dammit.

2009-06-23T11:38:00.002-05:00

How much cocaine do you have to be on to go naked hiking for five days on the Appalachian Trail? And how do you do it as governor of a state and manage to dodge your own security, your own staff, the state police, and the press? Sanford's reappearance creates a lot more questions than it resolves.

Ignorance is Piss

2009-06-13T21:46:00.001-05:00

The tumult in Iran has lasted late into the night, and yet, here in America, the cable news networks are firmly in fire-and-forget weekend programming mode. Larry King was on during his regularly scheduled slot this evening, MSNBC is running it's standard "documentaries" on prison life, and CSPAN-3 was airing an interview with former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who has been dead for over ten years.

Meanwhile, here's the main page of CNN.com, which might as well be a representative sample of America's perspective on the world:

That's right. A (counter?-)revolution may well be brewing in Iran, and in CNN's best judgment, Americans should be more interested in the bankruptcy of a national chain of amusement parks.

Sometimes I marvel at the extent of our national self-absorption. Is any other country on Earth as staggeringly ignorant and dangerously influential as ours?

2009-05-20T11:35:00.002-05:00

I can't find words to express how much I would love to be at a dinner with Charles Krauthammer and Barack Obama.

Civil Obedience

2009-04-15T13:52:00.002-05:00

Conservatives suck at protests.

There will be no tea-dumping in the Potomac River -- that's illegal -- but organizers of today's national tea party tax protest found out this morning that so is their plan to dump a million tea bags in Lafayette Square to demonstrate displeasure at government spending and tax policies.

Protesters, using a rented truck to haul the million tea bags, began unloading their cargo at the park this morning but were told by officials that they didn't have proper permits and must move the tea . They complied with the order but are still considering what to do with the load.

As my understanding goes, it doesn't even count as a real protest if no one gets beaten up by a cop.

Tenuous Grasp of Reality

2009-04-14T08:54:00.002-05:00

Found here:

"I don't know how to break this to you, but people that go out and murder people don't read The Wall Street Journal."

-- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to CNN's Wolf Blitzer on whether the bad economy increases gun violence.

I don't even know where to begin pointing out the problems with this statement. Does Bloomberg really think that people need a newspaper to tell them that they're broke, unemployed, desperate and pissed off?

Briefly

2009-04-10T12:18:00.002-05:00

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

Discrimination is not defensible under the umbrella of religious freedom, just as the assassination of William McKinley is not defensible under the umbrella of political "speech" or expression.

A jump to the left, but then a step to the right

2009-04-08T13:08:00.004-05:00

I find that in recent weeks, I've spent more time looking for hope on the right wing than I have from the left. I am, of course, still a proud liberal, and I still get a tingle from saying "President Obama." But his presidency thus far has been less than perfect, and given that the dire circumstances of the present time leave little room for error, we need to be especially deliberate about thinking critically about all of our leaders and their decisions.

Like the President, I back Keynesian policies in the face of an economic crisis like the one we're in: we spent our way into this mess and now we have to bite the bullet and, very strategically, spend our way back out. "Shovel-ready projects" are a good first step, as well as steps to reinforce the social welfare safety net by extending unemployment benefits. I completely back Obama's holy trinity of energy, health care, and education: I think that the first two can provide a valuable short term economic stimulus and the latter will build a foundation for long term viability.

But as we're all so painfully aware, the biggest federal expenditures right now are going to the financial sector which (not single-handedly, mind you) emptied a clip of hollowpoints into the system that made them rich. We're propping up banks far beyond the basic assurances of the FDIC, often taking control of them, and assuming all of their losses while taking none of the gains. Meanwhile, as Eliot Spitzer has been trying to point out in his Slate articles (which are a must-read), we're also bailing out AIG so that they can make good on their insurance policies by paying huge amounts... to the very banks we already paid off. Meanwhile, all of this is being financed by the Chinese, who not only have a government inhospitable to the capitalist-democratic way of life, but who could stand some capital injections of their own.* All of this debt is increasing rapidly not only in principle, but every additional dollar we spend is accruing interest. Each year in our budgets we keep current on the interest, meanwhile constantly adding to the amount on which we're paying that interest.

Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany won't go on board for the kind of massive government spending that Obama wants from his counterparts throughout the developed world, and very shrewdly: "Over the next decade we will undergo a massive demographic change, and, therefore, borrowing is a greater burden for the future than in a country with a much more continuously growing population." It's a popular trope to say that we're leveraging our current excesses on the earnings of our children. But what should happen if, like Germany, our population levels off or starts declining... or even worse, if we don't turn around the growing class disparity and the vast majority of American children remain in an impoverished underclass with limited earning potential? What happens with that debt then? What happens to our budget projections? It's one thing to plan for what happens if everything turns out as planned, but what about contingencies? Natural disaster? A large-scale terrorist attack? An oil shortage based on our sabre-rattling with both Venezuela and Iran? We have to face the possibility that our economy will likely not be fixed by the end of the year, and even when it is fixed, it will be some time before it's as strong as it needs to be to pay off the obscene amounts of debt we're accruing.

The cartoonists are lampooning Obama daily for his deference to the needs of Wall Street while playing tough with Detroit (which, mind you, would be well served with three long-due bankruptcies and the creation of incentives for foreign automakers to expand into Detroit and employ UAW labor -- support good products and American labor until American companies make a product worth buying). The shouts of populist rage are audible from sea to shining sea, and many of us are hoping in vain for Obama to let the financial industry tank so we can rebuild it in a responsible model. Indeed, it's often hard to tell the left from the right, when the conservatives are accusing the liberals of socialism for wanting to disassemble astronomically reckless banks and restore broad-based financial autonomy and independent ownership so we can engage in true economic competition.

Unfortunately, as we all know, that won't happen. Building an economy where there wasn't one before is challenge enough (see Eastern Europe, 1991), but completely restructuring one of the largest and most convoluted financial systems in history is beyond the range of any President, even Barack Obama. Letting Wall Street and Detroit do a faceplant would wreak more havoc in the short-term than America would stand for, and Washington would be forced by that same populist rage to realign their goals and strategies before they had a chance to do any good with the opportunity they had created. No, for as frustrating as it can be to watch, dismantling the financial institutions we've all come to know and loathe is a project that should be saved for when we have another house to live in after we've burned this one down, not when we have an unemployment rate at 8.5% and rising fast.

With so many problems in having free-for-all battle to determine which gets to screw us the hardest, it seems obvious to me that it's necessary for public officials to remember once again that communication is a two-way street. I'm normally one to defend a certain amount of partisan bickering: I think people often vote along a party line because that's what they really believe, and that's why they joined that particular party. But a republic is built upon the principle of debate, and a real debate only exists when each party can acknowledge that they don't have all the answers, and that the other party has some validity to their argument.

And so, though I hate to find myself saying this, I'm keeping my eye on the right wing for glimmers of hope (however small) that a loyal conservative opposition may appear. And slowly but surely, they are starting to emerge.

Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins. I don't expect them to defer to the Democrats on every issue, but at least they've demonstrated an ability to listen.
John Feehery, a lobbyist and former staffer for GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert wrote a remarkably mild-mannered (though somewhat naive-sounding) column for CNN encouraging civil debate:
Instead, Republicans should allow themselves to like the president, just as they fight against his policies. And as they fight his policies, they should do all that they can to market their own ideas so that the American people understand that the Republicans have positive alternatives that will make our country stronger, safer and more prosperous in the future.
John McCain, who I've said plenty of unkind words about over the last year or so, is wrangling with his party and trying to convince them to make a positive contribution and not aim solely to sink the Obama administration. Obama's budget passed on a party-line vote, but during the debate, John McCain was pushing for the GOP to put forward a full alternative budget which would suggest a vision of how they wanted to move forward. The GOP platform seems to be a completely context-free, generic "More tax cuts, less spending, more aggression, fewer earmarks" platform. McCain is absolutely guilty of wearing all of those hats and wearing them until they're threadbare. But a fully fleshed out proposal planning out how those principles would help the country would be a far better contribution to the public discourse than the reflexive nay-saying we're getting now. The GOP leaders opposing McCain suggest that it's "not their job" to make a budget since they're in the minority. I would argue that as elected officials and civic leaders it is absolutely their damn job and even when I'm feeling bipartisan (like right now) I'm not giving them an ounce of respect until they show some sort of comprehension that they have responsibilities to accomplish things. Until then, much to my chagrin, I'll have to look to John McCain to provide principled leadership on the right.
Charles Krauthammer. No, really. Stop laughing! I cite as evidence that Krauthammer is providing a valuable discourse his column from last Friday. He laughs off the conservative hysteria over Obama's promise to back manufacturer warrantees on all American cars, because he knows that that's a sideshow for Obama.
Obama has far different ambitions. His goal is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation's income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.
All of this is, as far as I can tell, is completely accurate. As a liberal, I see no problems with this. I think healthcare is a right and I have no problem saying it. I believe in levelling the economic playing field enough that opportunity is equalized (though absolutely not the rewards for utilizing those opportunities), and I have absolutely no problem using taxes on pollution to help do it. I see Krauthammer as so valuable to the debate because I think he is as brilliant analytically as he is amoral. He is interested in strength, intelligence, and success. Human rights are a principle to be fought for in words, as a tool for condemning other countries, but have no meaning to him. Social justice is folly, and weakness. Conciliatory foreign policy is something to be mistrusted. But as I think I've made evident by now, my interest is in generating valuable, considered dissent, which Krauthammer never fails with. Liberals don't trust Goldman Sachs, and they shouldn't. By the same token, Krauthammer doesn't trust Russia, and as far as I can see, he shouldn't. We need men like Barack Obama to create a vision of an America worth living in, who are wary of unregulated markets. And we need people like Charles Krauthammer who are devoted to their cold analysis to remind us that sometimes paranoia is justified, that being nice can't be our only foreign policy, the government won't fix human nature, and who will take the baby out of the bath before we dump the water. When I read his columns, I'm often enraged. But I've found that there are two types of partisan rage: the kind where someone is spouting nonsense and people are paying attention, and the kind where you're furious because someone has made a logical point that contradicts your political dogma. More often than not, Krauthammer incites the latter. Many liberals mourned just as conservatives did over the death of William F. Buckley because he was dedicated to the truth as he saw it, to his idea of a better America, not to his party. I won't go so far as to state that Krauthammer is on the same level as Buckley, but I do believe his loyalty lies in the same place, and he's a better option than Jonah Goldberg, Ramesh Ponnuru, or any of those other goofs at the National Review.

I suppose what I'm trying to get out of this is that I'm gradually starting to have more faith in the "marketplace of ideas" than I have in my lifetime. We have a good president with a nimble intellect who is willing to listen to his opposition. In addition to a liberal population that got their shouting muscles warmed up during the Bush presidency calling for action on the left, there's valuable analysis and even a (limited) desire to propose alternative solutions on the right. And even if it's only represented by three lonely senators whose party has them on the chopping block, at least someone in the elected opposition is willing to listen. What I want from Washington is for Barack Obama to push as hard as he can for his position, with rational people making principled arguments that he's wrong. And I want him to hear them out, and adopt their ideas when they're worthwhile. This is the beautiful, foolish idealism -- and the challenge -- laid forth by the founding fathers when they gave us our free speech and our democratic republic. I want to see our country get closer to meeting that challenge, and I think it's possible we might be inching forward.

*Anecdotal evidence: the company I work for has a number of its interests wrapped up in development in China. I was able to write all of this at work, almost entirely in one afternoon.

"Sob Story" (or, "I'm Frustrated")

2009-03-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

I just watched the full, unedited interview between Jon Stewart of The Daily Show and Jim Cramer of CNBC's Mad Money. I was a little surprised and annoyed this morning when I started seeing a fake news show making headlines on real newspapers, but as I watched the interview unfold, it made more sense. America, as a collective, feels like it has been swindled by the people it trusted to make money for all of us. Stewart was in fine form. He had clips ready for ambush, he never once pulled a punch out of courtesy for a guest who had pretty much folded (literally: watch Cramer's slouch get deeper and deeper through the interview) after the first minute, and he did more than just whine about the failures - he had solutions for how CNBC can stop screwing people. It was stunningly cathartic. Comedy Central has the interview divided into three parts which you can find here, here, and here.

I felt good after that, like I'd gotten some token measure of justice. Then a fellow I (now no longer) work with came in, gave me his personal contact information, and in a voice that wasn't too good at disguising his grief, told me what he was going to be doing with all of his newfound spare time.

You can yell at a child for breaking a glass, but the glass is still broken.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

2009-01-20T10:09:00.003-06:00

I wrote this on February 8, 2004. It has been slightly edited to make more sense to people that aren't me.

Saturday morning, I got up much earlier than I wanted to in order to go to the Heartland Cafe, where my father and I heard the delightful words of Barack Obama. If the world is a just place, Barack Obama will be America's first black president (I'm presuming, of course, that George W. Bush will manage to hold out against stunningly talented and straight-shooting political savant Al Sharpton). Everything he said was exactly what needed to be said, he's articulate but not snooty, he's reasonable about his expectations, he has the respect of his peers . . . I want this man to be my senator. You could say that I am a strange overly idealistic youngster who doesn't know his political ass from his political elbow. But afterwards, my dad and I went to the Little Corner Restaurant and he was beaming with admiration. In his words, he hasn't been this excited about a politician since Bobby Kennedy.

The world might be a just place after all. This morning, when I considered what was going to happen today, I wept with joy. We've got a long way to go, but we've got a good man at the helm.

Hmm, guess he isn't too busy these days.

2008-12-13T09:43:00.002-06:00

Writing for Slate, Eliot Spitzer discusses the auto industry bailout. His solution? Let the Big Three fight it out to determine which two companies get funding. I wish that I knew more about this issue to comment on the merits of this idea, but I don't. However, upon reading the article, my initial thought was, "And what happens to that third company?" I'm also not sure about his notion of not needing a so-called "car czar," because it certainly seems as if he's auditioning for the role.

Any thoughts?

Rod-Blo Goes to Jail

2008-12-09T13:55:00.005-06:00

Today is the day 87% or so of the citizens of Illinois have been waiting for for a long time. Rod Blagojevich has been arrested.

I would like to note briefly that for as much as I am a pretty loyal Democrat, I refused to vote for this creep. I voted for Rich Whitney, whose preferred press photo was of him talking to an inanimate object.

I have nothing but admiration for Pat Fitzgerald. The man is relentless.

A Face for Mount Rushmore

2008-11-25T18:56:00.000-06:00

08 September 2003
The Last Portrait of Johnny Cash
from Country Music: The Masters, a collection of photos by Marty Stuart

Whatever.

2008-11-21T21:40:00.001-06:00

The Los Angeles Times: Hillary Clinton blows name of next Russian president [27 Feb 2008]

So naturally late in the Ohio debate when it came time for the trick question, the kind of TV interview question that got George W. Bush so much unwanted, embarrassing and prolonged attention in 1999 when he couldn't name the president of Pakistan, Tim Russert claimed later that he looked at both candidates Tuesday night as if to say, 'Who wants this one?' And Clinton seemed to respond. So he asked Clinton first.

The question concerned Russia's so-called presidential elections Sunday to pick a successor to Vladimir Putin. Russert wanted to know what Clinton could tell the world about this new president.

In her 204-word response Clinton worked in how he'd been hand-picked by Putin, how Russia's political opposition has been suppressed and how she'd been critical of the Bush administration on a wide variety of issues regarding Russia.

Then, Russert pounced: "Who will it be? Do you know his name?"

Chances are you don't know his name. But then you're not running for president. We'll never know if the name was known by Obama, who is running for president, because Russert chose to put Clinton on the spot. And she blew it. Although the official transcript partially covers up her mistake. It has Clinton replying, "Medvedev -- whatever."

What a tape actually shows the senator said was, "Meh, uhm, Me-ned-vadah -- whatever."

26 February 2008

"Whatever."

The Heritage Foundation: Russia on the March: The Return of Red Square Parades [11 Feb 08]

As Yogi Berra once said, "This is déjà vu all over again." On May 9, heavy military equipment will once again roll down Moscow's Red Square for the Victory Day military parade. Tanks, missiles, and 6,000 troops will be joined overhead by Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft and military helicopters. The last time Moscow saw such a display of military hardware on Red Square was in November 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The world should take notice of Russia's increasing militarism. The parade is designed to generate nostalgia among the Russian people and to signal to the U.S., NATO, and Russia's neighbors that Russia's power is back.

...

This is yet another indication from the Kremlin that the so-called "power" ministries and agencies are the bedrocks of the Russian Federation—not democracy, open society, a multiparty system, free media, fair elections, constitutional liberties, and the separation of powers.

...

Russia's rearmament, the parade, its global maneuvers, and its new weapon systems are designed to make others respect Russia as well as deter NATO and the U.S., which Putin sees as a hegemonic superpower seeking to harm Russia. Russia wants to signal that it again has the military means to counter both perceived strategic threats, such as the U.S. missile defense system, and conventional military challenges, such as NATO expansion and the West's superior air power. Fanfare communicates Russia's intentions to tilt the global "correlation of forces" in Moscow's favor and encourages Russia's neighbors to do its bidding and not to challenge its security or its interests.

Russia is back on the world stage with all the attributes of power, including wealth and military might, for all to see. The next U.S. administration will have its hands full dealing with a resurgent Moscow.

07 May 2008

Whatever.

The International Herald Tribune: Putin's presidency to end as protege Medvedev takes Russia's top office [07 May 2008]

Dmitry Medvedev will become the third president of the Russian Federation Wednesday, in an elaborate modern ritual that should remind the world of his country's czarist roots and 21st century wealth.

The 1993 constitution stipulates that the president takes the oath of office "in a ceremonial atmosphere," and there's little risk Medvedev's invitation-only inauguration on the grounds of the Kremlin will fall short of that demand.

Medvedev is scheduled to stride into an opulent throne room in the Grand Kremlin Palace around noon after an honor guard enters with a folded Russian tricolor and the presidential flag, according to Russian officials and state-run media.

Czar Alexander II's coronation ceremony was held in the palace in 1856, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

...

Medvedev's inauguration will be followed Friday by a Victory Day parade celebrating the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, with tanks and missile launchers rolling across Red Square for the first time since the Soviet Union's 1991 collapse.

While the military parade will evoke memories of Soviet military glory, the inauguration ceremony will be more reminiscent of imperial Russia's grandeur.

09 May 2008

Whatever.

The Washington Times: Russia Revives Cold War Aircraft

Russia's venerable Tupolev Tu-95 bomber is a gigantic, lumbering and slow behemoth that flies with turbine-driven propellers. It has an engine technology the U.S. Air Force wouldn't have been caught dead with since before 1950. So how come it poses a formidable strategic threat to the United States and its NATO allies in the 21st century?

The giant Tu-95 (NATO designation: Bear) was one of the signature aircraft of the Cold War. It played center stage again in the past month along with the vastly faster and more formidable Tupolev Tu-160 White Swan (NATO designation: Blackjack) in the largest strategic exercises the Russian air force has conducted in nearly a quarter century.

During the exercises, code-named Stability-2008, Tu-95MS Bears fired live air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM). It was the first time since 1984 - and just the second time in history - the giant aircraft had done that in any exercise.

But those cruise missiles are what have given the Tu-95 an unlikely but formidable new lease on life in the 21st century. Russia's KH-55 ALCMs (NATO designation: AS-15 Kent) are very good indeed. They fly three times as fast as their American counterpart, the venerable Tomahawk ALCM. The Tomahawk is subsonic, but the KH-55 can fly three times as fast. It has a maximum speed of more than 1,900 miles an hour, Mach 2.8, at sea level, and a range of 2,000 miles. That means that if the KH-55 AS-15 Kents are launched outside U.S. legal airspace in a surprise attack, they could hit any target anywhere in the United States when fired from off the Eastern Seaboard or the West Coast.

It certainly is true that the slow old Tu-95MS Bear, with a cruising speed of less than 500 mph, would be easy pickings for U.S. air-superiority fighters defending the homeland. They even would have been shot down like giant flies 46 years ago if the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated to a thermonuclear showdown between the superpowers.

Nevertheless, the long range of the KH-55 AS-15 Kents means the Tu-95MS Bears have been transformed once again into a formidable strategic weapons system - vastly more dangerous than they were in the 1950s, when they were the best the Soviet Union had to offer.

Today, Tu-95s can fly holding-pattern patrols 1,500 miles to 2,000 miles away from any prospective targets along the U.S. East and West coasts and far beyond the range of any homeland-based U.S. Air Force fighter squadrons.

Yet by staying airborne, any one or two TU-95s at any time can remain invulnerable to U.S. land- and submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles targeted on Russian Strategic Missile Forces bases or Russian air force bases. Their cruise missiles are vastly more difficult to intercept than a conventional intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) because they do not fly in straightforward and easily predictable ballistic flight paths. Nor do they have limited in-flight maneuvering and evasion capabilities that the most modern Russian ICBMs such as the Topol-M have.

Instead, cruise missiles are programmed to fly along the contours of the Earth - flying around or up and over mountains and hills or even following the course of rivers. Therefore, they are far more difficult to intercept, especially because they also are programmed to fly very low, confounding the most sensitive and effective U.S. radar systems that are designed to enable ground-based midcourse interceptors to home in on and destroy ICBMs in midflight.

Each Tu-95 can carry and launch as many as six KH-55 ALCMs. They are far cheaper and easier to maintain and operate than the huge, supersonic Tu-160 Blackjacks, and the Kremlin has far more of them.

According to a recent report from the RIA Novosti news agency, the Russian air force operates no fewer than 40 Tu-95MS Bears, compared with just 16 Tu-160 Blackjacks.

Add up all these advantages, and it looks as if the Tu-95 may be around for a few more decades yet.

24 September 2007

Whatever.

The Australian: Russian warplanes fly over US carrier [13 Feb 2008]

WASHINGTON: Two Russian Tupolev 95 Bear bombers overflew a US aircraft carrier in the western Pacific at the weekend, prompting US fighter jets to scramble, a defence official said yesterday.

US fighter planes intercepted the Russian bombers flying unusually close to the aircraft carrier in the western Pacific.

The official said one Tu-95 buzzed the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at an altitude of about 610m [2000 ft], while another circled about 91km [50 nautical miles] out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

The incident on Saturday, which never escalated beyond the flyover, comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Russia over US plans for a missile defence system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Such Russian bomber flights were common during the Cold War, but have been rare since.

The bombers were among four Tu-95s launched from Rusia's Ukrainka air base, about 1000km [621 miles] northwest of Vladivostok, in the middle of the night, including one that Japanese officials say violated their country's airspace over an uninhabited island south of Tokyo.

US officials tracked and monitored the bombers as two flew south along the Japanese coast, and two others flew farther east, coming closer to the Nimitz and the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.

As the bombers got to about 800km [497 miles] out from the US ships, four F/A-18 fighters were launched from the Nimitz, the defence official said.

The fighters intercepted the Russian bombers about 80km [50 miles] south of the Nimitz.

At least two US fighters trailed the bomber as it came in low over the Nimitz twice, while one or two of the other US fighters followed the second bomber as it circled.

The official said there were no verbal communications between the US and the Russians and that the Pentagon had not heard of any protests being filed. Historically, diplomatic protests have not been filed in such incidents as they were so frequent during the Cold War era.

This is the first time Russian Tupolevs have flown over or interacted with a US carrier since 2004.

11 February 2008

Whatever.

11 August 2008

Whatever.

The International Herald Tribune: Russia test-fires ballistic missiles [12 Oct 2008]

Russia test-fired long-range ballistic missiles Sunday as President Dmitri Medvedev pledged to build up the country's armed capabilities.

The military fired a Topol intercontinental missile from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwest Russia at a target thousands of kilometers away in the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. Submarines in the Okhotsk Sea near Japan and the Barents Sea launched ballistic missiles that reached northern Russia and Kamchatka, the state broadcaster Vesti-24 reported.

"This shows that our shield is in order," Medvedev said Sunday at Plesetsk. "We will build up our armed capability, which means we will acquire new weaponry while also launching traditional ballistic missiles."

The purpose of the Plesetsk test launch was to confirm the viability of the Topol rocket, which has been in service with Russian forces for 20 years, Vesti reported. The Topol, with a range of 10,000 kilometers, or 6,200 miles, is part of Russia's response to a planned U.S. missile defense shield in Eastern Europe, the state broadcaster cited experts as saying.

