disrupted after an important bridge on the Peshawar-Torkham road was blown up on Tuesday.

Officials of the Khyber political administration said the 30-metre-long steel bridge was damaged by a blast and collapsed when a trailer loaded with cement was crossing it early in the morning. …

Attacking supply lines is an old trick. The New York Times has a great picture of the bridge.

Tom Ricks offers a classic on this one:

Looking at the blown bridge in the Khyber Pass, I remember reading somewhere that prime ambush sites along the Pakistani-Afghan border were passed along from generation to generation, much as Boston’s WASPs pass on vacation homes in New Hampshire.

I highly recommend the series of posts Ricks did on the Wanat battle last July. It will infuriate you, but that goes along with the territory when talking about Afghanistan.

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Clinton to China

By on 05 February 2009

Hillary's World
This seems so fitting for her, especially for anyone who remembers her speech when she was first lady. It was a speech that shook the world, all because Hillary Clinton dared to say “women’s rights are human rights.”

Climate is to be a top priority on Secretary Clinton’s first trip, with Japan being the first stop on her Asia trip where economic turmoil will be on the agenda.

From Andrew Revkin of the NY Times on China’s energy focus that includes tackling emissions and greenhouse gases:

As I wrote the other day, it looks like countries are going to remain focused on addressing real-time problems related to energy security (most notably high oil prices) for the time being, even as evidence builds that global warming could fuel turmoil, particularly in already-troubled places like sub-Saharan Africa, in the long run. I ran a panel at a meeting on China, energy, and climate at the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday, and in the preceding session, Zhou Dadi, one of the leading figures shaping China’s energy and climate policies said energy security will remain China’s top priority for a long while to come. He restated the longstanding mantra from China on climate, saying the responsibility for blunting emissions curves for greenhouse gases will remain with industrialized powers for a long time to come.

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Bank Tycoons Needn’t be Too Worried

By on 05 February 2009

On the fly, but I thought this was important to emphasize, especially since asking big shot bankers to limit pay to $500,000 isn’t exactly the most realistic plan in the playbook when you need the best and brightest to get us back on track.

Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial institutions receiving federal aid aren’t likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced yesterday by President Barack Obama.

The rules, created in response to growing public anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to top executives at companies that need “exceptional” assistance in the future.

[...] “They’re just allowing companies to defer compensation,” said Graef Crystal, a former compensation consultant and author of “The Crystal Report on Executive Compensation.” The restrictions are “a joke,” he said, because “if the government is paid pack, you can be sure that the stock will have risen hugely.” …

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Clinton to East Asia, Zbig & Scowcroft to Iran?

By on 05 February 2009

This is a long travel day for me, so I put together some links, including some emailed to me, that involve foreign policy, as well as the economy. While I’m traveling over the next days, Pamela from DemocraticDaily will be on board to help out. Please welcome her, though some of you no doubt remember her from her previous guest posting. I’ll be writing too, but I won’t have a regular schedule.

Secretary Clinton’s schedule for the day is here and includes a working dinner on East Asia, which is said to be her first trip abroad.

David Ignatius picks Obama’s Iran “a Team”:

This willingness to embrace new ideas was especially clear when Brzezinski and Scowcroft talked about Iran. Both believed that the Bush administration’s policy of isolating Iran — and trying to dictate terms for negotiations about its nuclear program — had been a mistake. Scowcroft argued that the United States had approached Iran “emotionally,” while Brzezinski said the administration had followed “a self-defeating policy that simply perpetuates the existing difficulty.”

Steve Clemons has an interesting read on “The Economicization of US Foreign Policy.”

Up front on the economic scene is a column in the WSJ. The title alone gets it included today: The GOP Has a Dumb Mortgage Idea.

Few philosophers have done more good than Locke and Montesquieu, whose advocacy of divided government inspired America’s Founders. Our history, and the less happy past of nations without checks and balances, suggests the wisdom of John Adams’s statement: “a people cannot be long free, nor ever happy, whose government is in one Assembly.” Today, the Senate Republicans bear the heavy burden of providing the primary check on one-party rule in America.

