Pin The Tail On Obama

Amidst the sturm und drang that is the nascent Obama administration, pundits, analysts, talking heads, blogger boyz and other professional bullshitters are running amok, racing each other to see who can be first to bang his/her head into a brick wall trying to figure out just where the Spokesmodel-in-Chief is coming from, and exactly where he might think he’s going.  Needless to say, none of them seem to have a freaking clue.  Is he too tired, over his head, fiendishly Machiavellian, liberal, centrist, Socialist, Marxist, fascist, or, just,  as Mickey Mouse allegedly said to the divorce court judge about Minnie, fucking Goofy?

The New York Times, in an interview aboard Air Force One, tried valiantly to pin the Teflon TelePrompTer Reader down about his overall philosophy of governance, to little avail:

Q. The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?

A. You know, let’s take a look at the budget – the answer would be no.

Q. Is there anything wrong with saying yes?

Obama then goes on to give a classic 4-paragraph, professorial ObAnswer that didn’t come anywhere near to answering the question.

Q. So to people who suggested that you are more liberal than you suggested on the campaign, you say, what?

A. I think it would be hard to argue, Jeff. We have delivered on every promise that we’ve made so far. We said that we would end the war in Iraq and we’ve put forward a responsible plan.

Q. In terms of spending.

Obama then goes on to give a classic 3-paragraph, professorial ObAnswer that didn’t come anywhere near to answering the question.  Which of course, prompted the interviewer to again ask the president if he was a Socialist:

Q. Is there one word name for your philosophy? If you’re not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?

A. No, I’m not going to engage in that.

No wonder the pundits, analysts, talking heads, blogger boyz and other professional bullshitters are all having such a hard time sussing out where he’s coming from; they’re using yardsticks to measure water temperature.  The only logical answer to the “where’s this guy coming from?” question is, “someplace only he knows.”  He fits no known description, he is an Obacanacratist.  He fully intends to “change” the “old ways of Washington,” just like he always said he would.  What I can’t understand is why so many people find something so obvious, so hard to comprehend.

Until everybody, on both sides of the aisle, and down the middle, wraps their heads around the fact that he’s not a Democrat or Republican, Socialist, Marxist, or any other -can,” “-crat,” or “-ist” you can think of, they’ll never be able to answer the only pertinent question, which is not, “what’s he up to?” but, “are we going to let him get away with it?”

Cross posted @ Cinie’s World

Not Ready On Day One

The White House admits they blew it with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but the explanation makes things worse:

Barack Obama ‘too tired’ to give proper welcome to Gordon Brown

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been “overwhelmed” by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

[…]

Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president’s surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama’s inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to “even fake an interest in foreign policy”.

A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. “I think it’s right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn’t quite understand the British concerns and didn’t get what that was all about.”

The American source said: “Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

“That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they’re finding it a hard thing to do everything.”

[…]

The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.

The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”The apparent lack of attention to detail by the Obama administration is indicative of what many believe to be Mr Obama’s determination to do too much too quickly.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that one of Mr Obama’s most prominent African American backers, whose endorsement he spent two years cultivating, has told friends that he detects a weakness in Mr Obama’s character.

“The one real serious flaw I see in Barack Obama is that he thinks he can manage all this,” the well-known figure told a Washington official, who spoke to this newspaper. “He’s underestimating the flood of things that will hit his desk.” A Democratic strategist, who is friends with several senior White House aides, revealed that the president has regularly appeared worn out and drawn during evening work sessions with senior staff in the West Wing and has been forced to make decisions more quickly than he is comfortable.

He said that on several occasions the president has had to hurry back from eating dinner with his family in the residence and then tucking his daughters in to bed, to conduct urgent government business. Matters are not helped by the pledge to give up smoking. (emphasis added)

First of all the statement that there is “nothing special about Britain” is a diplomatic faux pas of the highest order.  Even if that is Obama’s personal opinion it’s not something you say out loud.  If I was Hillary I would find out who said it and transfer the person to our embassy in Antarctica along with the person who embarrassed her by mistranslating Russian.  (If I was either of those people I would defect to Cuba or some other nation without an extradition treaty before Hillary gets back from her overseas trip.)

As for the admission that Obama is overwhelmed – who could have predicted it?  Was there anyone who kept saying all last year that Obama was inexperienced and unqualified?  Did anyone warn that he had never accomplished anything or held a full-time job before?  Anyone besides 18 million Hillary supporters I mean.  Remember how the sippy-kup kidz from the kool-aid kingdom said “experience doesn’t matter?”  They were wrong.

