LFTC - Letter From The Capitol

Index 1/30/09

6 posts: (1) 44's First Foreign Policy Tests--Us v. Them; (2) Palin Power: Energy Yes, Pork No, Book Next--The Home Front; (3) Soros: Economic Game Changer?--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (4) Holding Holder: GOPowder Dry--The Home Front; (5) Fannie and Freddie: Barney's Bet Backfires--The Home Front; (6) Illinois Legislature: Did They Know What They Did?--The Home Front.

44's First Foreign Policy Tests

Human Events editor Jed Babbin applies his considerable foreign policy & military expertise and flags four national security crises rapidly rolling in upon 44: (1) an Israeli strike at Iran's nuclear facilities, made inevitable by 44 embracing 43's failed negotiations-only strategy; (2) a deteriorating situation in Iraq, as the Status of Forces Agreement attenuates American  power and thus ability to sustain post-surge progress; (3) a long-term need for Afghanistan commitment, which requires more patience than 44 is likely to show; (4) decrepitude that endangers traditional American air dominance, with aging F-15s not being replaced in sufficient numbers by the F-22.

Jed's entire article is well worth a full read.   He notes that America has not lost a pilot in aerial combat since 1953, but lost in the 2004 "Cope India" air duels against newer Russian models flown by the Indians, though rules required close-range engagement and barred long-range targeting that our pilots prefer.  Still, for anyone to come close could undermine the air dominance essential for successful US military ground operations.  44 is too busy throwing money at education (surely to be wasted, as was much 43 funding) to bother with buying enough F-22s (double the number planned now) to sustain air superiority at the postwar level America has relied upon.

Joe Biden's "Obama will be tested within 6 months" October 2008 prophecy likely will come true.  "Change you can believe in" rarely impresses our foreign adversaries.  They prefer concrete testing.

Palin Power: Energy Yes, Pork No, Book Next

UPI reports on Sarah Palin's latest political move toward more national involvement: SarahPAC will raise funds for political candidates who support the PAC's goals, first among which is energy independence.  Notably, Democrats & Independents are eligible for funding.  The Juneau Empire reports that Palin is at odds with the State legislature over how much to get from Washington' stimulus bill.  Palin wants only 5 projects: the Kodiak Launch Complex and 4 natural gas projects.  The Alaska Aerospace Corporation owns the Kodiak facility.  Lawmakers way up north want more, in the form of federal pork earmarks.

This LA Times report says Palin is shopping a book deal, asking as much as $11 million.  Call it "Drill, baby drill for dollars."

Soros: Economic Game Changer?

The Financial Times published a George Soros op-ed offering advice on what to do to get the economies of the world restarted.  Most interesting is how Soros explains why Lehman- AIG botch by the administration triggered collapse in financial markets; this is much in dispute, as Soros did not have all the information Treasury & the Fed relied upon.  Then compare his controversial assessment with this blunt financial world assessment from the Naked Capitalism blog.

Throw in another game-changer: FBFs bemoaning their love-life woes as their Masters of the Universe's balance sheets tank.  (FBFs is an acronym--perfectly fine family fare: Financial-guy Boy-Friends.)

Holding Holder: GOPowder Dry

It took GOP senators to do what 43 failed to do by extracting from A-G nominee Eric Holder a commitment not to prosecute CIA interrogators for early interrogation techniques approved by the prior administration.  A private understanding was made with Missouri Senator Christopher "Kit" Bond, albeit Holder, ever the weasel, denies having made it.  Trust Bond that he did.  It is wise to give 44 his Cabinet nominees, good, bad or whatever, at the outset of an administration all wish will succeed.  Because Holder is vulnerable due to his Marc Rich pardon and some early statements defending harsh interrogation tactics (shortly after 9/11), it is better to take him than have someone equally liberal but unbound by prior statements and actions.  Save confirmation powder for judicial nominations.  The GOP will need them.

Fannie & Freddie: Barney's Bet Backfires

A WSJ editorial recaps the Fan & Fred dance in Congress that would have made Ginger & Fred green with envy for nimbleness of high steps.  All about how little fixing Fric & Frac would likely cost.  Said a spokesman for Barney the Economic Dinosaur last July--when Barney was assuring all of us how fiscally sound Fric & Frac still were: "We especially like that there is less than a 50% chance that it will be used."  The bill is already $238B and climbing.  Want Barney to manage your 401k?

Illinois Legislature: Did They Know What They Did?

As I write this blog entry I am watching an Illinois state senator announce solemnly that he is casting his vote to "impeach" Governor Blago.  But in fact that is not what he did in casting his vote.  Blago had already been impeached a few weeks ago--by the Illinois state House of Representatives.  "Impeachment" is legalese for the formal adoption of one or more Articles of impeachment by the lower legislative house.  Once one or more Articles are voted, charges are formally filed in the upper chamber--the Senate--where an impeachment trial of the executive target is held.  Defendant is either acquitted, or convicted and thus removed from office.  Thus the vote cast by the senator--and all other 58 cast yesterday--was a vote to convict and remove from office.

Many news reporters fell for this, too.  Am I being a grouch?  I suppose so.  But clarity in such matters is worth fostering.  Perhaps clearest of all was the NY Post's headline (the link won't last long, so I am not posting--no pun intended--it): "Bad Hair Day: Blagojevich Convicted & Kicked Out of Office."  "Kicked out" seems even better than "removed from"--and "bad hair day" sums it up, doesn't it?

Index 1/29/09

7 posts: (1) Nancy's Stimulus Shopping Spree: Rahm's Golden Opportunity--The Home Front; (2) Pakistan's President Speaks--Wobble Watch; (3) Geithner on China--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (4) Taxing Treasury's Geithner--The Home Front; (5) Convict World--The Home Front; (6) NYPD: The Chief Speaks--The Home Front; (7) DC Snows 44--The Ap & the Cap.

Nancy's Stimulus Shopping Spree: Rahm's Golden Opportunity

A WSJ editorial details the monster H.R. 1 morass written by Nancy Pelosi and her House colleagues, which passed 244 - 188 (177 GOP + 11 "Blue Dog" Democrats voting against) on the House floor yesterday.  Of $825 billion, all of $30 billion (3.6 percent) is for old-fashioned infrastructure, plus another $40B (4.8 percent) for smart grid, broadband extension to rural areas and another $20B (2.4 percent) for business tax cuts.  (The remaining tax cuts are mere rebates, and thus do not alter investor incentives and hence cannot spur economic growth.)  Thus, 11 percent of the stimulus package is real stimulus--much of it not immediate stimulus.  But $252B (31 percent) is for income transfer programs (Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps & earned income tax credit).  The remaining 58 percent is garden-variety pork--money for the National Endowment for the Arts, mass transit, education (at $66 billion), etc.

Ace economist Alan Reynolds offers number analysis including these gems: (1) $215B of the $550B spending (39 percent) goes to...state governments; (2) more than half the spending goes to sectors where unemployment is lowest; (3) at $825B, even if, improbably, the President's 3 million job goal is reached, we are spending $275k per job!  Reynolds also eviscerates the economic assumptions underpinning the bill.  Economist Allen Sinai proposes a tax holiday on foreign earnings of US corporations to inject $545B of fresh capital into the American economy.  Jim Manzi, computer software company CEO (Lotus) in the 1980s, highlights the timing provisions of the bill and finds most of its fiscal impact in 2010 and beyond, hardly a 2009 stimulus.  The neatest nuggets of all are three provisions buried in the 647-page leviathan, expanding community group slush funding (think groups like ACORN) by--get this--$5.2 billion.  That will help, among other things, getting more folks like Al Franken into the Senate.

Instead of primarily rebate tax cuts, former CEA adviser (under 43) Larry Lindsey renews his push for a payroll tax cut that can boost economic growth.

George Will sees not a rainbow but opportunism in the bill. While, he writes, 44 is due some deference, the GOP may oppose non-germane provisions larded into the bill:

The opposition should oppose mere opportunism, which comes in two forms. One is presenting pet projects hitherto considered unworthy of funding as suddenly meritorious because somehow stimulative.

The other attaches major and nongermane policy changes to the stimulus legislation, counting on the need for speed to allow them to escape appropriate scrutiny. For example:

The stimulus legislation would create a council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. This is about medicine but not about healing the economy.

More, as to speaking truth to voting power:

The opposition's third duty is to assert inconvenient truths, one of which is that the truth shall make you modest. There never is a moment when an open society that wants to remain such does not need the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who said: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."

So the deference accorded this president should be proportional to his willingness to acknowledge that neither he nor anyone else can know whether the stimulus will work.

And from the quantity of deference owed to him, Republicans should subtract the sum of the opportunism of congressional Democrats. If Republicans conclude that the truly stimulative portion of the legislation is less than half the size of the portion composed of banal and brazen opportunism, and irrelevant but consequential policies surreptitiously pursued, they should oppose it.

Saith Nancy: "We won the election. We wrote the bill."  True, but as Will notes 44 is entitled to some deference, not a blank check.

Change we can believe in--NOT.  Or as White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel put it last November:

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before."  A WSJ editorial details the stealth health care provisions that follow Rahm's Rule.

All of which gives President 44 a choice: Pass a bipartisan bill and obtain GOP support as political insurance against failure, or bet the company on a Democratic steamroller bill put together by Nancy and Harry and the Democratic leadership.  Stay tuned.

Pakistan's President Speaks

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari writes in a Washington Post op-ed on US-Pakistan relations.  Worth a read.

Geithner on China

Bret Swanson looks at Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's China currency policy view and finds it wanting.  Geithner subscribes to the view that China's export boom was driven by its "manipulation" of its currency (the yuan) and the currency "imbalances" thus created.  Swanson rebuts this by citing the Federal Reserve's cheap dollar policy--our form of currency "manipulation"--that spurred inflation in commodities and the housing boom, as cause of our trade woes.  I agree with Swanson and recommend reading his article.  Another financial maven sees China's high savings rate as legitimate counterpart to our high consumption rate, and urges us not to blame the Chinese for our economic woes.

A Forbes op-ed warns that Geithner's China remark could spark a trade war:

In truth, the U.S. has few, if any, handy sticks with which to beat Beijing over the renminbi--or, for that matter, over much else. Even if the U.S. Treasury formally finds China guilty of currency "manipulation," it has no powers under law to do anything about it beyond raising the matter yet again with Chinese authorities. Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to use the International Monetary Fund to apply pressure on Beijing have split the institution's members.

Imposing trade sanctions on China would invite a spiral of tit-for-tat retaliation into which other countries would be quickly drawn, turning the recession into a global slump. It would also undermine the World Trade Organization's rules and its powers for enforcing them, depriving Washington of its strongest lever of influence over Beijing's economic policies.