...

The statement Sunday was the latest pledge by the Russian head of state to revive the might of the armed forces. Medvedev said Saturday that Russia would resume building aircraft carriers and last month announced that Russia would build more new submarines. The president also said that the country's nuclear deterrent should be upgraded within 12 years.

Seeking to assert its power after a decade of oil-fueled economic growth, Russia announced that it would increase defense spending 26 percent to a post-Soviet record of 1.28 trillion rubles, or $48 billion, next year.

Russia must achieve "supremacy in the air, in delivering high-precision strikes against land and sea targets and in the rapid deployment of forces," Medvedev said late last month.

Russia has stepped up protests since the Czech Republic and Poland agreed to host elements of a U.S. missile-defense system. Amid a chill in ties with the West caused by an August war with neighboring Georgia, Russia has warned it would respond militarily by targeting the sites.

12 October 2008

Whatever.

05 November 2008

Whatever.

The New York Times: Clinton Decides to Accept Post at State Dept., Confidants Say [ 21 Nov 08]

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton will have had a powerful platform to travel the world and help repair relations with other countries strained after eight years of President Bush’s policies.

...

Mrs. Clinton would bring a distinctive background to the State Department. As first lady, she traveled the world for eight years, visiting more than 80 countries, not only meeting with foreign leaders but also villages, clinics and other remote areas that rarely get on a president’s itinerary. Mr. Obama during the primaries belittled that experience as little more than having tea and pointed to schedules showing many ceremonial events on those trips.

29 February 2008

Change? Whatever.

Filling the New Cabinet, Part IV: Defense

2008-11-21T08:00:00.005-06:00

The Contenders

- Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE, 1997-present): President, McCarthy and Company (1991-1996); President and CEO of United Service Organizations (1987-1990); Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer, Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (1990); Deputy Administrator of Veterans Affairs (1981-1982); Sergeant, 2nd Battalion (Mechanized), 47th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, IV Corps, Vietnam, United States Army (1967-1968)

- Dr. Robert Gates: Secretary of Defense (2006-present); President of Texas A&M University (2002-2006); Interim Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University (1999-2001); Independent Lecturer (1993-1999); Director of Central Intelligence ["CIA Director"] (1991-1993); Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs ["Deputy National Security Advisor"] (1989-1991); Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (1986-1989); Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA (1982-1986); Director of the DCI/DDCI Executive Staff, CIA (1981-1982); Director of the Strategic Evaluation Center, Office of Strategic Research, CIA (1979-1981); Staff, National Security Council (1974-1979); Intelligence Officer, CIA (1969-1974); Intelligence Officer, Strategic Air Command, United States Air Force (1967-1969); Staff, Central Intelligence Agency (1966)

Sen. Hagel

Sen. Obama, Gen. Petraeus, and Sen. Hagel in Iraq, 21 July 2008

"As I’ve said here before, if Steve McQueen had ever been elected to the U.S. Senate, he would have been Chuck Hagel."

- D. Allan Kerr, The Portsmouth Herald

I have yet to watch Steve McQueen's 1978 production of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, but most assuredly, if Chuck Hagel is the Steve McQueen of the United States Senate, it is as much due to his role as the Republican Party's Dr. Thomas Stockmann (minus the ego) as it is for his background as a highly decorated war hero.

Sen. Hagel, who in 2002 was branded "Sen. Skeptic (R., France)" by the increasingly neoconservative National Review for his strong rebuke of Gen. Colin Powell and President Bush following the "Axis of Evil" speech, has been the subject of scorn among the PNAC set for his non-ideological, realist foreign policy views.

“Conservatives, I’ve always known, like this guy up there,” [Hagel] said, gesturing to a framed picture of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “and Reagan, Goldwater, and others—[Sen. Robert] Taft, Mr. Conservative—were very protective in conserving our resources. And what is more significant in a country’s resource inventory than its people, its army? I think we have used our military recklessly and carelessly. I don’t think that’s conservative.” He continued, “I find it fascinating sometimes when I am challenged on this. I think I am the real conservative on the Iraq debate here.”
President Bush’s loyal congressional supporters, bolstered by the base, beg to differ. They find Hagel’s brand of realist internationalism, his hammering away at the Iraq policy as a misbegotten adventure akin to the Vietnam War he nearly died in, quite noisome. They’ve called him an appeaser, a traitor even. A personally popular senator with 35-year-old ties to the Republican Party, his detractors have done everything to marginalize him.
...
“As far as foreign policy is concerned, they [the conservative base] regard him as an apostate,” [Ross Baker] added. “These are people who believe that anybody who contradicts the president has to be cast out into the darkness.
- The American Conservative, 09 April 2007

While he did vote for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, Sen. Hagel's floor speech was filled with prescience:

Because the stakes are so high, America must be careful with her rhetoric and mindful of how others perceive her intentions. Actions in Iraq must come in the context of an American-led, multilateral approach to disarmament, not as the first case for a new American doctrine involving the preemptive use of force. America’s challenge in this new century will be to strengthen its relationships around the world while leading the world in our war on terrorism, for it is the success of the first challenge that will determine the success of the second. We should not mistake our foreign policy priorities for ideology in a rush to proclaim a new doctrine in world affairs. America must understand it cannot alone win a war against terrorism. It will require allies, friends, and partners.

American leadership in the world will be further defined by our actions in Iraq and the Middle East. What begins in Iraq will not end in Iraq. There will be other ‘‘Iraqs.’’ There will be continued acts of terrorism, proliferating powers, and regional conflicts. If we do it right and lead through the U.N., in concert with our allies, we can set a new standard for American leadership and international cooperation. The perception of American power is power, and how our power is perceived can either magnify or diminish our influence in the world.

...

How many of us really know and understand much about Iraq, the country, the history, the people, the role in the Arab world? I approach the issue of post-Saddam Iraq and the future of democracy and stability in the Middle East with more caution, realism, and a bit more humility. While the people of the Arab world need no education from America about Saddam’s record of deceit, aggression, and brutality, and while many of them may respect and desire the freedoms the American model offers, imposing democracy through force in Iraq is a roll of the dice. A democratic effort cannot be maintained without building durable Iraqi political institutions and developing a regional and international commitment to Iraq’s reconstruction. No small task.

To succeed, our commitment must extend beyond the day after to the months and years after Saddam is gone. The American people must be told of this long-term commitment, risk, and costs of this undertaking.

We should not be seduced by the expectations of ‘‘dancing in the streets’’ after Saddam’s regime has fallen, the kites, the candy, and cheering crowds we expect to greet our troops, but instead, focus on the great challenges ahead, the commitment and resources that will be needed to ensure a democratic transition in Iraq and a more stable and peaceful Middle East. We should spend more time debating the cost and extent of this commitment, the risks we may face in military engagement with Iraq, the implications of the precedent of United States military action for regime change, and the likely character and challenges of a post-Saddam Iraq. We have heard precious little from the President, his team, as well as from this Congress, with a few notable exceptions, about these most difficult and critical questions.

...

While I cannot predict the future, I believe that what we decide in this Chamber this week will influence America’s security and role in the world for the coming decades. It will serve as the framework, both intentionally and unintentionally, for the future. It will set in motion a series of actions and events that we cannot now
understand or control.

In authorizing the use of force against Iraq, we are at the beginning of a road that has no clear end.

Since this speech, Sen. Hagel admitted he regrets supporting the authorization, building a reputation as one of the most reliable and principled critics of the Iraq War. More interesting still is Hagel's role in recognizing the original intent behind the White House's original draft of the Iraq War Resolution, revealed nearly five years later in a January 2007 interview with Wil S. Hylton of GQ magazine:

GQ: Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion?

Hagel: Have you read that resolution?

GQ: I have.

Hagel: It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.

GQ: It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.”

Hagel: In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.

GQ: But there was a decision whether to grant the president that authority or not.

Hagel: Exactly right. And if you recall, the White House had announced that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.

GQ: Which they seem to say about a lot of things.

Hagel: That’s right. Mr. [Alberto] Gonzales was the president’s counsel at that time, and he wrote a memo to the president saying, “You have all the powers that you need.” So I called Andy Card, who was then the chief of staff, and said, “Andy, I don’t think you have a shred of ground to stand on, but more to the point, why would a president seriously consider taking a nation to war without Congress being with him?” So a few of us—Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I—were invited into discussions with the White House.

GQ: It’s incredible that you had to ask for that.

Hagel: It is incredible. That’s what I said to Andy Card. Said it to Powell, said it to Rice. Might have even said it to the president. And finally, begrudgingly, they sent over a resolution for Congress to approve. Well, it was astounding. It said they could go anywhere in the region.

GQ: It wasn’t specific to Iraq?

Hagel: Oh no. It said the whole region! They could go into Greece or anywhere. I mean, is Central Asia in the region? I suppose! Sure as hell it was clear they meant the whole Middle East. It was anything they wanted. It was literally anything. No boundaries. No restrictions.

GQ: They expected Congress to let them start a war anywhere they wanted in the Middle East?

Hagel: Yes. Yes. Wide open. We had to rewrite it. Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I stripped the language that the White House had set up, and put our language in it.

GQ: But that should also have triggered alarm bells about what they really wanted to do.

Hagel: Well, it did. I’m not defending our votes; I’m just giving a little history of how this happened. You have to remember the context of when that resolution was passed. This was about a year after September 11. The country was still truly off balance. So the president comes out talking about “weapons of mass destruction” that this “madman dictator” Saddam Hussein has, and “our intelligence shows he’s got it,” and “he’s capable of weaponizing,” and so on.

GQ: And producing a National Intelligence Estimate that turned out to be doctored.

Hagel: Oh yeah. All this stuff was doctored. Absolutely. But that’s what we were presented with. And I’m not dismissing our responsibility to look into the thing, because there were senators who said, “I don’t believe them.” But I was told by the president—we all were—that he would exhaust every diplomatic effort.

GQ: You were told that personally?

Hagel: I remember specifically bringing it up with the president. I said, “This has to be like your father did it in 1991. We had every Middle East nation except one with us in 1991. The United Nations was with us.”

GQ: Did he give you that assurance, that he would do the same thing as his father?

Hagel: Yep. He said, “That’s what we’re going to do.” But the more I look back on this, the more I think that the administration knew there was some real hard question whether he really had any WMD. In January of 2003, if you recall, the inspectors at the IAEA, who knew more about what Saddam had than anybody, said, “Give us two more months before you go to war, because we don’t think there’s anything in there.” They were the only ones in Iraq. We hadn’t been in there. We didn’t know what the hell was in there. And the president wouldn’t do it! So to answer your question—Do I regret that vote? Yes, I do regret that vote.

GQ: And you feel like you were misled?

Hagel: I asked tough questions of Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld before the war: How are you going to govern? Who’s going to govern? Where is the money coming from? What are you going to do with their army? How will you secure their borders? And I was assured every time I asked, “Senator, don’t worry, we’ve got task forces on that, they’ve been working, they’re coordinated,” and so on.

GQ: Do you think they knew that was false?

Hagel: Oh, I eventually was sure they knew. Even before we actually invaded, I had a pretty clear sense of it—that this administration was hell-bent on going to war in Iraq.

GQ: Even if it meant deceiving Congress?

Hagel: That’s right.

"The difference between Hagel and [Sen. John] Edwards," wrote Kelley Vlahos of The American Conservative, "may be that Hagel’s change of heart never smacked of political convenience – in the manner of a maverick, he’s risked alienation from his party, his friends, his support back home. He doesn’t — yet — seem to be animated by obvious political ambition." Writing in 2006, John Nichols of The Nation said of Sen. Hagel:

Hagel has long been blunter than his Democratic colleagues about the disaster that the Iraq occupation has become for the U.S. The Nebraska Republican was making comparisons between the Vietnam War, in which he served, and the Iraq imbroglio months ago -- at a point when most Senate Democrats were holding their tongues.

...
Democrats should be asking themselves: Why is a Republican taking the lead on the issue that played such a pivotal role in putting Democrats in charge of the House and Senate?

The honest answer is an unsettling one.

Right now, Hagel is sounding more realistic and responsible than most if not all of the Democrats who are positioning themselves for 2008 presidential runs. Indeed, with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, the first senator to call for an withdrawal timeline, out of the running, Democrats could use a candidate who speaks as directly as does Hagel about the need to get out of Iraq. While it is true that Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who may or may not be running, is a Democrat who has started to make some of the right noises, Obama has not begun to equal the directness of Hagel's declaration that: "The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs: America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose."

Not only a man capable of highly accurate foresight, Sen. Hagel isn't one to mince words. I recommend to your viewing the following footage of Sen. Hagel speaking at a 24 January 2007 meeting of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:

In November 2006, Sen. Hagel wrote that the United States had "misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam." On 11 January 2007, the day after President Bush delivered his "New Way Forward" speech articulating the proto-Surge, Sen. Hagel blasted Secretary of State Condolezza Rice in a Foreign Relations Committee hearing, stating:

When you were engaging Chairman Biden on this issue on the specific question of, "Will our troops go into Iran or Syria in pursuit [of terrorists], based on what the President said last night?," you cannot sit here today — not because you’re dishonest or you don’t understand — but no one in our government can sit here today and tell Americans that we won’t engage the Iranians and the Syrians cross-border.

Some of us remember 1970, Madam Secretary. And that was Cambodia. And when our government lied to the American people and said, We didn’t cross the border going into Cambodia, in fact we did. I happen to know something about that, as do some on this committee.

So, Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous. As a matter of fact, I have to say, Madam Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this President represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam — if it’s carried out.

I will resist it.

Once again, Sen. Hagel demonstrated foresight. On 27 October 2008, the US launched a helicopter-borne raid into Syria.

Along the way, Sen. Hagel has demonstrated that he hasn't forgotten his roots as an enlisted man. When grilling Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker in front of the Foreign Relations Committee on 11 September 2007, Sen. Hagel spoke up for comrades in arms two generations his junior [section below starts at 6:22 in]:

Let's get above the underbrush and look at the strategic context, which, essentially, we have never done.

It's not your fault, General. It's not Ambassador Crocker's fault. It's this administration's fault. We have never, ever looked at Iraq from the larger strategic context, of not Iraq only but Iran, Syria, and the Middle East.

Now, where is this going to go?

Because the question that is going to continue to be asked -- and you all know it and you have to live with it -- and when you ask questions, as we all do, about is it worth it, the continued investment of American blood and treasure, when Senator Dodd presents to do [sic] the evaluation of one lonely enlisted man -- and by the way, I assume you read The New York Times piece ["The War as We Saw It"] two weeks ago -- seven NCOs [Non-Commissioned Officers] in Iraq, today, finishing up 15 month commitments.

Are we going to dismiss those seven NCOs? Are they ignorant?

They laid out a pretty different scenario, General, Ambassador, from what you're laying out today.

Senator Biden said to me once -- I think it was on our first trip to Iraq. He turned around and I was gone. He said: "Where did Senator Hagel go? "

He found me out talking to the guys in the jeep, the Corporals and the Sergeants who have to do the dying and the fighting.

I've always found that, if you want an honest evaluation, and not through charts, not through the White House evaluations, you ask a sergeant or a corporal what they think.

I'll bet on them every time, as I know you will, General. I know you will.

His dedication to his fellow veterans is longstanding and not without a dedication to duty which has brought Sen. Hagel to sacrifice himself personally and professionally for his beliefs:

“I think the world of Chuck Hagel,” [Rick Weidman, Vietnam vet and the Vietnam Veterans of America's head of government affairs] said, recalling how Hagel quit his job as deputy administrator for the Veterans Administration in 1982. His boss, then-Veterans Administrator Robert Nimmo, had a history of antagonizing Vietnam vets, calling them “crybabies” and seeking to cut off research into the physical effects of Agent Orange exposure, wrote [Charlyne] Berens in Moving Forward.

Hagel quit and was unemployed at the age of 36; Nimmo soon resigned amid a threatening scandal over his use of the office for personal gain. To many, Hagel was a hero all over again.

“He resigned over principle, it was a wonderful scene,” Weidman said, noting that Hagel immediately became “our champion in the Senate” when he was elected in 1996.

Furthermore, this past year Sen. Hagel threw his support wholeheartedly behind a proposal of fellow Vietnam veteran Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) to provide modern education benefits for American veterans, similar to the original post-WWII GI Bill. The Webb-Hagel GI Bill was passed into law as the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008.

Finally, Sen. Hagel has proven himself a man of his word. Though it would have been exceedingly easy for him to win re-election this year given his popularity in his district (he won reelection in 2002 with 82.76% of the vote), Sen. Hagel stood by a promise he made in 1996 to limit himself to two terms in the Senate:

I support Term Limits. However, I will not need Term Limits. Twelve years in Congress is enough for anyone. We should return to the Founding Fathers' concept of the "citizen-legislator," and Term-Limits [sic] would help preserve that ideal. When elected officials stay too long in the same job, they become institutionalized and co-opted by the system.

Sen. Hagel announced his retirement from the Senate on 09 September 2007, and published a book - America: Our Next Chapter - in early 2008 [Full disclosure: Admittedly, I'm a Chuck Hagel fan, and I have a first edition hardcover of his book.] Earlier this year he had been considered by many as a potential Unity '08 presidential nominee, but he declined to run for office. It seems to me that the United States could use an "enemy of the people" like Senator Hagel in a very senior Cabinet role, be it Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State.

Dr. Gates

Perhaps the highest praise of Dr. Gates is to recognize simply that he is not Donald Rumsfeld. One can not, for instance, reconcile the following video with the personality of Rumsfeld, "the nation's square-jawed, harsh-talking, heartless Secretary of Defense, an existentialist on the order of Albert Camus' Meursault" and most dangerous American technocrat since Robert McNamara.

Rumors that President-elect Obama will likely ask Dr. Gates to say on as Secretary of Defense speak volumes on Dr. Gates' credibility and track record since taking over at the Pentagon on 05 December 2006. As acknowledged by TIME, Secretary Gates "has won praise on Capitol Hill for arguing that U.S. foreign policy is too militarized, and for firing senior officers and officials he deemed to have failed the nation's wounded vets and to have been derelict in ensuring the security of America's nuclear weapons." [links mine] From these actions it is clear that Secretary Gates has returned accountability, a key component of military culture, to the Pentagon after its conspicuous absence under Donald "I'm working my way over to figuring out how I won't answer [your question]" Rumsfeld.

Dr. Gates also declined to renominate General Peter Pace for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in June of 2007, expecting the confirmation process to be a "divisive ordeal." Pace had "been criticized by some senior officers who saw him as too deferential to civilian leadership, in particular former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and too inattentive to the impact of prolonged war-fighting on the Army, Marines and their National Guard and Reserve elements." Secretary Gates instead recommended Adm. Michael Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations, for the post.

"Gates is a great choice because of the respect he has gained from all quarters after the fiasco that went before," says Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine who once headed the U.S. Central Command. "He would also provide continuity at a critical time."

General Zinni's statements have been echoed by others as well:

Understand that on the Hill, after Rummy, Gates was like a blast of fresh air. People found him candid and responsive (as opposed to arrogant and dismissive). I think most Democratic senators actually like and respect him, and most staff seem comfortable with keeping him on for some defined period.

Maybe that's a sad reflection of how low Rummy set the bar -- that we celebrate mere competence and professionalism -- but there you go.

Opines Josh Marshall of TPM:

Let me be clear, I do not have a negative impression of Bob Gates. He's mainly had the unlucky task of picking up after the mess created by Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and President Bush. My sense is that Gates is a pretty sane guy and highly capable foreign policy hand. And that's managed to come through even through the heavily cloaking effect of having to operate within President Bush's inane foreign policies. I don't think I know enough about Gates or the particulars of his administration of the Pentagon -- to the extent that can be distinguished from the necessity of operating under President Bush -- to give any qualified appraisal of him. But certainly he is much more in the [Gen. Brent] Scowcroft, rough-realist school than anything from the [George W.] Bush mold.

In other words, Secretary Gates has in common with the foreign policy team of the George H. W. Bush administration than the administration of his son. Further more, it appears that Gen. Scowcroft, who served as National Security Advisor for both Gerald Ford and Bush 41, and who since has "been involved in a multi-year rearguard battle against the neocons in the Bush administration, especially in key efforts trying to block sundry wars with Iran, shut down John Bolton, etc" is attempting to bring the Gates and Obama teams together in a "de facto alliance."

This mutual cooperation on foreign policy bodes well for the country. Truthdig's Joe Conason connects the dots:

Remember that during the months before President Bush asked him to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Gates was serving on the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton. The study group’s best-selling report, released only weeks after Mr. Gates resigned to accept the Bush appointment, was strongly critical of the president’s failed policies in Iraq.

Contrary to policies favored by President Bush at the time, the report urged immediate diplomatic contacts with all of Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, in an effort to achieve stability, as well as negotiations with the Sunni insurgents that would lead to amnesty. The aim of those efforts was to achieve an orderly withdrawal of American troops from Iraq sooner rather than later. The report expressed deep worry that the Iraq war had diverted military and diplomatic resources away from the conflict in Afghanistan.

The Iraq Study Group’s recommendations and concerns sound familiar because they reflect the views expressed repeatedly by Obama ever since he announced his presidential candidacy. When President Bush largely rejected the ISG findings, his new secretary of defense felt obliged to distance himself from them as well. But according to the panel’s other members, it was Gates who had in fact written much of the report, and he concurred fully with its views.

Upon assuming control of the Pentagon, Gates did his best to subordinate his own opinions to administration policy, working hard to make the best of the troop escalation in Iraq despite personal doubts about the long-term wisdom of the “surge.” But he never echoed the Bush administration’s official hostility to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq—and in fact at one point praised the debate over timetables in Washington as a means of increasing pressure on the Iraqis to achieve reconciliation and security on their own.

That should sound familiar, too, because it is so close to Obama’s stated policy.

The consensus, then, is that Secretary Gates is a competent civilian administrator who happens to be live in a similar foreign policy neighborhood to the President-elect.

"He's not ideological, he's not partisan, and you could trust him to manage the wars in a competent manner while a new administration gets up to speed," said Nancy Soderberg, a Democrat and onetime U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "It would allow the Obama administration to hit the ground running."

- The Wall Street Journal, 11 November 2008

Should President-elect Obama decide to retain Dr. Gates as Secretary of Defense, it would be a most prudent choice.

Note:

I had originally included Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy from 1998-2001, and Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) in early drafts of my pool of potential appointees. However, with the recent consistency of rumor surrounding the retention of Secretary Gates, the nomination of either Mr. Danzig or Sen. Reed in his stead seems unlikely and only tied to any reluctance on the part of Dr. Gates to remain in his position. I have included Senator Hagel in this post because his name has been the other most widely circulated, and because I firmly believe that the Obama administration would do well to bring Senator Hagel into the Cabinet at a very high level, either at the State Department or the DoD. Should either Mr. Danzig or Sen. Reed vault back into the top tier of potential appointees, or should I see their names mentioned as a potential National Security Advisor, I will write a special post to cover this omission.

Good News re: Gov. Napolitano's Prospective Secretaryship

2008-11-20T11:15:00.000-06:00

Via Reason's Dave Weigel:

On Tuesday, Gov. Janet Napolitano signed a measure, House Bill 2677, barring Arizona's compliance with the Real ID program. In so doing, she called it an unfunded federal mandate that would stick states such as Arizona with a multibillion-dollar bill for the cost to develop and implement the series of new fraud-proof identification cards.

...

In a letter explaining her support for HB 2677, Napolitano cited a White House estimate that Real ID would cost at least $4 billion to implement. But thus far, she said, the federal government has only appropriated $90 million to help Arizona and other states offset those costs.

"My support of the Real ID Act is, and has always been, contingent upon adequate federal funding," Napolitano wrote Tuesday. "Absent that, the Real ID Act becomes just another unfunded federal mandate."

- The Arizona Republic, 18 June 2008

[Weigel:]

The implication is that Napolitano would favor a national ID if it could be funded. What's the likelihood of it being funded soon? Not very high. So Napolitano seems, first and foremost, like an effective manager who understands immigration policy and has been a bulwark against the crab barrel of restrictionist crazies in her state. Not the worst pick Obama could make.