Last of all, if Obama is “too tired” maybe he should knock off the speeches and campaign trips to Ohio and Indiana  and focus on his work.  If he’s worn out then he should stop holding White House concerts and cocktail parties so he and Michelle can schmooze with celebrities and get some sleep instead.

Inside joke

While we’re all waking up and getting our act together, this is an open thread.

Presidentin’ Is Hard

Though I make no claims of being a financial wizard, or a political maven, even I can see that all is not right on Wall Street, D.C. where the heart and soul of our country is on life support, currently being administered to by second graders who want to be doctors when they grow up.  And, I’m sophisticated enough to recognize that a lot of what I read about our dire national situation is presented in the media by people representing the political party so far out of favor they have to look to bloviating blowhards for advice, or worse, can be made to appear to need to do so.  I get that.  However, in spite of all that, the forces pretending to represent the white-hatted good guys in this classic Adventures in Administration movie, armed with their heralded sky-high approval ratings for their poor man’s Dark Gable leading man, simply can’t mount enough of a stampede to disguise the fact that the dustcloud that follows them like Charlie Brown’s pal Pigpen’s is not the result of riding hard and strong over the dusty trail, but merely the wispy smoke trails from their “throw ’em off the path,” hastily built, diversionary cookfire.  In other words, they got nothing.

Stalwart bastion of the Obamedia protection service, Salon Magazine, has an article by former Clinton labor secretary and Obacolyte, Robert Reich, in which he pitifully attempts to pooh-pooh rightwing claims that the Obamessiah himself is responsible for our economic woes by trying to lay them at the feet of the finger-pointers:

When it turns out that people like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who took home $68 million in 1997, was the only Wall Streeter in a meeting last September at the New York Federal Reserve to discuss the initial AIG bailout with Tim Geithner, then New York Fed chair, among others, at the very time Goldman was AIG’s largest trading partner, a distinct scent of self-dealing begins to emanate. When it turns out that Citigroup got a bailout deal last October far more generous than that given to any other distressed bank, when a top Citi executive was advising the Treasury and Fed, the scent increases. Goldman’s past CEO was treasury secretary at that time, by the way, and another former Goldman CEO was a top Citi official and also a former treasury secretary. I am not suggesting anything so crude as corruption. But could it be, given these tangled webs, that — innocently, unintentionally, perhaps even subconsciously — the entire bailout effort was premised on saving these companies rather than protecting the public? Or that the distinction between the two was lost, and still is?

Yet, Reich gleefully and disingenuously, ignores the fact that the people he’s defending his ObaMaster against are the people who funded his campaign.  Not only that, the central figure in Reich’s little morality play, Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner, tax cheat, (TTTG,tc)  has a family history of sorts with Barry Sutoro, and is currently employed as the Blameless One’s lapdog and whipping boy.  To point out that he may have colluded with the banksters against the public in ripping off the country on the other team’s watch is…well…stupid.

Why would anyone purporting to defend the Obama administration draw attention to the man quickly becoming the public face of its incompetence?  Especially when the author can’t even make it through to the end of his own piece without acknowledging at least some of the complicity of the Obama Drama Troupe?

The Wall Street and Republican media attack machine doesn’t know exactly what to make of this. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, along with CNBC, alternates between attacking Obama for bailing out Wall Street and excusing Wall Street’s excesses. But then again, Obama doesn’t seem to know exactly what to make of it either. He seems to vacillate as well — one moment scorning Wall Street, the next moment justifying further bailouts. I do hope he takes a firmer hand, drawing a clearer distinction and making a clearer connection between clearing up these financial balance sheets and helping average people. Otherwise, the next populist uprising will be born in this moneyed quagmire. It is here — within the muck that was created by AIG, Citigroup, Fannie and Freddie, other giant financial institutions, now in combination with the U.S. Treasury and Fed — that the public is most confused, bears its most serious scars, and is potentially most burdened in future years, by decisions still made in secret.

Friday: Tunnel Vision

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse with the banking system, we have a *new* concept to grapple with and this one should make you want to sharpen your pitchfork.  It’s called “tunneling”.  In short, tunneling occurs when bankers on the brink of insolvency are kept afloat just long enough for them to hide the good assets while they leave the bad assets for the government to absorb at taxpayer expense.  Isn’t that fun?  You can read all about it at NakedCapitalism.  And our administration’s resident genius, Tim Geithner, has set up conditions in a way that seem to be perfect for just this sort of thing.