Furthermore, the global havoc unleashed by the subprime crisis has led Chinese officials to turn a deaf ear to any U.S. lecturing on how to run their economy. Threats and ranting from Washington risk merely fortifying hard-line opponents of change in China at a time when slowing growth has put its leaders on the defensive.

Good advice.

Taxing Treasury's Geithner

I have refrained writing on the tax payment brouhaha that engulfed Timothy Geithner, who was confirmed earlier this week by a 60 - 34 margin, and likely would not have been confirmed had the times not been so extraordinarily financially perilous.  Many senators sided with the Punditocracy, which concluded overwhelmingly that Geithner evaded taxes and also tried to avoid taxes by claiming a child care credit for summer camp.  As I do not expect anyone to be able to figure out the tax codes, and as accountants often differ in their advice--even IRS agents have been tested and responded with divergent advice--I decided to ask two accountants I have used, both superb.  Their responses follow.

ACCOUNTANT ONE

I have lots of IMF and World Bank employees as clients.  While those organizations do a good job of informing people that the employee has responsibility for Self Employment (I.e., John, Social Security and Medicare) taxes, they still issue a W-2 form indicating Social Security and Medicare Wages showing no taxes withheld.  Confusing for people not familiar with the process – and for preparers who don’t encounter it regularly.

As I understand it Geithner was audited and paid the SE tax on the audit years but not any closed years before the audit.  When vetted for Treasury he was told by Obama’s vetting team that he needed to pay those pre-audit years and did.  The trouble came when he didn’t ‘fess up to not paying because the pre-audit years were closed but instead said that he wasn’t aware of the prior year taxes due.  Mistake.

On the child care/summer camp issue – I don’t know a preparer who hasn’t been asked this question by parents who spent fortunes sending their kids to camp.  If a preparer puts summer camp in a return for the child care credit he/she should make sure that the camp is a day camp – overnight camps are not deductible -  and then the credit is prorated for the period of camp vs. the entire year. 

ACCOUNTANT TWO

I believe him.  If he worked for a foreign corporation as an employee, I BELIEVE he would not be subject to social security tax at all....but from the various news reports, he must have been paid as an independent contractor, which requires the contractor to pay the tax.

To paraphrase Fox News, they opine, you decide.

Convict World

More proof that convicts live in a different quantum universe than most people, and think in different modes, came with this news report on a courtroom assault that stuns those accustomed to normal folkways: A defendant told that his motion to replace his appointed defense counsel responded by smearing feces on the face of his defense counsel, then hurling same at members of the jury.  Mistrial declared, new attorney on order.  This recalls a video last year of a defendant cold-cocking his counsel upon being told by the judge that his motion to replace counsel had been denied.  Motion granted.

NYPD: The Chief Speaks

NYPD chief Raymond Kelly explains what NYPD is doing now to continue pushing crime down and thus build on Rudy Giuliani's greatest legacy.  Appointing Ray Kelly--who served as chief during David Dinkins' last mayoral year and give a downward nudge to crime rates even then--was Mayor Mike's best turn.  Well worth a read.

DC Snows 44

President Obama chuckled at DC transportation impotence after all of two inches of ice & snow.  Check the link and have some laughs.  If DC gets a blizzard, our new chief executive will find out that DC's snow removal program, per Hizzoner Marion Barry of the good ol' days, is...June.

Index 1/28/09

3 posts: (1) Palestine: Mr. Mitchell's M.O. Mugged by Reality--Us v. Them; (2) Dutch Debacle: Islam Trumps Speech; Jews Next?--Us v. Them; (3) Pew Poll: Economy First, Global Warming Last--The Home Front.

Palestine: Mr. Mitchell's M.O. Mugged by Reality

Begin with the 2001 Mitchell Report on the then-state of the Arab - Israeli conflict.  It runs 17 pages single-space, a turgid exposition of Foggy Bottom moral equivalence in which Israeli settlers are morally indistinguishable from Palestinian terrorists.  Expanding settlement activity is no different, in this conception, from opening up on unarmed civilians with AK-47s.  A couple of samples from the report illustrate the mentality at work (my comments are in parentheses): "Whatever the source, violence will not solve the problems of the region.  It will only make them worse...."  (Didn't "violence" "solve" World War II?)  "Despite their long history and close proximity, some Israelis and Palestinians seem not to fully appreciate each other's problems and concerns.....The culture of peace, nurtured over the past decade, is being shattered."  ("Nurtured" while Palestinians destroyed artifacts evidencing ancient Jewish presence on Temple Mount, while Palestinian police fired at Jews instead of on Palestinian terrorists they were to control...)  [page 2]  Palestinians describe Israel's targeted assassination policy as a "clear violation" of the Fourth Geneva Convention...[page 9]  (Is there anything richer than Palestinians, who target civilians by the carload, who glory in using women & children as shields, pleading the Geneva Conventions?)

The Mitchell Report was issued midway between the September 2000 launching of Yasir Arafat's al-Aqsa Intifada with its suicide bombers, and the September 2001 9/11 attacks.

Now add a Jerusalem Post portrait of the formidable George Mitchell:

In selecting Mitchell, the new US president has chosen a man who believes that all troubles have solutions, that no problem is intractable. He has chosen a man who believes in conflict resolution, not merely conflict management, which - to a large degree - was the default setting of the Bush administration and the Sharon and Olmert governments.

The failure of the Oslo process in the 1990s, and the violent eruption of the second intifada, prompted a switch both in Jerusalem and in Washington, from the belief that we were on the cusp of solving, for-once-and-for-all, the Arab-Israel conflict, to a belief that the best we can do now is manage the conflict until attitudes and patterns of behavior fundamentally change on the ground.

Israel went from then-prime minister Ehud Barak's drive to forge an "end to the conflict" agreement with Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000, to building the security fence and disengaging from Gaza - polices propelled largely by a belief that the conflict was unsolvable, and that the best way to manage it was to take unilateral steps that the government thought would best serve the country's interests.

Mitchell sees all conflicts as resolvable, as he told an audience in Israel in December:

I UNDERSTAND the people in the Middle East are discouraged," Mitchell told The Jerusalem Post last month, after delivering a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. "I understand your feelings."

The soft-spoken, very personable Mitchell continued: "But from my experience in Northern Ireland, I share the feeling that there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended. Conflicts are created by human beings, and can be ended by human beings. It may take a long time. But with committed, active and strong leadership, it can happen here in the Middle East."

When the warring sides in Northern Ireland got together last year to adopt a power-sharing agreement, Mitchell said, it happened "some 800 years after Britain began its domination of Ireland; 86 years after the partition of Ireland; 38 years after the British Army formally began its most recent mission in Ireland; 11 years after the peace talks began; and nine years after the peace agreement was signed."

He said that in the negotiations which led up to the agreement, "We had seven-hundred days of failure and one day of success."

But the JP author, Herb Keinon, notes that Israelis across the political spectrum have been mugged by the grim reality of suicide bombings and rockets, and now reject conflict resolution in favor of conflict management--muddling an insoluble conflict through with security fences and border crossing barriers.  Keinon points out differences between Northern Ireland 1998 and Palestine 2009: (1) the Irish Republican Army (IRA) aimed to unite Ireland on its terms, not destroy England: (2) the IRA, while it cooperated with other terror groups, lacked global conquest ambitions invested in such links; (3) the IRA was never motivated to kill all British on religious grounds--Catholics destroying the Anglican Church, etc; (4) the Catholic Church never sanctioned IRA activities, while Islamic militant clerics actively aid and abet Palestinian terror; (5) Northern Ireland was a modern state whose neighbors, Ireland & Britain, actively worked for peace, rather than actively prosecuting war as Iran does openly, or Syria clandestinely.

Keinon concedes that Mitchell knows there are differences, quoting Mitchell's December speech:

No two countries, no two conflicts are the same. So what happened in Northern Ireland cannot be precisely replicated here or anywhere else. But it does offer an example of what can happen when peace makes a better life possible.

OK, so Mitchell, an extremely intelligent and accomplished statesman, grasps that differences exist; he simply does not grasp that the differences amount to a chasm.  And he may well be right that all conflicts are ultimately resolvable.  Where Mitchell goes wrong is in believing that all conflicts are resolvable by negotiations between equals.  They are not.  Some--perhaps most--conflicts can be settled by the Mitchell Method of Perpetual Parley; Northern Ireland proved to be one of them, no doubt in major measure due to the presence of a skilled, indefatigable interlocutor.  But the IRA was what is called a programmatic terror group: it had a political program of limited aims.  Hamas is an apocalyptic terror group: it has a religious program of unlimited aims.  As for the Palestinian Authority, it has sponsored Nazi kidvid videos and even has co-sponsored same with Hamas; there is zero difference between the two on this.

Alas, some conflicts can only be resolved by a second conflict resolution model.  Call it the FDR Model of Total Victory: defeat of the enemy on the battlefield, followed by pacification under interim trusteeship, and then--only then--return to self-rule.  Germany had to be de-Nazified; Japan demilitarized.  For the Palestinians this means killing Nazi kidvid brainwashing of Palestinian youth.  This takes two forms.  First, anyone under 18 has had nothing but anti-Semitic lies and anti-Israel lies fed them: Jews are said to be apes & pigs; "occupied territory" is defined as not just Gaza (Israeli withdrawal is deemed a sham) & the West Bank, but the land within the Jewish State itself--Tel Aviv, in this reading, is properly Tel al Arabi.   This kind of stuff doesn't go away after signing a peace accord.  Its eradication is the predicate for true peace.  Then, only then, can some form of responsible political authority be constituted.  It need not be--should not be--the irremediably corrupt Palestinian Authority.  What emerges from trusteeship is not knowable today.  (The poisonous concoction that is twentieth century Palestinian nationalism makes permanent trusteeship unlikely to work.  This is the fruit of Arab manipulation of the refugee problem created by the war they started in 948, and perpetuated thereafter.)  Because trusteeship is not even on the agenda at this point, containment and muddling through remain Israel's sole viable options.  Publisher-editor Joseph Joffe makes the same point about managing the conflict an an op-ed worth a read.  (For epic flights of fancy, try Thomas Friedman's screamingly off-the-wall riff on how to make Mideast peace: get Hamas to make nice, and Syria & Iran too.  Mitchell is a realist compared to Friedman.)

Second, there is the broader Islamist movement that aims to establish a global Caliphate (Sunni) or Imamate (Shia).  Thus videos trumpet to Palestinian youth daily the glory of becoming a shahid (martyr) and thus winning everlasting happiness in the Islamic Garden of Paradise.  This part can only be resolved within Islam, via a Reformation of the kind that Western religions underwent over the past 300 years.  Conflict becomes anathematized, as with the Catholic Church never endorsing IRA violence.