This gives a considerably better shine to President-elect Obama's selection of Gov. Napolitano for this very key post. While she's apparently not opposed to Real ID on admirable philosophical grounds like her Democratic colleague Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana (who started a states' rights rebellion against Real ID and successfully stared down DHS chief Michael Chertoff), at least Gov. Napolitano understands that unfunded mandates on states are a gross overreach of federal authority. Hopefully Gov. Schweitzer, a fellow Western governor, can bend her ear a bit before she takes office.

Catching Up on the Latest Cabinet News

2008-11-20T07:30:00.001-06:00

There's been a good deal of news breaking in the last 24 or so hours, so I'll try to catch up on that before posting Part IV in the "Filling the Cabinet" series (which will hopefully be ready for Friday morning publication). First, the news that broke late last night:

Gov. Napolitano for DHS, Penny Pritzker for Commerce?

I'll have more to say on Gov. Napolitano and Ms. Pritzker in my National Security and Industry profiles. My immediate reaction toward these selections is mixed. I'd certainly expected the DHS job to go to a Democrat - specifically, Rep. Jane Harman. After the 2006 midterm elections, Rep. Harman (D-CA) was snubbed by Nancy Pelosi, who wanted in install an impeached and convicted US District Court Judge, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence over the very senior Rep. Harman because she did not get along with Mrs. Harman and considered her a political rival.

In 1988 Pelosi, along with her chief lieutenant Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), voted in favor of impeaching Hastings, who was subsequently convicted by the US Senate of perjury and corruption stemming from a $150,000 bribe he accepted in return for lenient sentencing of the defendant in a racketeering case. Hastings was only the sixth federal judge in US history to be removed from office. Pelosi was rightfully slammed for her partisan decision to back Hastings over Harman, and ultimately caved in under pressure, naming Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) to chair the committee. Jeff Stein of CQ Politics has advanced Rep. Harman as a potential head of the Central Intelligence Agency. I'll have more to say about Rep. Harman (including her controversial defense of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program) should she ultimately wind up at the Agency.

With respect to Gov. Napolitano, as Secretary of Homeland Security she'll have the lead on illegal immigration, something with which she is already well-acquainted (if not particularly distinguished) as a border state chief executive:

The one issue Republicans think they can use against the popular Napolitano is illegal immigration, because the huge number of border crossings have left many Arizonans feeling overwhelmed and powerless. Her critics claim she came to the problem late, but she seems to have navigated it deftly. Last November angry voters passed Proposition 200, which in part provides that undocumented aliens receive no state welfare benefits that they are not entitled to. Napolitano opposed it, as well as several bills that targeted illegal immigrants.

Instead, she looked to the systems and people that make illegal immigration possible: she ordered state contractors to ensure that their employees are legal, set up an undercover unit to catch forgers of identity documents and demanded the Federal Government, which is responsible for immigration, reimburse the $217 million Arizona has spent since 2003 on imprisoning undocumented aliens convicted of crimes. In mid-August she declared a state of emergency in Arizona to direct more funds to protecting border areas from illegal crossings.

- TIME, America's 5 Best Governors, 13 Nov 2005

Perhaps a choice tailored to achieving a working consensus on immigration policy (as well as other national security issues), The Washington Post's John Pomfret characterized Gov. Napolitano's stance on illegal immigration as "too-tough for some, not-tough-enough for others." It is notable that, in a supposedly red state, as of September Gov. Napolitano's approval rating was (narrowly) higher than Arizona's own John McCain, 54%-53%. I haven't yet done enough research to say if Gov. Napolitano's the right person to head DHS, but her bipartisan appeal does make approval seem likely.

Of note: Gov. Napolitano is barred by term limits from running for reelection in 2010.

As for Ms. Pritzker, I don' t think much more research is necessary for me to form an opinion. To set the stage, here's a Wall Street Journal article from 21 July 2008:

Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices.

What kind of unsound financial practices? According to Mortgage News Daily:

Superior Bank was, in the early 2000s, a leading subprime lender and that operation continued, under FDIC supervision, for months. During this time, according to the Journal, Superior funded more than 6,700 new subprime loans worth more than $550 million. Most of these loans were subsequently sold to another bank. The problems was, many of these loans suffered from the same deficiencies as other subprime loans - unqualified borrowers, inflated appraisals, and inadequate verification of borrowers' incomes.

The WSJ states, "Hundreds of borrowers who took out Superior subprime loans on the FDIC's watch - some with initial interest rates higher than 12 percent - have lost their homes to foreclosure." The FDIC stopped funding new Superior loans in early 2002 and closed the lending operation by mid-year. [emphasis mine]

And what was Ms. Pritzer's explanation for the closure of Superior Bank? From the same WSJ article linked to above:

In a written response to questions, Ms. Pritzker said the reasons for Superior's fall "were complex. They include changes in accounting practices, auditing failures, reversals in regulatory positions and general economic conditions." During her tenure at the thrift, she said, she believed it followed "ethical business practices" and complied with "fair lending laws." For years, she said, Superior's financial statements were found to be acceptable by regulators.

According to Infoplease, in 2002 the rate for a 15-year fixed mortgage was 6.02%; for a 30-year fixed mortgage, it was 6.56%. Even given the sub-prime status of these mortgages, an interest rate of double that for a regular 15-year fixed mortgage is highly suspect as an example of predatory lending. Ironically, as familiar with predatory lending as Ms. Pritzker is, she is also the chair of TransUnion, the third-largest consumer credit reporting agency in the United States.

Unlike Gov. Napolitano, who seems at the very least competent and credible, my initial reaction toward the selection of Ms. Pritzker is one of extreme animosity and trepidation.

Fmr. Senator Daschle appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services

I'll admit to a certain relief when I heard President-elect Obama had (reportedly) named Tom Daschle to head up the Department of Health and Human Services, simply because that area of domestic policy hasn't much attracted my interest. I know Tim has reservations about Sen. Daschle's appointment, and I'm sure he'll express them at some point. I haven't yet read enough about Daschle's plan or dug into his background sufficiently to address his appointment, but I will address it once I reach the Public Welfare section of the series. Hopefully by then I'll be read up on it enough to give some decent insight.

One note: Politico indicates that Daschle will be more of a visionary leader than a hands-on administrator:

Daschle, who will be 61 next month, will focus on what the official called the “30,000-foot” part of the job, with powerful deputies handling day-to-day matters. “He’s going to do the broader perspective,” the official said.

Foggy Bottom Noise

Former Bush 41 Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, recently interviewed by Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, offered his opinion on Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State:

"I'm not trying to defend her. I think she would be, in terms of a competent Secretary of State, I think she stands probably head and shoulders above anybody else I can think of," he said. "There are all these peculiar connections that the Clintons have had for years, and I can't deny any of those. I do believe, however, when it comes to the serious issues of foreign affairs, she probably brings more to the job than most of the other possible candidates."

Ms. Mitchell followed up that comment by asking Mr. Eagleburger in turn his opinion on other prospective appointees:

On Bill Richardson:

"Again, I don't want to beat everybody to death, but I have very little respect for his intelligence and his knowledge of foreign affairs."

On John Kerry:

"Good. But is he able to stand up to the Vice President? I'm not sure of that."

Personally, I don't think John Kerry could stand up to a reasonably bright college sophomore armed with a modestly-written Wikipedia précis, but I'm sure there are those who would disagree.

On Chuck Hagel (who I'll be profiling on Friday):

"I think he could be a good Secretary of State. I shouldn't deny that. I think he could be quite good."

As a matter of note, in a 2002 interview on CNN, Mr. Eagleburger said of a possible invasion of Iraq, "I am not at all convinced now that this is something we have to do this very moment."

David Bromwich, writing for The Huffington Post, was much less enthusiastic about the apparent offer of the Secretaryship to Sen. Clinton:

It is said that Barack Obama has read Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, Team of Rivals, about the war cabinet of Abraham Lincoln. It is said Obama wants to constitute his cabinet out of former rivals because he liked the book and he models himself on Lincoln.
Implausible as it sounds, this is the best explanation anyone has given of the offer of the position of secretary of state to Hillary Clinton. Lincoln took William Seward at State, and Seward was a rival indeed, but he had fought for Lincoln with ferocious loyalty and all his eloquence throughout the campaign, and he put his considerable vote-getting power at Lincoln's disposal. What can be said for Hillary Clinton? She fought against Obama until the last possible moment, and on the way exploited, for the purpose of discrediting him, most of the devices the Republicans would later tap in the general election. She said Obama had not shown himself fit to be commander-in-chief. She pretended not to know for sure whether or not he was a Muslim.
Team of Rivals is a pleasant work of popular history, only harmful to the extent that you weave fantasies around it. Anyone who cares about Obama's fortunes after his first large public mistake (for even to offer Clinton the position was a mistake) should close his copy of Goodwin and open the actual words of Hillary Clinton on Iraq, and the things Barack Obama said about those words.

Mr. Bromwich elaborates his concern by citing key instances in what he sees as a larger pattern of missteps on the part of the President-elect:

Signs going as far back as July, and as near as yesterday, from persons "close to Barack Obama" ranging from Patrick Leahy to Cass Sunstein, have suggested there ought to be no serious investigation of crimes around domestic surveillance and torture. What of the hundreds of Bush appointees sown throughout the departments and the agencies? These people's ideas of right and wrong will come in part from what the new administration shows itself to care about and what it prefers to disregard. Indifference in this setting is not magnanimity.
Tuesday the Democrats voted to allow Joe Lieberman to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. Lieberman did his worst to tear down Barack Obama in 2008 by questioning his love of his country and his fitness to lead a secure government. Compare Lieberman and Clinton now with another person who has been mentioned for secretary of state, Chuck Hagel. Hagel accompanied Obama on his foreign tour even as Lieberman accompanied McCain. That we are not now at war with Iran may also be owed in part to a courageous letter that Hagel wrote to Admiral Fallon last October, on the recklessness of American saber rattling--this, when Clinton and Lieberman were voting the AIPAC line and saying, with docility, that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was a terrorist organization. They hoped if there was a war it would be over by the election.

Mr. Bromwhich's conclusion is essentially suggestive of a streak of evident appeasement in the President-elect's character. He finds this problematic because "A party in control must in some respects resemble any other institution that hopes to maintain itself. Reward those who sap and undermine, and you likewise discourage those who are loyal. People will practice the bad arts that they see are profitable."

To my mind, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joseph Lieberman have been rewarded enough in the last few days, Clinton by even entering consideration as a plausible Secretary of State (much less the apparent front-runner for the job), and Lieberman for not being run out of the Democratic caucus on a unsanded, sliver-riddled hickory rail.

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Rubin & Summers)

While we're on the subject of bad ideas, Robert Scheer wrote the following for Truthdig:

This is not change we can believe in. Not if Robert Rubin or his protégé, Lawrence Summers, get to call the shots on the economy in President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration. Both Clinton-era treasury secretaries deserve a great deal of the blame for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that has derailed the world economy. They both should, along with former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan, perform rites of contrition and be kept at a safe distance from the leadership of our nation.

If either of these jokers is named Treasury Secretary, at least they'll have a friend in Ms. Pritzker over in Commerce.

Filling the New Cabinet, Part III: Attorney General

2008-11-18T17:55:00.000-06:00

President-elect Obama has asked Eric Holder, former Deputy Attorney General (1997-2001), to head up the Justice Department in his upcoming administration. From 20 January to 02 February 2001 Mr. Holder served as Acting Attorney General. The formal vetting process is pending.

Mr. Holder has been President-elect Obama's senior legal adviser since late 2007 and was co-chair of the VP selection committee. Prior to his nomination as Deputy Attorney General in 1997, Mr. Holder had spent four years as the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. He was confirmed unanimously by the Senate following President Clinton's appointment. Additionally, Mr. Holder has fairly strong bipartisan appeal. He was nominated to a judgeship on the District of Columbia Superior Court by President Reagan and served on the bench for five years. In his confirmation hearing, Mr. Holder indicated that he would enforce all laws, even those with which he personally disagreed:

[Senator Orrin] Hatch questioned Mr. Holder about his views on the death penalty in general and in particular about a case in which Mr. Holder initially did not seek the death penalty for someone who was accused of killing a District of Columbia police officer.
''I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us,'' Mr. Holder said.
Mr. Holder said that at first he had not thought the crime met the legal conditions for the death penalty. But he said he changed his mind after a conversation with Attorney General Janet Reno. ''I hope that the committee would feel very assured that even with those statutes that have death penalty provisions will be fully enforced by me,'' he said.
- The New York Times, 14 June 1997

This alone would be a refreshing switch from the current administration's policy of disregarding or not enforcing laws (and issuing signing statements indicating this intent).

The one major blemish on Mr. Holder's record is his role in the pardoning of Marc Rich, an international commodities trader who fled the United States for Switzerland ahead of an indictment on 65 counts of tax evasion (to the tune of an alleged $100 million in 1983 dollars) and illegal trading of oil with an embargoed Iran. Rich's ex-wife Denise was a major Democratic Party and Clinton Presidential Library donor. Mr. Holder, on the last day of the Clinton administration, was presented with a pardon for Rich and asked his opinion. Deputy AG Holder responded, indicating a "neutral, leaning towards favorable" opinion of the pardon.

When he was appointed deputy attorney general [sic] to Janet Reno, his friends expected he would rise to the top job before Clinton left office. At a minimum, they believed, Holder needed only avoid mishap to become attorney general in the next Democratic administration -- and the first African American to occupy the post.

At a critical moment on the last full day of Clinton's term, however, Holder said he was "neutral, leaning towards favorable" on the Rich case. Clinton cited the opinion among eight factors that persuaded him to grant a pardon, although he publicly regretted that Holder was not given more time to review the case.

Even supporters agree that Holder should have raised serious questions about pardoning Rich, a fabulously wealthy commodities dealer who spent 17 years dodging federal tax and oil trading charges. Holder himself painfully concurs: "If I had focused on this in a way that I could have, should have, the recommendation I would have given him would have been, 'Don't do this, Mr. President.'"
...
In political Washington, "neutral, leaning towards favorable" could become his epitaph. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) commented ruefully at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that Holder may be an unintended casualty of the intense lobbying that accompanies the pardon process.

"A lot of well-meaning people get involved and they put on a lot of pressure," Feinstein said. "And a lot of other well-meaning people get involved in that -- I think Mr. Holder is one of them, for example -- and something like this can really ruin their entire career."
- The Washington Post, 01 Mar 2001

Certainly this incident is a cause for concern. If Mr. Holder is to be believed, his "neutral" opinion on Rich's pardon "meant that he knew too little about Rich to make a recommendation on the legal merits. The reference to "leaning towards favorable" meant deferring to the White House if foreign policy interests warranted." [this from the same WaPo article cited above] Considering his otherwise extremely impressive credentials and given the benefit of the doubt, if Mr. Holder has learned from his mistake in the pardoning of Rich, it seems reasonable to be optimistic about this appointment as in the best interest of the nation, something the Bush administration clearly demonstrated was not a consideration when Alberto Gonzales was nominated.

Interestingly, Mr. Holder spent twelve years in the Public Integrity section at Justice prior to his 1988 nomination by President Reagan, "prosecuting misconduct by state officials, judges, F.B.I. agents and a Federal prosecutor." Considering the very loose concept of legality employed by the Bush administration, Mr. Holder's appointment poses some interesting questions regarding the likelihood of Presidential pardons before the end of the current administration. Given his history of prosecuting government officials, Mr. Holder's appointment seems a shot across the bow of Bush's many lackeys.

Oh, and one more thing. Marc Rich's attorney from 1985-2000 was none other than convicted felon and Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Rubin's Treasury Chances Liquidated

2008-11-17T16:30:00.003-06:00

Robert Rubin, the former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, has been mentioned as potentially reprising his role in the Obama administration. I profiled Mr. Rubin (along with others) last week, noting at the time:

Just days before Rubin resigned as Treasury Secretary and joined Citigroup as a top advisor, Congress passed (and President Clinton signed) the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed commercial and investment banks to merge and thus assisted the Travelers Group-Citicorp supermerger. Robert Scheer wrote of Rubin:

But Gramm and the Republicans couldn't have done it [creating, in Scheer's words, "the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression"] without the support of leading Democrats. The most egregious of Gramm's legislative favors to the financiers took the form of legislation named in part after him - the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which only became law when Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin prevailed upon President Clinton to sign the bill. The bill's immediate major effect was to legitimatize the long-sought merger between Citibank and insurance giant Travelers. Rubin's critical support for the bill was rewarded with an appointment, within days of its passage, to a top job at Citibank (later Citigroup) paying more than $15 million a year.

Even more damning from a basic standpoint of foresight is Rubin's statement in late January as director of Citigroup claiming that the turmoil already evident in the economy was "all part of a cycle of periodic excess leading to periodic disruption." According to CNN Money, under Rubin Citigroup holds "$55 billion of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other subprime-related securities."

Today Citigroup announced that it would be eliminating an additional 53,000 jobs, following the termination of 23,000 employees' positions between January and September of this year. According to National Public Radio, the company has canned 20% of its employees since 31 Dec 2007.

More notable still in light of Mr. Rubin's name circulating as a potential secretary is this tidbit in the same NPR story:

Citigroup reported a loss of $2.8 billion during the third quarter and has seen its share price plummet. Last week, Citigroup stock fell into the single digits for the first time since Sanford "Sandy" Weill created the bank in 1998 from the merger of Travelers Group Inc. and Citicorp.

Again, just to reiterate the point, here's the Wikipedia summary of Mr. Rubin's involvment with Citigroup:

In 1999, affirming his career-long interest in markets, Mr. Rubin joined Citigroup. Of note, the supermerger between Travelers Group and Citicorp was facilitated by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act). This legislation was passed under the Clinton administration, days before Rubin's resignation. Consolidation of investment, commercial banking, and insurance services as practiced by Citigroup under the direction of Rubin has been implicated in the subprime mortage [sic] crisis.

Citigroup's present Jenga-like viability should be another red flag in any vetting of Mr. Rubin (and, to an only slightly lesser extent, his right hand man, Larry Summers). Hopefully the Obama team won't give Rubin or Summers a second chance to maim the American economy.

Filling the New Cabinet, Part II: State

2008-11-14T09:00:00.004-06:00

The Contenders:

- Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM, 2003-present): Democratic Primary Candidate for President (2008); Secretary of Energy (1998-2001); United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1997-1998); US Representative from New Mexico (1983-1997); Staff, United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1975-1978); Staff, United States Department of State (1973-1975)

- Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY, 2001-present): Democratic Primary Candidate for President (2008); First Lady of the United States (1992-2000); Board Member, Lafarge (1990–1992); Board Member, Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992); Board Member, Wal-Mart (1986–1992); Board Member, Children's Defense Fund (1986–1992); Board Member, TCBY (1985–1992); First Lady of the State of Arkansas (1978-1980, 1982-1992); Partner, Rose Law Firm (1979-1992); Attorney, Rose Law Firm (1976-1979)

- Senator John F. Kerry (D-MA, 1985-present): Democratic Nominee for President (2004); Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts (1983-1985); First Assistant District Attorney, Middlesex County, MA (1977-1982); United States Navy (1966-1970)

- Ambassador Richard Holbrooke: United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1999-2001); Special Presidential Envoy [private citizen, pro bono] (1997-1999); Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affiars (1994-1996); United States Ambassador to Germany (1992-1994); Managing Director, Lehman Brothers (1985-1993); Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (1977-1981); Campaign Coordinator for National Security Affairs to Governor Jimmy Carter (1976); Consultant, President’s Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy (1974-1975); Managing Editor, Foreign Policy (1972-1976); Director, Peace Corps in Morocco (1970-1972); United States Foreign Service [served in Vietnam] (1962-1969)

Gov. Richardson

Bill Richardson has been the odds-on favorite for Secretary of State ever since Barack Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate, and likely since Richardson exited the Democratic primary race on 10 January. Gov. Richardson subsequently endorsed Obama on 21 March, causing James Carville, a top Clinton advisor, to remark "Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic." Gov. Richardson had served in two Cabinet positions in the Clinton administration.

Though Richardson's campaign suffered from his pigeonholing as "the forlorn candidate of the wonk set," his candidacy did serve to underscore his chops as a leader possessing practicality and foresight. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Richardson highlighted the following "six trends" as major points of focus for the United States in the next four years:

The first trend is fanatical jihadism bursting from an increasingly unstable and violent greater Middle East. This trend had been growing for years, but the invasion and collapse of Iraq have greatly fueled its rise. A second trend transforming the world (in ways still not well understood by the public) is the growing power and sophistication of criminal networks capable of disrupting the global economy and trafficking in WMD.

...

A third trend transforming the world is the rapid rise of Asian economic and military power. India and China are destined to be global powers in the decades ahead -- one as a democracy, the other not. And a fourth trend is the reemergence of Russia as an assertive global and regional player with a large nuclear arsenal and control over energy resources -- and one tempted by authoritarianism and militant nationalism. The rise of India and China and the reemergence of Russia call for U.S. strategic leadership to integrate these powerful nuclear-armed nations into a stable global order.

A fifth trend transforming our world is the increase in global economic interdependence and financial imbalances without the sufficient growth of institutional capacities to manage these realities. Globalization has made every country's economy more vulnerable to resource constraints and financial shocks that originate beyond its borders. A global energy crisis or a sudden collapse of the U.S. dollar could do great damage to the world economy.

The sixth trend we face is that of grave global environmental and health problems. Climate change and pandemics such as AIDS do not respect national borders. Poverty, ethnic conflict, and overpopulation spill over national boundaries, feeding into a growing underground economy of money launderers, counterfeiters, and smugglers of drugs, arms, and human beings.

Richardson, who brokered the cease-fire in Darfur, also understand the significance of maintaining diplomatic relations. In the same article, he noted:

The United States needs to stop considering diplomatic engagement with others to be a reward for good behavior. The Bush administration's long refusal to engage diplomatically regimes such as Pyongyang and Tehran only encouraged and strengthened their most paranoid and hard-line tendencies. Both governments, not surprisingly, responded to Washington's snubs and threats about "regime change" by intensifying their nuclear programs.

...

We need to stop the saber rattling and instead work tirelessly with the international community to impose severe multilateral sanctions. The Iranians must know that they have no future as a nuclear weapons power: the international community will stand united behind painful sanctions. But they also must know that they will receive benefits similar to those that Libya received if they renounce uranium enrichment. If they meet international security standards, sanctions will end, and they will have guaranteed access to fuel enriched and banked elsewhere.

Moreover, Richardson has shown that he has the ability to prevail in difficult negotiations with unfriendly states:

In 1995, [Peter] Bourne helped get access to Saddam Hussein, and in July of that year he and Richardson travelled to Baghdad together to secure the release of two American aerospace workers who had been captured by the Iraqis after wandering over the Kuwaiti border. Richardson and Bourne subsequently collaborated on a number of such efforts in Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, and North Korea, where Richardson helped win the release of an American lay preacher who had crossed to the wrong side of the border.

During the Democratic primary, and with the endorsement of the Bush administration, Richardson made his sixth visit to North Korea to discuss the country's nuclear program.

Gov. Richardson hasn't always been an effective leader. As Secretary of Energy he drew considerable criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for his handling of the nuclear espionage affair at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. David Plotz, writing for Slate at the time, suggested Richardson was mismatched in his role as Energy Secretary:

Running DOE is like herding rattlesnakes. Each of its responsibilities is worse than the next: holding down gas prices, bullying OPEC, building nuclear weapons, protecting secrets about those weapons, disposing of waste from those weapons, apologizing to all the employees made sick by those weapons, etc. The job requires vast technical knowledge, an ability to navigate a labyrinthine bureaucracy, high tolerance for the whimsical behavior of scientists, and a heavy interest in hands-on management.

But it does not much concern Richardson's supreme talent: personal politics. In the United States today, only Bill Clinton is a better natural politician.

...