Simon Johnson of Baseline Scenario explains what is going on:

Emerging market crises are marked by an increase in tunneling – i.e., borderline legal/illegal smuggling of value out of businesses…

Boris Fyodorov, the late Russian Minister of Finance who struggled for many years against corruption and the abuse of authority, could be blunt. Confusion helps the powerful, he argued. When there are complicated government bailout schemes, multiple exchange rates, or high inflation, it is very hard to keep track of market prices and to protect the value of firms. The result, if taken to an extreme, is looting: the collapse of banks, industrial firms, and other entities because the insiders take the money (or other valuables) and run.

This is the prospect now faced by the United States.

Treasury has made it clear that they will proceed with a “mix-and-match” strategy, as advertized. And people close to the Administration tell me things along the lines of ”it will be messy” and “there is no alternative.” The people involved are convinced – and hold this almost as an unshakeable ideology – that this is the only way to bring private capital into banks.

This attempt to protect shareholders and insiders in large banks is misguided. Not only have these shareholders already been almost completely wiped out by the actions and inactions of the executives and boards in these banks (why haven’t these boards resigned?), but the government’s policy is creating toxic financial institutions that no one wants to touch either with equity investments or – increasingly – further credit.

Policy confusion is rampant. Did the government effectively sort-of nationalize Citigroup last Thursday when it said Vikram Pandit will stay on as CEO? If that wasn’t a nationalization moment (i.e., an assertion that the government is now the dominant shareholder), what legal authority does the Treasury have to decide who is and is not running a private company?

Will debtholders be forced to take losses and, if so, how much and for whom? As part of last week’s Citigroup deal, preferred shareholders – whose claims had debt-like characteristics – were pressed into converting to common stock. You may or may not like forced debt-for-equity swaps, but be aware of what the prospect of these will do to the credit market. Junior subordinated Citigroup debt (securities underlying enhanced trust preferred shares) were yesterday yielding 26%….

What do rapidly widening credit default spreads for nonbank financial entities (such as GE Capital and many insurance companies) signify? Is it something about expected behavior by the insiders or by government, or by some combination of both?

Confusion in policy breeds disorder in companies, and disorder leads to the loss of value. This is the reality of severe crises wherever they unfold; we have not yet reached the worst moment. And, of course, there are many more shocks heading our way – mostly from Europe, but also potentially from Asia.

The course of policy is set. For at least the next 18 months, we know what to expect on the banking front. Now Treasury is committed, the leadership in this area will not deviate from a pro-insider policy for large banks; they are not interested in alternative approaches (I’ve asked). The result will be further destruction of the private credit system and more recourse to relatively nontransparent actions by the Federal Reserve, with all the risks that entails.

Read it and weep, Obots.  This is what you worked for.  Obama is in bed with these people.  They helped him buy off superdelegates and pay for massive amounts of advertising.  They helped him trash the reputation and career of a much better candidate.  They footed the bill for those stupid Greek Columns.   Our retirements are in jeopardy right now and the bankers are using the confusion to loot whatever’s left and stash the booty in an underground banking system.  It’s the finance version of the Shock Doctrine.  Before you know it, there won’t be anything of value left.

Paul Krugman is also alarmed by the “dithering” that is leading to more confusion and the possibility of acts of bad faith among bankers.  When Krugman starts to worry about the deficit, you know the situation has gotten out of control.  The administration keeps throwing money at the problem, hoping to kick start it to life.  But the administration seems to be adamant about protecting the bankers from taking their medicine:

Think of it this way: by using taxpayer funds to subsidize the prices of toxic waste, the administration would shower benefits on everyone who made the mistake of buying the stuff. Some of those benefits would trickle down to where they’re needed, shoring up the balance sheets of key financial institutions. But most of the benefit would go to people who don’t need or deserve to be rescued.

And this means that the government would have to lay out trillions of dollars to bring the financial system back to health, which would, in turn, both ensure a fierce public outcry and add to already serious concerns about the deficit. (Yes, even strong advocates of fiscal stimulus like yours truly worry about red ink.) Realistically, it’s just not going to happen.

So why has this zombie idea — it keeps being killed, but it keeps coming back — taken such a powerful grip? The answer, I fear, is that officials still aren’t willing to face the facts. They don’t want to face up to the dire state of major financial institutions because it’s very hard to rescue an essentially insolvent bank without, at least temporarily, taking it over. And temporary nationalization is still, apparently, considered unthinkable.

But this refusal to face the facts means, in practice, an absence of action. And I share the president’s fears: inaction could result in an economy that sputters along, not for months or years, but for a decade or more.