Bottom Line.  President Obama's appointment of Mitchell, coupled with his Jan. 27 statement to al-Arabiya news channel that the time is "ripe" for pursuing Arab-Israeli peace sets up a double trap: First, Mitchell, with a legacy of brokering the Irish peace, cannot afford to see his legacy tarnished by failing here, and thus will press the more malleable party--Israel--to make concessions on the Oslo model that failed so dismally in the 1990s,  Second,  President Obama has made his first major public investment of his prestige in seeking an unattainable goal, thus setting himself up for an inevitable fall.  Presidential prestige should be husbanded, not expended in haste.

Sadly, the estimable Mr. Mitchell mirror-images the two sides and imagines a "cycle of violence."  When Israel pulled out of Gaza unilaterally in 2005, and the Palestinians smashed the greenhouses left behind by his bogey Israeli settlers, and commenced firing rockets into Israel, was that a continuation of a cycle of violence?  Israel, put simply, traded land for rockets.  Earlier, in 2000, having unilaterally vacated southern Lebanon and reaped the al-Aqsa Intifada, Israel traded land for suicide bombers.  In 1993, with the Oslo Accords, Israel made irrevocable tangible promises to cede territory, in return for revocable intangible Palestinian promises to end terror and recognize Israel; Israel, instead, wound up trading land for lies.

Mitchell sees none of this.  He is wedded to the mind-numbing cliche of a "peace process" that does not exist--does not process peace.  In the summer of 2000 Israel was merely on the cusp of trading more land for more lies. Land for lies, land for suicide bombers, land for rockets, land for what next?  Welcome, then, in 2009, to the umpteenth round with Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football....

Dutch Debacle: Islam Trumps Speech; Jews Next?

Incredibly, last week a Dutch court ruled that an elected Dutch Parliament member could be tried for blaspheming Islam by producing a film featuring quotes of militancy & hatred from the Quran, juxtaposed with images of terror and hate-speeches by radical imams.  Gert Wilders made a 17-minute film entitled "Fitna" ("strife") that sparked violent demonstrations in the Muslim world by the Usual Suspects.  This Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report offers more depressing detail.  Author Bruce Bawer, deeply knowledgeable about Europe caving in to Islam, provides vivid background and perspective on Holland's abject surrender to Islamist violence & intimidation.  Free speech advocate Nat Hentoff notes in an article today that last month the UN (predictably) caved, voting to protect Islam from "defamation" in a way no other religion is protected.

Equally depressing is growing global anti-Semitism and equally growing global indifference to same, as Claudia Rosett's latest Forbes article attests.  Check out this money paragraph on anti-Semitism in the US, versus other hate crimes against religious group members:

For 2007, FBI figures show that among 1,477 religiously motivated hate crimes reported by U.S. law enforcement authorities, 9% were anti-Islamic, 9.5% were "anti-other religion," 4.4% were anti-Catholic and, by far outstripping any other category, "68.4% were anti-Jewish."

So which hate crime category gets most attention among media types?

Pew Poll: Economy First, Global Warming Last

A Pew poll taken recently shows public attitudes have shifted in the past year, with the economy front & center, and global warming dead last on the list of public concerns.  Climate change is an elitist cause, supported by the public only when its members feel they have the luxury of worrying about sea levels a century from now.  Yet fabled enviro-guru James Lovelock warns of catastrophe from even a two-degree warming, because he believes that the vastly greater population now, versus earlier warming periods, cannot be supported after such a rise.  He proposes to have farmers bury carbon as charcoal to reduce the 30 gigatons (a gigaton is one billion tons) of carbon humans put in the atmosphere annually--a number that is a small fraction of the 550 gigatons Mother Nature returns each year.  Famed physicist Freeman Dyson urges a cautious approach to climate change, in a superb 8-pager reviewing a pair of books by prominent economists on the economics of strategies to combat global warming.

Meanwhile, savor the discomfort of senior Massachusetts Democrats (and Mitt Romney, former Governor of Taxachusetts) who fought against a $2 billion wind power platform to be erected off the coast of Nantucket.  Hmmm, it seems that the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Cape Cod's House Representative, William Delahunt wish not their aesthetic sensibilities impinged upon ISO Green Nirvana.  (The latter is the lefty horror who openly expressed hope that al-Qaeda would be able to target a Cheney aide once his visage was aired on TV at a hearing where Delahunt was badgering the aide over "torture.")

Index 1/27/09

3 posts: (1) Celebrate 44's Ascension?--The Home Front; (2) Israel Hits Energy Paydirt--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (3) Terror Detainees: Inconvenient Truths--9/11, 3/11 & N/11.

Celebrate 44's Ascension?

David Horowitz, on the culture war barricades for several decades, eloquently explains why there is much for conservatives to celebrate in 44's ascension despite policies that conservatives often will not celebrate.  His essay is especially well written.  Michael Barone sees parallels between 44 & 35 (JFK) in an article well worth reading.  Deroy Murdock hopes 44 will roll back ghetto culture and thus restore traditional values to an ascendant position among vulnerable African-American youth.

But the Cleveland Leader reports on a major snub by 44 on Inauguration Ball night: He skipped the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball, which honors the Nation's Congressional Medal of Honor recipients.  First held in 1953 to celebrate President Eisenhower's inauguration, every President has attended, for 14 consecutive inaugurals.  President Obama became the first to skip the event, apparently too busy with Hollywood & rap & rock pals.  David Horowitz, no doubt, always eager to honor America's military heroes, would not approve.  Not a good move, 44.

Israel Hits Energy Paydirt

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel may have found its energy salvation offshore: three huge natural gas fields discovered by Noble Energy, Inc. 50 miles off the coast of Haifa (Israel's high-tech capital).  Israel now can anticipate full energy independence and even becoming a natural gas exporter.  Israel's Greens are now calling for canceling plans to build a coal-fired plant at Ashkelon.  In one stroke Israel ends dependence upon Mideast oil & Russian-controlled natural gas moving via the Caucasus.

Terror Detainees: Inconvenient Truths

A recent New York Times front-pager on Guantanamo informs us that one Saudi released from custody at Gitmo has returned to head an al-Qaeda unit in Lebanon.  A second news report informs us that two other Gitmo detainees have surfaced in an al-Qaeda video posted online.

National security ace Thomas Joscelyn offers the perfect case for Team Obama in deciding where to draw the line on evidence and holding detainees: a man identified by two high-level detainees--independently--as a sleeper al-Qaeda agent in the US, whose laptop contained oodles of incriminating evidence.  Much of this stuff probably cannot be used in a courtroom, yet how likely is it that two detainees, neither knowing the other was in custody, let alone what has been said, finger the identical guy?  Lawfare types would throw out much of the evidence.

Welcome to the real world of detainee issues, Mr. President.  Human Events editor Jed Babbin dissects the Obama White House session on detainee treatment and finds much ambiguity and thus, confusion; his article is well worth a read.  The Atlantic's brilliant Robert Kaplan sees a "torture dilemma" facing President Obama.  Read his excellent, short article in full for his vivid portrayal of the stress facing interrogators.  His money paragraphs sum it up perfectly:

But if we can’t—or shouldn’t—waterboard, then how far do we push the envelope? Because if we don’t push it somewhat, we face what I call the 15 percent dilemma. Let me explain.

If we act like angels, and another, even more massive attack occurs in the United States, then the public might cry for blood, as it did to an extent in the immediate days and weeks after 9/11, when torture was occasionally spoken of in different terms than it is now. Remember that some Bush Administration policies were drawn up in the context of one public mood, and carried out in the context of another. Were that to happen, detainees’ rights might decline by, say, 50 percent. But if we push the envelope only 15 percent along that dangerous path, then we might avoid the 50 percent trap, and save many of our own lives.

But even 15 percent makes me queasy. To avoid the question, though, is itself irresponsible.

Ace international lawyers David Rivkin & Lee Casey caution President Obama that the laws of war fashion a seamless web, and that altering one can alter others, with baleful consequences:

Some changes to the Bush policies are obviously inevitable. But what Mr. Obama must keep in mind is that the laws of war form a relatively seamless web. Different elements -- military detention and prosecution, and robust rules of engagement driven by combat necessities -- reinforce each other. So while he may grant detainees additional due process rights (the courts have already established a right to habeas corpus proceedings for those at Guantanamo), he must continue a system of military detention for most of the captured fighters.

That's because the law of war requires that enemies be "granted quarter" -- meaning prisoners must be taken if they surrender. But if these prisoners cannot be held until hostilities are concluded and must be released only to fight again, the military would be consigned to a deadly game of catch and release. Without a viable detention regime, the U.S. cannot fairly ask its soldiers to risk their lives in combat any more than we can send in troops with defective equipment.

The WSJ editors see a "Jack Bauer Exception" in President Obama's Guantanamo executive order.  The editorial bears a full read, but savor this anecdote from the Clinton - Gore Annals:

The "special task force" may well grant the CIA more legal freedom to squeeze information out of terrorists when it could keep the country safe. An anecdote former Clinton counterterror czar Richard Clarke recounts in his memoir "Against All Enemies" is instructive. In 1993, White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler was horrified by Mr. Clarke's proposal for "extraordinary rendition," where our spooks turn over prisoners to foreign countries like Egypt so they can do the interrogating.

While Mr. Clinton was still chewing his fingernails and seemed to side with Mr. Cutler, Al Gore arrived late to the meeting. "Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides," Mr. Clarke writes. "Gore laughed and said, 'That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.'"

Too bad Al got hung up on global warming.  Maybe he can advise 44 on Gitmo.

Index 1/26/09

3 posts: (1) Iran: Uranium Agonistes--Us v. Them; (2) The "President Analyst": Carter Couch, Reagan Ranch--The Home Front; (3) Terrorist Surveillance: The FISA Review Court Speaks--9/11, 3/11 & N/11; (3) Iran.

Iran: Uranium Agonistes

The London Times reports that Iran faces a possible uranium shortage that may crimp its nuclear weapons program.  Six major uranium exporters (out of 20 worldwide)--America, Britain, France, Australia, Canada and Germany--have banded together to stop uranium shipments to Iran, in part by leaning on other key suppliers, which include Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (the latter a nuclear power until after the former Soviet Union dissolved, when it sent its weapons to Russia).  The LT report is ambiguous to my skeptical eye, offering numbers of interest, yet quoting one analyst that says Iran already has enough gasified uranium to make 35 nuclear bombs.