For that reason, it is particularly disappointing to see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell embrace “providing government-backed, 4% fixed mortgages to any credit-worthy borrower” as his alternative to the Barack Obama/Nancy Pelosi stimulus package. Our nation needs Mr. McConnell’s leadership, but this idea is bad economics and not a real alternative to the vision of America offered by Democrats. It also stands at odds with all that is good in Republicanism.

China could raise wages to stimulate demand:

Asians must either make less stuff and spend more time cutting each other’s hair, or they must buy more themselves. Either way, households will have to increase spending. But things have been going in the wrong direction. Assumptions about the region’s swelling middle class notwithstanding, consumption as a proportion of a fast-rising GDP has been falling – and swiftly at that.

Brad Setser writes for the Council on Foreign Relations regarding China and trade.

Macroman reports that there is a bit of optimism in the air about China right now. Loan growth was strong in January. Steel prices have picked up a bit. The latest Chinese purchasing managers survey wasn’t as bad as the last one. The fall in the pace of contraction in activity has generated hope that China’s economy will rebound later in the year. China’s stimulus will help, as will the fact that China’s state banks are liquid and have clear instructions to lend …

Everyone looks at China through their own lens. My lens is the trade data. And there I still don’t find much basis for optimism.

“Boo Hoo from the Boardroom” is one of my favorites today:

As it turns out, there’s a performance clause in class resentment. To fail and still walk away with a killing is a break in the social contract simply because it doesn’t work that way in real life for most people.

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Getting Back In The Game

By on 05 February 2009

President Obama just learned the definition of bipartisanship includes the fact that Republicans think anyone using the word is a wimp.

It doesn’t get any more brutal than two weeks into your new job you feel compelled to confess “I screwed up.”

The Rasmussen poll yesterday showing support slipping for the stimulus, at a time when yet another Obama nominee crashed. Obama decided now is the time. Those four words the drumbeat in President Obama’s op-ed today.

That’s why I feel such a sense of urgency about the recovery plan before Congress. With it, we will create or save more than 3 million jobs over the next two years, provide immediate tax relief to 95 percent of American workers, ignite spending by businesses and consumers alike, and take steps to strengthen our country for years to come.

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending — it’s a strategy for America’s long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it’s a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis — the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. [...]

Michael Hirsh of Newsweek wrote yesterday about Obama “losing control”: The decisive issue here is leadership. The lack of it is what is plaguing the Obama administration. He’s right.

The good news is that it’s only two weeks in and President Obama seems to have finally sensed that Republicans are owning the message, because bipartisanship to them means you win, but they get to dictate the terms. I don’t think so.

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Wind Down

By on 04 February 2009
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwUH9iA0GcM

Topic free for all time. I’ll start with a combo. Maddoff’s “Penthouse” arrest, and Michael Phelps’ bong crime.

For the former, Rep. Grayson out of Florida (great video at the site) recently questioned whistleblower Harry Markopolis, who wrote letters to the SEC about Maddoff several years ago and testified in front of the Financial Services Committee. Grayson is demanding Maddoff go to jail pending trail.

And yet, even now after the revelations of his criminality emerge, Jim Hightower reports that Madoff is living in a $7 million penthouse paid for by his victims, and was “even allowed to hire his own private guard detail to watch ever so gently over him.” “What other criminal in this country gets to hire their jailer?” asked Grayson.

Hire your own jailer? Seriously. Rep. Grayson is absolutely correct. How many in the public even know this fact?

The link of the day goes to Kathleen Parker about Michael Phelps’ pot smoking:

This we know: Were Phelps to run for public office someday and admit to having smoked pot in his youth, he would be forgiven. Yet, in the present, we impose monstrous expectations on our heroes. Several hand-wringing commentaries have surfaced the past few days, lamenting the tragic loss for disappointed moms, dads and, yes, The Children.

Understandably, parents worry that their kids will emulate their idol, but the problem isn’t Phelps, who is, in fact, an adult. The problem is our laws — and our lies.

Of course our marijuana laws are ridiculous. Even as the point of her column, especially for a conservative, is dead on, equally ridiculous is Parker talking about how marijuana becomes a gateway drug. If marijuana is a person’s “gateway,” it’s quite likely the person involved would have found a different gateway anyway. The problem for Phelps is the rules for competing as an Olympian. You can become president after smoking pot, even doing a little cocaine. What would cause a ruckus is if the president was caught doing either while campaigning for the presidency. But the amount of insanity over Phelps’ bong sucking is absurd. The obligatory athlete’s apology the height of hypocrisy. Like most marijuana smokers, Phelps is likely not sorry about smoking, just incredibly sorry he got caught.