Um, I don’t think I can wait a decade or more to see *if* my 401K investments bounce back.  I want to see things returning to some kind of normal state pretty damn quick so I know that recovery is possible.  Now, I’m no financial wiz but I think we’ve all seen something like this happen before. Your computer starts to hiccup.  At first, it’s just a minor thing and you ignore it.  Then it happens again and again with greater frequency.  Before you know it, you’re opening and closing windows, relaunching programs and tinkering under the hood with network settings.  The last thing you try that you know you don’t want to have to do (because you’re not sure everything is saved) is a reboot.

It’s time to hit that power off switch.

Really Bad Open Thread

David Hasselhof – “Limbo Dance”

What could possibly be worse?

Was it an Intentional Trans-Atlantic Cold Shoulder?

 

Within days of taking office Barack Obama caused a minor diplomatic flap when he brusquely rejected the continued loan of a bust of Winston Churchill that had stood in the Oval Office since shortly after the 9/11 attacks.  The valuable bronze art work was on loan from the British government’s art collection.

Then there was the visit this week from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

Number 10 may be content that they just about got away with the visit to the Oval Office yesterday, as Andrew Porter reports from Washington.

But on this side of the Atlantic the whole business looked pretty demeaning. The morning papers and TV last night featured plenty of comment focused on the White House’s very odd and, frankly, exceptionally rude treatment of a British PM. Squeezing in a meeting, denying him a full press conference with flags etc. The British press corps, left outside for an hour in the cold, can take it and their privations are of limited concern to the public.

But Obama’s merely warmish words (one of our closest allies, said with little sincerity or passion) left a bitter taste with this Atlanticist. Especially after his team had made Number 10 beg for a mini press conference and then not even offered the PM lunch.

Mister Brown didn’t come alone, he brought his wife Sarah and their two sons:

Like all good guests, Sarah Brown arrived bearing gifts for the children, Malia and Sasha. And they were really nice presents. A bit of thought had clearly gone into choosing them: Top Shop dresses (with matching necklaces) and a selection of books by British authors. Lovely.

Mrs Brown may have two boys but she certainly knows the way to a little girl’s heart. These were gifts chosen in the true spirit of present-giving: to please the recipient, not the giver.

In return Mrs Obama gave the Brown children, Fraser and John, two toy models of Marine One, the Presidential helicopter. Fair enough on the helicopter part, always a popular choice with small boys; but Marine One? It’s not as though anyone needs reminding that Barack Obama is President or that he has his own helicopter. Short of giving the boys Action Man models of her own husband smiting the evil forces of neoconservatism, Mrs Obama’s gesture could not have been more solipsistic or more inherently dismissive of Mrs Brown.

Not only did she demonstrate that she spent approximately three seconds contemplating the needs of the Brown boys (having an aide pop to the White House gift shop for a piece of merchandising does not imply a great deal of thought), she appeared to show a most uncharacteristic lapse of judgment.

[…]

Whether deliberate or not, the whole thing feels like a snub.

As for Fraser and John, their parents’ trip to America will always be remembered as the time that “Mum and Dad went to see the President, and all we got was this lousy plastic helicopter.”

So was it a snub or just bad manners?  From Baldilocks:

Many observers seem puzzled.  I’m not and neither is the UK press.  It’s about Kenya.

If you recall, before Kenya became Kenya (1963) it was a British colony known as British East Africa.  Between 1952 and 1960, there was this little “difference of opinion” between the UK and the natives of British East Africa—primarily from the Kikuyu tribe.  That conflict is known as the Mau Mau Uprising.  There were tens of thousands of African civilians killed and, according to Wiki, seven to ten thousand Africans interned by the British colonial masters.  In Dreams from My Father, President Obama says that his grandfather was tortured by the British during the conflict, though he was not a Kikuyu but a Luo.  Guess which prime minister ordered the Mau Mau insurgency to be put down.

Mystery solved.  It seems that the president is seeking to humiliate the progeny of those who humiliated his ancestors.  Revenge isn’t that complicated a motive.

However, a question remains.  Is this any way for a President of the United States to behave?

Is Barack Obama really that petty and vindictive? 

Thursday: Where in the world is Hillary Clinton?