Clinton passed over Richardson for the Cabinet in 1992, but the president and the congressman, each recognizing a kindred spirit, became fast friends. Soon Clinton deputized Richardson to act as an unofficial U.S. negotiator with thugs and monsters. In the mid-'90s, Richardson freed a U.S. helicopter pilot downed over North Korea, a pair of Americans who inadvertently crossed into Iraq, an American jailed in Bangladesh, and three aid workers held hostage in Sudan, among others. He was dispatched to butter up Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, Haiti's military dictators, and Burma's tyrants.
Richardson courted the despots with the same rumpled, hail-fellow-well-met manner that won him friends at home. He played up his friendship with the president, flattered the hostage-holders, listened to them graciously, ate their food, told self-deprecating jokes, and cajoled them with promises of good press and American sympathy. He was magic. Sudanese rebel Kerubino Kwanyin Bol was intransigent till Richardson asked to visit Kerubino's child, who was dying of measles. That request melted the warlord, who dropped his ransom demand from $2.5 million to a few jeeps and some rice. Richardson's missions won him three Nobel Peace Prize nominations.
In 1997, Richardson brought his retail style to the United Nations. He worked the cafeteria, shaking every hand he could find. He admiringly called Kofi Annan "a political animal" and pegged Laurent Kabila, with whom he negotiated Congo's peace agreement, as "a street-smart Chicago ward heeler."
Richardson's career, in short, testifies to the power of the schmooze. Unlike Clinton, he doesn't marry schmoozing to wonkery. He is weak on policy, often skipping complicated discussions for a cigar and a party. He has no great beliefs, which may be why he didn't mind flattering despots. In Richardson's world, personal relationships may trump principles, and friendships may supersede treaties.
Richardson had excellent careerist reasons to take the Energy job: DOE has a huge presence in New Mexico. Energy secretary, unlike U.N. ambassador, is a real Cabinet post with real authority. And it positioned him perfectly for veep: a personable Hispanic with legislative, international, and executive experience.

For a while, Richardson eluded the Energy Curse that had tarnished the careers of Hazel O'Leary, Federico Peña, and almost everyone else who'd been secretary. Arriving in the midst of the Wen Ho Lee scandal, he calmed Congress by tightening security. He launched a pilot project to dispose of nuclear weapon waste, something his predecessors could never manage. This spring, his in-your-face diplomacy persuaded OPEC to boost oil production, which halted hikes in U.S. gas prices (though Richardson does not seem to have any short-term fix for the current gas price spike).
But the Los Alamos farce is showing why political savvy alone is limited as a governing strategy.

...

Richardson happily played the shambling, self-deprecating genial fellow when he was lobbying for the release of hostages. But he is discovering, painfully, that there is a difference between playing the fool and being the fool.

If his extensive subsequent writing on foreign policy and current reputation for dry, even wonkish, public speaking are indications are that Richardson has learned a valuable lesson in policy and preparedness from his experience as Secretary of Energy, then his past performance as a diplomat indeed does commend him for the position of Secretary of State.

Sen. Clinton

I don't understand the reasoning behind NBC's Andrea Mitchell's report that Senator Clinton is under consideration for Secretary of State. In the brutally contested Democratic Primary, Hillary Rodham Clinton tried from the very beginning every strategy her team could come up with to paint Barack Obama as a neophyte, particularly in realm of foreign policy. There was the inexperience meme, which brought us the 3AM phone call ad and the Clinton-concocted Commander-in-Chief Threshold:

"I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

"I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.

If the above is to be believed, Clinton likely passed her Commander-in-Chief Threshold when she took a trip to war-torn Bosnia during her husband's administration:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Confronted with CBS News video tape which completely contradicts her sensational version of the events, Clinton responded:

"I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

Encouraging words for any foreign leader who would sit down with her at the bargaining table.

Though Clinton claimed her role as President Clinton's wife gave her significant experience in foreign affairs, the Obama campaign was skeptical, stating:

There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton played an important domestic policy role when she was First Lady. It is well known, for example, that she led the failed effort to pass universal health insurance. There is no reason to believe, however, that she was a key player in foreign policy at any time during the Clinton Administration. She did not sit in on National Security Council meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the Situation Room. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy, nor did she have her own national security staff. She did not do any heavy-lifting with foreign governments, whether they were friendly or not. She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis. As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue - not at 3 AM or at any other time of day.

...

Senator Clinton's claims of foreign policy experience are exaggerated.

The Obama campaign then went on to categorically debunk Clinton's claims of high-level diplomacy in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rawanda, and China.

Beyond her liberties with the truth regarding her role as First Lady, once Clinton was actually elected to public office, her voting record on foreign policy began to reveal her dismal judgment. Since taking office, Hillary Clinton voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, has refused to apologize or indicate that she felt she’d made a mistake, instead:

[Clinton] settled on language that was similar to Senator John Kerry’s when he was the Democratic nominee in 2004: that if she had known in 2002 what she knows now about Iraqi weaponry, she would never have voted for the Senate resolution authorizing force.

Yet antiwar anger has festered, and yesterday morning Mrs. Clinton rolled out a new response to those demanding contrition: She said she was willing to lose support from voters rather than make an apology she did not believe in.

- The New York Times, 18 Feb 2007

Worse still, Clinton voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, which not only classified the Iranian Guard as a terrorist organization, but created the opportunity for what Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) called "a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action" against Iran. When confronted over her vote by former Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK), who single-handedly read the Pentagon Papers into public record, Clinton laughed.

But most damning of all is the fact that, in the days preceding the vote on the Iraq War Resolution, Clinton did not read the National Intelligence Estimate provided for her by the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:

A new book about Sen. Hillary Clinton says she did not read the NIE, a document so highly classified that even her senior staff did not have access to it at the time.
Blitzer asked Clinton on Sunday whether she regretted not having read it.

"Wolf, I was thoroughly briefed," Clinton said. "I knew all the arguments. I knew all of what the Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department were all saying. And I sought dissenting opinions, as well as talking to people in previous administrations and outside experts."

...

But former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the Intelligence committee at the time, has said he read the NIE. And Graham says that not only did he read it — it is what moved him to vote against authorizing Bush to invade Iraq.

The information Senator Graham is referring to is likely the dissenting opinion offered by the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, an intelligence analysis arm of the State Department:

The Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research (INR) believes that Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons and that available evidence indicates that Baghdad is pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapon-related capabilities. The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to speculate that such an effort began soon after the departure of UN inspectors or to project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening. As a result, INR is unable to predict when Iraq could acquire a nuclear device or weapon.

That Clinton did not read the intelligence document - regardless of what it contained - before casting her vote indicates that she is an entirely unacceptable, contemptible, and frankly disturbing choice for Secretary of State. In light of this information, the only two jobs she is likely less qualified for are Secretary of Defense and President of the United States.

Finally, a note about the political considerations of offering the Clinton control of Foggy Bottom. One blogger, writing of the potential of President-elect Obama appointing a highly respected Republican like Senator Chuck Hagel or Senator Dick Lugar to the post, said:

We can’t screw around with bipartisan appeasement on such a crucial, crucial post. This isn’t the time for a political gambit, even if it does have some good intentions behind it.

The same could be said for offering the post to Senator Clinton as a gesture of unity to her and her extremely partisan PUMA [Party Unity My Ass] supporters. Barack Obama won the election and is the new leader of the Democratic Party. As such, he should be under no obligation to the Clintons' faction of the party, and instead should move forward with his vision of the party's future. Selecting Hillary Rodham Clinton for any Cabinet position would definitely not be change we can believe in.

Sen. Kerry

There are two reasons which rationalize President-elect Obama potentially offering John Kerry an appointment as Secretary of State. Unfortunately, neither of them have anything to do with Senator Kerry's record on foreign policy. First, it was Sen. Kerry who pushed for Obama's selection as Keynote Speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Second, Senator Kerry endorsed Obama the day after his loss in the New Hampshire primary and gave him access to his donor database, which proved helpful in Obama's fundraising efforts against the Clinton machine. There is no question that Kerry has been a political benefactor of Obama's, and that he could continue to promote the new administration's policies in the United States:

Furthermore, longtime observers say, Kerry’s political instincts could be an asset. Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation for non-proliferation studies, said Kerry’s experience in the Senate — and as a presidential nominee — taught him the importance of building domestic support for an administration’s foreign policy. “He combines foreign-policy expertise with political instincts,” Cirincione said. “He understands it’s not enough to have the right policy, but to deliver the policy and build support for that policy.”

...

“Kerry would be a great secretary of state,” said Cirincione. “One of the best things that ever happened to him was to realize he’s not going to be president. It freed him up, and let Kerry be Kerry. His insights and statements over the last couple of years are some of the best work he’s ever done.”

Kerry might have proved an effective political ally, whether on the campaign trail or in promoting a policies in the domestic arena, but as a diplomat on the international scene he is less appealling. Stephen Morse, writing for The Australian, an admittedly center-right (for Australia) newspaper, lamented Kerry's "dour demeanor, pedantic personality, and history of being on both sides of an issue."

Dissatisfaction with Kerry's character isn't confined to conservatives. One liberal blogger writes:

We also need a person of courage and decisiveness as Secretary of State. When an audience member at once of Kerry’s speeches was electrically shocked (Tased) by police simply for stating his opinion, Kerry said nothing. This moment could have been one of historical change in the fight against Tasing of Americans for political speech. Instead, it showed Kerry’s lack of backbone.

Kerry is not a man of courage. He is an inveterate public bumbler whose would only bring highly public embarrassment to President-elect Obama if Kerry were nominated.

The incident, of course, is the infamous Andrew Meyer tasing at the University of Florida. Nick Antosca of the Huffington Post wrote at the time:

Second, John Kerry did not handle this well at all. I liked him all right before -- I voted for him, but what were the alternatives? -- but now I really dislike the man. His behavior here is pathetic. Listen to him droning sonorously on in the background as a guy is dragged down the aisles and pinned the ground. He does say something like, "Officers, can we--" but then trails off ineffectually... and you can also hear him make what sounds like a joke about Meyer: "...unfortunately he's not available to come up here and swear me in as President..." At that point, fair enough, maybe it didn't seem as bad from the stage as it looks on the video. But then the guy is screaming in pain, and Kerry is still droning on, not agitated, nothing. He should have gotten off the stage and told the cops to get the hell off that guy. It's not what a politician would do, but it's what a fucking man would do.

Senator Kerry has expressed a very unsettling views on nuclear arms reduction, expressing desire for a world without nuclear weapons. While this is certainly an admirable wish, it is hardly realistic or even sane foreign policy. In a world where nuclear weapons are increasingly sought after by hostile and often repressive nations as status symbols and bargaining chips, the United States needs to maintain a viable nuclear deterrent and strategic strike capability. The Pandora's Box of nuclear weaponry has been open for over fifty-three years, and it is simply unreasonable, and even foolhardy, to expect nuclear-capable nations to mutually disarm while maintaining non-proliferation across the rest of the world. The next Secretary of State will of necessity be a realist, as the State Department has enough problems to address without attempting a policy of nuclear utopianism.

More troubling still is Senator Kerry's defense of Hillary Clinton after it was learned that she had not read the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate mentioned above:

"It really depends frankly on what the total exposure to the intelligence is," said Kerry. "You don't have to read the NIE, honestly, if you've been briefed, if you sat in on hearings, if you have some familiarity with the topic."

Clinton has said she was thoroughly briefed on the National Intelligence Estimate despite not having read it herself. Kerry, meanwhile, read the summary of the report and got much of his intelligence straight from senior administration officials.

On Monday, the Massachusetts Democrat declined to take what he deemed a chance to score political points against Clinton over the NIE.
"It really depends on the total picture and I'm not familiar with the total picture of what her due diligence was in this regard," he said. "It is helpful [to read the NIE] but it doesn't really tell you the whole picture."

Once again, Senator Graham would clearly disagree. Just as Clinton's willful ignorance of the NIE's content should permanently disqualify her from any position with influence over national security, so should John Kerry be barred from holding similar positions as long as he believes disregarding vital intelligence reports to be acceptable behavior.

Mr. Holbrooke

A career diplomat who was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize as the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, Mr. Holbrooke, the outgoing Ambassador to the United Nations, said on 11 January 2001:

"Saddam Hussein's activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view, dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world," Holbrooke continued, "not only because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very nature of his regime.
"His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times," he said.

Any American still sensitive to the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" should sit up and take notice. This is a very senior Clinton Administration official claiming Saddam Hussein had WMD capabilities in 2001, something directly contradicted by the 2002 NIE and the whole of Operation Iraqi Freedom. What's even more troubling after the last eight years is that Holbrooke sounds like a neoconservative:

Richard Holbrooke triggers incredible passion, some of it negative, among foreign policy professionals. He's a Democrat, but many don't understand why he's not a Republican. Dems, some argue, are supposed to be about achieving moral goods in the world along purist pathways of good behavior and enlightened intentions. To some Holbrooke seems to be someone willing to deploy any tools that it takes to achieve his (and America's) ends, and that puts him at odds with many in the so-called global justice community.

I'm going to frustrate a number of my friends -- but the veneer and appearance of moral flexibility is why I very much like Richard Holbrooke. In a way, he's a Kissinger applied to moral purposes.
...

Successful heads of state -- inspirational and committed to international peace and progress or not -- often have strategists and global arm-twisters at their side along the lines of a Holbrooke, a Brzezinski, or a Kissinger. They are masters of gray in a world of leaders and citizens who prefer black and white. They wrestle with the highly improbable and generate possibilities. Holbrooke did this in the Dayton Accords. They are ruthless, shrewd, and morally elastic in hitting their targets.

Granted, the United States needs to play hardball with countries like North Korea and Iran. However, is the best person for the job of administering American foreign policy someone who is "ruthless, shrewd, and morally elastic?" In a profile published on 03 April 2008, TIME called Holbrooke "America's toughest diplomatic tactician ... alternately ingratiating and bullying on the surface but strategically minded beneath."

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note [cited above] seems to concur with this, noting:

Barack Obama needs someone in close proximity on his foreign policy team that the world knows is tenaciously committed to outcomes and that it fears just a bit. Obama needs to be about hope, about light -- but he needs someone who can pursue and defend American interests against thugs in the dark.

In my view, Obama needs a Holbrooke-type player on his team. The world is a far more dangerous place today than it was eight years ago. The global equilibrium that used to exist was decimated when George W. Bush punctured the mystique of American power by invading Iraq and showing our now financial and military limits to allies and foes alike. Obama needs a Holbrooke -- and since Holbrooke himself is available, he should strongly consider making him Secretary of State.

The world has good reason to fear Mr. Holbrooke. It appears that he has at least one major diplomatic indiscretion in his past, involving aiding and abetting geonocide and its perpetrators.

It appears that, as a consequence of the Dayton Accords, Mr. Holbrooke aided Radovan Karadžić, former President of Republika Srpska and Bosnian Serb war criminal, in evading prosecution at theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Karadžić, a fugitive for twelve years, is charged with the genocide of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica (the single worst atrocity in Europe since the end of World War II) and war crimes against Bosniaks, Croats, other non-Serbs, and non-nationalist Serbs during the siege of Sarajevo (05 April 5 1992-29 February 1996). Karadžić claims:

"Mr [Richard] Holbrooke undertook on behalf of the USA that I would not be tried before this tribunal..."

...

"The offer was as follows: I must withdraw not only from public but also from party offices and completely disappear from the public arena, not give interviews and not even publish literary works, in a word, become invisible long enough for the Dayton agreement to be implemented in full."

Holbrooke's rejoinder was simply an ad hominem attack on Karadžić:

"It's an old story by one of the worst mass murderers in the world, and it's completely untrue," Holbrooke said in a phone interview. "There was no deal. It would have been immoral, illegal and disgraceful."

...

Holbrooke said the rumor of a deal was "given marginal credibility because NATO failed to capture him, but that doesn't mean there was a deal."

However, a "unambiguous political deal" between Karadžić and Holbrooke was confirmed by former Bosnian foreign minster Mohammad Sacirbey, citing Robert Frowick, American head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's mission in Bosnia in 1996 as his source.

Conclusion

Of the likely candidates mentioned above, the clear choice is Richardson, who not only has proven himself as an expert negotiator in the past, but doesn't appear to have blood on his hands (Holbrooke), hasn't shown himself to be criminally negligent (Clinton), or pusillanimous (Kerry).

Filling the New Cabinet, Part I: Treasury

2008-11-11T08:00:00.010-06:00

Picking a New Treasury Secretary: Balancing Culpability and Expertise

This is the first post in an ongoing series highlighting potential Cabinet appointees for the Obama Administration. Future posts will follow the same form, first listing pertinent information from each individual's CV, then analyzing the blend of pertinent past performance in other positions and any ideological considerations.

Without further delay:

The Contenders:

- Paul Volcker: Chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-1987); President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1974-1979); Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Monetary Affairs (1969-1974); Vice President and Director of Planning, Chase Manhattan Bank (1965-1969); Deputy Under Secretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs (1963-1965); Director of Financial Analysis, US Treasury (1962); Financial Economist, Chase Manhattan Bank (1957-1962); Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1952-1957)

- Larry Summers: President of Harvard University (2001-2006); Secretary of the Treasury (1999-2001); Chief Economist, World Bank (1991-1993); Professor of Economics, Harvard University (1983-1991)

- Robert Rubin: Co-Chairman, Council of Foreign Relations (incumbent); Director and Senior Counselor, Citigroup (incumbent); Secretary of the Treasury (1995-1999); Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director, National Economic Council (1993-1995); Co-Chairman of Goldman Sachs (1990-1992); Vice President and COO, Goldman Sachs (1987-1990); General Partner, Goldman Sachs (1971-1987); Risk Arbitrage Associate, Goldman Sachs (1966-1971); Attorney, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton (1964-1966)

- Governor Jon Corzine (D-NJ, 2006-present): US Senator from New Jersey (2001-2006); Chairman and Co-CEO of Goldman Sachs (1994-1998); General Partner, Goldman Sachs, (1980-1994); Trader, Goldman Sachs (1975-1980); Employee, Bank Ohio (1973-1975); United States Marine Corps Reserve (1969-1975)

- Timothy Geithner: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2003-present); Director, Policy Development and Review Department, International Monetary Fund (2001-2003); Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1999-2001); Staff, United States Treasury Department (1988-1999); Researcher, Kissinger Associates, Inc. (1985-1988)

Though no appointment is expected this week, the state of the economy has made this decision the present focal point of the transition. Volcker, Summers, and Rubin are presently economic advisers to the President-elect, while Corzine, who endorsed Obama after he became the presumptive Democratic nominee, has been mentioned as a top candidate for the post, which could make him the third CEO of Goldman Sachs to serve as Treasury Secretary in the past ten years.

Mr. Volcker

Paul Volcker's relationship with the Federal Reserve dates to the Truman Administration. In 1952 he joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as an economist. After five years Volcker moved to Chase Manhattan Bank, where he remained until 1962. He then joined the Treasury Department, becoming Deputy Under Secretary for Monetary Affairs in 1963. In 1965 he became a Vice President at Chase, only to return to the Treasury in 1969, this time as Under Secretary for International Monetary Affairs. In 1975 he became President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he remained until his confirmation as 12th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979. Though he was a Democrat, Volcker was reappointed by President Reagan in 1983. In 1987, at age 59, he was succeeded by Alan Greenspan, who was two years his senior. The New York Times observed on the occasion:

The main philosophical difference between Mr. Volcker, a Democrat, and Mr. Greenspan, a Republican, appears to be in their views of the structure and regulation of the banking system. Mr. Volcker has tended to resist deregulation of banks while Mr. Greenspan is more favorably disposed to it.

Hmmm.

Volcker is credited with lowering inflation from a an average of 12.8% when he took office in 1979 to 3.2% in 1983, though his policies also were attributed as the cause of the recession of 1981-1982, when some interest rates rose above 20% and unemployment rose to the highest levels since the Great Depression.

To Volcker's credit, he is well-respected by Democrats and Republicans, as much for his skill as a economist as for the strength of his convictions:

Secondly, during his time at the Fed, Mr. Volcker showed that he was willing to do difficult -- even unpalatable -- things. He also showed he was unafraid to inflict pain on the very president who appointed him -- in his case Jimmy Carter. As you may recall, in his effort to stop the raging inflation that was threatening the country, Mr. Volcker raised interest rates so high that he threw the country into a recession -- and in so doing, doomed Mr. Carter's re-election efforts. He faced stiff criticism, but he held his ground, and in the end, he did the right thing for the country. The long bull market that began in 1982 was a direct result of Mr. Volcker's willingness to do what he thought was right.

In 2004, Volcker investigated corruption charges against the Oil for Food program as one of the heads of the Independent Inquiry Committee. Mr. Volcker earned his MA in political economy from Harvard in 1951. His undergraduate degree was conferred by Princeton University in 1949.

Mr. Summers

Like Mr. Volcker, Larry Summers is not afraid to say or do what he thinks is correct. However, as President of Harvard University that characteristic brought Mr. Summers considerable grief, as he found himself at the center of controversy on three occasions, which eventually brought about his resignation in 2006.

Though Summers warned of the looming recession in late 2007, he is also as responsible as anyone for the creation of this economic crisis. Speaking on Monday, Truthdig editor Richard Scheer said the following of Mr. Summers' involvement:

He was Robert Rubin’s protege in the Treasury Department, and he became Secretary of the Treasury after Rubin, who had come from Goldman Sachs to be Clinton’s Secretary of Treasury, went off to CitiGroup—which was the first company from the kind of deregulation pushed through under Clinton. Summers was the Secretary of Treasury that got Clinton to sign off onto the two most egregious pieces of legislation that permitted the financial meltdown. This was legislation carried by Phil Gramm, the Republican senator who was head of the Banking Committee, and his name is one of them—it’s called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, or otherwise known as the Financial Services Modernization Act—that was in 1999. And in 2000, as a lame duck, the Clinton administration approved after Congress passed again at Graham’s insistence, something called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. These two pieces of legislation allowed the current meltdown. They allowed the commercial banks, investment banks, stockbrokers and insurance companies to merge.

...

And it was Lawrence Summers who was Secretary of the Treasury, who in 1999-2000, urged Clinton successfully to sign off on those two pieces of legislation. It’s now admitted that they didn’t even known what was in them. That it had not been vetted, there had not been hearings in Congress on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, and so Lawrence Summers has got his fingerprints all over these things. He assured the President, he assured everyone else, that this was a very good thing to do, but what in effect did, was end the regulatory regime that had been put place under Franklin Deleano Roosevelt during the Great Depression to prevent such a meltdown. So the idea that you would now reward Lawrence Summers for having gotten us into this mess by making him secretary of the treasury, and in an administration that has been elected to promise change and go back to this retread, go back to this guy who helped get us into this mess, is mind-boggling.

...

So, I for the life of me cannot understand why Barack Obama would now turn to Lawrence Summers who certainly among the Democrats was a leader in pushing or that legislation.

Worse still, Politico quotes Summers as heralding the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act as "a major step forward to the 21st Century," and dismissed the recommendation for greater regulation of derivatives (such as credit default swaps) by the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as "highly problematic."

TPM's Josh Marshall calls a Summers appointment a case of "cognitive dissonance," and I'm inclined to agree.

Mr. Rubin

One obvious stumbling block to Rubin's appointment is his role in opposing the regulation of derivatives, which include credit default swaps, a position he shared with then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan:

In November 1999, senior regulators — including Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Rubin — recommended that Congress permanently strip the C.F.T.C. [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] of regulatory authority over derivatives.

- The New York Times, 08 Oct 2008

This position certainly complicates a potential Rubin nomination, particularly as one would hope the Senate would take a dim view of recycling anyone with direct involvement in the creation of the present economic crisis. Just days before Rubin resigned as Treasury Secretary and joined Citigroup as a top advisor, Congress passed (and President Clinton signed) the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which allowed commercial and investment banks to merge and thus assisted the Travelers Group-Citicorp supermerger. Robert Scheer wrote of Rubin:

But Gramm and the Republicans couldn't have done it [creating, in Scheer's words, "the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression"] without the support of leading Democrats. The most egregious of Gramm's legislative favors to the financiers took the form of legislation named in part after him - the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which only became law when Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin prevailed upon President Clinton to sign the bill. The bill's immediate major effect was to legitimatize the long-sought merger between Citibank and insurance giant Travelers. Rubin's critical support for the bill was rewarded with an appointment, within days of its passage, to a top job at Citibank (later Citigroup) paying more than $15 million a year.
When Rubin assumed a top position at Citibank after his stint at the Treasury, he was not above influencing his former employees in the government. In one notorious instance during the fall of 2001, when Enron was going down the tubes, Rubin telephoned a Treasury undersecretary and asked him to consider intervening with credit-rating agencies to hold off downgrading Enron's ratings. Some media accounts noted the possibility of a conflict of interest when the story was leaked, because Enron owed Citibank $750 million, which it could not pay if bankrupt.

