JEW THOUGH I AM

I want to respond to a NY Times Op Ed piece by Benny Morris, published yesterday. Morris has been advocate of attacking Iran.

Morris says many Israelis feel they will soon face the same kind of threat they faced before the Six Day War, which - let's not forget - Israel launched.

Why? Because the Arab world still has not accepted Israel. There is just about no truth to that. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties. The Saudis have proposed a global peace which includes recognition of Israel. Al Qaeda has not accepted Israel - but they haven't accepted any state or government they don't agree with, which is just about everyone - so Israel shouldn't feel picked upon. Iran says it will not accept Israel - but it's far from certain it has to be that way, and no one has bothered to talk to Iran about it.

Israel points to Hezbollah's refusal to accept Israel as an indication of Iranian intentions. But Israel tends to think of Hezbollah only as it relates to them. I think Hezbollah is an Iranian effort to create a sphere of influence. In other words, what Hezbollah is doing in Lebanon is the important thing, not how it thinks of Israel. Even assuming Iran will not deal with Israel, that is only one element in the Middle East and, so far, only on Israel's north. At the moment, Israel's southern border is secure, as is what is de facto its eastern border with Jordan. What kind of surrounded are they, exactly?

Morris goes on to say that Western public opinion is reducing its support for Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians. Well - they should have thought of that a while ago. Israel thought the Holocaust was its guarantee of support. But, Morris says, "The Holocaust is increasingly becoming a faint and ineffectual memory ..." Not through any lack of trying by the Jewish community to maintain its effectiveness. But that's what happens, over time - particularly if you use it as an excuse to trample on other people. Besides, I think Morris is overstating the case. The Holocaust hasn't become worthless quite yet.

Then of course there are the Palestinians. Morris seems to be saying he's afraid of Hamas. Really? What have they really been able to do?

And the Israeli Arabs? Morris seems surprised that they are expressing support for their Palestinian brethren.

What elements of this that were not built in to Israel's situation in 1948 have been created by both Arab and Israeli intransigence. Israel has done essentially nothing towards a long term peace. And I don't see any chance of their beginning to do something now.

Here's how Morris finishes the piece:

"Israel's sense of the walls closing in on it has this past week led to one violent reaction. Given the new realities, it would not be surprising if more powerful explosions were to follow."

Are we following what he is saying here? By comparing the current situation to that before the Six Day War, he is telling us that Israel may well launch a pre-emptive war against any country it feels threatened by. That means specifically Iran, but it could mean just about anybody else. Poor Israel - they're claustrophobic, they need lebensraum.

We have just lived through eight years of this mentality. Hopefully, we're going to get away from it now. I've always believed Israel ran US foreign policy under Bush. They probably won't be running it under Obama. I'm sorry, I have no tolerance for any neocon state. So, Jew though I am, Israel gets no support from me if this is the way they choose to go.

A PROBLEM

From a 12/29 NYT editorial about Obama's plans:

"Another question clouding the labor agenda is whether Mr. Obama will give equal weight to worker concerns while the financial crisis is still playing out. Most members of his economic team are veterans of the Clinton administration who tilt toward Wall Street. In the Clinton era, financial issues routinely trumped labor concerns. If Mr. Obama's campaign promises are to be kept, that mindset cannot prevail again."

I'm pleased a major news source has finally acknowledged where the Clintons' hearts lie. If Obama's is in the same place, we've got a problem. As the Times also points out, his choice for Labor secretary is solidly pro-union, but there is a question as to whether Obama will let her act that way. I'm not sure what it means that she was appointed so late in the transition process: she could be an afterthought, a sop or the key to a secret plan. The reason I'm so eager for January 20th is that I want to find what we got in the last election. Because I'm not at all sure what that is.

NO CASE?

The time for Fitzgerald to indict Blagojevich runs out on January 7th. Fitzpatrick is now asking the court for a 90 day extension. Get the feeling he hasn't got a case? After declaring Blagojevich guilty before trial, is Fitzgerald desperate to back up what he said?

This is beginning to look Ken Starrish.

STURM UND DRANG

How do you turn the appointment of a US senator into the equivalent of a tabloid story on a drunken movie star?

Easy.

There's nothing wrong with Roland Burris or Caroline Kennedy. They're as qualified to be senators as anyone. There's no hint of corruption in either case. They should be one day stories.

But the media needs political ratings hype in the interregnum. It's not like actual conditions on the ground need much coverage, right? And politicians need attention paid to what they say - and they need to stay in the minds of the simple-minded. So the issue in Kennedy's case becomes whether to re-enthrone a royal family whose founding geniuses were killed and whose present king is dying. And in Burris' case, whether the usurper king shall have his way. I'm convinced it's all Shakespearean, but I can't remember which plays.

For the record, I have previously said I do not believe Blogojevich will be impeached. I also do not believe Burris' seat will be taken from him. Blogojevich has the power to appoint. The Illinois secretary of state does not have the power to refuse to certify the appointment - a writ of mandamus would take care of any such refusal. Congress does not have the power to unseat Burris simply because there are allegations (so far unproven) of impropriety against, not the appointee, but the appointer.

Harry Reid is given to grandiose statements which don't turn out to be true. The Democrats may be concerned as to whether either Burris or Kennedy has the stuff to win re-election in two years - but if they don't, there's always a primary. And for so long as these ridiculous stories play out, we will be missing two Democratic senators. Not a good idea at the beginning of Obama's term.