SOS Clinton with Shimon Peres- Caption this picture

Our intrepid Secretary of State is hitting her stride this week with visits to the middle east and Europe.  You can follow her itinerary using this Google interactive map.  Yesterday, she met with Mahmoud Abbas and declared our commitment to a two state solution as well as recognizing the Palestinian Authority as the only legitimate Palestinian government:

“The United States supports the Palestinian Authority as the only legitimate government of the Palestinian people. As a partner on the road to a comprehensive peace, which includes a two-state solution, our support comes with more than words. As I pledged in Sharm el-Sheikh, we will work with President Abbas, Prime Minister Fayyad, and the government of the Palestinian Authority to address critical humanitarian, budgetary, security, and infrastructure needs, both in Gaza and in the West Bank.”

She has been meeting with government officials in Israel as well to reopen the borders with Gaza to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid.  And while she has affirmed our “unshakable, durable, fundamental relationship and support for the State of Israel”, she has also been critical of the efforts of the mayor of Jerusalem who has been tearing down houses belonging to Palestinians.  Such efforts are “unhelpful” to the peace process.

The photos of these meetings are remarkable as a study in gender roles and how she seems to be throwing the book away in that regard.  She looks confident, uses direct eye contact, appears to be fully engaged and isn’t afraid to break down the physical barrier between people.

Hillary and George Mitchell in Israel

I can remember some anthropologist’s study of Congress from years back.  The researcher was able to pick out the alpha Congresscritters by watching how many people came up to them and touched them.  It sounds weirdly primitive.  Can we see the same kind of phenomenon with Hillary Clinton?  The NYTimes had a picture of her meeting with Mahmoud Abbas where the two are very much within one another’s space bubble.  But it looks comfortable and collegial, not pushy.  What I think we are witnessing is the next evolutionary stage in winning the gender wars.  Hillary is a self-actualized *person*.  Maybe this has been the issue with people who have had to deal with her in the past and have become her worst enemies.  She doesn’t appear to operate in gender space as much as person space.  That kind of thing can be profoundly disconcerting to others who are operating within prescribed gender boundaries formed by years of conditioning.   It might be the case that Hillary looks so comfortable in Israel because the culture has had to put aside gender in the political realm in order to survive.  They have had successful female leaders in the past and could very well have them again.

We’ll get there too someday.  Sometimes evolution happens rapidly.  By physically demonstrating the characteristics of leadership, Hillary may be our catalyst.

In other news:

Planet Money has an interesting interview with Sean West of the Eurasia Group who seems to be a WORMy type.  His argument is that Obama and Geithner are politically savvy.  They are trying to make everyone think they aren’t nationalizing the banks when they really are.  That whole thing where they swapped $45 billion in preferred stock for $5 billion in common stock and an agreement that the US wouldn’t have a controlling share in Citigroup?  It was all a wiley political trick, says West.  They are cleverly fooling the bankers into taking our money so that we can make them think we aren’t owning them by not insisting on anything in return.  Damn, they’re geniuses!  I never would have figured that out.  And I guess that Sean West sounds like a kool-ade drinker and administration apologist out of the goodness of his heart.  It probably has nothing to do with who pays his salary.  Hokey-dokey!

Barbara Bush has a heart? Who knew?

Glycerol monolaurate blocks AIDS infection in monkeys.

No Tinfoil: We Have Been Living in a Dictatorship

On Monday the Department of Justice posted nine memos containing stunningly un-American legal opinions that were kept secret during the Bush years. These memos were used to justify a shocking expansion of executive power and to nullify most of our Constitutional rights. Scott Horton of the Harpers Magazine writes:

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

Finally, the truth breaks into the mainstream media. Some of us did realize it, Scott; but I’m glad you’re writing about it now. I just hope you keep your eyes and ears open, because I’m not so sure that President Obama won’t try to hang onto some of these powers.

I Told Ya So!

Big Fat Idiot

Yesterday I said I had a bad feeling about the Obama administration’s strategery of targeting Rush Limbaugh.  Today from The Big Fat Idiot:

But I have an idea.  If these guys are so impressed with themselves, and if they are so sure of their correctness, why doesn’t President Obama come on my show?  We will do a one-on-one debate of ideas and policies.  Now, his people in this Politico story, it’s on the record.  They’re claiming they wanted me all along.  They wanted me to be the focus of attention. So let’s have the debate! I am offering President Obama to come on this program — without staffers, without a teleprompter, without note cards — to debate me on the issues. 

Barack Obama obviously isn’t going to agree to debate Limbaugh, on Rush’s show or anywhere else.  So Rush will keep taunting Obama and he’ll claim that the President is afraid to face him.  The Dittoheads will eat it up with a spoon.

My grandma used to say “Never argue with a pig – it wastes your time and the pig enjoys it.”