Despite his skills and his vaunted position as Citibank's chairman, Rubin was not spared the disastrous consequences of Citibank's own wild financial manipulations that, if anything, even exceeded those of Enron. Tens of billions in bad mortgage and credit card debt placed the bank at the forefront of the current economic crisis, and so it is weird that Obama would now turn to Rubin for advice.

Even more damning from a basic standpoint of foresight is Rubin's statement in late January as director of Citigroup claiming that the turmoil already evident in the economy was "all part of a cycle of periodic excess leading to periodic disruption." According to CNN Money, under Rubin Citigroup holds "$55 billion of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other subprime-related securities."

Gov. Corzine

"There's no question he's on their short list [for Treasury Secretary]," said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell of his colleague Jon Corzine in an appearance on CNBC. In a ironic twist of fate, Illinois farmboy Jon Corzine likely wouldn't be residing in the Governor's Manager in New Jersey if it wasn't for Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. In 1998, Corzine and Paulson were co-CEOs of Goldman Sachs. Despite having overseen the proprietary trading division, which was losing $200 million a month, Corzine was elevated to the investment bank's C-level executive suite in 1994 after nearly twenty years with the firm. Lisa Endlich, author of How Greed Changed Goldman, wrote "Some banking partners felt that rather than be elevated, Corzine should have been made to bear some of the responsibility for the firm's troubles, many of which originated in his division." To his credit, when Goldman was poised to go public in 1998, Corzine observed that, while an IPO would certainly enrich the firm's partners, "Selling the firm in good times and spreading the largesse broadly, deeply, and generously would actually be less greedy."

Corzine's fall from grace at Goldman came during Christmas 1998. Hank Paulson and two other members of the five-man executive committee had him stripped of his position in the company when earnings sank 80 percent and Corzine steered the Goldman into collaborating in the $3.625 billion bailout of Long-Term Capital Management.

Last week Robert Teitelman, editor in chief of The Deal, wrote of Corzine:

Do we -- or Obama -- really want another treasury secretary from Goldman? I mean all these Treasury guys (Rubin, Paulson, Corzine) plus Jim Cramer. Second, Corzine was a trader. And in that sense he, far more than investment banker Paulson, participated professionally in the leveraged excesses of the last few decades. Now that may be good. After all, Joseph Kennedy made an excellent chairman of the new Securities and Exchange Commission in the '30s because he knew all the tricks of the Wall Street trade. Third, it would be just too weird for Paulson to hand the reins over to Corzine, the man he effectively moved aside in the late '90s at Goldman to seal his own ascension.

Could all that be overcome? Certainly. Corzine hasn't traded since the '90s and his financial ties to Goldman are far more attenuated than, say, Paulson. But pondering a name like Corzine does raise a large subject: How do you balance off culpability and expertise?

In 1969, Corzine graduated from the University of Illinois as a member of Phi Beta Kappa and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserves, served in an infantry unit until 1975, eventually attaining the rank of Sergeant. He received his MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business in 1973, having attended night sessions while working as a portfolio analyst at Continental-Illinois National Bank, and in 1975 was recruited by Goldman Sachs as a bond trader. He made partner in 1980. As of 2005, Corzine had divested himself of any accumulated holdings (valued at $270 million in 2001) in Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Geithner

The first career civil servant to be appointed Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, Mr. Geithner became the head of the New York Fed in 2003 at age 42. At the time of his appointment, The New York Times described him as "a crucial player in the formulation of interest rate policy in the United States and a point man for crisis management for the domestic and international financial systems." Geithner has served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, which administers the federal funds rate, the benchmark interest rate at which banks lend one another money.

The Deal calls Geithner "a protégé of Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin," which by itself should be damning enough to warn off the President-elect from appointing him. Matthew Wurtzel of The Deal said in late September that Geithner "is being pushed by [Treasury Secretary Hank] Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as the man."

To Geithner's credit, it appears he at least partially anticipated the current economic crisis. Lisa Lerer of Politico reports that "in 2005, at his urging, financial services companies established a national registry to help process and track their trades of credit derivatives, an insurance-like product bought by financial services companies to cover risky subprime mortgage investments."

In March it was Geithner who orchestrated the deal that allowed JPMorgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns using a $29 billion loan from his bank. One week ago, Geithner's bank hired Michael Alix, Bear Stearns' Chief Risk Officer from 2006 to 2008 and global head of credit risk management from 1996 to 2006, as a senior vice president in the bank supervision group.

Take it for what you will, but CNBC's Jim Cramer was aghast at the suggestion of Geithner as Treasury Secretary, stating that as head of the New York Fed (which bears the responsibility of regulating the Wall Street investment banks) "the man should be facing a Senate investigation, not a Senate confirmation hearing." Cramer elaborated his contempt by questioning Geithner's role in the decision to allow Lehman Bros. to fail, which then snowballed into the collapse of AIG and Merrill Lynch. It could be argued that, by allowing Lehman Bros. to fail, Geithner is ultimately responsible for the taxpayer-funded $85 billion buyout of worthless AIG.

Conclusion

Given the neck-deep involvement of Rubin, Summers, and Geithner in the meltdown of the economy, and Corzine's status as yet another Goldman Sachs executive, I'm inclined to endorse Paul Volcker. He demonstrated his ability to direct and regulate the economy as well as the determination to maintain his policies no matter the political fallout, something sorely needed in Washington.

Filling the New Cabinet, Intro

2008-11-11T07:30:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned yesterday, Tim has asked me to post on potential appointees to President-elect Obama's Cabinet. I'd originally intended to simply run down a list with the likely contenders for each post and provide a small blurb about each, but in the process of researching potential Treasury heads, I decided there was simply too much information to condense into one post.

As a result, over the next few days I'll be posting about each position in the new administration. At first I intended on doing this based on the order of precedence, but I reconsidered and instead will be grouping them as logically as possible. You can expect something approximating the following order:

The Big Four

Secretary of the Treasury

Secretary of State

Secretary of Defense

Attorney General

National Security

Secretary of Homeland Security
National Security Advisor
Secretary of Energy
Ambassador to the United Nations

Industry

Secretary of Commerce
Secretary of Labor
Secretary of Transportation

Public Welfare

Secretary of Health and Human Services
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Secretary of Education
Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Natural Resources

Secretary of the Interior
Secretary of Agriculture
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

So, what you can expect is a post each devoted to Treasury, State, Defense, and Justice, followed by posts on positions organized into the National Security, Industry, Public Welfare, and Natural Resources logical groups. Of note: I have placed the Secretary of Energy under National Security instead of Natural Resources to highlight the implications of our reliance on foreign-produced energy commodities. In grudging deference to the financial crisis, I'll lead off the series with the Treasury post, as I suspect the economic crisis is of greater present concern than foreign policy (though I think this is mistaken).

I'm not entirely certain how this will play out in terms of duration. The Washington Post's excellent diagram indicates I might have somewhere between six to nine weeks to do this series based on past Presidential selection rates. (Interesting side note: Nixon and Reagan were finished picking their respective Cabinet members soonest, while George W. Bush took the longest, finally selecting his Secretary of Labor in Week 11.) If I post twice weekly for the Big Four, and then once a week thereafter, I would be right at six weeks in duration, which would carry me through finals week to 23 December. This will be the goal - we'll see how time and school responsibilities (and any interim appointments) conspire in allowing me to remain on schedule or not.

One disclaimer: I will readily admit my nearsightedness in certain areas, particularly when it comes to prospective HUD, HHS, and Interior secretaries. I'll do my best to correct this, though I'll be relieved if one of these posts is preempted by an announcement from the President-elect.

Hopefully he does windows; we need more transparency in the White House.

2008-11-10T08:00:00.002-06:00

At Tim's request, I'll be posting my own thoughts on potential Cabinet appointees later today. I wanted to start of this week by posting the following photo by Callie Shell:

I loved that he cleaned up after himself before leaving an ice cream shop in Wapello, Iowa. He didn't have to. The event was over and the press had left. He is used to taking care of things himself and I think this is one of the qualities that makes Obama different from so many other political candidates I've encountered. Nov. 7, 2007.

Ladies and gentlemen, a President who cleans up after himself. Considering the mess made by this guy, I would say that this glimpse into the President-elect's character is a good sign.

Boehner's Straw Man

2008-11-07T15:01:00.003-06:00

John Boehner has an op-ed in the Washington Post today talking about rebuilding the Republican party and offering a strong alternative to the Democrats. It contains the following:

Our most immediate challenge is creating new jobs and getting our economy moving in the right direction again. While Republicans have put forward a plan for economic growth and job creation, congressional Democrats are proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in new government spending masquerading as "economic stimulus." To rebuild 401(k) plans and keep jobs here at home, we'll offer tax relief for families and small businesses. And to lower fuel costs and create as many as a million new jobs, we'll offer a comprehensive plan for more American energy.
We'll also offer health-care reforms that empower patients and doctors, promote a strong military that keeps us on offense to protect the American people, and demand fiscal and ethical reforms to fix a broken Washington tarnished by scandals on both sides of the aisle. We have a responsibility to the American people to make sure our ideals are heard, and we expect these to be vigorous debates.

Let's take a look at a few things, shall we?

I look forward to this apparently very civil debate.

One more dispatch from election night

2008-11-07T11:20:00.004-06:00

In my exhaustion after Grant Park, I forgot about this voicemail from Anna which (as you'll see) I've been asked to share.

Tim, I'm down at the White House, it's a quarter to one in the morning, it's fucking packed, it's amazing [loud screaming in the background]. Oh my god you need to transcribe this for your blog tomorrow. I could not be more [more hooting and hollering] excited about being down here for this. There are people hugging and kissing like it's fucking new year's eve and... oh my god... it's amazing, I... I don't care. I've, I've never been more proud to be part of this country. I'm... I'm so excited... yeah. Okay, before I get all weepy I'm [message cuts off].

Too good not to share

2008-11-07T11:11:00.001-06:00

From Political Insider:

The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion sent out an email with the subject line: "Marist Poll: Matchups for the 2012 Presidential Election - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE"

Inside was this message:

Did you really open this email?!
Haven't you had enough?!

You'll be hearing from us soon...but, not this soon.

Best wishes,
Your friends at The Marist Poll

It's good to know that even the number-crunchers have a sense of humor about this.

The Cabinet

2008-11-06T16:02:00.003-06:00

There are a lot of cabinet positions that are considered relatively minor (although on a personal level, they probably have a lot more to do with our lives than the bigger ones) that I'm not going to speculate on, but the big ones are too tempting not to take some wild guesses on.

Secretary of State:
My money says Bill Richardson. The man was made for this job. While his charisma evaporated on the campaign trail, Richardson is the go-to guy for defusing international crises, his diplomatic credentials are unparalleled, and I think he and Obama see eye to eye on their goals. This is wishful thinking, I suspect, because John Kerry is already pushing hard for the job and he has more clout, but Richardson seems to me to be the best choice.

Secretary of Defense:
Chuck Hagel. I'm pretty certain about this. He's not especially popular with wingnuts on either side, but he has broad appeal on both sides of the center line. And you can't say the man doesn't have chops. Jim Webb would be another good pick, who I can see working well with Obama, but there are two things standing in his way: his national visibility is low, and his Senate seat is vulnerable.

Secretary of the Treasury:
My money says Paul Volcker. He helped dig us out of the late-70's stagflation debacle (although not without consequences) and tried to resist deregulation during the Reagan economy, which I think will be a strong argument in his favor. He is

Attorney General:
Before the infidelity scandal, my money was set on John Edwards. Now it seems he can't even get mentioned on a long list, much less a short one. I'm not really sure what to expect. The better money is on Janet Napolitano: current Governor of Arizona, former US attorney, former State Attorney General. But the Chicago Tribune's list has two interesting names on it that I want to at least mention as decent options.

The first is James Comey, the former deputy attorney general under Bush who got famous for stabbing Alberto Gonzalez in the back. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his involvement in a late night showdown in the hospital room of the then-Attorney General John Ashcroft where he had to have Secret Service guards posted at the door in order to prevent Gonzalez from badgering the barely-alive Ashcroft into reauthorizing an illegal wiretapping program (if you haven't already, you have to read this). I haven't been following him especially closely, but from what I can tell, he seems like a pretty straight shooter.
The second interesting name is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who I think is an absolute legal superhero. He has the legal strength of a hundred mortal lawyers. Republicans love him because he is a constant thorn in the side of corrupt Illinois politicians (and there are many: Fitz has investigated, tried, and/or convicted former GOP Governor George Ryan, current Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, and an army of aides close to Mayor Richard M. Daley). Democrats love him for relentlessly pursuing the Valerie Plame leak case and getting Scooter Libby convicted. I would love to see Fitzgerald as the Attorney General, but if he's nominated, expect to see a lot of buzz from the right about how Obama is promoting him out of the way to protect his friends in Chicago.

Tim's Wishful Thinking Awards:

Elizabeth Edwards for Health & Human Services. Unfortunately, Mrs. Edwards is dying and probably won't be around to take a formal position in an Obama White House (certainly not without taking significant time off the job for treatment), but there's no one I can think of who's better qualified for this than her. Obama may tap Howard Dean or perhaps someone who went through the healthcare battles with Sen. Clinton back in the 90's, but we're missing something great with Elizabeth Edwards.
Samantha Power for Ambassador to the United Nations. Yes, I know it's not a cabinet level position. Frankly, if it wasn't for one ill-chosen word, I think she'd be a shoe-in for Secretary of State. This woman is brilliant. Listen to her talk for five minutes and you can hear the depth of her understanding of the most difficult international issues there are. After guys like John Bolton, I can't imagine a fresher breath of air.
Tom Daschle for MSNBC. People don't seem to remember this, but Daschle wasn't all that much better than Harry Reid. I remember being kind of relieved when he lost his seat. Keep him out of this administration please.

Rahmbo

2008-11-06T14:02:00.003-06:00

I'm more than a little iffy on the choice of Rahm Emmanuel as chief of staff. It's not necessarily a bad one, I'm just cautious. There's still a big part of me that wants to believe in Obama's misty-eyed talk about bipartisan consensus-building, which I'm aware is me willfully greasing the lens. I want to see an GOP in the opposition so stymied by reason and cooperation that they have no choice by to go along with it. Rahm Emmanuel is the man who once said that the translation of his first name from Hebrew was "go screw yourself" and (on an unrelated occasion) mailed a dead fish to a pollster he didn't like. The word "conciliatory" is not in his vocabulary. He's widely said to be aiming for the ultimate goal of Speaker of the House, which I think is quite telling: he only has to be elected by a small, hardcore Democratic part of the country and then maneuver his way into power through patience and intraparty negotiation. He knows that his dubious "charm" won't play to a broader national audience, so he goes about achieving national prominence through the back door. Part of me laments this choice because after all of the graciousness in John McCain's concession speech about backing the new president, this is just a big "go screw yourself" to anyone on the right who might have taken that seriously.

And then there's the part of me with no grease on the lens. Rahm Emmanuel, for as much of a prick as he may be (sorry, but it's true), is an incredibly smart guy, and will not rest until he's gotten his way. He knows how to organize people and he knows how to get people to do what they promise. The man gets results. And for all of this talk of reaching across the aisle, John Boehner and his lot will not be any less obnoxious in their pursuits just because Barack Obama is President. On the contrary, they will be far more obnoxious. As such, Obama will need a highly organized team under him, which I have no doubt Emmanuel will provide, and he will need a hatchet man to play hardball with anyone who doesn't succumb to bipartisan sweet-talk. I think Obama has a sharp edge to him that doesn't really come out in public, and I think it will serve him well as president. But he needs someone on his side who will be a pitbull (with neither lipstick nor a hockey stick) to beat down the hardcore opposition and make it easier to work with the more reasonable elements of the GOP.

On a practical level, this is probably a great choice. I'm just not sure if it's the change we were promised.

*Apologies to all of my friends from Sarah Lawrence who are so gung-ho to see one of their own get so far. I'm just trying to appraise this as honestly as I can.

Grant Park

2008-11-05T15:42:00.013-06:00

Now, I want to stress that I am a lousy photographer, and taking photos at night with no tripod and a camera that doesn't seem to have any night-time settings while thousands of people mill about you makes it less easy to get any good shots. But I would be remiss if I didn't share some photos.

Jackson & Michigan

Immediately upon stepping onto the street in the Loop, it felt more like a sporting event than an election party. People were swarming everywhere, and vendors were out en masse. The more innocuous ones stood quietly and inconspicuously (there were about 20 to a block) selling buttons or T-shirts. Some were selling fans ("you can't call yourself a fan unless you have a fan!") and there were even a startling amount of people selling "rally towels:" hand towels with slogans like "Yes We Can" on them. They were all trying very hard to convince people that all of our friends would need proof that we were there. Like a rally towel.

Outside the first checkpoint

This is the crowd just outside of the first security checkpoint (I believe at Congress and Columbus), where people were milling around trying to find friends before heading inside. This is the first of many photos I have of stunningly large amounts of people. There ended up being three basic ticket-check/security-check points before we arrived at...

The Metal Detector Mob

The white tent at the front of the crowd is where the metal detectors were located. This was taken at the corner of Columbus & Balbo, looking south. This was by far the longest portion of the wait to get in. It took us over an hour to get from that first spot at Jackson & Michigan to get to the metal detectors, just over half a mile away. However, we're lucky we got there when we did.

The Second Wave

This photo is taken from the same spot, but looking back north. As you can see, on the other side of Balbo, CPD set up a barricade to keep the crowd coming in waves. I'm pretty sure traffic was blocked off on Balbo, but I believe the intent was to keep the crowd broken into smaller chunks so they could be managed more easily. All told the CPD did an exemplary job last night. Last time a Democratic function this big was held in Chicago, well... we all know what happened there. The police here don't have the best reputation. Former Police Commander Jon Burge is finally being brought up on charges related to his alleged torturing of more than 200 suspected criminals between 1972 and 1991, pre-invasion Iraq War protests were said to have more police than protesters, and at least one police officer was recently caught on tape beating a woman within an inch of her life because she refused to serve him more alcohol. More to the point, Chicago also doesn't have a great record with crowd control: the legendary Iroquois Theatre fire killed hundreds of children here in 1903, and more recently a fatal porch collapse and the E2 nightclub catastrophe. I was warned more than once to get out as fast as I could if it looked like there was going to be violence. But throughout the night, all I could see were calm, orderly crowds, helpful police officers overseeing the whole process, and overall a flawless event. It's a sad statement when I'm surprised that I didn't read about any arrests in the papers today (especially the Sun-Times, which only exists to criticize Mayor Daley), but it's still a happy surprise.

Playing to the Camera

We happened to end up situated close to a roaming crane-cam (I don't know what network it was for, but I was probably on said network a lot last night). As I said, the crowds were quite orderly: when the camera swung past, everyone would shout and cheer and wave their hands, and as soon as it moved on, they returned to quiet, polite conversations. I was expecting the hooting and hollering to be much more consistent, but what I saw was actually a lot more patient poll-watching. CNN was playing on the jumbo-tron, and all eyes were focused on the talking heads, and only reacting when another projection was made.

Wireless

Everyone and their mother was on their cell phones, constantly getting poll numbers, state by state updates, telling friends and family how excited they were, and so on and so forth. After a while, everything stopped getting through altogether. I would get notifications ten and fifteen minutes after the fact that my texts had gone out to Wyl. When I left the park, I got 17 text messages and 5 voicemail messages simultaneously.

Victory
Just after 10:00, when the west coast polls closed, CNN shot through a giant graphic reading "Barack Obama Elected President" and the crowd went insane. People were crying, screaming, dancing, waving their hands, hugging and kissing indiscriminately. As such, I was not going to take any photos. I was caught up in the moment. Not too long after, one of the sound guys came out to the podium and, amidst counting to four repeatedly, announced, "sound check for the next President of the United States" and the indiscriminate hugging and yelling started all over again.

Then John McCain gave his concession speech. For the first five minutes or so, Grant Park was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The only sound other than John McCain's voice was the police helicopter hovering over Lake Michigan. There was a tangible sense of thousands of people collectively forgiving John McCain, and remember after a fevered campaign that this was an earnest, honorable man who was being as gracious as he could be in defeat. But then he started repeating himself and everyone started checking our watches. Not out of bitterness, I don't think, but because he had visibly run out of steam, and we were waiting for our moment.

About ten minutes later, an announcer came on the PA and announced "Ladies & Gentleman, I would like to introduce to you..." The crowd went wild... and then was introduced to a Bishop who would lead them in prayer. Then the PA kicked up again, and we were introduced to... someone who would lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the PA kicked up again, and we were introduced to... someone who would sing the National Anthem. Each time the crowd was audibly disappointed, impatiently awaiting the moment when our champion would emerge and begin to lead us on the road to peace and prosperity and equality.

And then it happened.

I was far enough away that even with the zoom on my camera, and standing on my tip-toes and standing as still as I could, this was the best shot I could get of our new President-elect. But my god, the excitement.

Wednesday Morning Coming Down

And then we all filed out. It was a lengthy process, none hastened by the stiff knees caused by six straight hours of standing and the adrenaline crash. We walked several blocks out of the park to a train station in the opposite direction as the one we were going, in order to get on the train before the crowd. Upon entering the station, we were met by a 10-minute wait to get past the turnstile, and a largely full platform. That said, the trains were running frequently enough that we had no trouble getting on the first train that came by and getting out of the loop in a reasonable amount of time.

By the time I got home, all the energy had washed out of my body. Anna called me from her celebration in front of the White House to relay messages of the ecstatic masses roaming the streets of Washington. I got some desperately needed food into my body, flipped on the TV for a reprise of the acceptance speech, and poured myself two fingers of bourbon to celebrate our victory with the cat. I made it through the speech, but not much longer before I had to drag myself off to bed. But all told, what else was there for me to do?

We won.

Satire

2008-11-05T12:52:00.004-06:00

I plan to spend a good portion of my night writing about my experience in Grant Park, why I think Obama will be such a good president, and closing the books on the 2008 presidential campaign as much as I can. However, as I am a dutiful son of the Lutheran tradition of senseless devotion to work for the sake of work, I decided to cut short my "sick" day and come into the office, so I can't really do that right now.

However, I do want to say something briefly to temper my optimism. I received a text message this morning that read as follows: "Let us pause to lament the passing of decent political satire in the forthcoming four years."

1) Have faith in your comedians, America.
2) A large part of political satire is giving us the ability to laugh at our crappy circumstances. And while we've taken the first step onto a better road, our national and global circumstances remain pretty crappy.
3) Let's be realistic. No world leader has EVER been so perfect as to avoid becoming a target for satire.
4) For as liberal as the comedic realm generally is, they have to make a living making fun of something.

For example...

Sixty Slips Away

2008-11-05T09:20:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I fell asleep before the final results were in. Then again, with a recount looming in Minnesota, I have no reason to expect myself to stay awake until December.

Here's where the race stands with 100% of precincts reporting (data from the Minnesota Secretary of State's website):

Norm Coleman - 1,211,627 (42.00%)
Al Franken - 1,210,901 (41.97%)
Dean Barkley -437,308 (15.16%)

With a margin of less than one half of 1%, there will be an automatic recount of the nearly 2.9 million ballots cast. Minnesota's ballots are of the Scantron/bubblesheet variety, so I don't expect the recount to change this outcome.

And here are the other races that were outstanding as of very, very early this morning:

Georgia (96% reporting as of 10:05:25 AM ET )
- Saxby Chambliss (R)* - 1,832,368 (49.9%)
- Jim Martin (D) - 1,717,052 (46.7%)
- Allen Buckley (L) - 125,649 (3.4%)

Buckley is the Libertarian Party's candidate, and he seems to be drawing votes from Chambliss. Either Chambliss or Martin need to win a clear majority to avoid a run-off. The Georgia Secretary of State's website has an "unofficial and incomplete" total.

Oregon (as of 5:53 AM PT)
- Gordon Smith (R) - 474,398 (47.30%)
- Jeff Merkley (D) - 469,920 (46.86%)
- Dave Brownlow (C) - 55,852 (5.57%)

Brownlow is the Constitution Party of Oregon's candidate. I'm assuming he drew votes that would have gone to Smith out in the eastern part of the state, so, as in Georgia, the margin of victory here will likely depend on whether the third party candidate acts as spoiler. The website of Oregon's Secretary of State has an unofficial total.