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Mission Afghanistan

By on 04 February 2009
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83dL7WciRFM

Two important additions to State are worth mentioning. One is Vali Nasr, who Laura Rozen reported will be a senior adviser to Holbrooke, who is off to London today (according to State), then the Munich Security conference. Former Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth, whom I interviewed on my radio show regarding Pakistan, may also get a spot in South Asia, Rozen reporting it might be U.S. ambassador to India. But what swirls in this mix is the winds of war in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, reality broke through:

The Pentagon’s top military officers are recommending to President Barack Obama that he shift U.S. strategy in Afghanistan — to focus on ensuring regional stability and eliminating Taliban and Al Qaida safe havens in Pakistan, rather than on achieving lasting democracy and a thriving Afghan economy, officials said.

Now, I’m for limited troop increase in Afghanistan, but only on a preventing failed state mission. How anyone can use Afghanistan and “lasting democracy” in the same sentence is a mystery to me. That’s been the problem with all the “Obama’s Vietnam” headlines, including Newsweek’s, which you can see in the video above. Obama campaigned on a counterinsurgency priority that stops the slide of teetering states like Afghanistan. Nothing is more in our strategic interest than keeping the Af-Pak region from dropping off a cliff. They go together.

Secretary Clinton had a dinner last night that focused on Afghanistan, with experts invited. CNAS described our challenges post Bush-Cheney, as well as our mission in Afghanistan:

No Terrorist Sanctuary and No Regional Meltdown

American neglect of Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet defeat contributed to Al Qaeda entrenching there. The United States and Europe cannot again allow Al Qaeda or its associated movements to have the open support and protection of a state. The efforts of the past seven years have largely eliminated unfettered Al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan, and the country must not be allowed to return to the condition it was in on September 10, 2001. The problem, however, has become even more complex: collusion among Al Qaeda, the Taliban, narco-traffickers, and criminal gangs presents a real and growing threat to the region.

[...] The desired ends in Afghanistan—no terrorist sanctuary and no regional meltdown—and the way to cement those ends for the long term—helping the Afghans build a system of governance that can provide them security—require a comprehensive, integrated, and sequenced set of means. In a word, they need a strategy. A comprehensive strategy will be intrinsically regional, recognizing that even a perfect campaign in Afghanistan will fail if an unstable Pakistan continues to provide sanctuary to militants.

Wood at the briefing today at State:

QUESTION: And following on that, is the State Department doing its own policy review separate from the Petraeus review in CENTCOM, separate from the Lute review that came out of NSC, its own Afghan policy review?

MR. WOOD: Well, we obviously will take a look from the State Department standpoint at our overall contributions to overall U.S. policy in Afghanistan. But – and that will feed into a much larger review of our overall policy toward Afghanistan.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute is in charge of Afghanistan as “war czar.”

As the debate continues, someone needs to explain to me how we maintain an integrated Af-Pak strategy, first stabilizing Afghanistan, without a limited expansion of troops in that country. I’ve read a lot on the matter from those against any troop increase, but until someone can do it, preferably without raising the Vietnam flag, I won’t be convinced. The back and forth I had with Juan Cole is exhibit a. But I’m listening.

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Zinni’s Obama Drama

By on 04 February 2009

–updated–

The Washington Times is reporting that President Obama green lighted the appointment of Anthony Zinni to be ambassador to Iraq, then pulled it. They’ve even got a quote from Zinni.

“I started making arrangements,” Gen. Zinni said, but became concerned because he heard nothing further from the State Department or White House. He called Gen. Jones Monday night and was told that Christopher Hill, the outgoing assistant secretary of State for East Asia, was getting the job.

Gen. Zinni said no explanation was given. “That kind of bothered me,” he said. “I was told that I had it.” [...]

With Zinni on record, the story gets legs. So what happened after Secretary Clinton offered Zinni the job? At the very least there was a communications glitch between Obama and Clinton at State.