If we need sturm und drang stories, let's go to Alaska, pull Palin out of her hole and bother her some more.

MUST READ

If you have not read David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine," you do not understand what we have been going through for the past 30 years and what we will probably be going through for the next 30. The amount of information conveyed is staggering. Connections you never knew of, or forgot, are made crystal clear.

There is no more important political book.

QUIZ FOR THE DAY

What was the last nation to launch hugely disproportionate responses to terrorists (then called "The Resistance") in territories it had invaded and conquered?

How did that work out, by the way?

OBAMA'S FIRST MISTAKE?

The Israeli attack on Gaza is Bush's last war. I knew he'd find a way to fit one in.

I don't condone Hamas' behavior. But the intention here is to destroy Hamas utterly. How Israel - or Bush - thinks this might succeed is beyond me. If this sort of strategy actually worked, there never would have been an American revolution.

I know that the conservative Arab regimes are supporting Israel - since they're more afraid of Hamas' ilk than the Israelis are. And the PA supports it too, for obvious reasons.

Certainly the Israelis and the neocons wanted to get this in before Obama had a chance to change US policy. But I'm not so sure he's going to change US policy. I don't know if he can afford to take on that fight with everything else he's got on his plate.

But not to change the policy is a mistake that will lead to years, decades or centuries of world wide hate and the ultimate defeat of both Israeli and the US. The Muslims do not get weaker over time these days.

SO HELP ME

My mother in law just died, and I've taken over paying her bills. Among them is a Citibank credit card. The interest rate on this card, which has a $1200 balance, is 29%.

So help me God, before I talk in favor of giving Citibank any help I need to see their credit card rates reduced by law, along with their exorbitant fees for just about anything.

And a few of their criminals locked up for serious terms.

THE SAME STUPID STUFF

The closing of so many retail stores is theoretically good. Americans have for too long used credit to buy things they don't need or even really want. They will continue to buy what they need, and some things they want - Apple products come to mind. But America doesn't need all those retail outlets selling the same stuff.

The problem of course is the imminent loss of so many retail jobs. Those are jobs which should never have existed, and elements of the American economy should have been created which provided these people employment that was meaningful to the nation and the economy as a whole. The equivalent of these jobs on the high end is the proliferation of financial positions. We don't need those either. Never did. For years we've been erecting a huge Scotch Tape store (SNL, if you recall.)

The job facing Obama is not creating more useless jobs to keep people employed, but creating jobs that make a contribution to our well-being. Teaching, nursing and working in businesses developing new technologies, or even old ones that have been ignored. That can only happen if he disdains those who make fortunes off uselessness and encourages those who make fortunes for damn good reasons, The Harrimans built railroads. Linens 'n' Things built nothing.

Unfortunately, it is going to take a long time and some intense political warfare before we even begin to move this situation in the right direction. That means an extended recession, or a depression, is likely.

Or we could keep doing the same stupid stuff.

A THIEF IS A THIEF

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, wrote on Dec. 17: "The anti-Semite's new Santa is Bernard Madoff. The answer to every Jew-hater's wish list. The Aryan Nation at its most delusional couldn't have come up with anything to rival this."

What Haaretz is doing writing about the Aryan Nation - which is not active in Israel, to my knowledge - who knows? But they've got it wrong. Bernie Madoff has done the Jews a great favor.

The antisemitic paradigm would have had him, as he set up his Ponzi scheme, send the word out to his compatriots that "This is only for the goyim, not the Jews." I.e., okay to steal from the gentiles, but not from Jews. Sort of like the warning all the Jews in the Twin Towers supposedly got not to go to work on 9/11. Madoff has certainly dispelled this myth.

So it pains me to hear Jews express their outrage that Madoff stole from Jews. True, the religion and the culture in theory make Jews responsible for each other. But what Madoff proves is that a Jew can't trust someone just because he's Jewish. A thief is a thief, no matter who he steals from.

MIGHTILY CONNED

With my monthly mortgage statement today came a little note saying I could borrow up to 97% of my home's value, or get cash-out refinances up to 95%.

Does that sound like a credit squeeze to you? Or that anything's changed in mortgage practices?

Yes, Virginia, we have been mightily conned.

BITCH ALL YOU WANT

Everybody's all blown up about executive compensation in the financial industry, as if the market that drives what they're paid is some kind of abstraction. No one recognizes their own complicity.

Let's talk about the Yankees. People are outraged at how much some of their stars are paid. But they are paid that money because you want to see them.

Okay, you say, but I don't go to the games, I just watch them on the TV for free. So I'm not paying these stars. But you are.

The team gets the money to pay these guys from TV and the city, to oversimplify. TV recoups that money by showing ads. The advertiser recoups its ad money by upping the price of its product. The city floats bonds to support the stadium. You pay the interest on the bonds out of your taxes.

So - if you're upset about what anyone is making, make sure it's not you who's paying them. Don't watch the Yankees. Don't patronize Merrill Lynch. Get everyone you know to do the same. Once you've accomplished that, bitch all you want.

WHAT'S MORE IMPORTANT?

Obama held off releasing a report on the non-involvement of his staff in the Blogojevich matter. The Illinois legislature has put off impeaching the governor. Both because Fitzgerald asked them to. What I want to know is: why did they listen to him?

