There Is No Plan

iraq. should we stay or should we go?

Obama’s speech at Camp LeJeune today made official what we’ve known for a while, that the combat mission in Iraq is over. Perhaps that explains why the response to what should have been a historical announcement seemed strangely muted. There are many other possible explanations too, ranging from the little matter of a massive economic crisis, to the existing de facto end of hostilities in Iraq, to the fact that just maybe, there’s a sense out there that it’s a mistake to go.

Obama’s decision to bring our major combat brigades home by the end of August 2010, and the remainder of the training and counter-insurgency force by 2011 is not a cause for celebration, even among those vehement in their opposition to the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The reason is simple. If, as the President has pledged, all US forces are withdrawn from Iraq in 2011 we’ll be leaving an unpredictable power vacuum that we will have no ability to deal with – if as is possible, a new sectarian crisis breaks out. I’m certain that Obama’s National Security Team did their due diligence and got as much intelligence to support the case for continued stability in Iraq as possible, but forecasts are just another word for hopes. And in the Middle East, banking on hope is a very bad idea. Read the rest of this entry »

a fresh faced bill clinton in 1993. he came from hope, he ended up nowhere.

In 1993 Clinton arrived on a heady wave of enthusiasm, dedicated to undoing some of the excesses of Reaganism. He made a few stumbles, he announced a sweeping healthcare initiative and he got nowhere. There are many reasons for his failure. The sheer newness of the administration, presentation issues, and this – he got very limited support from a Democratically controlled Congress. That opened the door for Gingrich’s charges of stasis and corruption that led to the Contract for America, and sweeping mid-term victories. That broadly was the end of the Clinton Administration as an effective liberally-driven government. It’s the main reason that the Reagan Revolution was not shattered. Clinton became merely a painful interregnum.

Cut to 15 years later.  Obama is getting it right. The budget is a great document, the bipartisan experiment is over, the decision to leave troops behind in Iraq is correct, and the healthcare, energy, and education agendas are on course. Now it’s up to the Democratically elected Congress to respond. Obama’s charm offensive is wasted on the GOP. Obama appears to have realized that. The true targets of his charm offensive should be members of his own Senate caucus with a more conservative viewpoint. Read the rest of this entry »

potus has his brain in gear.

There are an awful lot of liberals breathing easier after the release of President Obama’s first budget. Krugman, who had been as close to castigating the President as any columnist on the left was almost unequivocally supportive. The budget’s focus on healthcare and education as key to our long term economic revival as well as boosting the middle class in a meaningful and intelligent way is a great starting point for recalibrating American economic and social policy. It sets up a battle royal with the Republicans, and will put Obama’s political savvy on the line. Rahm Emmanuel will also get battle-tested for the first time. Convincing Blue Dog Democrats of the need for a fundamental shift away from Reaganomics and its terrible legacy will be tough, but Obama is starting to display the calm under fire that suggests it can be done.

It’s been mentioned before on this blog, but you’ll be hearing an awful lot about The Two Ladies of Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. At least one of them is required to beat the inevitable GOP filibuster.  Maine’s two senators are about to become the most important people in the history of the state. They are sure to drive a hard bargain as they together become the last vestige of Obama’s short dalliance with bipartisanship.

Badd Bob of Planned Obsolescence has built on my discussion about Neo-Liberalism with a thought-provoking post that asks some fascinating long term questions about where US hegemony could lead. Badd Bob puts China at the top of his list of adversarial states, but he questions how forceful the US can be in establishing and directing its power without generating blow-back.  There’s still plenty of work to be done in shaping the concept. Discussion open.

gitmo - where america creates the terrorist role models of the future

Among the many black marks on the Bush Administration will be the following; they sure were talented at getting us into jams we couldn’t get out of. Iraq, and Afghanistan are top of the list, but just below them is Gitmo. Opened at a time when Bush and the neo-cons really did think that the War on Terror was going to be a real live war with stacks of POWs, the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was to put it mildly a total and utter disaster. Bush is clearing Cedar brush back in Crawford, but like a bad dream, Gitmo is still there, yet another piece of heavy luggage that the new President’s got to haul around with him.

Obama is rightly dedicated to totally overhauling America’s image abroad, especially in the Muslim world. And a big blot on relations with Arab countries is Guantanamo. So it would seem to be a no brainer to shut the damn place as quickly as possible. The President wants the doors closed on that particular PR nightmare within a year. Nice idea. Very nice idea.

There’s only one slight problem. It’s not going to work. Read the rest of this entry »

the economy is one big fixer-upper

Here’s your number one problem. We got into this mess because of inflated housing values, sourced from low interest rates, easy-lending, lax regulation and runaway derivatives. The bubble burst when price discovery kicked in and everyone realize they had nothing. The bottom fell out, and people who bought houses at fictitious valuations got slammed. The problem is that these fictitious values can’t be restored. They’re gone. Therefore there has to be hurt for people caught in the trap. The only way to alleviate their suffering is to restore fictitious values which are what put us in this mess in the first place.

Any attempt to mitigate loss will only end up creating more loss. I hate to sound like a conservative here, but real estate is a pure market (unlike health care for example). Houses will find their true value. We need to let that happen. All we’re doing by bailing out the homeowners is creating false valuations once more, and as important bailing out the lenders. No moral hazard, regulatory inertia and we’re just priming for a repeat performance.

If you’re looking for a home and find one that was bought at $400k which is now worth $100k you’ll buy, so will others and the demand will push the prices back up to an equilibrium once more, supporting surrounding homeowners. Neighborhoods will be restored. It’s called simple economics. Pain is part of life. It has to be allowed to happen, except where there is no justice in it. For many who made bad investment decisions, suffering is just. And for those who pushed the bad loans, the suffering is necessary punishment.

here's a plan. panic first. solve problems never.

Who came up with the cockamamie idea of the ‘economic stimulus’? The Bushies. During the post Bear-Stearns policy meltdown, when Paulson and his merry band of idiots put together policy on the fly, all we heard was how we needed to stimulate the economy. Well, we did an awful lot of stimulating but we’re in deeper trouble now than we were then.

And yet, Obama, continuing his annoying tendency to shape policy through a Republican prism, is continuing with this absurd “got to rush through the package now before its too late” rubbish. Many of the changes in the package are going to take months or years to be seen but that doesn’t stop him from giving the poor, downtrodden American people hope (remember that word) that this is a quick fix. It isn’t, and by branding it as one, Obama is only setting up problems for himself. Read the rest of this entry »

it's 4 a.m and darryl steinberg is shaking the hand of abel maldonado, the man he hates most in the whole world, with a big, big, grin on his face

Just ask Abel Maldonado. There’s nothing better than a little late-night horse-trading to get the blood circulating. Abel managed to extract his pound of flesh from the willing Democrats, trying to stave off collapse in California on behalf of a toothless Republican Governor. Putting his obnoxious opportunism aside for a moment, Abel’s high stakes poker game (the chits being the lives and treasure of the California citizenry) might all be for naught.

Why? Because the people of the state have to ratify the deal. Uhh? Our lawmakers, elected to represent us, don’t get to actually do the representing part because we end up representing ourselves in the single most important budget in the state’s history. We’re likely to turn it down. Not because it sucks, but because we just don’t want to know how bad things truly are. We’ll refuse to accept things got that bad. We’ll apply the blame to the system. We’ll blame Republicans and Democrats and politicians and vested interests. We’ll blame the Governator and his bloviating. We’ll blame Washington, we’ll blame Wall Street. But mark this, we’ll blame the New York Yankees before we blame ourselves.  Read the rest of this entry »