The basic arithmetic is that it takes about 4,ooo kg (about 2.2 tons) of "yellow cake" uranium to make 1 kg (2.2 lbs.) of 94 percent enriched (weapons grade) uranium, with 20 kg needed for one bomb (of yield comparable to that dropped on Hiroshima--15 kilotons, or 15,000 tons TNT equivalent).  This means that for one bomb you must start with 80,000 kg (about 44 tons) of yellow cake, convert it to uranium hexafluoride gas, and spin the gasified uranium in thousands of centrifuges to separate out from non-fissile U235 the highly fissile U238 isotope that makes for bombs.  (U238 has the same number of protons--92--as U235 but has 3 extra neutrons, critical to enabling a chain reaction that reaches critical mass for an explosion; U238 is but 0.7 percent of uranium yellow cake, the remainder being U235.).

All the above is widely published, and the Iranians, plus anyone else seriously ISO A-bombs, knows this stuff.  So this is NOT a primer.  In the event, intelligence on these matters is highly uncertain.  But the feeling is growing among Western nations that 2009 is the year Iran goes critical in its nuclear program, and crosses the nuclear threshold.  At that point it is a matter of time when they can deliver a weapon on a target.

Now if only the West will embargo refined oil to Iran as well, we might get the desired result of stalling their program.

The "President Analyst": Carter Couch, Reagan Ranch

In 1967 Hollywood gave us a fun flick called "The President's Analyst" starring James Coburn as healer-hero.  In the late 1970s Jimmy Carter gave his countrymen "The Incredible Shrinking Presidency."  Now, George Will's First Obama era column tells us, we have elected a President and "shrink":

Now, however, the ubiquitous federal government struggles with tasks, from managing the economy to inspiriting the citizenry, that were not considered government tasks until long after 1789. Today, when many Americans seem to want in the presidency a semi-royal presence of the sort that Washington eschewed, inaugural addresses ring with regal confidence.

Obama's preternatural confidence is intended to be infectious. His presidency begins as an exercise in psychotherapy for a nation suffering a crisis of confidence. But neither the nation nor the government that accurately represents it is constructed for consensus. And he will be unable to fault his office for his frustrations because, more than any predecessor except the first, the 44th president enters office with the scope of its powers barely circumscribed by law, and even less by public opinion.

Obama's unprecedented power derives from the astonishing events of the past four months that have made indistinct the line between public and private sectors. Neither the public as currently alarmed, nor Congress as currently constituted, nor the Constitution as currently construed is an impediment to hitherto unimagined executive discretion in allocating vast portions of the nation's wealth.

President 44 starts with a reservoir of good feeling that figures to give him an extended honeymoon.  But being a shrink carries risks.  If the patient depends too much on a shrink, the habits of independence are undermined and, along with this, confidence too.   Alternatively, if the patient perceives that the shrink is peddling snake oil, the doctor - patient link is fractured.  The attempt at acting as Presidential shrink was Jimmy Carter's famed summer 1979 "malaise" speech (in which, to be fair, Carter never used the word--the media attached the label).  Carter, too, spoke of his country's "crisis of confidence."  Obama, a more inspiring figure by far (not hard) than Carter, has a better chance to sell his pitch.  But times are in many ways more dangerous today, so his prescriptions have less chance of succeeding than those of predecessors going back decades.

His language at times echoed Ronald Reagan, re tax cuts and national security.  Yet President 44 seems, by at least one measure, to have fallen short in the mass appeal division, compared to the Gipper: TV ratings for the Inaugural.  His Nielsen 37.8M audience was, at 1/8 (12.4 percent) of America's 304M population, 11 percent less than the Gipper's 41.8M, which was more than 1/6 (18.3 percent) of America's 228M population in 1981.  Thus RR's 41.8M audience in per capita equivalent terms, given a nation whose population today is exactly 1/3 larger than it was 28 years ago, would have been 1/3 larger today: 55.6M.  So RR's TV audience was not 11 percent larger, but 47 percent larger in true equivalent terms!

Let's hope that the stresses of his job do not lead President 44 to seek his own James Coburn agent-analyst!

Terrorist Surveillance: The FISA Review Court Speaks

A WSJ editorial alerts us to an August 2008 authoritative judicial decision on the legality of the Bush administration Terrorist Surveillance Program, released last August by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in its second-ever ruling since the Court was established in 1978.  (The ruling, In re Directive: Pursuant to Section 105B of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is redacted to protect classified information.)

The FISA Review Court was presented with a case involving a telecom company which refused to honor directives from the federal government to assist in placing taps on communications of suspected terrorists, citing Fourth Amendment privacy concerns--civil liberties groups had already filed lawsuits seeking billions in damages from telecom firms for cooperating with the administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP). The lower Court (FISC) had ordered the company to comply with the government's directives, citing national security interests as trumping privacy interests in this case.

The FISA Review Court noted extensive safeguards instituted by the government for its TSP, and that the TSP--"as applied" to date--is fully compliant with the Fourth Amendment.  (This leaves legal room, as judges like to do, to decide in the future that a more aggressive application of the TSP does violate the Fourth Amendment, though nothing in the opinion indicates this is likely.)  Petitioner had cited the Warrant Clause:--"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."--as a bar to TSP searches without a warrant.  Petitioner also asserted that searches under TSP had been, in the event, "unreasonable," because the "primary purpose" of TSP searches was not established as being for intelligence gathering, rather than criminal prosecution.

The FISA Review Court found the FISC's reading of the FISA law "plausible" and the actions of the government to date "reasonable."  It rejected the "primary purpose" argument raised by petitioner, stating that the primary purpose of TSP was irrelevant under the USA Patriot Act (the law passed in October 2001, tearing down the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence collection).  The Patriot Act in fact substituted "a significant purpose" as a standard, to replace the former "primary purpose" rule.

As to the Warrant Clause, the FISA Review Court placed TSP within the "special needs" case exceptions to the WC: "when the purpose behind the governmental action went beyond routine law enforcement and insisting upon a warrant would materially interfere with the accomplishment of that purpose."  Earlier applications of "special needs" trumping the warrant rule encompass drug-testing of high-school athletes, drug & alcohol testing of railroad workers, stop-and-frisk (pat-down) searches of suspects during street investigative stops.  The TSP searches involve suspects outside the US, and as the appeals court noted, petitioner presented "no evidence of any actual harm, and egregious risk of error, or any broad potential for abuse in the circumstances of the instant case"; only the usual "parade of (hypothetical) horribles" was offered, and this did not satisfy the Court.  Protecting America against future terror attacks was sufficiently compelling to both FISA courts as a governmental interest to justify invoking the "special need" exception.

The appeals Court declined to presume bad faith on the part of the government, but warned at the end:"[W]e caution that our decision does not constitute an endorsement of broad-based, indiscriminate executive power."  This suggests that the government has little latitude for expanding TSP, absent Congressional approval.  The decision was indeed a vindication for how the Bush administration applied the TSP.  But courts are notoriously fickle in matters where they reserve (most cases) the option of ruling differently later in a case not precisely the same.

Our legal system amounts to a giant, high-stakes lottery, with often capricious outcomes.  This case was a good outcome for national security.  But stay tuned, as those seeking to curb governmental power to protect Americans from harm will continue to use civil liberties as a weapon in our courts.

Index 1/23/09

3 posts: (1) Gaza: Hold Hamas; Defeat Lawfare Lies--Us v. Them; (2) Finance: Facing Up--The Home Front; (3) Caroline....--OOPS!.

Gaza: Hold Hamas; Defeat Lawfare Lies

Mideast ace Barry Rubin frames the Gaza War perfectly, and sets minimum objectives for preventing rapid restart: blocking tunnels, blocking military equipment and keeping aid away from Hamas.  Natan Sharansky proposes a trusteeship structure that pushes Hamas aside in favor of the US, EU, Israel & non-belligerent Arab states; notably, he excludes (rightly, too) the anti-Semitic UN.

that pushes Hamas aside infLegal eagle Alan Dershowitz debunks the legal case against Israel's Gaza response that lawfare advocate sare pushing.  He notes that Russian, Sudanese and other instances of brutality are ignored by Israel's lawfare assailants, and that this makes for a mockery of laws of war.  Both articles merit a close read.

Finance: Facing Up

What follows is a collage of pieces that I found most worthwhile.  Alas, travel demands make it impossible for me to sort through them with full narrative.  LFTC readers must sift on their own, but will find the effort, I hope, rewarding.

Recent articles shed light on causes and options re the financial meltdown.  The final stock index figures for 2008 were horrific: a 43.7% drop for the global MSCI index--erasing $14 trillion worldwide, 45% for the pan-European FTSEurofirst index, 42% drop for Japan's Nikkei.  Figures for the American indexes were not quite as awful: Dow Jones 2008 figures show Industrials down 34.7%, Transportation - 24.8%, Utility - 31.7 and Composite - 31.1%.  The S&P 500 2008 figure was minus 38.5%.  Nasty news indeed.

Here's worse: A private newsletter recently noted three consequences of severe financial crises.  On average, in real terms: : (1) asset values collapse - housing prices drop 35 percent over 6 years, share prices tumble 55 percent over 3-1/2 years; (2) output & employment also decline sharply, with output down 9 percent for two years, and unemployment averaging 7 percent over four years; (3) government debt jumps 86 percent.  Dissenting, two economists writing in Forbes see a bottom passing in the recession as wage data show improvement, along with fewer initial claims for unemployment insurance in December.

Here is more of "worse": The New York Times reports that the Fed has concluded it must put more funds into failing banks to stave off collapse.  The total bailout bill for the economy may approach $2TR.  Another New York Times front-pager details the tribulations of a small community bank in Michigan in a 3-pager well worth reading.

A New York Times front-pager recounts China's role in inflating the financial bubble.  AWSJ 8-pager provides riveting, sobering detail on how Iceland hedged itself into national bankruptcy.  At Forbes, economists Brian Wesbury & Robert Stein debunk the Paulson - Greenspan - Bernanke "imbalances" theory as the culprit in the meltdown.  The world monetary system is a closed system, with imbalances offset by counter-imbalances.  The Fed's goosing the money supply in 2002 - 2003, and even after, plus the ratings agencies and Congress going in the tank for Fannie & Freddie, led to the over-investment in real estate and derivatives that followed this "mis-pricing of risk" (a term Paulson uses).  Companies face a massive pension funding shortfall after a 27 percent decline in corporate pension fund assets in 2008, from $1.66TR to $1.21TR in assets, versus liabilities of $1.62TR.  Keeping such plans funded through 2009 will require a $60B increase in corporate funding.