What's more important: Obama coming into office free of scandal, or Blogojevich getting convicted? The delay in releasing the information has increased the risk, so that the statement may no longer be enough to diffuse it.

What's more important: getting Blogojevich out of office, or getting him convicted? If you believe he's guilty, the public interest is quite clear on this. If we have to wait for Fitzgerald to allow the impeachment to go forward, either the Senate is going to be missing a Democratic vote or Blogojevich is going to pick the next Senator from Illinois.

Fitzgerald, and all the people kowtowing to him, have an inflated opinion of his importance. This is not a court order we're talking about. This is Fitzgerald's preference - and it might be best to honor it in other circumstances, but not when the risks are so high.

GOOD REASONS

Is there anyone out there who still trusts the conventional wisdom? Then why do we believe we're in an economic disaster?

1) The stock market has fluctuated between 8-9,000 for the last six weeks, and is likely to stay there short of irrational exuberance or irrational panic. It's roughly 1000 points above the post-dot com bottom, meaning it reflects the real increase in values since that time. I.e., it's stable.

2) New housing starts are down - and they should be. Foreclosures are putting homes on the market, but they wouldn't have been a problem if they hadn't been built - and a rational look at the market around 2004 would have dictated that new home building stop until all of those already built were occupied by people who actually intended to live in them, rather than flip them. I.e., the housing market is essentially stable.

3) Jobs are being lost - but why is that? Because business receipts are down because people aren't spending. For years, business receipts were up because people were paying with easy credit, which they should not have had. With credit disappearing, business receipts are stabilizing where they would have been if that credit hadn't existed.

In other words, on the whole, we are returning to normalcy.

This leaves too many people without work. But unless the US returns to producing goods, or we revert to the bad habits of the last 20 years, unemployment is going to stay high. We only need so many financial advisers, retail clerks and construction workers in a rational economy. There is no good reason for jobs to exist for many Americans. We need to create good reasons for those jobs. Read this and you'll understand that that is beginning to happen.

Or we could concoct a new bubble and go through the whole thing again.

What needs to happen short term is: people who are supposed to know (but actually don't) have got to stop telling us this is a disaster. This is an opportunity to move ahead big time toward an economy which is not based on needless consumption. The spin has got to be positive. And that's Obama's biggest job.

SOMETHING SICK?

Please read this and then, if you can, tell me what the fuck this woman is talking about. This was a two year old kid she never even met. Bart either has a massive free-floating need to love - she watches Nancy Grace! - or a serious self promoter.

As to that, here's her resume to help you out. Try this, too. She seems to be a good representative of a sad parallel world out there.

It is a fact I do not overflow with milk of human kindness, so maybe I'm not the one to judge. But I think there's something sick in this.

DON'T REMEMBER THAT, REALLY

So we don't like living in a competitive world? Whose fault is it?

Our Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe, creating the first economic power to challenge us after the war. Japan was the first country we exported manufacturing to which had the capacity to learn from us. China's the second. If it weren't for Indians, we probably wouldn't have a computer industry - and they learned it in our schools and our tech shops.

So what are we complaining about? This is what we wanted, isn't it?

Although I don't remember anyone asking me if we should teach China the things they'd need to kick our ass.

SHAME - WHAT'S THAT?

Well, whaddaya know! Now, according to the WSJ, the big property developers are coming after a bailout. And, since we're bailing out everyone who's put us in this mess, I think they're entitled, too. It's not like they overbuilt or anything. Damn public just didn't want to buy or rent that many homes or offices. Not breeding fast enough, or something. Next it'll be the local governments who encouraged them to overbuild. The concept of shame has ceased to exist.

NOT A NUMBERS PROBLEM

I'm hearing that the "restructuring" that Bush is looking for in the auto industry is down-sizing - you know, making them lean and mean. This while we're losing jobs willy-nilly, the pressure to bail them out is specifically to avoid job loss, and Obama is considering a stimulus to create new jobs. Incredible.

It's time to take economists (and financial people) off this job. The problem is not comprehensible by economists, because it's a human (not a numbers) problem, and they're not trained to get it, and probably became economists specifically because they can't deal with human problems.

People focused on markets have nothing to contribute here. People who are focused on helping other people should be in charge. I hope that's Obama. I hope he's enough of a progressive to blow off the crap that economists are feeding all of us.

NO MORE

Now that the banks have shown that they never had any intention of using bailout money for the reason for which it was given to them, I would think it would be perfectly clear that they are not to get another government dime. If in fact there is still a credit crunch, the rest of the bailout money ought to be used - if it is used at all - for direct loans to the people and businesses which need them.

But I don't believe there in fact is a credit crunch. If you tell people they're in big trouble, they won't spend. So they don't need more credit. And if businesses see that people aren't spending, they don't need credit to keep producing, either.

So the banks can say: hey, we'd loan if anyone wanted one, but nobody does, so we're going to give the bailout money to ourselves. No sense in wasting it - or, God forbid, giving it back.

It's a far more beautiful scheme than Madoff's, although it's designed for the same purpose. Scare Congress into giving the banks money, and scare the public into not wanting to use it. It is, in fact, the biggest criminal enterprise I've ever seen or conceived of.

And Tim Geithner is right in the middle of it.

HOW THEY DOIN'?