The Weekly Standard was quick to jump:

… Those with less faith in the president’s managerial abilities expected instead that that Clinton and her camp would be a constant source of trouble for Obama, and a constant source of leaks for the press. The fact that Zinni, whose name was floated as a possible Obama VP and who claims he was offered the job by Clinton herself, would be treated like this seems to suggest that the fighting between State and the White House has already begun. And if Clinton can’t even hand out ambassadorship’s without Obama cutting her legs out from under her — it’s going to be a very bumpy ride.

No comment so far from State on the matter.

It’s at this point we ask, what the hell is going on with the senior honchos of the Obama administration? You don’t jerk someone like former Gen. Anthony Zinni around.

UPDATE: Laura Rozen has the bottom line. Zinni unloaded on Obama’s team and how he was treated.

A former senior official familiar with the case said the matter appears to have been handled disastrously.

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Dick Cheney Steamrolls Politico

By on 04 February 2009

Reading this article today on Politico, I was suddenly thrown back in time when the late Tim Russert interviewed Dick Cheney right after 9/11. It basically turned into an open forum for the vice president to say any unsubstantiated thing he wanted because everyone who wasn’t stunned into submission at this early point was rendered mute by the attack. But today, John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei, who started the site after leaving the Washington Post, along with Mike Allen, who spread enough manure during HRC’s State Department nomination to fertilize a field, all basically play stenographer for Cheney. Oh, and guess the message. I know, too easy, America is going to get attacked because Barack Obama policies, but particularly because he intends to close Gitmo.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Citing intelligence reports, Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration — “that’s about 11 or 12 percent” — have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.” [...]

According to John, Jim and Mike, Mr. Cheney was in “a self-vindicating mood.” Well, I’m shocked. Stating the obvious after the longest legacy rehabilitation tour we’ve seen in recent memory is hardly worthy of writing, but on and on they go. We won’t even get into the fact that Cheney’s “61 of the inmates” parable is false. But it gets worse, as the Politico boys allow Dick Cheney to do what he did on the run up to the Iraq war. Spin nonsense that forgets one salient element, the truth.

“If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.”

Dick Cheney, like every other Republican, forgets to mention that it was on George W. Bush’s watch that we got hit, even after warnings, signs and a PDB screaming “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside U.S.”

The deal with Politico must have been with a tape recorder, with the “reporters” present in order to push record.

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From ‘Spending Bill’ to ‘Splat’

By on 04 February 2009

A source close to Daschle says “he didn’t have the stomach for the fight.” – George Stephanopoulos

Republicans crowned the stimulus the “spending bill.” It stuck. Stimulus morphed into Republican propaganda to hit Democrats on being big spenders, the stereotype they love to use, which takes a lot of nerve after big borrower Bush. Still, President Obama kept a hand outstretched for a economic rescue plan that bleeds neither red nor blue, even as the House became a PR nightmare for the non-partisan prez. Speaker Pelosi did her job, which has nothing to do with placating Republicans, regardless of what Claire McCaskill says and even though she’s right about the bonuses. There’s a larger issue at stake, but if no one fights for it who’ll know?

Meanwhile, a little media kerfuffle develops over one, then another, then another Obama cabinet nominee, finally landing on Obama’s health care champion, Tom Daschle, someone who knows the insiders and lobbyists inside the health care world, as well as the Congress backwards and forwards. Now, I know it’s revolting to some to have people who can deal with the riffraff, but health care isn’t like picking teams for dodge ball. Amidst this, Mr. Daschle picks up The New York Times one morning, forgetting this is about more than just him, suddenly dropping everything to scurry out stage left.

But when a notoriously venomous columnist starts quoting Kitt Bond’s words against the President, you know you’re in a very deep hole. After all, no matter how nice Mr. Bond, I sat next to him in a parade when he was governor of Missouri, he doesn’t exactly have the stature required to beat up on the new president, but he gave it a try anyway: As Senator Kit Bond, a Republican, put it, there were so many good targets that he felt “like a mosquito in a nudist colony.” I heard that on “Hardball,” too. Maureen Dowd pays no attention to the caliber of conservative she’s vaunting to Republicans main man status, someone who is now president of the tony Alfalfa Club, but has one foot out the door. Not exactly your up and comer. Kitt quipped to President Obama on Saturday, about creating a “Troubled Alfafan Rescue Fund.” Clearly, Republicans feel they’ve got their issue. Dowd has her target.