A Bloomberg news report ran numbers on Obama's unemployment targets and his infrastructure medicine.  A Charles Krauthammer 7-pager on energy proposes a "net-zero" gas tax.  Ex-Bush 43 CEA chairman Lawrence Lindsey proposes his stimulus remedy in the form of a payroll tax holiday.  National Economic Council chief Lawrence Summers outlines Team Obama's stimulus plan come January 20, 2009.  George Will impales czardom pretensions as unlikely to help an ailing economy.  Brookings Institution scholar Clifford Winston writes that stimulus and pork need not go together for Team Obama.  Policy ace William Tucker warns that alternative energy subsidies are a danger to economic recovery.  Brian Wesbury examines Federal Reserve balance-sheet expansion and finds it not hyper-inflationary.  Economist editor William Rees-Mogg offers 6 lessons from the Great Depression to guide today's policymakers.  GD historian Amity Shlaes offers her FDR lesson list for the new administration.

A New York Times article examines the 1998 bailout of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund and asks if the bailout back then set the stage for the financial meltdown.  Economist John Tanny counsels that the Fed can't create economic growth by pumping out money.  Columnist Robert Samuelson sees as the takeaway lesson from 2008 as learning how little we know about the world economy and its complex interactions.  Economist Irwin Stelzer sees neither comfort nor joy awaiting Team Obama for 2009.  Robert Samuelson calls stimulus a "stopgap" at best, braking an economy in free fall; new sources of productive growth must be found to put America back on a sustainable growth path.  Nobel Laureate Hal Varian proposes an investment tax credit as better than federal spending stimulus, as privately invested funds are less likely to be wasted on boondoggles.  IBM's CEO fingers three key infrastructure items that would create one million jobs within one year: smart grid, broadband & health care IT.

Nouriel Roubini, the finance maven who foresaw much of what transpired in the past two years, predicts a nasty year-long recession for 2009 which, if not addressed by sound policy, could morph into long-term stagnation.  Read also "The End of the Financial World as We Know It" and "How to Repair a Broken Financial World" (in that order); the authors--Wall Street chronicler Michael Lewis & finance maven David Einhorn, offer lots of insight into how the mess came about and what might be done.  Former WSJ deputy editor George Melloan hopes that Keynesian money-minting works better now than it did in the 1930s, when it failed to lift the economy out of its deep doldrums.  Bush 41 CEA chief Michael Boskin sees unwinding the massive infusions of cash & credit as key, beginning with Fed rollup of liquidity injections as private credit recovers, and then unwinding insurance commitments as circumstances permit.

A WSJ op-ed sees a "bad bank" solution  as the only option: force deleveraging and give up trying to prop up failing banks.  Ian Martin of the Times of London sees the entire UK going under and taking PM Gordon Brown with it.  These two articles stress that current levels of leverage cannot be sustained indefinitely.  Any effort to prop things up will create new bubbles and lead ultimately to an even bigger crash than seen this past fall.  Martin Wolf of the Financial Times assigns President Obama the task of fixing the global economic mess.

On top of this, two finance mavens see epic political risk in 2009 as politicians pump out politically popular programs that will not help, and could hurt, economies.  WSJ pundit Dan Henninger sees President Obama at a "hinge point" in history but without anyone who knows what to do--here or anywhere else.

Caroline...

Reports since my Caroline posting yesterday saluting her withdrawal suggest I gave more credit to her than was due.  I am tempted to blame California, but will take the fall myself.  Oh, Caroline....

Index 1/22/09

3 posts: (1) Gaza: Obama Steps Into Palestinian Sandbox--Us v. Them; (2) Caroline Shows Her Class--The Home Front; (3)  Detroit: When It Rains, It Pours..and then Snows--The Home Front.

Gaza: Obama Steps Into Palestinian Sandbox

As AP cameras catch Palestinian smugglers back at work bringing petrol in from Egypt to resupply Hamas in Gaza, President Obama committed the very Mideast policy error he promised to avoid when speaking in June 2008: put the Palestinian issue front and center in the Mideast, rather than treat it as the subsidiary issue it is--far less important then preventing Iran from going nuclear, completing Iraq's transformation, and rescuing Lebanon from the clutches of Syria, Iran & Hazbollah.  His first Presidential call was to Palestinian PM Mahmoud Abbas.  One hates to strike a negative tone so soon, but the insoluble Mideast mess cannot be resolved until the terror apparatus is defeated & dismantled, Palestinians are disarmed and pacified--more precisely, de-Nazified.  The latter requires some form of interim trusteeship, involving Egypt & Jordan, for at least 5 years.  Until then true peace is simply impossible.  It cannot be resolved by early investment of precious Presidential time & prestige.  Perhaps 44 will learn how negotiations rushed into are set to fail, and will apply such lessons with regard to engaging Iran.

Caroline Shows Her Class

Caroline Kennedy's decision to withdraw her name from consideration for appointment to Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat, which came on the eve of her appointment to same by New York State Governor David Patterson, shows real class.  Caroline cited "personal reasons" for her decision, as well she might.  Her selection would have put her into a glass cage with 99 colleagues who would be eclipsed by her star power despite her junior status.  She can accomplish more about the stuff she really cares about without immersion in the hurly-burly of the Senate.

Congratulations, Queen Caroline, on a wise, classy call.  Best of luck to you & your family.

Detroit: When It Rains, It Pours...and then Snows

Detroit's 2008 was bad enough with crumbling infrastructure & services, a mayor convicted & removed from office and a dying automobile industry, and things still got worse.  Here is a look at Detroit's worst-ever year.

A Detroit Free Press column summed up Detroit's 2008 crisply: A wet cigar award for the Detroit Lions establishing an NFL first, the first 0-16 season in the storied league's 89-season annals--on the heels of 2007's first-ever 16-0 regular season record year (New England Patriots, who lost the Super Bowl to the NY Giants).  Oh yes, for 45 years, the Ford family has owned the club.  One prior team, the fledgling Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976, went 0-14.  One player summed it up: “It was one of those years where it just all kind of came together.”  (Ironically, on the same Dec. 28 day that the Lions entered the history books, the Miami Dolphins clinched the AFC East title, after having gone 1-15 in 2007.)

In my youth I witnessed in person a nearly equal exercise in futility and embarrassment.  In December 1960 the Dallas Cowboys came winless to Yankee Stadium to face a sagging New York Giant team that was having what would be its worst year in the decade 1956-1965, when the Giants played 5 title games; the Cowboys tied NY 31-31, the only non-loss of their 0-1-11 12-game season.  But the Cowboys & Bucs had the same excuse, one that storied franchise Detroit lacks: they were first-year teams assembled primarily from cast-offs.  The Lions' nadir is, alas, matched by that of the city they represent.

Weekly Standard reporter Matt Labash filed a long report of a somber week he spent in December in the Motor City, with depressing tales of crumbling urban infrastructure and shockingly decrepit, even non-existent, government services.  It merits a close read.  About all that can be said of disgraced, departed Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is that he was not the Motor City's worst mayor.  That honor goes to Coleman Young, the militant lefty and first-ever black mayor, who in about twenty years of socialist, racialist misrule destroyed the city's economic and social fabric.

Oh, and did I mention that the Big Three auto manufacturers did not have the greatest 2008?  One reason, writes WSJ columnist Holman Jenkins, are the environmental standards imposed by a Green Congress in the form of CAFE (Beltway parlance for Corporate Average Fuel Economy) mileage standards.  Foreign car makers pay fines to the US Treasury for failing to comply with CAFE as to cars they export to America, and make the money back by selling cars.  US manufacturers could avail themselves of the same option in theory, but the political backlash that being branded lawbreakers carries deters them from following foreign vendors in ignoring CAFE.  But take heart, Greens!

Toyota is developing a solar car that would run on electricity provided by solar panels, date of debut unknown.  But Toyota, too, faces a sharp slowdown in customer demand and must retrench.  An automotive maven explains why electric-car economics are not ready for prime time versus gasoline cars.  They remain far too costly for most consumers.  A New York Times front-pager examines the same issue and finds Detroit doubting the efficacy of electric cars at present.

Meanwhile, what the WSJ editors call Hank's "Deal's on Wheels" is underway: $6 billion in TARP funds to General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC), now a commercial bank. to subsidize zero percent financing for new car purchases--down, mind you, to a consumer credit rating near sub-prime territory.

Earth to Congress: Green militancy carries potentially immense economic costs--especially risky given the perilous state of the American--and global--economies.

Index 1/21/09

4 posts: (1) Inauguration Day: Impressions--The Home Front; (2) Presidential Succession: Grim Primer--The Home Front; ((3) Gaza: Game to Israel, Match Undecided--Us v. Them; 4) Thomas Jefferson & Executive Power--The Home Front.

Inauguration Day: Impressions

Symbolic of the grand $170 million Inauguration Americans marked yesterday is that President Barack Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts, against whose confirmation he voted as a senator--the first time ever that this juxtaposition has come to pass.  Equally symbolic of the embattled administration that ended yesterday was the sight of VP Dick Cheney being conveyed in a wheelchair to his reviewing stand seat, unable to walk next to the President who appointed him.  Cheney was hugely influential in many consequential matters, more so than any of his predecessors and, quite possibly, more so than any of his successors--most notably, in national security policy.  Preventing a WMD catastrophe was his prime focus.  Yet he was denied the comfort he deserved upon his exit, thanks to a back injury sustained lifting a carton the day before.

A notable contrast was that between the relaxed, even cheerful demeanor of Bush 43, the weight lifted at last from his shoulders after eight tumultuous years--begun with a hotly disputed election, shattered by the atrocities of 9/11/01, torn asunder by a war turned sour that was saved at the brink of total defeat, serially battered in its final year by soaring energy prices, Russian invasion of Georgia and financial meltdown--versus the tense demeanor of the President-Elect, minutes before his swearing in.  President-Elect Obama said "I, Barack Hussein Obama..."-- "Hussein"--which means "beautiful" in Arabic and irrefutably symbolic of a country that can simultaneously fight a war against militant Islamic terrorists and elect as President a man with an Arab middle name, a man who spent several years in a Muslim country during his youth, including a smattering of (moderate) Muslim religious schooling.

A delightful surprise for this viewer was the musical performance by top musicians of an arrangement of an Air & "Simple Gifts," the Quaker hymn.  I found a perfect retort to the recent idiot outburst against President Obama from Venezuelan thug-tyrant Hugo Chavez, in the selection of classical & jazz pianist Gabriel Montero, of Venezuelan birth, to perform as part of the ensemble.  It reached out to music fogeys like me and warmed the occasion considerably.  Notable as a final prelude was the beaming smile on Michelle Obama's face as her husband took the Presidential oath; gone was her frowning and scolding mien of the campaign primary season.