How should Congress begin its investigation of the auto industry? By talking to experts. Car mag writers, Consumer Reports writers, dealers, engineers, repairmen, blue book writers. Investigate every model currently made; find out how they sold (when it was possible to sell a car), how they held their value, what consumer complaints were, how they compared to foreign competition in performance, handling, reliability, etc.) Pull the recall info from the CPSC. Solicit public comment on the internet. Since so many people want to emphasize reducing the carbon footprint, find out from science just what can be done now and what can be expected in the future, and when.

Up to now the auto bailout discussion has been dominated by the perception that the big 3 make lousy cars. They have, and maybe they still do - but this is not a decision to be made on amorphous perceptions. Congress needs to know how good these cars are, how far along the companies are on new generations of vehicles, etc.

Because if it turns out that the problem is not in production but in marketing, an entirely different set of prescriptions will have to be imposed.

ONE STEP AT A TIME

Let's try to make some sense here.

Suppose, on the current theory that SUV's aren't good for you, the Big 3 stop making them - and trucks, too. Those Americans who want these things will buy them from Toyota. The path to the health of the Big 3 does not wander through the fields of eliminating SUV production.

As a matter of fact, a good business plan for the Big 3 would require two things: 1) they build better quality cars - meaning better than anyone else, and 2) they relearn how to market what they make.

Right now nobody's buying cars. The current conditions are no fault of the Big 3. What IS the fault of the Big 3 is their crappy reputation. Which is well-deserved. If they begin - or have begun - to make high quality cars, that will become widely known relatively quickly. I don't know the current quality of their cars. I've had two straight Ford Explorers and loved both of them.

If the Big 3 is going to be required to make environmentally sound cars, somebody is going to have to convince Americans that they really want them. I have no faith that the American public - or any public anywhere in the world - has actually turned the corner on this. It is entirely possible that the Big 3 can make electric cars or whatever that fall flat on their face, not because they're no good but because nobody wants them - either because of the Big 3's rep or the unfortunate fact that American taste in cars has nothing to do with their greenliness.

These days everybody;s marketing green. Sooner or later America is going to figure out that the green they're talking about is, for the most part, sheen. As I've said, when considering stories about people building green houses out in the desert, the truly green thing would be to leave the land alone.

What the Big 3 have to do is emulate Apple. They have to make cars that are innovative, reliable and hip. It will not be hard for them to show us innovative ideas. It will take longer to convince us that their cars are reliable. It will take a genius to make us think they're hip. But they have to find that genius.

The problem has very little to do with the cost of the vehicles - although Mercedes has shown with the Smart Car that reliable, innovative and hip can also be inexpensive. So has Toyota, with Scion. And it would be nice if the Big 3 could find a way to match, or outdo, them. But mostly it has to do with hip.

The plan we need to hear is how the Big 3 are going to make hip cars - and then convince people that they ARE hip. The Big 3 used to know how to do this better than anyone. Until VW outhipped them and started them on their slide.

I don't know enough about marketing to know how this can be done, or how long it's going to take to turn opinion around. But this is what Congress is going to need to know - and I'm afraid Congress doesn't even know what it needs to know.

But there are plenty of people who do. All I need to hear, short term, is that GM has brought them on board. Then I'll take it one step at a time.

TOO GENTEEL

Fourteen days ago I wrote: "Some times I wonder if the reason Paulson suddenly came out with his terrifying predictions of disaster was to scare the public - and particularly Congress - into giving the banks their last handout before the end of the Bush administration." In another words, they were looting the U.S. Treasury.

David Sirota now says my suspicions were correct.

When are we going to get tired enough of these frauds to storm the Wall Street bastions and the government departments and drag these people out by the hair? If I didn't think the whole thing was a generic American failing - i.e., plenty of people who didn't participate in these frauds would have if they'd only had the chance - I'd be advocating revolution right now. We are much too genteel about all of this.

WHAT WE ARE

This is endemic, and it's disgusting. It's what we've become.

ALWAYS WITH US

I've finally figured out why we have Fox News: to remind the rest of us that idiots are always with us. Of course it would not be wise to ignore fools completely - but couldn't we just sort of keep one ear on them and otherwise operate as if they don't exist?

I know the constant harping on Fox is good for Olbermann's ratings. But I don't want to spend another minute on them. That is, until we elect a president who believes what they believe. Then we will need to hear what they say.

TWO DEMOCRATS WHO MAY NOT BE AS SMART AS THEY THINK THEY ARE

How smart is it of Carl Levin to come out in favor of an investigation of administration figures who operationalized torture, with a view toward prosecution, when, according to the Big 3, George Bush holds their future in his hands?

Now - about this Rick Warren thing.

Obama clearly believes that he is the Messiah - that he can harmonize human factions which have no use for each other. But he's approaching it on almost a simple-minded level - a pure, Christian, Jesus level (let's not forget he's a born again Christian) - and we know what happened to the original.

If it's his intention to harmonize progressives and evangelicals, I'm afraid he's going to have to reach out to evangelicals who share some progressive ideals. They exist, and one of them should have been picked to do the inaugural. Obama likes Rick Warren because, in contrast to Dobson, Warren believes in lowering the rhetorical noise - or, as he put it, in civility, which seems to be the thing Obama is pushing most: not agreement on policy, but being nice to each other. But Warren has not abandoned a single one of the fundamentalist principles that have caused so much agita all these years. I'm afraid Obama is going to come to understand, belatedly, that being civil is not a long-range goal.