Even as he told the children his favorite superheroes were Batman and Spider-Man, his own dream of being the superhero who swoops in to swiftly save America was going SPLAT!

[...] The Democratic president has been spending so much time trying — and failing — to win over Republicans that he may not have noticed the disillusionment in his own ranks.

Betrayed by their bankers and leaders, Americans were desperate to trust someone when they made Barack Obama president. His debut has left them skeptical about his willingness to smack down those who would flout his high standards or waste our money.

“SPLAT!” Wow, and here I thought this far out from poppy Bush she’d finally give it up. But Ms. Dowd’s writing fetish for making all Democrats seem weak, unless they’re women, whom she makes into emasculating shrews, is in full gear. I guess Ms. Dowd doesn’t realize that Democrats can pass the stimulus without Republicans. That by reaching out and getting stiffed, President Obama doesn’t owe Republicans a thing, especially if he believes in the stimulus Democrats are working to pass. Dowd doesn’t realize that Obama was standing fully behind Daschle, even as the Dem senators decided to close ranks around him. Whose fault is that?

No doubt many believe President Obama admitting he “screwed up” was refreshing, especially after George W. Bush. That admitting a mistake will buy him favor with some. Wake up. Republicans framed the stimulus, then on a signature Democratic issue, without hardly a peep from Republicans, Obama’s HHS nominee fled the scene because of an editorial. Keeping in mind that it will take a lot of capital and clout to change health care, which will also be expensive, this combination was put in place to keep Obama’s domestic plans in check.

Senator McCain has now sent out an email, to accompany his online petition, with wingnut radio amassing because Republicans, with nothing but retread Reagan ideas (and a moose killin’ ethics challenged governor), have muscled their way on to center stage.

Tell me again who’s in the minority.

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Obama: ‘I screwed up’

By on 03 February 2009

Yeah, not a great day for team change.

“Today was an embarrassment for us,” Obama said. He said he was “angry,” “disappointed” and “frustrated with myself” over the Daschle episode.

[...] The dual-withdrawal fiasco is “something I have to take responsibility for,” Obama told Williams.

“I appointed these folks. I think they are outstanding people. I think Tom Daschle, as an example, could have led this health care effort, a difficult effort, better than just about anybody. But as he acknowledged, it was a mistake. I don’t think it was intentional on his part, but it was a serious mistake. He owned up to it and ultimately made a decision that we couldn’t afford the distraction.”

Obama added, “I’ve got to own up to my mistake. Ultimately, it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”

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Wind Down

By on 03 February 2009
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mji4nAk_8ZY

Free for all on topics.

I’ll start by answering a question we’re getting: have you looked at your new website with your monitor set at 800 x 600? Short answer from my tech whiz is that this resolution is receding from popularity, my words not hers, but the gist of what I picked up.  A portion of the site, including the post itself does fit the screen at that resolution, is easily seen, as is the header. So, we made a decision, but yes we definitely checked that out. No doubt there will be tweaks and additions along the way, so this is just a start.

The post of the day for my money is over at Media Matters, where they take a defense cutting rumor by Robert Kagan apart:

In his February 3 Washington Post column, headlined “No Time To Cut Defense,” Robert Kagan claimed that “Pentagon officials have leaked word that the Office of Management and Budget [OMB] has ordered a 10 percent cut in defense spending for the coming fiscal year, giving Defense Secretary Robert Gates a substantially smaller budget than he requested.” In fact, as Josh Rogin reported in a February 2 Congressional Quarterly article, the Obama administration has actually proposed increasing the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2010 budget by about $14 billion from its 2009 budget. In stating that OMB has “ordered a 10 percent cut,” Kagan was comparing the limit reportedly set by the Obama administration for defense spending with what Rogan reported was “a $584 billion draft budget request compiled last fall by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for fiscal 2010″ — not a budget that Gates “requested,” as Kagan claimed. Indeed, Kagan baselessly suggested a split between OMB and Gates over the increasing size of the budget, writing that President Obama “should side with Gates over the green-eyeshade boys.” But Gates has stated that the “FY 2010 budget must make hard choices” and that the “spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing.”

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