President Obama's Inaugural Address was 3 pages, single-space, and took 21 minutes to deliver.  Its policy substance I will pass on, leaving policy to official acts of his administration.  He spoke with evident resolve, his anticipatory tension gone, his words eloquent yet plain-spoken--despite reliance on cliches; it clearly was his work, not that of speech-writers, and thus made up in genuineness of text what it lacked in high polish.  He also warned our adversaries in no uncertain terms.  His poetry was more in manner of delivery than the text itself.  It is a speech that reads not so well, but sounded far better than it reads.  Historical references to George the Father of our Country, and to Abraham its Saviour, and to our astonishing civil rights progress that made yesterday possible, were interwoven with calls to assume responsibility and come together.

Its best substantive passage, to my ear, was this:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those ... To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

Its underlying message, I thought, was this:

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

But as England's World War II Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously remarked at a dinner: "This pudding, it has no theme."  Missing was a sound-bite phrase for a sound-bite era, such as New Frontier (JFK), Great Society (LBJ), City on a Hill (Reagan).  I saw "Unity, Civility for Common Purpose" as his main theme, but President Obama did not so crown his speech.

President 44 spoke with telltale rhythms and cadences of a preacher to the Pulpit born.  Which called to my memory the great words at the end of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's famed "I Have a Dream" speech of August 8, 1963, crowning the great March on Washington, spoken in front of the Lincoln Memorial: "Free at last!  Free at last!"

Presidential Succession: Grim Primer

One of President Bush's final official acts was to designate Defense Secretary Robert Gates--who has been held over as SecDef into the Obama administration--as head of government in event of a catastrophe yesterday (such as a nuke exploding on the Mall).  SecDef Gates was thus dispatched prior to the ceremony to "an undisclosed location" of the kind made unintentionally famous by VP Dick Cheney many times since the 9/11 attacks.

Much confusion reigns about presidential succession.  This primer should clear things up.  First, Article II, Section I of the Constitution provides, in Clause 6, that Congress may prescribe Presidential succession by statute, after the Vice-President's constitutional succession, in event of death, disability, etc.  As this Wiki entry on Presidential succession details, Congresss has acted several times.  First, in 1792, Congress provided for succession of the President pro tempore  ("pro tem" in shorthand, meaning" for the time being") in event of Presidential and Vice-Presidential death or disability.  This made sense then for two reasons: (1) the President pro tem of the Senate presides there in place of the Vice-President, who under Art. I, sec. 3 of the Constitution is President of the Senate; (2) there were, then, no powerful political parties, a circumstance that held until the hotly contested election of 1800.

The latter made it possible for a President pro tem of the opposing party to succeed to the Presidency and thus give the republic a new President elected by (in those days, until in 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment provided for popular election of Senators) the legislature of a single state.  In 1886 a second try was made during the first of two (separated) terms of President Grover Cleveland.  The succession law was amended, substituting the President's Cabinet for the President pro tem of the Senate.  This had the virtue of assuring that the President would become someone who had been chosen as a senior member of the Executive Branch by someone duly elected as President.  The order of Cabinet succession was made the order in which Departments were created, beginning with the Secretary of State.   The logic of succession being in accord with chronology of creation is, to say the least, strained.

President Truman pushed through the third major amendment of succession law with the 1947 Presidential succession law that still governs today with minor amendments.  The order began with--for the first time--the Speaker of the House (presumably as the House stood for the small "d" era we had already entered by 1947); then (once again) the President pro tem of the Senate.  Then comes the Cabinet, in the following order, still keyed to time of creation:

Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security. Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security.

A debate arose with creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, as DHS was thought more germane than many Departments re national security, given that a catastrophe wiping out large parts of the government would most likely arise from a WMD event.  But in 2006 DHS was put at the end of the line of succession anyway.

Which now leaves of with a Presidential succession law with the worst of both worlds: (1) the dip into Congress before Cabinet, at a time of intense political party partisanship, giving leaders not chosen by the President a senior place in line; (2) the Cabinet ranks determined by chronology, not analyzed relevance to cope with the aftermath of an unprecedented national catastrophe. Indeed, the Speaker is chosen by a Congressional district of some 700,000 constituents.  Then comes a Senator who may have been chosen by a state voting electorate of less than one million, up to being chosen by the roughly ten percent of the electorate that resides in the Golden State.  Then comes the Cabinet crazy-quilt.

President Obama could propose a change, and deal with other specialized problems of mass Congressional disability that might arise out of a WMD strike, calling for rapid elections of House & Senate Members, with state Governors making interim appointments.  Elections could take place within, say, 100 days, to replace vacancies.  This topic was ignored despite the activities and recommendations of the Continuity of Government Commission established after 9/11.  Its scope I leave you to peruse, or you can get more detail from me in on this topic in my book, The Long War Ahead and the Short War Upon Us (2008), which you can order at the top right of my LFTC web page.

As if President 44 does not alrady have enough on his plate....

Gaza: Game to Israel, Match Undecided

Bret Stephens assays the Gaza War outcome and awards Israel a major tactical victory but with strategic triumph denied.  Among the dividends Stephens sees Israel having reaped (based upon, in part, assessments by Israeli officials): Hamas split between its political & military wings; Egypt tilting away from supporting Palestinian militancy; Israel demonstrating a new-found competence in combat against irregular warfare; and Palestinians furious that Hamas used them as shields and invited a massive Israeli military response--which, though discriminate to a remarkable degree, still inevitably led to hundreds of collateral casualties (the fault of Hamas, but no consolation to the Palestinians).

Stephens interviewed one senior Israeli official and recounts:

In a wide-ranging interview, a senior military official offers perhaps the most authoritative explanation of his government's war aims and his interpretation of its effects. "We have no desire to go back into Gaza," he says. "We decided we're not going to spend five years [in Gaza] like the five years Americans spent in Iraq."

On the contrary: Far from seeking regime change in Gaza, the official seems at ease that the Palestinians will remain bifurcated between Hamastan and Fatahland for many years more, the way Germany was divided during the Cold War. The idea is that a Hamas state in Gaza -- somehow deterred from mischief -- could become a kind of useful negative example to the Palestinians of the West Bank, somewhat in the way East Germany served West Germany as a monument to everything that was wrong with communism.

This leads the official to his second remarkable comment, after I ask whether Israel deliberately chose not to kill Ismail Haniyeh, the elected Palestinian prime minister and Hamas's political leader in Gaza. "Israel tried to target people from the security apparatus and military wing," he answers. "At this moment, we prefer that the less-radical wing will take over."

The current divisions within Hamas are not the only ones the official sees as a consequence of the war. Palestinians, he says, no longer look to Hamas as the party of clean and competent government. Instead, they see a group whose leaders needlessly provoked a ruinous war they didn't have the courage to fight themselves. No wonder the third intifada in the West Bank, on which Hamas had counted, never materialized.

Israel's unilateral ceasefire no doubt was in part a bouquet to the incoming administration.  But there will be another round.  President Obama would do well to keep the Palestinian mess--insoluble in any imaginable time frame, as LFTC has discussed numerous times--as far off the front-burner of his foreign policy as possible.

Thomas Jefferson & Executive Power

Here are two eminent Constitutional scholars writing on executive power.  John Yoo examines how Thomas Jefferson exercised executive power as President.  Robert F. Turner adds his analysis of executive power over the past 25 years of conflict between Congress and the Executive Branch.  Each offers lessons for the new adminsitration to consider with care.

Index 1/20/09

2 posts: (1) Obama's Theme: "The One is Here!"; "Joe and Jill (& Hill)...."--The Home Front; (2) Enter Barack Obama--The Home Front.

Obama's Theme: "THE ONE" is Here!"; "Joe and Jill (& Hill)...."

Let's mark the new Presidency, facing a host of grave issues, with a pair of chuckles, as we will have plenty of occasions in perilous times to feel rotten, no matter how well the new administration governs--and I, along with every thinking person (I credit myself with being one such) wish the new team success.  First, a song for President Obama, and then a rhyme for Jill Biden, who yesterday on Oprah let slip on live TV that hubby Joe had a choice between Veep & Secretary of State, and that he chose Veep for family reasons;  enjoy the clip embedded in the link.

First to President 44.  Take the "2001: A Space Oddysey" theme from the 1968 movie, set to Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathrustra (thus spoke Zoroaster, the Persian deity of antiquity).  Now add my lyrics:

“THE ONE” IS HERE!"
To the melody of Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathrustra)

Begin with drum roll….

Comes at last THE ONE
Drum beats (12)….
His work just begun
Drum beats (12)….
Salvation is near
Banish fear!!
for
He is here!!
THE ONE is at last HERE!!!!!!!

Copyright John C. Wohlstetter 2009

Now to Joe & Jill (& Hill).  Of course, to the nursery rhyme Jack & Jill....

Joe and Jill

On Oprah's bill

Jill let slip a

Mouth-fill

"Joe," said Jill

Fit Barack's bill

For State, not Hill

"Thanks, Jill!"

Copyright John C. Wohlstetter 2009

Enter Barack Obama

Notes for Number 44.  Historian Jay Winik offers historical examplesre how the stresses of being President weighed heavily on Obama's 43 predecessors.  Karl Rove sees a short honeymoon and Andy McCarthy sees a rude awakening awaiting the new President.  All three are well worth a read--especially note McCarthy's explanation of the difference between pursuing criminals and gathering intelligence, and how it relates to evidence in terms of utility and sufficiency.  For a view from a great English friend of America, read John O'Sullivan's appraisal of the man and his task (which goes a bit too far in likening Obama to, of all people, the inimitable Fred Astaire).  O'Sullivan frames Obama's choice in his final four paragraphs, which I was for some unknown reason unable to copy and paste.  In the event, the entire piece merits a close read.

My 5 Priorities for 44.  President Obama should focus first on five key moves:

(1) Accelerate unblocking of credit markets & cleanup of bank asset balances - Until this is accomplished, nothing will restart the economy;

(2) Quickly pass a stimulus bill focusing on two urgent items. tax cuts and the "Smart Electric Grid" - Tax cuts (aim for payroll & corporate cuts first) will have a potential immediate positive effect on consumer balance sheets & investor calculation of risk v. reward (upon credit being unblocked), and Team Obama must jump-start the"Smart Grid" upgrade of our electric power networks, which though it will take years to boost the economy must be started ASAP;

(3) Pass within the first 100 days a second, longer-term stimulus package focusing on infrastructure - Boost repairs of existing facilities, plus build bridges & highways to somewhere only--no heating for swimming pools in Hawaii & no snow-making machines for Minnesota (both have been proposed)--it will take months to sort out serious from frivolous items;

(4) Quietly but firmly warn Russia Not to invade Eastern Europe & Ukraine - Russia must be told that military action will result in a strong American response  (with or without allies, the latter point made implicitly only), and that vacating Georgia as promised last August is a precondition for better overall relations & more economic opportunity;

(5) Embargo refined oil exports to Iran - This requires stepping outside the UN, where vetoes can be wielded in the Security Council, and making clear to allies that otherwise military action (by America or Israel) is the only option to stop Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. 