There was no necessity for picking Warren and alienating not just LGBT's but many progressives. There are plenty of people whose selection would have sent no message. It will not be long before the battle is joined on many fronts, and if Obama isn't careful he's going to find himself ignored while the fight comes on from the bottom up.

This is going to be a very short honeymoon.

On the other hand, Obama's labor secretary pick, Hilda Solis, has the right credentials. The SEIU say she has deep roots in the union movement. She's good for women and good for Latinos. My only question is whether she has the balls for the bloody fight she's going to have with business interests. But Andy Stern says he has.

THROW 'EM OUT

Nah. Won't happen.

Like I said, for other reasons: get rid of 'em.

NOT EXPECTING MUCH

After repeated Obama disapppointments (Rick Warren, anti-gay preacher, will do the inaugural invocation; Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, gets farm subsidies Obama promised to end; Salazar is not too good on the environment, and neither is Ray LaHood at transportation, etc. etc. etc.) progressives are wondering if the moment has arrived to start bitching, or whether Obama has some brilliant plan they're going to love, like the one he used to win the presidency.

Well. There are a lot of extremely qualified people out there on the progressive side of the issues, and Obama has picked next to none of them. So either Obama is a Trojan horse, or he's still into his inclusive, consensus thing.

If it's the latter, Obama obviously thinks that by the force of his personality, brains or office he is going to be able to make all these people do what they don't want to do. Problem is, as you load up your administration with people who don't believe in the things you promised the voters, ultimately you reach a tipping point where the opposition is stronger than you are, and you get contradicted, or even ignored.

Personally, I think Obama is already well past that point. I'm still ready to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think his ego has gotten in the way of his judgment. He really believes he can change the world, no matter what. And the nature of man. But the thing is, he's going to need help with that. And he's not going to get it.

I no longer expect much from our new president. I think he's going to be dissed and ignored, just like Carter. If he isn't, I don't think I'm going to like what he has in mind.

INVITATION TO FRAUD

Step 1: The Illinois courts have refused to hear the attorney general's suit to have Blogojevich removed as unfit. They didn't give a reason, but there's a good one: the statute she was trying to use was never intended for that purpose.

The impeachment effort is reported as stalled. Allegedly, because Fitzgerald has asked them to hold off so that he gets a first crack at the witnesses in his pending grand jury investigation. Is it likely he can be impeached? Yes.

Under the Illinois Constitution, the House of Representatives has the sole power to
conduct legislative investigations to determine the existence of cause for impeachment and, by the vote of a majority of the members elected, to impeach Executive and Judicial officers. Impeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When
sitting for that purpose, Senators shall be upon oath, or affirmation, to do justice according to law. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators elected.

What does this come down to? There is no definition of an impeachable offense. Not even a hint. The Illinois House decides, on a case by case basis, what justifies impeachment, and then tries to get the Senate to agree with them. Nothing in this Constitution seems to prevent the House from impeaching someone because he has B.O. This Constitution must have been written by some ad copy writer. So, on the face of it, they can impeach for whatever reason they want. Or NOT impeach for whatever reason they want.

I have not read the whole Constitution, and there may be something in there that helps narrow the matter, but I don't think so. There may be some judicial precedent which narrows it, but I doubt it. There may be some application of the standards of the U.S. Constitution, but I doubt that even more.

If we were dealing with the U.S. Constitution, I would have to say that until there is actual evidence that Blogojevich did something besides yakking about what he wanted to do, there could be no impeachment. And so far I've heard no such evidence. But under this Constitution, the political wave will determine what happens to him. His haircut could be enough to get him removed.

What a perfect opportunity to corrupt Illinois legislators. This Constitution is an invitation to fraud.

BALTIMORE

Obama's taking the train to his inauguration?

I think he's taking the whole Lincoln thing too seriously. I hope he remembers what almost happened to Lincoln in Baltimore.

NOT STUPID

Reading Matthew Alexander's "How to Break a Terrorist" has taught me something.

When Bush was crediting the surge for the reduction in violence in Iraq, others - like me - were saying that the reduction was due, in part, to buying off the Sunnis. Who was right? Well, let's see.

Iraqi Sunnis did not like al Qaeda any more than they liked any other foreigners. But they turned to al Qaeda for the following reasons: 1) the US decision to disband the army, which they controlled under Saddam, left them feeling somewhat defenseless in the face of Shia death squads which were intent on avenging what Saddam had done to the Shia during his reign. 2) The government the US was supporting was Shia. 3) The Shia government was cutting off employment opportunities for Sunni, and al Qaeda was willing to pay for their help.

In other words, Sunni turned to al Qaeda out of fear, and for economic survival.

The surge had the potential to make them feel more secure, to the extent that it was directed against Shia militias. The fact that some of it was directed at al Qaeda only helped Iraqi Sunnis to realize that their best bet was alliance with the US, assuming that alliance was possible.

The US then provided Sunni leaders with cash, which made it possible for them to provide livings to Sunnis (whether they actually did that, I don't know.) The US brought an end to the uncontrolled Shia-on-Sunni violence, partly through the use of the surge.