Alaska (99.32% reporting as of 1:24AM Alaska Time)
- Stevens (R)* - 106,351 (48.06%)
- Begich (D) - 102,998 (46.54%)

These results are from Alaska's Department of Elections's website. What can I say? Alaska is just flat crooked.

*incumbent

Minnesota Update

2008-11-05T02:25:00.001-06:00

If CNN is to be believed, Al Franken is about 1,000 votes ahead of Norm Coleman. However, CNN is about 28,000 total votes ahead of the Minnesota Secretary of State's website, which still has Coleman in the lead by just less than 12,000 votes.

However, some interesting data has emerged in the exit polling:

Votes for Dean Barkely by Sex:
-Men (47% of the electorate) - 14%
-Women (53% of the electorate) - 16%

Votes for Dean Barkley by Age:
-18-29 (22% of the electorate) - 14%
-30-44 (28% of the electorate) - 16%
-45-64 (37% of the electorate) - 15%
-64+ (13% of the electorate) - 16%

Not bad for a guy who had $56,763 compared to a (latest estimate) combined $50 million for his opponents.

The Other Outstanding Seats

2008-11-05T01:50:00.002-06:00

Via MSNBC:

Georgia (98% reporting)
- Chambliss (R)* - 50%
- Martin (D) - 46%

Oregon (45% reporting)
- Merkley (D) - 47%
- Smith (R)* - 47%

Alaska (45% reporting)
- Stevens (R)* - 49%
- Begich (D) - 46%

*incumbent

The website of Oregon's Secretary of State has an unofficial total as of 11:53 Pacific time.

Jeff Merkley (D) - 439,390 (47.30%)
Gordon Smith (R) - 435,464 (46.87%)

Still Awake

2008-11-05T01:48:00.000-06:00

Still awake and plugging along. I've got Minnesota Public Radio streaming in iTunes, the Secretary of State's website open and refreshing periodically, and I plan on staying up until the race is decided.

Here's where things stand with 94.55% of precincts reporting at 1:44 AM:

Norm Coleman - 1,131,572 (42.16%)
Al Franken - 1,120,123 (41.74%)
Dean Barkley -408,567 (15.22%)

Tracking the Senate

2008-11-05T01:10:00.000-06:00

The latest results, this time from the website of the Minnesota Secretary of State:

Norm Coleman - 1,095,431 (42.20%)
Al Franken - 1,082,450 (41.70%)
Dean Barkley - 395,387 (15.23%)

91.82% of precincts reporting as of 1:04 AM

This race just keeps getting tighter.

The Senate remains at 56-40 in favor of the Democrats. The other races outstanding (totals via MSNBC)

Georgia (97% reporting)
- Chambliss (R)* - 51%
- Martin (D) - 46%

Oregon (43% reporting)
- Merkley (D) - 47%
- Smith (R)* - 47%

Alaska (37% reporting)
- Stevens (R)* - 49%
- Begich (D) - 45%

*incumbent

Sixty is looking increasingly unlikely.

Indiana

2008-11-05T01:08:00.002-06:00

Indiana breaks for Obama, according to MSNBC. This is the first time Indiana has been won by a Democrat since 1964.

The tally is now 349-159.

The View from the Cheap Seats

2008-11-05T00:53:00.002-06:00

This man is now our president.

Seeking Sixty

2008-11-05T00:31:00.002-06:00

FiveThirtyEight on how the Senate is shaping up:

Mark Udall wins easily in Colorado. Mark Begich will defeat the convicted tubes guy. Landrieu has escaped in Louisiana. That's 57 seats.

Minnesota, Oregon, Mississippi and Georgia have not been called. Democrats will need to win three of those to get to 60 votes, and all four to get to a Lieberman-proof, filibuster-proof majority.

Minnesota Public Radio has the race at Coleman 42.1%, Franken 41.7%, Barkley 15.3% with 87% of precincts reporting. Coleman's lead amounts to just under 10,000 votes.

For Posterity

2008-11-05T00:10:00.004-06:00

Oh Freedom, Over Me

2008-11-04T23:57:00.004-06:00

Via Taegan Goddard:

With Sen. Barack Obama on the brink of becoming the 44th President of the United States, it's interesting to note that the first 16 presidents [sic] could have legally owned Obama as a slave.

To which I add:

Virginia was home to the capital of the Confederate States of America from 1861-1865. Tonight, it elected a black man President of the United States.

60?

2008-11-04T23:50:00.002-06:00

Another update from Minnesota Public Radio, with 75.7% of precincts reporting:

Norm Coleman - 42.2%
Al Franken - 41.5%
Dean Barkley - 15.4%

With the Senate currently standing at 56-40 in favor of the Democrats, MSNBC rates the other races outstanding:

Georgia (95% reporting)
- Chambliss (R)* - 52%
- Martin (D) - 44%

Oregon (40% reporting)
- Merkley (D) - 48%
- Smith (R)* - 47%

Alaska (0% reporting)
- Begich (D)
- Stevens (R)*

*incumbent

At first glance, it seems that Gordon Smith is holding closer to his challenger Jeff Merkley than originally anticipated. FiveThirtyEight rated this race as "Likely Democratic" in their final analysis.

I See a Red State and I Want it Painted Blue

2008-11-04T23:31:00.003-06:00

States that were red in 2004 that are now blue:

Virginia (13)
Ohio (20)
Iowa (7)
Colorado (9)
New Mexico (5)
Nevada (5)
Florida (27)

Four more remain:

Indiana (11)
North Carolina (15)
Missouri (11)
Montana (3)

Obama is currently leading in Indiana (50% to 49%, 99% of precincts reporting) and Montana (49% to 48%, 43% of precincts reporting). North Carolina is split 50-50 with 99% of precincts reporting. McCain leads in Missouri 50% to 49% with 91% of precincts reporting.

A Change Has Come

2008-11-04T22:00:00.003-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States:

Update on 60

2008-11-04T21:54:00.001-06:00

Latest info from MPR:

Franken - 42.1%
Coleman - 41.3%
Barkley - 15.7%

538 on the Senate

2008-11-04T21:32:00.001-06:00

Those 60 seats might still be possible:

If Udall, Begich, Merkley and Franken can win their races, and Mary Landrieu hold hers, Democrats will sit at 59 Senate seats. Then Democrats need to either keep Chambliss under 50% (some big Democratic counties are outstanding) or somehow pull off the Musgrove-Wicker upset, another race that has not been called.

According to Minnesota Public Radio, the race is currently Franken 43.2%, Coleman 40.3%, Barkley 15.6% with 8% of precincts reporting. Franken's been trending steadily downward in the last half hour or so, while Coleman is up a bit from earlier and Barkley is holding steady around 16%.

So that race is tightening, and Minnesotans are notorious ticket-splitters. I wouldn't count Franken toward those 60 seats just yet.

Blue England

2008-11-04T21:10:00.001-06:00

All of New England's seats in the House of Representatives have now gone blue.

The Red Sox might have to change their name.

538

2008-11-04T21:06:00.000-06:00

FiveThirtyEight has called the election for Obama.

What a tool.

2008-11-04T20:55:00.000-06:00

White reporter asks black family why they brought their kids to Grant Park.

What do you think, genius?

From Tim in Grant Park #5

2008-11-04T20:50:00.000-06:00

"Apeshit screaming for OH"

Senate Results #2

2008-11-04T20:38:00.003-06:00

MSNBC has called the following races:

NM - Udall (D)
AL - Sessions (R)
KS - Roberts (R)
OK - Inhofe (R)
WY (Class 1) - Barrasso (R)
WY (Class 2) - Enzi (R)
MI - Levin (D)
MS (Class 2) - Cochran (R)
RI - Reed (D)
SD - Johnson (D)

Red Seeing Blue

2008-11-04T20:29:00.004-06:00

MSNBC just called Ohio for Obama a few minutes ago. That's the first red state to flip.

And now they've called New Mexico for him as well. That's another former red state gone blue.

200-85.

From Tim in Grant Park #4

2008-11-04T19:39:00.003-06:00

From "Chicago's Front Lawn"

Tim's inside the rally now, and they have CNN on the Jumbotron, which means I can probably stop texting him every eight minutes.

Dole'd Out

2008-11-04T19:33:00.002-06:00

What was mentioned previously has come to pass. MSNBC just called North Carolina's Senate race for Kay Hagan. Elizabeth Dole is out of a job.

Alabama was also just called for McCain. Virginia remains too close to call.

Senate Results #1

2008-11-04T19:16:00.002-06:00

MSNBC has called the following races:

ME - Collins (R)
NH - Shaheen (D)*
MA - Kerry (D)
NJ - Lautenberg (D)
DE - Biden (D)
WV - Rockefeller (D)
VA - Warner (D)†
IL - Durbin (D)
TE - Alexander (R)
SC - Graham

* upset
† replaces John Warner (R), who is retiring

From Tim in Grant Park #3

2008-11-04T18:52:00.002-06:00

Tim's still in line to get into the Obama rally, presently just outside the 4th security checkpoint - a metal detector. Glad to know that security is being taken very seriously tonight.

"HUGE crowds; it is HOT." is the word on the ground.

Meanwhile, MSNBC has called South Carolina for McCain. Right now the electoral vote is sitting at 16-3, with a spate of poll closings due in a few minutes - including Pennsylvania.

From Tim in Grant Park #2

2008-11-04T18:36:00.002-06:00

Moments ago in Grant Park, Chicago

Pushing Back Hate

2008-11-04T18:22:00.004-06:00

John Marshall over at TPM mentions a very interesting observation on MSNBC:

Howard Fineman just had a very interesting point on Chris Matthews' show. Pennsylvania is the only state where the state party pushed the Rev. Wright card really hard. And it seems they may now be reaping the whirlwind with extremely high African-American turnout in Philly and throughout the state.

Just desserts (Baked Alaska!) for the GOP if this blows up in their faces. Obama didn't bring up Rev. John Hagee or Bishop Thomas Muthee in the closing days of the campaign.

Off With Their Heads!

2008-11-04T18:08:00.002-06:00

Former Republican Congressman and current MSNBC pundit Joe Scarborough just hit the nail on the head: the Republican Party of Bush and McCain is sorely out of touch with the American people and is being brutally repudiated.

Pat Buchanan credits the "hope, joy, and enthusiasm" of Obama, but also equates Obama v. McCain '08 with FDR v. Hoover '32, both in terms of a Republican repudiation and an economic crisis. He says we might be looking at "a transformational election" similar to Reagan v. Carter '80, and that we might be "at the cusp of a new liberal era."

Most importantly, Pat says that if Obama wins tonight, that he will enjoy a franchise similar to FDR.

Shades of '96

2008-11-04T18:06:00.000-06:00

MSNBC just had an on-the-scenes reporter (Kelly O'Donnell?) state that the North Carolina GOP is already unofficially admitting defeat.

Update: They have also just called the US Senate race for John Warner's seat in Virginia for Mark Warner (D), and South Carolina's race for incumbent Lindsey Graham (R).

From Tim in Grant Park #1

2008-11-04T17:34:00.003-06:00

Tim left me a message on my voicemail a few minutes ago saying that the cell network in Chicago has pretty much maxed out and that he's not certain he'll be able to send me many texts from the Obama rally. He's got a backup plan, though - pen and paper. He'll be making observations and anything that isn't posted tonight will be posted for posterity tomorrow.

Tim did remark on the carnival atmosphere in downtown Chicago; people are out selling Obama gear and walking around in a general state of what Tim called "Obamagasm."

Live Results

2008-11-04T17:05:00.001-06:00

Both Political Wire and TPM have their real-time election scorecards up and running. The score is currently 0-0.

That won't last long.

60*

2008-11-04T16:30:00.002-06:00

Vote none of the above.

Much has been made about Al Franken potentially embodying the filibuster-busting 60th Democratic vote in the Senate. Hillary Clinton cut an ad for Franken not too long ago posing this exact scenario. I'm on record as being less than enthusiastic about Franken's candidacy, but I find Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent, pretty undesirable as well. A friend of mine characterized the race as "the unctuous vs. the obnoxious," and I think that sums up the situation quite adequately.

Fortunately, Minnesotans have a third option - former Senator Dean Barkley - who is running on the Independence Party ticket. Barkley, who was appointed to complete Paul Wellstone's term in the Senate by Governor Jesse Ventura, saw a high water mark of 19% in the polls in early October, despite only raising $56,763 for his campaign and running only two statewide ads. Franken and Coleman raised $36 million between them.

The Independence Party is Minnesota's fairly strong third party, tracing its roots back to the Ross Perot's Reform Party. When the Reform Party divided in 2000 following a contentious convention that ultimately nominated Pat Buchanan, the Independence Party broke from the national party. Essentially radically centrist, the party follows Jesse Ventura's quasi-Libertarian "fiscally conservative and socially liberal" credo. Were I still a Minnesota resident, Barkley would definitely get my vote.

Though Barkley poses a highly appealing choice over smarmy Franken and lickspittle Coleman, I don't hold high hopes that he'll eek out a Ventura '98-style victory (though he's no stranger to upsets - he was Ventura's campaign chair that year). So, in the spirit of quixotic third party candidates like Ventura, Kinky Friedman, Ross Perot, and Robert La Follette: Go Barkley!

Gov. Jesse Ventura and Sen. Dean Barkley

Note: I'm just now home from school and am getting spooled up. Consider this the first of what I imagine will be several posts tonight.

Prognostication

2008-11-04T14:04:00.002-06:00

People have been asking me all day to make predictions, when will we know this, when will we know that, do I think Obama is really going to win, and so on and so forth. I may have had some claim to being able to look at this reasonably before, but I think that's pretty much shot today. I'm having a hell of a time focusing at work (as is obvious by the amount of posting I'm doing), even though I'm only posting in two minute stints between doing other things. It's harder because my office overlooks Grant Park and all I want to do is get out there and see what's happening.

The point is, here is my "what to look for" statement of the day. At 7pm Eastern Time, polls will close in Virginia and Georgia. If Virginia goes to Obama, look for him to win. If they announce it fairly quickly after polls close, he'll win by a comfortable margin. If he wins Georgia, this will be an electoral landslide.

This just in from the East Coast

2008-11-04T11:19:00.003-06:00

Anna asked me to post this since she can't currently get on Blogger:

A persnickety alarm clock and some residual sleep in the eyes meant that I didn't leave the house as early as I had planned. The line was wrapped almost completely around the Catholic-church-rec-room-cum-polling-place, but the crowd was well-behaved. Nobody budged, nobody threw up their arms in frustration and left - they read silently (me), thumbed through the digital offerings of their mobile devices (my boyfriend), tending to infants in baby carriages (the lady in front of us), and so on. The wait was a bit over an hour, but I didn't care: I would've waited all damn day if I'd had to. It is no exaggeration to say that I was more excited to vote than I was most Christmas mornings as a small child. I've never voted in person in a presidential election, and have a head filled with all manner of notions about fulfilling one's civic duty, patriotic pride, so there is something almost romantic about the entire ritual. After a poll worker handed me one of the free-cup-of-coffee-free-scoop-of-ice-cream-ensuring 'I Voted/Yo Vote' stickers, my giddiness was barely contained.

I have nothing else interesting to write except noting that I realized over the weekend that Tim was the first person I knew to espouse the virtues of Barack Obama. Check out this conversation that we had over four years ago. Just let it be noted that Tim knows about all the cool bands and political candidates before everybody else.

[Tim adds: She's not necessarily right about that last part, but I like to pretend. That being said, check out Cheveu. They're pretty amazing.]

2008-11-04T10:20:00.002-06:00

Real time election results at Political Wire, if you're like me and won't be around a TV for Wolf Blitzer's massively premature 6%-of-the-population projections but do have a web-enabled mobile device.

Duty Now for the Future!

2008-11-04T09:51:00.002-06:00

Other responses, when prompted, on this morning of November 4:

Mike P: "Oh, that thing. Will there be happy riots or sad riots tonight?"

Rob L: "In line now in the east village. Line goes halfway down the block in both directions. Also, did you think I'd forget to vote or something? I drove to NYC from RI this morning."

Sam O: "Voted. Our fucking judge who looks at our voter cards etc. admitted to not being able to see them. Amazing!"

Mike T: "I'm hungry. I Could definitely go for a Steak Egg & Cheese Bagel Sammich [sic]."

Early Reports

2008-11-04T07:58:00.002-06:00

I showed up at my polling place at 6:08 this morning (they open at 6) and was happy that I only had to wait 15 minutes before getting a ballot. Wyl sent me a text at 7:41 saying that he had tried to beat the line by getting to his polling place in Madison before they opened, only to find that there were already lines out both doors and a 45 minute wait.

In almost every (if not every) other democracy on the planet, election day is declared a national holiday so that everyone can vote. Why this idea has never taken root here, I have no idea. The only place I should be going at 6:08 in the morning is home, to bed.

A Special Election Day Editorial

2008-11-04T05:43:00.001-06:00

Vote, dammit!

Samizdat

2008-11-03T17:25:00.002-06:00

There are things that U.S. soldiers are allowed to talk about with the press and others they are not. One of the things they are not allowed to voice is their political opinion, especially if it goes against their commander in chief. In the privacy of latrine stalls on military bases in Iraq and Kuwait, however, it is quite a different story. I did not see any pro-Bush writings in any of the hundreds of latrines I photographed.

- Zoriah

Eight years ago I voted in my first Presidential election. At the time, I was a supporter of Alan Keyes, who now has the distinction of having lost a carpetbagging bid for a seat in the US Senate to the current Democratic candidate for President.

Six years ago I was preparing for boot camp at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, fully believing that I was going to serve my country honorably in the war against global terrorism.

Four years ago I was freshly home from a tour of duty in Al-Anbar Province, Iraq. My tour impressed upon me the incompetence and utter unaccountability of the senior civilian administrators in the Departments of Defense and State, as well as the President and Vice President of the United States. I read piles of books over that deployment, but the one that I found most compelling was Pat Buchanan's Where the Right Went Wrong. When I returned home on leave that October, I went to the county courthouse and filled out an absentee ballot for the upcoming election. Displeased with the Democratic nominee and absolutely unwilling to support my Commander-in-Chief, I left the top two slots on my ballot blank.

Three years ago I was engaged in a field exercise and sitting outside my battalion's Command Operations Center. I just learned that I had been passed over for very well-deserved promotion due to a contentious relationship with my ignorant boss, and I clung bitterly to my M-16 and religion. At that time, my religion was Chalmers Johnson's The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, which the Battalion XO (Executive Officer) saw me reading and all but ordered me to throw away. I eventually got the promotion, but my odium toward the professional military lingers today.

One year ago, after years of enduring philosophical doldrums, I finally found my political voice after reading the writings of a man who lived the majority of his life under a totalitarian regime. His philosophy challenged me to think about many of my long-standing beliefs in new ways and freed me of the chains of any political ideology. I began to look forward to tomorrow.

And now one night remains between the world of the last eight years and the world of tomorrow. Tonight marks the last day of President Bush's relevance to the greater share of American political discourse, and a new voice will be heard, calling us to unite and follow him.

Contrary to what I wrote a few months ago about a man who I have grown to deeply distrust and despise, I choose not to heed that voice if it belongs to John McCain, nor would I suggest listening to it to anyone who loves American democracy, troubled as it often can be.

If that voice belongs to Barack Obama, I promise to all the readers of this blog, particularly those more liberal than I, that though we may disagree deeply on policies in the coming months and years, we will always have this night to remember, the night that George Bush stopped being the legitimate leader of America and merely the legal one.

I'll see you here tomorrow as we finish one of the darkest chapters of American history and begin (hopefully) a brighter one.

No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to vote!

2008-11-03T08:22:00.005-06:00

For the last 20 months or so, the laser has been creeping up the table, ever so slowly. We've been watching in terror as it creeps up on us, knowing that we've spent the last eight years strapped helpless to the slab by a greedy lunatic, and that if we don't say exactly the right thing (Operation Grand Slam) as a nation, we're going to get that laser right where we don't want it. Tomorrow, we get to speak up, and as confident as we are that we're going to say the right thing, it's still no more comfortable watching our pants get singed.

Three recurring thoughts:
1) Let's get this over with.
2) There's virtually no chance Obama is going to lose. Why am I still so nervous?
3) What am I going to do on Thursday? Start getting nutty about cabinet appointments? Start counting the days until the party caucuses and committee assignments?

Happy Halloween, America

2008-10-31T17:33:00.003-05:00

Overheard in the bathroom, I kid you not:
Gentleman A: Are you going trick-or-treating?
Gentleman B: Yeah, and i've got a real scary costume.
Gentleman A: Oh? What are you going as?
Gentleman B: A banker.

Liz Edwards and Grant Park

2008-10-30T12:23:00.003-05:00

So, first things first. Every one of you, should you have an hour or so of time to be horrified, dazzled, and educated, should watch this discussion on health care between Elizabeth Edwards and Ezra Klein. Both of them are incredibly knowledgeable about the topic, and you will learn a lot. For example, the current foreclosure crisis? Half of the foreclosures happening in recent years are because of uncontrollable medical costs (also sourced here and here).

Also, I'm pleased to announce that on election night of this year, I'll be in Grant Park with several hundred thousand other people for the Obama rally* and hopefully victory celebration. I initially wasn't sure about this because A) Chicago gets cold this time of year and B) I've spent the last 14 months keeping an election blog, I feel like I should be there on election night. But the opportunity to be there with the Obamas on a night like that was too good to pass up. So Wyl's going to take over election night blogging (although I may ask him to kick in some updates that I may or may not be able to send from my web-enabled mobile device) and hopefully we'll all have good reason to call in sick on Wednesday morning.

*How could I turn down an opportunity to attend a Democratic event in Grant Park in an election year (ending in 8) that will be kept safe and orderly by Mayor Richard Daley's finest police officers? I'm sure nothing will go wrong. As Hizzoner (the original) said, "The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve disorder."

2008-10-29T08:23:00.001-05:00

Snarky though it may be, I really love this ad.

The wink is really what does it.

Syria

2008-10-27T17:29:00.003-05:00

I can remember back in 2003, during the actual invasion part of the Iraq war, wondering how long it would be until we went to war with Syria. I figured at the time that it would happen before the 2004 election, but it looks like it may be George W. Bush's parting gift to John McCain.

We can't bomb Pakistan to kill Osama bin Laden, but we will attack Syria to kill some other guy (not defending the other guy, I'm just sayin').

The Stevens Verdict

2008-10-27T16:49:00.003-05:00

Ted Stevens is officially corrupt. In other news, rain might get you wet.

John McCain's quest to rid the federal budget of porkbarrel spending has just taken a giant leap forward. Similarly, the American justice system has just taken a giant leap to defend its current incarnation and undo the PR damage done by the first OJ trial.

I suspect Stevens will never get the chance to learn that jail is more than just a "series of bars" (although, like the internet, it's not a truck) but it makes me feel better anyway just knowing he lost.

Who took all the mirrors out of the White House?

2008-10-27T11:27:00.002-05:00

Former Bush speech-writer David Frum has an interesting and unfortunately astute column in the Post this morning. He argues that the McCain campaign is not only losing the race for the White House, but that the way he is doing it is sabotaging the rest of the Republican Party.

McCain got the formula backwards: he campaigned during the center during the primaries, and then upon discovering that he had no party base, campaigned to the right during the general election and sacrificed all of those "swing" votes that any candidate needs to get elected. As such, McCain is not only leeching campaign money from congressional races, but also making the race that much harder for vulnerable Republicans in states and districts where the electorate is far more moderate. As such, he's setting the GOP up to lose more seats than they would if they had a better presidential candidate.

Frum then turns his argument to the defense of a divided government: keeping the Congress and the White House in the hands of opposing parties, for the sake of checks and balances. His proposed plea from the Republican Party to the voters of America reads as follows.

We're almost certainly looking at a Democratic White House. I can work with a Democratic president to help this state. But we need balance in Washington.
"The government now owns a big stake in the nation's banking system. Trillions of dollars are now under direct government control. It's not wise to put that money under one-party control. It's just too tempting. You need a second set of eyes on that cash. You need oversight and accountability. Otherwise, you're going to wake up two years from now and find out that a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House have been funneling a ton of that money to their friends and allies. It'll be a big scandal -- but it will be too late. The money will be gone. Divided government is the best precaution you can have."