One Add-On: My Very Best Wishes to President Obama and all the 44th First Family.  May 44's Presidency be successful, and bring enhanced security and prosperity to America and its friends around the world.  All Americans (and friends) of goodwill so wish, and LFTC joins them.  If LFTC does criticize the new administration it will be in the spirit of improving things, not tearing things down for partisan advantage, as happened to often at the expense of 43, even post-9/11.  All administrations face this, but 43 got far more than his share, and in far more dangerous times than many of his predecesors have presided over.

Last Word from Number 43.  Bush's final press conference (Jan. 12), includes offers sage advice for his successor:

For the last eight years I've had a national security briefing every day but Sunday. And when you get a national security briefing, it is a reminder of the responsibilities of the job.    It's just a daily reminder about what may or may not happen.

The interesting thing about this job, by the way, is it's one thing to deal with the expected, what you anticipate; the real challenge is to be in a position to deal with the unexpected. And that's why those intel briefings are so important, because there is -- there's an awareness in the briefings by the analyst to try to help anticipate problems. And of course you hope they don't arise, but you better be prepared when they do.

And that in itself creates a -- you know, gets your attention, when you start thinking about what could happen. And the key there, of course, is that -- to take these different analyses seriously, and then have a structure so that your team will be in a position to analyze and then lay out potential avenues for the President -- from which the President can choose.

I say all that because that's -- this has been -- this notion about being briefed and thinking about this issue or that issue has been just a part of my life for eight years. People say, well, there you are in Crawford on vacation. You never escape the presidency. It travels with you everywhere you go. And there's not a moment where you don't think about being President -- unless you're riding mountain bikes as hard as you possibly can, trying to forget for the moment.

Enter Oval Office Occupant Number 44.  To repeat once more with extra feeling from LFTC to President 44: Please have the greatest success for our country, and best of luck personally as well to you and the entire First Family.

Index 1/19/09

2 posts: (1) Exit Bush 43--The Home Front; (2) Jazz: America's Civil Rights Trailblazer--The Home Front.

Exit Bush 43

At noon tomorrow presidential power passes for the 44th time, as it has, peacefully, since 1789.  At 220 years distance, the average president serves 5 years--most have served but 4.  Of the first 5 presidents, 4 served two terms (only John Adams did not); since then, of 38 presidents, one served 4 (FDR) and 9 (Jackson, Grant, Cleveland, TR, Wilson, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43) served two--with 3 presidents having their second term cut short (Lincoln and McKinley by assassins, Nixon by resignation).  So, in all 13 of 43 presidents have served two terms (11 a full 8 years, 2 serving 7--Truman and Teddy Roosevelt having succeeded fallen presidents).  Before 1933 and FDR's ascension the country passed through four recognized eras: 1789 - 1828, dominated by the founding generation; 1829 - 1860;, dominated by the rise of the Democratic party 1861- 1896, dominated by the rise of the Republican party; 1897 - 1932, dominated by the apogee of Republican power--strong enough to check Woodrow Wilson on the Versailles Treaty ratification after World War I.

Michael Barone recently wrote that the torch is passing to a new generation (the language is lifted by me, not Barone, from JFK's famous 1961 Inaugural).  Barone summarizes a century's political generational changes:

This is the third time in a century that we have seen such a generational change in the White House. From 1933 to 1961, we had presidents born between 1882 and 1890. From 1961 to 1993, we had presidents born between 1908 and 1924. John Kennedy's inauguration marked the departure of the World War II commanders who occupied the White House for 28 years; Bill Clinton's the moving on of the G.I. generation after 32 years. Obama's will mark the passing of the boomers after only 16.

The advantage of a new generation is that it brings fresh ideas and perspectives, a greater sense of possibility and none of the weariness of fighting the same old battles over and over. The disadvantage is that it lacks experience and doesn't know the lessons of the past.

Boomers are an odd lot. The years 1946 -1964 are marked as Boomer years, covering the period between the end of World War II and, coincidentally, the sharp escalation of the Vietnam War by Lyndon Johnson.  I like to roughly divide the Boomers into three sub-groups: Old Boomers, born 1946-1951, who came of political age with the JFK assassination; Middle Boomers, born 1952 - 1957, who came of political age during Vietnam and Watergate; and Young Boomers, born 1959 - 1964, who came of political age during the Carter & 1st Reagan terms.

As Barone's classification implies, the OBs & YBs are truly not of the same generation in outlook.  For the YBs JFK was a mythical martyr and Camelot a mythical kingdom, Vietnam & Watergate national nightmares that ended before they formed their political outlook.  Thus the Boomer era is, in political terms, indeed over.

Clearly, Barack Obama sees himself as standing in the shoes of two predecessors: Lincoln and FDR, facing crises comparable to the Civil War and the Great Depression.  Arguably, the threat of WMD equals the Civil War in potential to scar our society; beyond argument, the financial meltdown has led to the worst economic situation, overall, since the 1930s.

What does President Bush say about his two terms?  The White House has posted Highlights of Accomplishments and Results (52 pages) + "100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record" (41 pages).  (The second document is more compact; if you like pictures, see the first as well.)  On Jan. 12 President Bush held his final press conference (11 pages) and scored a knockout.  He answered all queries crisply, defended his record while admitting some major errors, and presented himself as a departing chief executive confident that history will vindicate his presidency.  Here is a great sample exchange from the Monday Jan. 12 event:

Q:One of the major objectives that the incoming administration has talked frequently about is restoring America's moral standing in the world. And many of the allies of the new President -- I believe that the President-elect himself has talked about the damage that Gitmo, that harsh interrogation tactics that they consider torture, how going to war in Iraq without a U.N. mandate have damaged America's moral standing in the world. I'm wondering basically what is your reaction to that?    Do you think that is that something that the next President needs to worry about?

THE PRESIDENT:    I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged. It may be damaged amongst some of the elite, but people still understand America stands for freedom, that America is a country that provides such great hope.

You go to Africa, you ask Africans about America's generosity and compassion; go to India, and ask about, you know, America's -- their view of America. Go to China and ask. Now, no question parts of Europe have said that we shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq without a mandate, but those are a few countries. Most countries in Europe listened to what 1441 said, which is disclose, disarm or face serious consequences.

Most people take those words seriously. Now, some countries didn't -- even though they might have voted for the resolution. I disagree with this assessment that, you know, people view America in a dim light.    I just don't agree with that.    And I understand that Gitmo has created controversies.    But when it came time for those countries that were criticizing America to take some of those -- some of those detainees, they weren't willing to help out. And so, you know, I just disagree with the assessment, Mike.

I'll remind -- listen, I tell people, yes, you can try to be popular. In certain quarters in Europe, you can be popular by blaming every Middle Eastern problem on Israel. Or you can be popular by joining the International Criminal Court. I guess I could have been popular by accepting Kyoto, which I felt was a flawed treaty, and proposed something different and more constructive.

And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States, and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, were you critical of this plan or not; the question is going to be, why didn't you do something?

Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, how come you didn't know this, that, or the other? And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?

And so, Mike, I've heard all that. I've heard all that. My view is, is that most people around the world, they respect America. And some of them doesn't like me, I understand that -- some of the writers and the, you know, opiners and all that. That's fine, that's part of the deal. But I'm more concerned about the country and our -- how people view the United States. They view us as strong, compassionate people who care deeply about the universality of freedom.

What a grand ending, and what a stark contrast to the pathetic spectacle of Bill Clinton dishing out a passel of outrageous pardons and then at Andrews Air Force Base telling reporters that he, Clinton was "still here and not going away."  President Bush will, like his father, depart with dignity.  Both followed the Ronald Reagan rule of wearing a coat & tie in the Oval Office.  Bush 43, like Bush 41, will keep a public silence about decisions taken by successors.

That stance is, of course, in even starker contrast to America's worst 20th century President & worst ex-President ever, Jimmy Oil, who not only shot off his mouth at the expense of every successor--despite his Presidency having been a disaster--but also conducts his own independent foreign policy.  Thus he tried to get allies to stay out of the Bush 41 Gulf War coalition, pre-empted the Clinton administration on North Korea, thus ensuring the survival of the North's nuclear program, validated phony elections in the Palestinian territories, held after Yasir Arafat had killed or intimated rivals, and legitimated a fishy vote count in a recall election, thus saving Hugo Chavez.

What d0 others say of Bush's two terms?  A WSJ editorial sees 9/11 having defined Bush 43 and thus his ultimate place in history.  George Will offers a characteristically tart appraisal of Bush 43's ups & downs--noteworthy is his inclusion of  Bush's signing the McCain - Feingold campaign finance law as abridging core First Amendment freedom of political speech.  Rich Lowry tallies ten Bush mistakes that were, he believes, avoidable.  Richard Perle assesses Bush's terms in an article well worth a full read.  RP says that the bureaucracy simply ignored what the President wanted done, and the President, unable to make it obey, eventually  acquiesced in what the bureaucracy desired--most notably at the State Department.  Heritage Foundation scholar Peter Brookes grades Bush 43 foreign policy as mostly a success.  PB is wrong re North Korea & Lebanon, where Syria still rules, but otherwise pretty much on target.  English historian Andrew Roberts sees Bush 43 looking better as time passes (as happened with Harry Truman).

Author Ruth Wisse separates Bush 43 from Clinton: Bush dethroned a dictator (Saddam), while Clinton installed one (Yasir Arafat).  Her discussion of Clinton & the ghastly Oslo Accords holds warning lessons for Barack Obama, if he will heed them:

This is not how these events are generally perceived. The image that still looms in the public mind is that of President Clinton, peacemaker, standing between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in the Rose Garden on Sept. 13, 1993. With the best intentions, Mr. Clinton had worked hard for this peace agreement and would continue to strive for its success, hosting the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the White House more than any other foreign leader.

But the "peace process" almost immediately reversed its stated expectations. Emboldened by his diplomatic victory, Arafat adopted Islamist terminology and openly preached jihad. The casualties suffered by Israel in the years following the Oslo Accords exceeded those of previous decades, and dangers to Israel and the world have increased exponentially ever since. This so-called peace agreement rewarded terrorist methods as fail-safe instruments of modern warfare, and accelerated terrorist attacks on other democratic countries. Though Mr. Clinton did not foresee these consequences, his speech at the signing ceremony betrayed the self-deception on which the agreement was based.