Finally, the US created a government which, although Shia (inevitably, since the Shia were in the majority and Sunnis, at least initially, were implicated in the Saddam regime and kept out of power), did not appear to support Shia militants like al Sadr. Maliki's attacks on Sadr were not intended to be militarily effective, but to show the Sunni that they had friends in government.

On the whole, once you get past what I saw as stupidity in getting into Iraq in the first place, this was not a stupid policy. It stifled al Qaeda, and it brought a measure of calm. What it means longterm, though, is another thing.

The Sunni now can believe that the US is pro-Sunni, or at least even-handed. The question for them is whether they will have reached the point of being able to at least defend themselves when American troops leave. This means either control of the army or the creation of Sunni militias to counter the Shia. I have not seen any stories on how they are doing with either - so I don't know whether or not they will welcome American departure.

I suspect that Sadr expects that they will not have accomplished their own defense, and so is willing to bide his time until their American defenders are gone and he has a free hand with the Sunni. On the other hand, if the Sunni are sufficiently armed to resist the Shia and their death squads, it is possible that something like mutually assured destruction will restrain the prevalence of armed conflict in the ultimate resolution of who gets the power in Iraq. That would tend to lend itself toward democratic solutions. It would also repress Iranian influence in Iraq.

So the culmination of American policy would have to be the rearming and combat training of the Sunni population, and not the creation of a government armed force. I have no idea if this is being done, but I'll be looking for signs of it. I have to say that if it isn't being done, the Sunni may turn to al Qaeda again.

CHOPPED LIVER

So people are pissed Bernie Madoff with their money? Well, I'm pissed I didn't even know who he was. And I'm in Palm Beach! - sort of. Well, just outside. What am I, chopped liver? I couldn't use 10%? Nobody wants to tell me about this miraculous guy? That's the last time I give to the temple. (It would have been the first time.)

THAN MEETS THE EYE

What's going on with Blogojevich is very odd.

First of all: he's innocent until proven guilty. Focusing on the Senate seat charge (which is clearly the charge behind the attempts to remove him), on what basis can a court find him unfit now? As far as we know, although there is evidence that Blogojevich wanted to sell the seat, there's no evidence (yet) that he actually tried to. He may be on the hook for conspiracy, based on the conversations he had with his own staff, but does that make him unfit? Besides, the Illinois law which allows a court to unseat a governor (probably temporarily) was intended to deal with situations of physical or mental incapacity. Who's going to testify that Blogojevich is nuts? No psychiatrist has examined him. Anyway, if what Blogojevich said he wanted to do was crazy, then half the country belongs in asylums.

Impeachment? On what evidence? Same problem.

At this point, I see no legal basis to convict, remove or impeach him. No wonder he's toughing it out.

Democrats want him out of there so Obama gets a clean start. But dealing rationally with the situation would be helpful. All this talk only makes things worse.

Speaking of talk, what is Fitzgerald doing characterizing what Blagojevich did in press conferences, without even using the word "alleged"? Fitzgerald has violated court rules, and probably made it harder for Blagojevich to get a fair trial - which may mean he never does get tried. Why did Fitzpatrick do that? What are his motives?

There's a lot more to this thing than meets the eye.

EITHER IS OR ISN'T

If, as seems likely, Pakistan goes the way of Iran - and, being Sunni rather than Shi'a, probably even more unreasonable - who do we have to blame? Two Bushes.

After the Russians were driven out in 1989, a Bush promised to rebuild Afghanistan. He did nothing, After the Taliban were driven out in 2001, a second Bush made the same promise, and again did nothing.

Had either of them made the investment to create a viable Afghan nation, Pakistan would have been far less likely to have been infected by Islamic fanaticism, and the ISI would have had no Petri dish in which to grow it. US policy after 2001 has been absurd: supporting Musharraf ostensibly as a weapon against Islamics, when in fact he was no such weapon; and doing nothing whatsoever to impede their increase. How insane is it that at the same time the US was backing Musharraf the strongman as the only way to hold Islamics back, it was taking out Saddam Hussein who served the identical function.

Stupid nations which think like second graders in schoolyards can't survive over time. We have been stupid, no doubt about it. It either is or is not too late to fix what we've done.

MAYBE

I don't know the reason - it could be sunspots or alien interference - but I'm convinced we have crazy Islamic bastards for the same reason we have crazy Christian bastards, crazy Jewish bastards, crazy Republican bastards and some crazy Democrats, too. Call it obstinate wrongheadedness or absolute evil, but there's a wave of it been washing over us for about thirty years. Or maybe it links all the way back to the Inquisition, or even beyond that, to whatever human insanity. Maybe we've just been fortunate to live in a little aberrational time period in which, for a while, Adlai Stevenson was taken seriously.

So I don't look for an end to Islamic fanaticism until all the other craziness begins to fade, too. Maybe it's a retrogressive phase in human evolution, the last gasp of an antediluvian mindset. Maybe we just have to live through it until it's gone, like the dinosaurs. Maybe the end result will be human perfection, some sort of Kabbalistic or Buddhist heavenly world.

Or not.

ALLEGORICAL

I don't know Madoff's politics, but I do know he gave money to Democrats. And it strikes me as so bizarre that he and Blogojevich, the poster boys of the era of unrestrained greed and corruption, were not of the party which perpetrated most of it.

What these two arrests do say, though, in their allegorical way, is that we can't forget Clinton's role in all of this. The massive failure of American ethics runs from Reagan through two Bushes and one Clinton, so far. And I see no reason to believe it will have ended there.