Alas and alack, if only Frum and his ilk had had that same concern 8 years ago when they took control of all three branches of government, and pissed away $16 billion on an extraneous war to a company once run by the Vice President that doesn't seem to be paying taxes in this country.

Someone should please mention this to John McCain, who's incensed by how much American businesses have to pay in taxes.

Bleep the Press

2008-10-27T08:41:00.006-05:00

So, I was watching Meet the Press yesterday. Senator McCain was on, and as always, watching him talk for 20 minutes led to a whole lot of eye-rolling and me muttering "yeah, yeah, yeah" to myself, and one loud decoration of "What the fuck!" that scares the cat. Today's WTF moment:

"Well, look, I would be glad to review the Reagan record, but the Reagan record was certainly one that reined in spending."

In response to that, here are some graphs.

As you can see:
1) Raw debt skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.
2) Debt as a percentage of GDP skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.
3) The national budget deficit skyrocketed under Ronald Reagan.
4) Federal spending has been on a consistent, unfettered rise since 1970.

And thus we come to the inevitable conclusion that on at least (at least) one issue, John McCain is full of crap.

McCain's performance yesterday didn't do anything to contradict the claims that his behavior is "erratic." Brokaw came at him out of the gate with talk about his trailing poll numbers, which put him immediately on the defensive. He started talking about how he doesn't agree with the polls, but how if he did, he still has Zogby on his side saying that he's only three points down (counting on the fact that no one has noticed that throughout this election cycle, Zogby has consistently been the least accurate and a persistent outlier from every other polling service). After that, he devolved into nongrammatical, nonsensical sentences that started on one topic and ended on something not at all related, sputtering talking point buzzwords at random and trying to piece them together as well as he could.

So, you know, I'm sure we don't want to spend the morning arguing about polls that are accurate or inaccurate, but I will stand before the American people with my view that, that I think that we don't, we cannot fine small business people and their, you know, or their employ--small business people who have employees without health insurance, that he's going to fine them if they don't have, have the insurance policy that they want, that Senator Obama wants them to have.

On the economy, look, we just, we just figured it out with "Joe the Plumber." Americans just figured it out. He wants to spread the wealth around. And every time there's a poll, there's a different tax plan. There's a different tax plan for America. He's the guy that Senator Obama voted to--for a Democrat budget resolution with will impose taxes on individuals making $42,000 a year.

The last time a president of the United States that did that was a guy named Herbert Hoover, protectionism and raising taxes.

That's what--listen, even the flat tax people somewhat pay more. Even--you put into different, different categories of wealthier people paying, paying higher taxes into different brackets. I mean, and the, and these are different times, my friend. These are times of the biggest financial crisis we've faced in America.

So, so let me just tell you again, I also said, when I opposed the Bush tax cuts, said--that is left out of this equation, I said I've got to--we've got to get spending under control.

That's, that's what, that's what our fundamental belief--the reason why we have governments. In times of crisis, we go in and we try and help the people, especially in this situation where they're the, the victim of a drive-by shooting by excess, greed and corruption in Washington and Wall Street. And again, I and others said we have to have legislation to rein it in. Senator Obama didn't lift a finger.

Well, in simplest terms, if their neighbor next door throws the keys in the living room floor and leaves, then the value of their home is going to dramatically decrease as well.

Michigan, as I understand it, is second--one of two states in America that has a declining population because businesses are fleeing the state. So the worst thing we can do is increase taxes. And Senator Obama wants to do that, and now it's $200,000. I guess last week it was $250,000. It changes with ever--whatever the polling data tells him and his advisers.

Senator Obama wants to "spread the wealth around," "fairness." And that, that is the most liberal economic position that I've seen in the United States of America. Just a fact.

Her husband is a--works the third shift on a oil--in--facilities on the North Slope. He's a--they, they have a--she has executive experience and has given back money to the taxpayers.

Look, she [Gov. Palin] lives a frugal life. She and her family are not wealthy.

Powell

2008-10-20T09:48:00.002-05:00

In case you missed it, here's Colin Powell's extremely well-phrased and well-considered endorsement of Barack Obama.

2008-10-16T17:53:00.002-05:00

Oops. Turns out "Joe the Plumber" is related to Charles "Keating 5" Keating and owes money on back taxes.

The Final Debate - First Thoughts.

2008-10-16T08:56:00.003-05:00

Much to my surprise, I thought the debate last night was the best one yet. There were a couple of pretty lame questions, but in general I thought the discussion he provoked was vigorous and fairly worthwhile to listen to. Both candidates appeared a bit tired and were fumbling over words at times, but they each had moments of surprising clarity. Obama, in the end, can claim victory, if only because he didn't have to do a whole lot. He stuck reliably to a good format: spend the first half of his responses negating McCain's attacks, and spend the second half of the response offering his policy plans. McCain, as a result, was left perpetually on the offense, taking potshots at an opponent who was too calm and too well-prepared for his attacks to do any damage.

It's also worth mentioning that McCain's spastic grinning and irrepressible eye-rolls didn't do much to mask his contempt. Thanks to Anna for tipping me off that there's already been an animated gif made.

Conscience Round

2008-10-15T19:54:00.005-05:00

From the Wikipedia entry "Execution by firing squad":

In some cases, one member of the firing squad may be issued a weapon containing a blank cartridge instead of one with a bullet, without telling any of them to whom it has been given. This is believed to reduce flinching by individual members of the firing squad, making the execution process more reliable. It also allows each member of the firing squad a chance to believe afterward that he did not personally fire a fatal shot (for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as the "conscience round"). This reinforces the sense of diffusion of responsibility. While an experienced marksman can tell the difference between a blank and a live cartridge based on the recoil - the blank will have much lower recoil - there is a significant psychological incentive not to pay attention and, over time, to remember the recoil as soft.

Considering the likelihood that many of the undecided voters remaining these few short days before the election are older white Boomers or senior citizens, and that many of them might welcome any reason not to vote for Senator Obama which would excuse from their minds any spectre of racial bias, I am left wondering what form of conscience round McCain will offer them tonight.

This is just not cool.

2008-10-14T17:23:00.002-05:00

WHAT IN THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE.

The GOP has been going on about Barack Obama's connection to Bill Ayers, a former obnoxious hippie who is now a respected philanthropist and upstanding member of the community. They also love reiterating that his middle name is Hussein, in an attempt to pin him to deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

And now, we have news of William Timmons, who John McCain not only has a casual association with, but has asked to join his campaign as head of his presidential transition team (which oversees the process of turning his campaign into an actual presidency that flows smoothly from the previous one). Timmons (a lobbyist, who McCain professes not to consort with) was involved in an effort during the 1990's to ease economic sanctions on Iraq, on behalf of Saddam Hussein. The two men with whom he worked on this project were convicted of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign regime (not to mention a hostile one).

In what universe is this okay?

McCain professes to hate lobbyists, yet surrounds himself with them.
McCain is playing guilt by association by trying to pin Obama to Ayers and Hussein, one of whom has spent decades working to better the community and one of whom Obama has no legitimate ties to, but apparently McCain's people do.
If Iraq was as much of a threat as the GOP would have us believe, Timmons was in fact working actively in opposition to the national security of the United States of America.
We are currently involved in a war in Iraq, in many cases against the people Timmons was working for. How many people have died in Iraq in the last six years, and how many people have died in conflicts related to the Weather Underground in the last six years?

2008-10-07T22:37:00.001-05:00

Can we just vote now and get this the hell over with?

The Debate

2008-10-07T20:04:00.004-05:00

I'm in Washington DC tonight watching the debate with my co-author Anna and her gentleman friend Dan. Here are my thoughts, as we go.

9:05 -- This is Obama's answer to the first question of the last debate.

9:06 -- A minute later, now you answer the question about how you help the middle-class, which is your bread and butter issue. Except for the part about how to deal with it quickly.

9:07 -- McCain's plan for fixing the economic crisis quickly also isn't very quick. If we could stop buying fuel from other countries so easily, we would have done it a long time ago.

9:09 -- Anna offers us beer. Dan and I quickly accept.

9:10 -- Dan asks whether or not Obama brought any new talking points to the debate. Obama says "no." The only new thing he's said is that he'd put Warren Buffett in charge of the Treasury.

9:11 -- Anna asks me to point out that Brokaw is wearing a "Live Strong" bracelet. I note that he's also wearing a red tie.

9:12 -- McCain talks with pride about "suspending" his campaign. Laughter is stifled throughout the room.

9:13 -- McCain blames Obama for taking too much money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, without mentioning his own campaign manager, Rick Davis, who was still on Freddie's payroll through August.

9:17 -- McCain has faith that the economy can stop getting worse before it gets better. That is silly.

9:20 -- Obama is giving a DAMN fine answer to how he can be trusted with tax money, even though I'm pretty sure he will indeed be increasing spending, which he said here that he'd cut.

9:21 -- DAMMIT JOHN MCCAIN. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT BEING A REFORMER IN A BROKEN SYSTEM. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM AND YOU HAVE BEEN THE BROKEN SYSTEM FOR 25 YEARS.

9:22 -- Obama looks so serene while McCain is talking that I'm not sure whether it's funny or if it comes off as patronizing.

9:26 -- One woman in the back row started smiling so wide it hurt when Obama knew the price of gas in Nashville.

9:27 -- Can someone tell both Obama and McCain that the president doesn't have a line-item veto?

9:29 -- Can we talk about this spending freeze idea a little more? How bad of an idea it is to stop federal spending?

9:33 -- Obama is arguing the "let's be a good example for our constituents" strategy of corporate regulation.

9:37 -- Anna is yelling very much at Tom Brokaw about Obama not being able to rebut McCain on healthcare costs and tax policy.

9:39 -- Purple-shirt in the back row (who got excited about the gas price thing) has a SERIOUS crush on Obama. She's got "Dream Lover" by Mariah Carey playing in her head.

9:41 -- McCain is getting really condescending, not only to Obama but to the audience. He's discussing Social Security and Medicare reform like we're kindergarteners.

9:43 -- Can Tom brokaw stop throwing John McCain as many favors as he can? Jesus H.

9:43 -- Joe Lieberman isn't a democrat. He's the political equivalent of a louse living on John McCain's scrotum. Dealing with Lieberman isn't an example of being bipartisan.

9:46 -- Barack Obama is discussing the creation of the computer. Al Gore is sitting at home doing the Marge Simpson groan.

9:46 -- At long fucking last, Obama is going after McCain about being in Congress for so long and yet here we are.

9:47 -- The snark factor and the little passive aggressive barbs between Obama & McCain are getting pretty intense.

9:49 -- I wish McCain would stop referring to us as "my friends."

9:50 -- Obama just got a softball lobbed at him, right over the plate, and he's taking his sweet-ass time attacking it. His eyes should have lit up and he should have dove right in. Speed up. Get energetic. You have a good plan. Get excited!

9:52 -- We should be doing a shot every time either candidate says the word "fundamentally." Thankfully, I'm not playing that game tonight.

9:54 -- McCain went over the red light for jokes about hair plugs? Really?

9:55 -- Purple sweater has "Wind Beneath My Wings" in her head.

9:57 -- Obama is trying his damnedest to rebut McCain on his health care bullshit, but there isn't enough time left before the election to dig through what McCain says in 2 minutes.

10:00 -- Anna suggests that this election would be in the bag for Obama if McCain wet himself in a debate. I explain that I'm not going to blog about hypotheticals, but then I do anyway.

10:02 -- Obama is going after McCain on this experience/judgment thing. Good. Because McCain's judgment sucks, so it's obvious that his experience doesn't mean squat.

10:03 -- If McCain's shoulders were alright, I would suggest that Obama & McCain just box instead of debate.

10:08 -- "exacerbating our reputation?"

10:08 -- Purpleshirt looks like Gollum in a close-up.

10:10 -- Thank you thank you thank you for talking about stopping the drug trade out of Afghanistan.

10:11 -- John McCain's hero was Teddy Roosevelt ... the trustbuster? Right. Also Ronald Reagan.

10:13 -- Brokaw is a really shitty moderator.

10:14 -- Obama is going after McCain hard on this "speak softly" crap. THANK YOU.

10:17 -- Purpleshirt has "I Only Have Eyes for You" by the Flamingos in her head.

10:18 -- John McCain's war strategy depends on the feelings of the people whose country we've invaded? We're screwed.

10:19 -- McCain isn't going to have another Cold War... except for that part where he's going to keep accusing Putin of trying to rebuild the Soviet Union and challenge him on everything he does. Talk softly my entire ass.

10:22 -- Obama isn't speaking very confidently about this whole Russia thing, and he really needs to be.

10:26 -- McCain mentions again a "league of democracies" -- has no one ever told him about the UN?

10:32 -- I feel like McCain got the last word on a lot of things in this debate. That matters, and I take issue with Brokaw letting it happen.

10:36 -- Has David Gregory any said anything that had any substance? Ever?

The scorecard: McCain came across as a cranky, cranky man, but Obama didn't fight back nearly as hard as he could have. Unfortunately, Brokaw really stifled the debate. I honestly can't say who I think won, because I felt like the discussion was too constrained. Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan, though, seem to agree that Obama won. Taegan Goddard too.

Killing time again

2008-10-06T15:08:00.002-05:00

As I wait for my lovely hostess here in DC to get off of work for the day, I'm sadly stuck cooling my heels in a Starbucks on 11th with a laptop that I call Mingus. I've been on the ground in the capitol for less than an hour and I'm already taking note of the weird place I'm in.

1) The public transit trains are carpeted. This just strikes me as an excruciatingly bad idea. Any public transportation vessel should be fully ready to be hosed down because the need will arise.

2) The train stations were apparently designed by the set designers who put Logan's Run together.

3) As I was looking for a place to hang out, preferably with wifi, I started noticing a lot of Abraham Lincoln themed gift shops. Why? I just happened to be accidentally wandering by Ford's Theater. Chicago's a place where people get excited when they see that guy from Wilco in the street, and they only line up to take photos of The Bean. Haplessly ending up at the place where the man who ended slavery in America was shot is on a different scale.

4) I'm in a Starbucks, and I'm the only one in it with a Macbook. I didn't think Starbucks was allowed to open in the morning unless they had a customer ready with a Macbook.

In other news!

I have learned today, much to my chagrin, that the world will not be ending this year. Much to the surprise of no one but myself, the Chicago "best record in baseball" Cubs have been eliminated from the playoffs in the first round and will not be winning the World Series for the first time in a century.
Harold Meyerson has an interesting column today in the Post about presidential guilt-by-association and suggests that perhaps John McCain's current association with former Senator Phil Gramm might be a lot more nationally toxic than Obama's former association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.
Meyerson also notes that McCain has done little to stifle rumors that Gramm would be a strong runner in a McCain presidency for Secretary of the Treasury. That alone should be cause for Obama to take the election in a landslide, but I don't think they're reading this in Texas. If I'm wrong... hi, Texas!
Afghan President Karzai is now facing accusations that his brother is involved with the heroin trade. I'm actually surprised that we haven't heard more about the opium business since the invasion in 2001. It spiked downward at the time, but it's up to record highs again. It wouldn't be surprising, since opium represents 11.4% of Afghanistan's GDP ($4 billion a year, out of a $35 billion GDP), but it wouldn't really be anyone's favorite thing to find out that the brother of the man who the U.S. installed as the democratically elected president is involved in the business that's fueling the Taliban insurgents that are currently killing underfunded, understaffed, and underequipped American troops.
I'm delighted to say that there's a chance that Saxby Chambliss might be losing his seat this year. Most of you will remember Chambliss (R-GA) as the morally bankrupt dickweed with the gall to campaign, six years ago, by suggesting that his opponent, Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam, was a terrorist sympathizer. Chambliss' campaign was perhaps the most grotesque example of electoral politics in the era of Karl Rove, and I don't think anyone reading this will be sad to see him go.

That's all for now. How did I ever deal with boredom before blogging?

2008-10-06T12:34:00.002-05:00

Killing time at LaGuardia. The electoral map on pollster.com is up to 260 for Obama, with Minnesota going blue.

The Map

2008-10-03T08:23:00.005-05:00

It's worth noting, a scant 32 days before the election, the electoral vote map on pollster.com.

If John McCain keeps the map exactly as it is right now, Obama only has to take Ohio or Florida and can sacrifice all other red states and win the election. As you can see, Obama is up by just a hair in Ohio, and a point and a half in Florida. Please take note that this is a poll of polls: they're averaging several different polls to come up with a composite. But as that stands, here's the states on those toss-up states:
Nevada (5 votes): M - 47.7, O - 47.1
Colorado (9 votes): O - 48.9, M - 46.0
Minnesota (10 votes): O - 48.8, M - 45.2
Missouri (11 votes): M - 49.3, O - 45.8
Indiana (11 votes): M - 47.2, O - 45.4
Ohio (20 votes): O - 47.1, M 46.9
Virginia (13 votes): O - 47.8, M - 47.5
North Carolina (15 votes): M - 47.3, O 46.4
Florida (27 votes): O - 47.9, M 46.4
New Hampshire (4 votes): O - 46.2, M - 46.2

If none of these numbers change at all and are (by some weird coincidence) 100% accurate, Barack Obama wins 329-205, with New Hampshire's 4 still upstairs getting dressed and waiting until 2012 when someone will notice them again.

Not that anyone expects this post to be updated all that regularly anymore, I'm excited to say that next week will probably not see much on this page. In the next 8 days, 4 of my best friends* (one of which is a co-author of this page) will be getting married, and I'll be spending the gap between weddings in DC crashing on Anna's couch, so there will likely be some obscenity-filled debate coverage from one or both of us, but not much else. Expect updates when I get back, especially if I happen to run into Chris Dodd at the bar (which I'm not expecting, but you never know: the man has a rep for knowing how to party).

*[Apparently this requires clarification: there are two weddings in the next week, and I'm very close with the bride and the groom in both parties. This is not a 4-person wedding.]

The Vice Presidential Debate

2008-10-02T21:59:00.000-05:00

There were a few key moments in tonight's debate that I want to mention that really caught my eye. Any quotations are from the CNN transcript, which can be found here.

Ifill asked Palin about her statement that she wants to see an exit strategy to get her son out of Iraq. Palin responded with a convoluted, rambling answer basically saying that she and McCain do have a plan, and what Bush is doing now is working. Biden called her out and said "Gwen, with all due respect, I didn't hear a plan." He then spent two paragraphs concisely and directly laying out the Democratic plan for "responsible withdrawal" from Iraq and why it's superior to the McCain plan. When Palin was asked to respond, she stared blankly into the distance for several seconds, before coming up with this fabulously original response: "Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq and that is not what our troops need to hear today, that's for sure." I could often see the charm in her vaunted "folksy" demeanor at times tonight, but at that moment, I could have sworn that she was about to stick out her tongue at him. She was grasping at straws, and she spent half her response trying to regain her footing (which she did). Biden could have easily been perceived as repetitive, and he could definitely have bored a lot of viewers with his actual knowledge of policy and awareness of specifics of voting histories, but he was never caught off-guard like that.
Palin backed herself into a corner with her pseudo-centrist conciliatory bullshit overtures to the Log Cabin Republicans. She started talking about how she didn't support gay marriage, but she didn't have anything against gays. Biden came back with a brilliant response about how he didn't favor redefining the traditional heterosexual concept of marriage, but made it clear that the definition of "marriage" isn't something that the government has any interest in: what the government has a say in is the civil rights granted to citizens regardless of sexual orientation. He knew that he was saying exactly what he had to say, and went into it completely confident, which led to a particularly funny exchange and yet another horrified look on Sarah Palin's face when she was forced to admit that she had just agreed with Joe Biden on gay rights.

IFILL: Let's try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?
BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.
The bottom line though is, and I'm glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that's the case, we really don't have a difference.
IFILL: Is that what your said?
PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.
IFILL: Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let's move to foreign policy.
Palin's third moose-in-headlights moment came when she talked about the wonder of using vice presidential power to its utmost, and then had that horrible realization shortly afterwards when she realized that she had just put herself in the same camp with Dick "Keyser Söze" Cheney, who everyone hates, and put the apple on her head for Biden to start shooting at.

PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.
IFILL: Vice President Cheney's interpretation of the vice presidency?
BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.
And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit.
The only authority the vice president has from the legislative standpoint is the vote, only when there is a tie vote. He has no authority relative to the Congress. The idea he's part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous.

Other thoughts:

Barack Obama's campaign made a huge mistake in letting Gwen Ifill moderate this debate. They had to have known she was writing a book about Obama, and that as a result, the conservative media would jump all over any perceived imbalance. And there were some issues where Biden and Palin were going back and forth, and Biden just happened to have the last word on the matter and it sounded like the book slamming shut on the issue. Ifill cut Palin off when she was about to (inexplicably) start talking about McCain's increased regulation on campaign finance reform (which he has oh-so-recently tried to undo for his own benefit), she let Biden finish the health care discussion on his "bridge to nowhere" joke, the aforementioned Keyser Söze article of the constitution, and (my favorite) going on a rampage against this common misconception that John McCain is a maverick. These things will not go unnoticed.
From Anna: "More or less a draw, if only because she refused to debate on conventional terms. He could've hit her a lot harder... not literally.
From Wyl: "I'll never be able to watch Fargo again. She was more folksy than The News from Lake Wobegon, but she comes off twice as fake... Biden handled himself as well as he could, considering he was debating with both hands - and more importantly, his mouth - tied behind his back. Sexism is a touchy subject, but I think people have to take a step back after tonight and say we need to engage that subject in a direct way, because tonight it was pretty clear Biden had to play it safe lest it seem he was picking on her. And that's just as unfair to him as it would be to a woman if he did portray her as weak because of her genitalia."

In Which Every Thought Goes to the Mouth, Indeed

2008-09-30T15:05:00.003-05:00

Via Taegan Goddard:

On the campaign trail, Gov. Sarah Palin jokes about listening to Sen. Joe Biden's speeches since she was in second grade. In a just-released CBS News segment, Katie Couric asks if that isn't an odd thing to say given her own running mate's age.

Said Palin: "Oh no, it's nothing negative at all. He's got a lot of experience and just stating the fact there, that we've been hearing his speeches for all these years. So he's got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he's got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years."

Sounds like somebody should be consulting Ozzie Guillén's thought process map, as illuminated by Carl Skanberg:

Washington, District of CYOA*

2008-09-29T17:30:00.000-05:00

The always-excellent Nate Silver highlights a very important piece of the bailout's defeat in the House:

Among 38 incumbent congressmen in races rated as "toss-up" or "lean" by Swing State Project, just 8 voted for the bailout as opposed to 30 against: a batting average of .211.

By comparison, the vote among congressmen who don't have as much to worry about was essentially even: 197 for, 198 against.

Now, I'm not particularly enamoured of this bailout proposal. If we're going to spend $700 billion of our own , I'd much rather we invest it in the American people than blow it on the irresponsible American banking industry.

That said, any Congressman who allowed their vote on this bill to be dictated by their poll numbers deserves to be dragged out into the streets and pilloried by their constituency.

God forbid our legislators ever stick their necks out, make a tough vote, and join their constituents in the unemployment lines because they wouldn't abandon their convictions.

* "Cover Your Own Ass" for the uninitiated

Eventually I'll post with words, not just pictures, but until then...

2008-09-28T20:08:00.001-05:00

Thank you, BoingBoing!

Round 1: Fight! (Kinda)

2008-09-27T00:55:00.000-05:00

I'm not going to go through the debate with a fine-toothed comb, playing "spot the lies" (I do have other things to do this weekend), but I will address a few things:

I found myself wondering - McCain says he saw the current economic crisis coming; as the two-time chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, did he ever hold any hearings based on his alleged concerns?

I've been around animals long enough to know that submissive ones avoid eye contact while others assert dominance by engaging it. McCain was shrinking away from Obama's gaze all night.