Further, Wisse concludes:

To be fair, Israel's role in this self-deception was, if anything, even greater. The Oslo Accords made Israel the first country in history ever to arm its enemy with the expectation of gaining security. The burden of soldiering in a defensive war for the "right to exist" -- which ought to have been theirs from the outset -- understandably saps the morale of Israelis. In this case, it also undermined their common sense.

The Oslo "peace accord" made the world more dangerous and subjected Palestinian Arabs to a rule of violence, corruption and intimidation. Arafat's dictatorship has since been outmatched by an even more brutal Hamas regime that serves as the terrorist outpost of Iran. President Bush's military intervention, by contrast, destroyed a terrorist state and made the world safer for its citizens.

 My summary appraisal of President Bush 43's two terms.  BIGGEST PLUSES: (1) No terror attack on US soil since 9/11; (2) Surge that saved Iraq from al-Qaeda + Iran; (3) Appointing lots of judges who will apply, not invent by revision, the law; (4) Taking advantage of a strategic opening to establish good relations with India, a rising mega-power; (5) Massive AIDs & malaria effort in Africa.  BIGGEST MINUSES: (1) Intel failure re Iraqi WMD & detection of insurgency; (2) Over-socialization of US economy during financial meltdown; (3) Serial, massive managerial failures; (4) Abject failure to control spending in his term's first seven years; (5) Communications breakdown with public & press.  Having written on all these topics before, I will not, given time constraints, repeat my detailed analyses here.

I specifically excluded two oft-cited flaws: Detention policy, partly because many of the criticisms of it are simply not true, and partly because no one could reasonably have foreseen that the Supreme Court would aggressively make new law for the benefit of unlawful combatant foreign terrorists held on foreign soil, by manipulating legal definitions and precedents.

I also omitted the flawed federal response to Hurricane Katrina--not for the reason President Bush gave at his last press conference, defending in part the federal response, but because the idiot Governor of Louisiana (Kathleen Blanco) who waited until 5 days after Katrina made landfall to declare a state of emergency was the major reason for the disaster.  (Bobby Jindal, by contrast to his catatonic predecessor, declared a state of emergency re Hurricane Gustav last fall 5 days in advance of the storm's making landfall.)

Special Kudos.  President Bush ran the finest, most cooperative transition ever, once again in stark contrast to the disgraceful transition by Clinton staffers, who trashed White House computers, offices, etc. in 2001.

Special "Worst" if not done before noon, Jan. 20: No Final Presidential Pardons.  Because this appraisal "goes to press" before 43's final hours, it is still possible he will do the right thing and pardon all those who served honorably in the war effort and acted in good faith on what they believed to be sound legal advice--including former top Cheney aide Scooter Libby, whose legal mugging shows what a wrecking ball our legal system can be.  Interrogators should not have to "lawyer up" and bankrupt themselves trying to stay out of jail for relying on legal advice subsequently declared invalid by successor Justice Department attorneys or federal courts.  If, as it looks still, President Bush "throws under the bus" these people, it will be his worst moment of all--worse than the Iraq intel failure, as every major intel agency in the world was saying the same thing of Saddam's still possessing WMD.  This call is Bush's alone.  He should make it and prove my foreboding wrong, pardoning everyone save those guilty of clearly violating policy and committing obvious crimes--like murder, not like waterboarding.  43 should have done this in his farewell address and talked about 9/11 shaping his presidency for better and worse, leaving all else aside.  Alas, he did not do so last Thursday.

Failure to do this will make the new CIA motto once again that of Monsieur Rick: "I stick my neck out for nobody."  That motto in the 1990s led led to a Justice Department policy of never submitting wiretap requests that held any chance of yielding court disapproval, and of not taking any chance of breaching the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence gathering which the 9/11 Commission found to be a prime factor in our failure to see clearly the full gravity of the threat Islamist terror posed to our homeland.  Sunday, House Speker Nancy Pelosi told Fox News Sunday that she remains "open" to possible prosecution of Bush 43 officials and that it is not up to Democrats to say: "It doesn't matter anymore."  Dubya, it's still not too late!

Bottom Line.  Above all, Bush 43's Presidency was a hugely eventful and hence highly consequential tenure.  It will take decades to evaluate its true standing.  He once said that he did not come to Washington to "play small ball" and he was true to his word.  His immediate predecessor, Bill Clinton, traded influence for popularity--passing up a chance to reform domestic entitlements in favor of mere political benefit.  No one can accuse--at least, not plausibly--George W. Bush of doing the same.  Here is his Jan. 15 farewell address (3 pages) to the nation.

"W", ride off into the Presidential sunset with head held high.  You did your best every day to defend America under crushing loads of stress caused by numerous grave threats.  Your Presidency will be remembered favorably by some and unfavorably by others, but remembered as a memorable, serious Presidency by all of serious mind.  Good luck in a long and happy retirement to you and the entire Bush clan.

Jazz: America's Civil Rights Trailblazer

Jazz critic & First Amendment defender Nat Hentoff details the central role jazz played in the civil rights movement in five lovely pages well worth reading.  Jazz stands in stark contrast to baseball's history of exclusion of Hall of Fame quality African-American players whose careers ended before integration reached their sport.  In jazz, white & black musicians played side by side, with mutual respect.  Even before Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up on the famous Alabama bus, Marian Anderson sang spirituals (1939) before the Lincoln Memorial.  President-Elect Barack Obama stands on the shoulders of, among others, music giants of jazz's Golden Age (the tail end of which I was lucky to catch in my youth).

In wonderful classical counterpoint to jazz, read how "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz used Beethoven's music to liven up his comic strip, through the piano playing of Schroeder.  Nothing to do with today's holiday, but worth reading for sheer enjoyment.

Index 1/16/09

8 posts: (1) Gaza's Egyptian Tunnels of Non-Love: The B-52 Solution--Us v. Them; (2) Petro-Price Plunge Humbles "Hurricane Hugo (Chavez)"--Us v. Them; (3) Financial World: The Cascade Problem--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (4) The Fed: Expanding Its Toolbox--"It's the Earth Stupid!"; (5) Hold Holder Hostage to Homeland Security--The Home Front; (6) Minnesota Senate Seat & Federal Constitutional Precedent--The Home Front; (7) Barack, meet DC's "Education Michelle"--The Home Front: (8) President Bush Honors a True State Department Hero--The Home Front.

Gaza's Egyptian Tunnels of Non-Love: The B-52 Solution

So United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is "outraged" that Israeli forces shelled the HQ of the UN Relief & Works Agency?  Well, as the UN is a tireless shill for the Palestinians and has actively subsidized terrorists and pro-terror propaganda, the HQ eminently qualifies as a legitimate target.

This Jerusalem Post battle report sums up the barbarity of Hamas & what the IDF faces in Gaza: The IAF had bombed some 40 targets overnight, including a Gaza City mosque in which weapons were stored and under which a tunnel had been dug. 

Turkey's Islamist PM called for barring Israel from the UN instead of calling for the UN to be barred from Israel matters.  On the West Bank, a Palestinian Authority crackdown on Hamas is being implemented by the PA, coordinating with the IDF and US security experts.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, addresses the tunnel re-supply problem Israel faces.  His opening paragraphs neatly sum up the tunnel mess:

When Israelis look back on what caused the current conflict in Gaza, they point to their government's decision in September 2005 to leave the narrow "Philadelphi Route" that runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. More than Israel's disengagement from the Strip as a whole, the abandonment of this strategic area made full-scale war inevitable.

The 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization placed this 100-meter wide corridor, which separated the Egyptian side of the town of Rafah from the Palestinian side in Gaza, under Israeli military control. (The Israeli army gave it the code name "Philadelphi.") By 2000, local Palestinians, many of whom worked with Hamas, dug underground tunnels between the two halves of Rafah. The tunnels allowed for a lucrative smuggling trade that included weapons.

Admittedly, there were rocket attacks on Israel before the Gaza pullout (the first Qassam rocket was fired in 2001). However, the scale of the attacks totally changed after the withdrawal. Rocket attacks increased by 500% (from 179 in 2005 to 946 in 2006).

With longer-range rockets due soon to put Tel Aviv (a city referred in Palestinian Nazi-kidvid as Tel al Arabi)--and Ben-Gurion International Airport--within rocket range, a solution to the tunnel problem is essential for Israeli security.  As Gold notes, Condi Rice (who, charming & bright though she is, never seems to learn from her mistakes) proposed EU monitors in 2005.  Her idea was implemented, but the EU monitors--shades of UN "peacekeepers in 1967 in the Sinai--fled upon the sight of the first Hamas water pistol.

US troops might work, but we cannot spare them.  So how about this: Once a week, have B-52s make a carpet pass over the 7-mile border under which the tunnels pass, giving one-hour notice.  Warn Hamas that putting children in the tunnels will not work, and that Hamas will be blamed.  I am reliably informed that if your are in tunnels underneath a B-52 strike, you will meet your Maker.

Cliff May juxtaposes Iranian and Arab criticism of Hamas with press criticism of Israel and sees (rightly) more good sense in Iran's dissenters.  Stephanie Guttman, whose The Other War (2005) ably documented massive anti-Israel bias in reporting on Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, questions casualty figures provided by Palestinian sources, as well she should.

Like most things that, if tried, might work, B-52s over Gaza will not happen. As usual, the international community is determined to prevent success at all costs.

Petro-Price Plunge Humbles "Hurricane Hugo (Chavez)"

Read and jump for joy over this New York Times front-pager on Hugo Chavez's misery as plunging oil prices undermine his desire to spread leftist poison throughout South America and stick it to Tio  Sam.  The price per barrel is now $35.50 despite a frigid winter--Chicago, as of yesterday, set a record with nine consecutive days of measurable snowfall (records date back to 1884).

Financial World: the Cascade Problem

Here is a brief comment I posted regarding a Jan. 14, 2009 editorial on Citi and systemic financial market risk, in which the WSJ editors argue for breaking Citi up so that its components are small enough to eliminate potential systemic risk from firm failure:

Your 1/14/09 editorial misses one key point: In a networked financial world, even small entities can bring down the global system.  Long-Term Capital Management never topped 200 employees, yet was thought in 1998 to credibly pose financial systemic risk.  Networks are susceptible to "cascade" failures.  Communications networks and electric grids have crashed when small module failures cascaded throughout the entire system.  Unless mechanisms are created that will break circuits before they are overloaded, plus enable rapid restoration are developed, we will see catastrophic crashes like last fall's meltdown recur.

I would add (not included in my posted comment) that massive leveraging enables small firms to have a huge impact.  Coupled with cascade vulnerability the result in times of stress can indeed prove to be a lethal financial cocktail.