THE BIGGER THIEF

Did I say Blogojevich was the new O.J.?

News media have choppers overflying his SUV as he drives to work.

Unbelievable, these people. All of them. Political paparazzi.

Let's see if Blogojevich holds the media edge over Madoff. Like there's a competition over who's the bigger thief.

STUPID BEYOND BELIEF

After 8 years of massive but barely noticed Republican corruption, and on the heels of another Republican move to put ideology ahead of the national interest, why is news of a piker governor such a huge story?

Because it's fun. And because it's simple. Any dope can understand it.

Or can they?

We know Blogojevich wanted to sell Obama's seat, but I've yet to see any evidence that he actually tried to do it. If being a moron was a crime in America, we'd have to turn half the country into a jail.

But this story is blunting the big one. Focus on "change" has stopped dead. Blogojevich is a negative allegory which can have huge consequences if Obama doesn't step in and get America refocused. And so far Obama's not doing this very well.

Even aside from the implication raised from Blogojevich's taped conversation that someone from the Obama team had been in touch (and refused to cooperate), it would be ludicrous to assume that Obama had no interest in who replaced him, or that he (or at least one of the Chicago pols who is central to his staff) would not at least have talked to Blogojevich about it. Obama's saying that he personally had no contact with Blogojevich, and refusing to comment further, was dumb beyond belief.

Now it turns out Rahm Emanuel was the guy, as logic would dictate and plenty of people suspected. Obama must have known that. Why didn't he just say so? Now he looks like he was covering up, or at least reluctant to tell the truth. And since his entire campaign has been based on his promise always to tell the truth, he has undercut his credibility. How badly remains to be seen.

And this sounds awfully Chicago. Not good.

WHAT IS HE DOING?

James Galbraith writes that Christina Romer - tapped by Obama to chair the Council of Economic Advisers wrote in 2007 that Lyndon Johnson's efforts to finish the work of the New Deal were a "costly wrong turn in ideas and macropolicy," and that Reagan had set things right.

What the hell is Obama doing?

WHO TALKED TO HIM?

I can believe that Obama himself did not talk to Blogojevich about his Senate replacement. Obama knew Blogojevich was a disaster waiting to happen. But I can't believe that no one on his staff talked to the governor.

Blogojevich was wiretapped expressing anger at the Obama team for not supporting his choice for the spot - or something like that, it's not exactly clear. So he must have talked to someone, or talked to someone through someone.

For a while today the Huffington Post was saying that it was possible Rahm Emanuel blew the whistle on Blogojevich. That story has now disappeared. It's unlikely the FBI needed any whistleblower, since they've had Blogojevitch on tape for quite a while. But the story suggests that Emanuel had contact with Blogojevitch on this matter.

Whatever the truth is, Obama had better come clean on it immediately, because stories are going to spread, fast, with a lot of media help.

The sad thing is the story is already a distraction from a whole host of far more important matters. If Blogojevich becomes the O.J. of public corruption, we're going to lose a whole lot of focus - and if the level of trust in Obama begins to recede, we're going to lose a whole lot more than that.

MICROCOSM

I'd like to know if the military jet which crashed in San Diego was flyable as it went down. Because if it was ...

There was a time when Americans felt some responsibility towards others besides themselves. If the pilot could have flown this plane away from neighborhoods, he had no business ejecting.

Microcosm - what America has been about lo these many years.

1 IN 4? THAT'S GREAT!

From Francis Moore Lappe on the Huffington Post:

In Paris, sixty years ago today, the U.N. General Assembly passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Access to food is the right of "everyone," says its Article 25. Yet, a new World Public Opinion poll reports that one in four Americans still rejects its premise -- that it is government's responsibility to protect citizens' right to eat.

America's depend-on-yourself-or-die stance is unique: in eighteen of the twenty-one nations surveyed, at most one in ten respondents shares this view.

Cliches abound as to why the U.S. stands alone. The positive spin chalks it up to our "rugged individualism"; that it's just the way we are. I'm not so sure. A less romantic, more formally institutionalized reason is the steady drip, drip, drip of market ideology from the Reagan era onward, telling us to shrink government's responsibilities.

_____________________________________________

I'm amazed it's only 1 in 4. It seems there's a very real possibility of reversing Reagan's destruction of what it means to be an American.

NO ARMED REVOLUTION

John Thain of Merrill Lynch has decided he doesn't want his $10 million bonus after all.

For all I know, the bonus might have been fair compensation - maybe Thain actually earned it somehow. But the fact that he was insisting on it correlates with the fundamental problem in finance: these people do not see into the future very well, and they do not see anyone outside of finance as anything other than a mark. Any CEO who is aware of his surroundings is being very careful about overreaching right now - after all, they're doing fine just reaching. The smart ones will go low profile until this thing blows over. They'll hold onto plenty of the assets they grabbed, unless we have an armed revolution. Which we won't.

DISASTROUS

Obama's failure to appoint a Secretary of Labor is becoming disastrous.

All efforts now are directed to saving the banks and corporations. These fixes are irrelevant if they don't result in protecting jobs, which is the only way to defeat depression.

There's plenty of pro-worker sentiment out there now, but it factors into the current debate only circumstantially. Everyone wants to cut CEO pay. No one wants to protect worker pay.