The exchange on earmarks left me wanting more. McCain kept on yammering on about Obama's requests for Illinois (something like $900 million?). Why Obama did not bringing up Palin's addiction to earmarks is beyond me. He could have easily said "John, if you're so concerned about earmarks, why did you pick a running mate who governs a state which had the highest per capita ratio of earmarked dollars this year - some $550 million dollars for a state of only 680,000 people? And to continue, John, why did you pick a running mate who submitted $127 million worth in earmarked requests from 2002-2003 as the mayor of a town of 8,000?" Those two sentences would have buried the issue and inflicted some serious damage on McCain/Palin, but Obama didn't even throw the punch.

When McCain was talking about strategic military strikes against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, he critiqued Obama's support of said strikes by saying something to the effect of "If you're going to point a gun at someone, you'd better be prepared to pull the trigger." All Obama had to say in response was "Really, John? Let me quote you directly: 'Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.' Are you going to pull that trigger?" Thank God, Obama did bring it up, but he didn't emphasize it or leverage it. If you can show your opponent to be a hothead while appearing calm and collected while under attack, you're doing well. Obama didn't capitalize the way he should have here; this would have been another potential knock-out blow.

Using the comments of McCain's pal Henry Kissinger regarding direct talks - without preconditions - was brilliant.

When McCain was talking about Georgia, Obama should have brought up the fact that McCain's top foreign policy advisor was a lobbyist for Georgia, which doesn't exactly provide McCain with an unmolested view of the situation.

As a student of Russian and Eastern European history, I've got to say that McCain's belligerent posture toward Russia (and his "I see three letters in Putin's eyes: K-G-B" line) are extremely troubling. Make no mistake, I'm not advocating the current brand of Russian foreign policy, but the United States need a President who is less bellicose and more nuanced. That President is not John McCain.

Finally, McCain's "I love the veterans" soliloquy went unanswered by Obama, which really upset me. If McCain is the guy who is going to care for us after we come back from war, we should all just make appointments with Jack Kevorkian and get it over with.

Overall, it was a mixed night, though I think Obama "won" the debate in the eyes of most potential viewers. My disappointment with Obama tonight isn't because McCain got the better of him in the debate, but because Obama didn't send McCain home reeling and bloody from an encounter with Facts and Truth.

But in all sincerity...

2008-09-26T22:45:00.002-05:00

What's the consensus? A draw? A win? A loss?

I honestly expected more assertiveness from Obama, though McCain was quite predictably ornery.

Right now I'll leave the incisive analysis of Debate I to Tim and Wyl, but let me just say...

2008-09-26T22:40:00.004-05:00

...at least I have my wardrobe for November 4 officially confirmed.

The Tale of Sen. McCain

2008-09-24T18:18:00.000-05:00

Brave Sir Robin ran away,
Bravely ran away, away.
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly, he chickened out. Bravely taking to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin.

- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

Since brave Sen. McCain is ducking the debates and running away from the public (something Eric Rauchway points out was not done by Lincoln in 1864, Hoover or FDR in 1932, FDR or Willkie in 1940, or FDR or Dewey in 1944), why not shout after him a good question that no one is asking:

"Senator McCain, what does your buddy Phil Gramm have to say about all your Wall Street pals that are currently whining so loudly?"

McCain's Suspension Ploy

2008-09-24T14:46:00.003-05:00

John McCain has just announced that he'll be suspending his campaign in order to help deal with the economic crisis.

Why this is respectable:
It's pretty much universally agreed upon right now that the economy is in rough shape. The debate is over how to deal with it. One of the most obnoxious things to me about watching high level political campaigns is listening to congressmen, senators, and other high ranking elected officials talking about what they would do, or what should be done. These are people that are fully capable of moving the process forward to get those Woulds and Shoulds done, but they're too busy talking and not acting. I'm all about officials running their campaigns by putting on display that they're doing their jobs and doing it damn well.

Why this is clever political posturing:
McCain's poll numbers have been plummeting this week (even a Fox News poll has him down 6 points nationally, ABC has him up 9). Most people seem to agree that Obama is better equipped to cope with the economy, and have decided that he's not an elitist, but rather that his years helping poor people that had lost their jobs made him more aware of the plight of people who are afraid of losing their jobs and becoming poor. John McCain himself has announced that he's not a very good student of the economy, and he's been digging his own free market grave since he first came to Congress as part of the Reagan Revolution. Senator Six-Homes McCain is making a mad dash to make himself seem more sympathetic to the people his top economic advisor refers to as a "nation of whiners." Not only does it make McCain seem like he's rushing to the aid of the American people, and if Obama doesn't go along with it, Obama looks like he doesn't care. So either McCain's determining the staging of the race and looking more leaderly in the process or making Obama look aloof.

Why this is just a big load of crap:
This would all be very noble, except John McCain has no intention of being any less visible to the voting populace. He's not going to be "suspending" his campaign, he's just going to be campaigning from Washington in between meetings, and from the Senate floor. McCain is pushing this as a way to put himself a rung above electoral politics (the cornerstone of our democracy, by the way, and not something to consider yourself "above") as a man who cares nothing for himself and only about you, but he's only doing this to propagate an image so he can bring his poll numbers back up and get elected. If he weren't running for President, John McCain would be off talking to some B-list newspaper explaining yet again that he doesn't know much about the economy and staying on the fringes of the debate until another war came up that he could support.

To be fair, it's very well executed bullshit, but it is bullshit nonetheless.

"Substituting Vehemence for Coherence"

2008-09-23T11:12:00.002-05:00

It's not like me to enjoy a George Will column. I generally find him stuck up and priggish. However, today's column is one of his occasional exceptions. Some excerpts:

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

[...]

By a Gresham's Law of political discourse, McCain's Queen of Hearts intervention in the opaque financial crisis overshadowed a solid conservative complaint from the Republican Study Committee, chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the RSC decried the improvised torrent of bailouts as a "dangerous and unmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions." This letter, listing just $650 billion of the perhaps more than $1 trillion in new federal exposures to risk, was sent while McCain's campaign, characteristically substituting vehemence for coherence, was airing an ad warning that Obama favors "massive government, billions in spending increases."

[...]

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

And there you have it. George F. Will has given a backhanded, extremely reticent, lesser-of-two-evils endorsement of Barack Obama over John McCain.

Also, for the record, I personally think "Substituting Vehemence for Coherence" should be McCain's campaign slogan. Thanks George!

Bridging the Chasm

2008-09-19T16:05:00.001-05:00

The other day I was reading this Consumerist post on the 10 largest Chapter 11 bankruptcies in US history. Most of us are old enough to remember when United Airlines bit the bullet in late 2002. United held pre-Ch. 11 assets of $25.2 billion, which ranks as the tenth largest bankruptcy.

I remember the talk when Texaco became insolvent in 1987 (my great uncle owns a service station which formerly sold Texaco gas). Texaco's assets at the time of receivership amounted to $35.9 billion, which is bad enough for 5th on the all-time list.

Baseball fans in particular remember when Enron went bust because of the scandal surrounding the naming rights deal the company had signed with the Houston Astros. Enron's pre-bankruptcy assets were valued at $63.4 billion in 2001. That places Enron a distant third.

Remember WorldCom (aka MCI WorldCom), the long-distance carrier and rival of AT&T which tried to merge with Sprint in 1999 until the Department of Justice and the EU got antsy? Three years later WorldCom went down to the tune of $103.9 billion, the largest bankruptcy filing ever at the time. Today, WorldCom is merely second...

...to Lehman Brothers. Prior to this Monday, Lehman's assets amounted to $639 billion, outstripping the previous bankruptcy record by $535.1 billion. This is a massive number that's incredibly hard to contextualize, but thanks to the information provided by Condé Nast Portfolio, I think I've managed to accord it proper scale.

Ford Motor Company's total assets, including global operations in Europe, Australia, and Latin America amount to $178.82 billion as of August. Entities owned by Ford include Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mazda, Volvo, Motorcraft (parts and service), Ford of Europe, Ford of Australia, the Ford Motor Credit Company (financing), and manufacturing facilities throughout Latin America and Africa.

General Motors is the maker of Chevrolet, Pontiac, Saturn, Buick, Hummer, Saab, Cadillac, Holden (Australia), Opel (Germany), Vauxhaul (UK), Daewoo (South Korea), Delphi Electronics, and 49% of GMAC Financial. GM's total assets, including operations in Europe, Australia, South Korea, and China, amount to $65.92 billion, also as of August.

Chrysler's assets are a bit harder to ascertain. The company's divisions include Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Mopar (Chrysler's parts and service arm), ENVI (hybrid vehicle development), and Chrysler Financial, and previously was part of the now-defunct DiamlerChrysler consortium. Now a private company, with 80.1% owned by Cerebus Capital Management, 19.9% owned by former partner Daimler AG (think Mercedes-Benz, plus a ton of truck companies like Freightliner and Sterling and a bank), I couldn't find any data on the Condé Nast site. An estimation is possible, though. In 2007, Cerebus paid $7.4 billion for the privilage of owning Chrysler, this despite the later's $18 billion in liabilities. If you believe assets minus liabilities equals a sales price, then Chrysler's assets would be in the range of $25 billion.

Lehman Brothers' $639 billion in pre-bankruptcy assets outstrips the combined assets of Ford, GM, and Chrysler ($269.74 billion) by $369.26 billion. So, since we're still not even halfway across the abyss, let's make a few more additions.

Toyota Motor Corporation's operations encompass the Toyota Group (Scion, Toyota, and Lexus), Toyota Financial Services, and 521 other subsidiaries, including a majority stake in Daihatsu, nearly 9% of Fuji Heavy Industries (makers of Subaru as well as ventures in aerospace and eco tech). According to the Fortune Global 500, Toyota is the 6th largest corporation in the world. The total assets for Toyota in August of 2008 amounted to $120.86 billion.

Honda Motor Company is another multinational engineering and manufacturing concern. Honda manufactures cars (Honda and Acrua), trucks, motorcycles, scooters, robots, jets, jet engines, ATVs, watercraft, generators, marine engines, lawn mowers, and aeronautical equipment. As of August the company's total assets amounted to $48.47 billion.

Combine Toyota and Honda with Ford, GM, and Chrysler and the Lehman Brothers Canyon shrinks to only $199.93 billion.

Apple, Incorporated needs no introduction. The company's assets amounted to $28 billion in August. Only $171.93 billion to go!

Likewise, Microsoft Corporation is familiar to everyone. In August the company was valued at $43.24 billion. Lehman Brothers' lead is shrinking - merely $128.69 billion left!

Google, Incorporated adds another $16.32 billion in assets to the pile. Down to a mere $112.37 billion loss!

Dell, Incorporated pulls off another $21.78 billion from Lehman's Ravine, now $90.59 billion.

The Boeing Company eliminates $25.94 billion more. Lehman's Gulch has shrunk to $64.65 billion.

Hey, what it Bill Gates had a really bad day at the track? His $57 billion fortune gone, the Lehman Gap narrows to $7.65 million.

Let's say that Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp empire goes down, taking with it HarperCollins Publishers, Dow Jones & Company, the Consumer Media Group (including The Wall Street Journal), all of FOX media entities, and hundreds more newspapers, magazines, etc. That's another $6.8 billion gone. Now there's only $850,000,000 left to account for.

California's Governator has an estimated worth of about $800 million, something I found rather surprising (more than Mitt Romney? Really?).

And the last $50 million? That's about what Rudy Giuliani spent to win a single delegate in the Republican primary (the Times' headline is somehow wrong).

Finally!

Ready for the bloodletting? To equal Lehman Brothers' pre-bankruptcy assets, the following companies and individuals would have to lose all value:

Ford Motor Company
General Motors
Chrysler, LLC
Toyota Motor Company
Honda Motor Company
Apple, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
Google, Inc.
Dell, Inc.
Boeing
Bill Gates
Rupert Murdoch
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rudy '08

That's how big Lehman Brothers was. Was. Now it's not worth a Roosevelt dime. Finita la commedia.

And now we know that Bernanke and Paulson told Congressional leaders that up to $1 trillion will be needed to prevent a second Great Depression.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you're scared shitless about Lehman Brothers' failing, you have every right to be. If you aren't scared, you should be.

Who watches the watchmen?

2008-09-17T14:18:00.004-05:00

So, all week, the major financial collapses have been all over the headlines, and I've been silent on it, because high-falootin' finance and money games are well beyond my expertise. So, I did what I always do in cases like this: I asked someone I know who's smarter than me. In this case, my friend Nick, who follows finance closer than anyone I know and has more expertise to assess it. And in order to really communicate how much Nick just scared the hell out of me, I'm just going to post everything he just wrote to me.

Obviously, there's a lot of subjectivity when it comes to economic prediction, but a lot of this makes sense to me. If you have any conflicting or supporting information and ideas, I'd love to hear them.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Q: On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is "minor fluctuation" and 10 is "start looking for refrigerator boxes to sleep in," how bad is this crisis?

A: As far as our lifetimes are concerned? 9.5.

Q: Can you give me a concise, idiot-proof explanation of how we got into this mess? I have a decent idea that it involves mortgage companies giving loans to people who couldn't really afford them(sub-prime rates, 100% financing, etc.), and then that somehow fed back to investment banking and insurance.

A: This sub-prime mortgage mess has been building for a couple of decades and the largest financial bubble in HISTORY is popping. There are three issues you should know about.

1.) At the heart of the issue is poor lending practices to people that cannot afford mortgages. Investments that are risky typically cost more, preventing people from investing too heavily. Banks took these bad mortgages, wrapped them up into securities (think stocks), and sold off the different layers at a non-risky price. They were able to do this because rating agencies (watchdogs that give ratings based on the risk of an asset) gave really risky investments very good ratings. This allowed banks to trade and sell these assets at prices that soon ballooned and created this bubble.

2.) Another problem is lack of oversight from federal regulators. When Enron collapsed the government created stricter standards on accounting through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation preventing abuse from CEOs. The banking industry has a HUGE lobby that has the sole purpose of deregulating the industry so they can get away with outright fraud. If you've heard of pyramid schemes, this is the mother of all pyramid schemes. Just an FYI, Obama has received $10m in campaign contributions from Wall Street and McCain accepted $7 million.

3.) Lastly, these banks were gambling with our money KNOWING the government would bail them out. If they thought for one instance they couldn't recoup their losses, this wouldn't be happening now. Banks lent out billions of dollars on these risky investments without the ability to cover their bets. They were somewhat cautious, however, taking out insurance from AIG…but who insures the insurer?

Q: The federal government has now taken control of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG. What exactly are they going to do to make these companies stay viable that the private sector couldn't do (other than prop them up with taxpayer dollars until they can stand on their own)?

A: The last major financial crisis involving financial institutions was the Savings and Loan scandals in the 80's and 90's. The same thing happened with S&L institutions making outrageously risky bets by lending money to unviable firms and people. Do you see any S&L companies now? Not really, because most of them tanked (WaMu is one current example, but it will soon tank as well). 747 S&L institutions fell costing a total of around $160 billion, most of which was paid by the US government (aka US people). As it stands the current fallout from this crisis is $900 billion and still counting.

When the government lends a helping hand to these institutions its first task is to keep them afloat by pursuing precisely the same policies that caused the crisis in the first place. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchased these toxic mortgage securities from failing institutions and went bust as a result. What policies has the US government put in place so far? They will continue normal functioning until the end of 2009, and then consider changing course afterwards. Same with AIG. A major concern is that these companies and the government don't even know what the problem is let alone how to fix it. So they put a temporary band-aid on a huge structural issue that cannot be fixed by money. The only way to fix these companies is to let the house of cards fall.

Q: In addition to the aforementioned 3, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch have died or been absorbed by someone else in very recent memory. Washington Mutual is on the rocks and the feds are trying to find a buyer before it crashes entirely. We've got anti-trust laws for a reason, but it's looking like competition in the banking and financial services sector is evaporating because of some very, very bad investments over the last decade. The market was already dominated by a few very powerful firms: what happens when that number gets dramatically reduced?

A: The Daily Show last night had a funny skit showing one of the cast in front of a sign "Bank of America and Merrill Lynch." As the skit continued, the sign said, "Bed, Bank of America, and Beyond." Monopolies should be a huge concern to all Americans. When someone is in power, they are able to take advantage of the system at the expense of customers. Competition prevents many of these abuses by giving people a choice to pick banks that won't screw them over. I believe the larger more sturdy banks like Bank of America and Barclays will come out of this with some key purchases making them ENORMOUS institutions. B of A has already purchased LaSalle Bank, Countrywide, and now Merrill Lynch. Unfortunately for them, the credit crisis is still in full swing and the company may have buyer's regret if the asset values of the acquired companies continue to fall. As mentioned earlier, no one truly knows the full extent of the problem and this makes it difficult to put a dollar value on affected companies. Additionally, new regulations will surely cripple the flexibility of operations. Finally, a global recession is about to ensue and banks can't make money when no one wants to borrow money. Growth through acquisition may be a double-edged sword and only time will tell.

The government is also purchasing companies so you have to wonder what's worse, a socialized or monopolized economy?

Q: Who's next?

A: The fallout is just beginning and you'll see effects on the real economy soon enough. First, regional banks will start closing as people borrow less money. They operate on smaller margins than these behemoths and are more susceptible to fluctuations. Second, the auto industry has been asking for bailouts and will likely not receive anything as the core of our economy (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate or FIRE compose 30% of our economy) is shutting down. Any other company that has big ticket and luxury items such as cars, consumer electronics, appliances, etc. will surely feel the effects as consumers buckle down and purchase only necessities. Starbucks and retail operators are closing down stores and will continue until the slump abates. As houses go into foreclosure, property taxes will decrease and local government services will be hurt as a result. The airline industry will have less business and personal travelers and the local tourism industries may see a boost.

From an international perspective, countries that have invested heavily in the US or have exported large amounts to our consumer culture will be hurt dramatically. China's sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, is mostly composed of US dollars. They have been inflating the value of the American dollar through their sale of cheap goods for a decade. Not only will their investment in US dollars decrease in value, their export-based economy will suffer accordingly. The US is the largest economy in the world so the ripples will be far-reaching. Already international markets are greatly affected by this credit crisis.

Q: What's going to be the effect of these billions of dollars of bail-outs on the federal deficit, and will it have any appreciable effects on the economy from that end?

A: The bailouts are merely band aids on a mortal wound. The million dollar question is what will happen to the value of our money? Sadly there are both inflationary and deflationary concerns and a coin toss can tell you how it will end up. Inflationary concerns are based on the assumption that the US government will continue to bail out institutions or incur large costs from the current bailouts. To cover expenses, the US can either borrow or print more money. Both will lead to the devaluing of the dollar and cause prices to increase. Oppositely, as consumers and business spend and borrow less, the velocity of money will decrease allowing fewer dollars to circulate in our economy. Fewer dollars increases the value of dollars outstanding and your current savings should be fine (given that you still have a job, and the bank that holds your money doesn't collapse).

To combat inflation, you should invest in gold and silver and other commodities that consistently hold their value. Dollars are paper and are inherently worthless except by popular misconception (fiat money). I have put a little money into gold and silver just in case. If there's deflation, make sure to kiss your boss' ass now so that you retain your job through bad times.

Q: Is there anything I didn't ask that you feel it's necessary to comment on?

A: This is fundamentally an issue of class and neo-liberal capitalism. If our economy were purely capitalistic things might be different. However, the current system provides a reinforcing mechanism for the wealthy and elite through various transfers of wealth. Big business and their lobbyists retain control over our elected leaders pushing through policies that benefit them at the cost of the average American. Wall Street, the Military-industrial complex, and the Healthcare Industry have created an economic system that transfers a majority of people's earnings into a few pockets. Indeed inflation itself is caused by the careless borrowing of our government to fight wars overseas and creates an indirect tax in the form of less bang for your buck. The Federal Reserve is a private company (really a consortium of privately held banks) that creates our money and enacts policies to hurt the average American. Alan Greenspan (former Fed Chair) was a huge supporter of adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) that were a partial cause of the current credit crisis. John McCain's former financial advisor Phil Gramm pushed through legislation that allowed banks to pursue these risky investments. Our credit card companies and educational institutions encourage debt-spending graves that people are unable to dig themselves out of. Our army and emergency services are composed of private companies. Our prison systems are built and monitored by private companies.

There is no magic bullet or well-spoken leader that can bring about the change that is needed. The only change that matters is from an educated populace. Internet bloggers and other grass-roots organizations will help expose lies and bring together communities to enact change.

Buy a gun, read more, spend within your means, and get involved.

Website links:

http://benbittrolff.blogspot.com/

shadowstats.com

rawstory.com

buzzflash.net

Morning thoughts

2008-09-17T14:18:00.003-05:00

Three things.

1) I had a dream last night about going to see Sarah Palin speak. It was in a school gym. The crowd, was already staunch Republican: she was preaching to the choir. I remember listening to her spout off all of her standard venom, and listening as the crowd got more and more riled up, and getting more and more pissed off at them. And then she made some line to the effect of, "and then we'll have peace, just like when Nixon was president." And then, unprompted and in complete unison, the crowd chanted "VIETNAM AND CAMBODIA" and then burst into roaring laughter. This is my worst fear about America: that all of the people who are excited about John McCain and Sarah Palin, that 47% of the electorate or whatever it is today, are fully aware of what it is that those two are promising us, they fully understand the truth behind the lies, and are playing along with the joke anyway. I'm terrified by the prospect that all of America understands how we would get screwed by a McCain presidency, and half of them are going to vote for it anyway. My better hopes for the country insist that most McCain voters are good people who just understand the world in a completely different way, but I was still rattled anyway.

2) Perk up though! For all of those of you who feared the worst after McCain and Palin got their convention bump in the polls, you can ease up on your apartment search in Toronto. McCain's little spike is on its way right back down.

3) Harold Meyerson has a fascinating op-ed in the Post this morning giving his final "screw you, you earned this" to Wall Street as we know it. He blames the investment community for creating a whirlwind circle-jerk where big money breeds bigger money without actually contributing anything to the community that allowed it to flourish, allowing the broader national economy to falter enough that when it was time to collect the "projected earnings" (a.k.a. theoretical future money), the actual money wasn't there to back it up.

During the late, lamented Wall Street boom, America's leading investment institutions were plenty bullish on China's economy, on exotic financial devices built atop millions of bad loans, and, above all -- judging by the unprecedented amount of wealth they showered on the Street -- on themselves. The last thing our financial community was bullish on was America -- that is, the America where the vast majority of Americans live and work.
Over the past eight years, the U.S. economy has created just 5 million new jobs, a number that is falling daily. The median income of American households has declined. Airports, bridges and roads are decaying. Rural wind-power facilities cannot light cities because our electrical grid has not been expanded. New Orleans has not been rebuilt. And as productive activity within the United States has ceased to be the prime target of investment, household consumption -- more commonly known as shopping -- has come to comprise more than 70 percent of our economy.

[...]

Finance set the terms of corporate behavior over the past quarter-century, and not in ways that bolstered the economy. By its actions -- elevating shareholder value over the interests of other corporate stakeholders, focusing on short-term investments rather than patient capital, pressuring corporations to offshore jobs and cut wages and benefits -- Wall Street plainly preferred to fund production abroad and consumption at home. The internal investment strategy of 100 years ago was turned on its head. Where Morgan once funneled European capital into American production, for the past decade Morgan's successors have directed Asian capital into devices to enable Americans to take on more debt to buy Asian products.

Cut the Crap

2008-09-10T10:32:00.002-05:00

It's worth making a separate post to add to the one about the Lipstick issue, Obama's personal remarks on the matter.

Some of you may have -- I'm assuming you guys have heard this, watching the news. I'm talking about John McCain's economic politics, I say, "This is more of the same, you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig."
And suddenly they say, "Oh, you must be talking about the governor of Alaska."

[Laughter from audience]

See it would be funny, it would be funny except -- of course the news media all decided that that was the lead story yesterday. They'd much rather have the story -- this is the McCain campaign -- would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future.

This happens every election cycle. Every four years. This is what we do. We've got an energy crisis. We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We've got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for -- and this is what they want to talk about! this is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about.

You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It's not the Democratic candidate, It's not the republican candidate. It's you, the American people. because then we go another year or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you. Enough.

I don't care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift-boat politics. Enough is enough.

Furthermore (and thanks to our friend Anna for tipping me off on most of this) even Mike Huckabee has come out on Obama's side on this.

"It's an old expression, and I'm going to have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin; he didn't reference her. If you take the two sound bites together, it may sound like it."