A real reversal of the economic collapse cannot begin until pro-worker policies dominate. The right Secretary of Labor could focus that effort. I wish Obama understood that.

WHO HE IS

America has now created several generations of corporate executives who believe the worker is the enemy - in fact, that anyone who works anywhere else is the enemy. Don't expect them to suddenly understand that laying off workers is not only bad for the entire economy, but bad for them. That would require a conversion equal to a fundamentalist's going atheist. God is not going to straighten them out. They have to be destroyed.

We need a class war - a war in which both sides, rather than just the corporates, understand there's a war on. We need it bad. And we might be getting it. We WILL get it if enough pressure builds on the new administration from below.

I do not advocate shouting it in the streets. Not right now, anyway. But I do advocate taking every opportunity to create awareness of economic truth, exploiting events - as the Chicago sitdown workers are being exploited - to move the center toward the plight of the middle class. There's a populist movement out there - it just hasn't understood itself yet. When it does, Obama will get every chance to show us who he is.

DOES HE GET IT?

From Wowowow.com:

Four Financial Horsewomen Who Warned of the Apocalypse

Readers, stop sharpening your pitchforks for a moment because here, just in time for your year-end 401K reports to arrive, is a little story about four women who not so very long ago caused eyeballs to roll and brows to knit among the Wall Street and Washington Testosterone Teams, but who, if they had been listened to by the reigning Masters of the Universe, might have either prevented the economic Armageddon we are in … or at least caught it in time to prevent some its more pernicious collateral damage.

Who are these women? Two accomplished regulators and two prescient financial industry employees who saw that the toxic brew of sub-prime mortgages, derivatives and lack of government oversight was bubbling up the greatest destruction of wealth in the history of the world. That they were ignored and in some cases ridiculed by the very perpetrators of this global White Shoe Financial Ponzi Scheme makes this a tediously familiar tale to many women who have worked in proximity of the polyglass ceiling, especially on Wall Street.

And here’s the remarkable news: some of the Big Boyz who ignored these women? They’re part of the new Obama financial team.

Horsewoman #1: Brooksley Born, chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996-99, a Federal agency that regulates commodity options and futures trading

What she said: Ten years before the collapse in the derivatives market became front-page news, and five years before Warren Buffett famously called them "weapons of financial mass destruction," Brooksley Born warned in Congressional testimony that these complex, opaque and unregulated financial instruments could “threaten our regulated markets or, indeed, our economy, without any federal agency knowing about it.” She wanted her commission to provide governmental oversight of the derivatives market.

Who tried to screw her: Claiming that she did not understand the markets, a triumvirate made up of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary (and current controversial Citibank Director) Robert Rubin and his deputy and new Obama appointee LAWRENCE SUMMERS (he late of the Harvard University dust-up where he claimed that women were intrinsically deficient in math) prevailed upon all who would listen to prevent Born’s agency from regulating the derivatives market. In their recent story on the Alan Greenspan legacy, The New York Times recounts the measures these three went to circumvent a woman who, if she had been listened to, could have prevented much of the current financial collapse.

The result: Derivatives remained unregulated, and Born left the CFTC in 1999. In the fall of 2007, the worst financial tsunami since the 1930s began to roil both Wall Street and Main Street, with derivatives based on now-failed sub-prime mortgages at its very core.

Quote to set your teeth on edge: “Brooksley was this woman who was not playing tennis with these guys and not having lunch with these guys. There was a little bit of the feeling that this woman was not of Wall Street.” —Michael Greenberger, a senior director at the Commission to The New York Times.

Horsewoman #2: Sheila Bair, chairman of the FDIC

What she said: Back in 2007, seeing that the escalating number of home foreclosures threatened the entire banking system, Bair called for Ben Bernanke’s Fed to require banks to tighten lending standards and to convert their adjustable-rate sub-prime mortgages into traditional fixed-rate mortgages. This fall, Bair criticized Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion bailout plan in a Wall Street Journal interview, suggesting that more of the money be earmarked for struggling homeowners rather than banks. "Why there’s been such a political focus on making sure we’re not unduly helping borrowers but then we’re providing all this massive assistance at the institutional level, I don’t understand it. It’s been a frustration for me."

Who is trying to screw her: Her tendency to speak truth to power has provoked the New York Fed Chair TIMOTHY GEITHNER, Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, who according to a story on Bloomberg.com last week, is maneuvering to force her to resign before her 2011 term is over.

The result: The Fed ignored her 2007 call to tighten lending standards until 2008, and has just in the last weeks finally proposed banks convert toxic mortgages to more traditional fixed-rate ones. So far, the popular Bair is hanging tough, with both Democrats in Congress and journalists singing her praises as an independently minded regulator, and she still speaks out about moving more of the Paulson Plan’s $700 billion away from Wall Street and toward Main Street.

Quote to set your teeth on edge: “I think part of the problem now, to be honest, is Sheila Bair has annoyed the ‘old boys’ club. To some extent, bank regulation and mortgage foreclosure have made a situation where we have several regulators up in the tree house with a ‘no girls allowed’ sign — and it’s aimed at Sheila Bair — who’s been really good.” —Congressman Barney Frank to Bloomberg.com

Horsewoman #3: Meredith Whitney, Managing Director and Analyst, Oppenheimer & Co.

What she said: On Halloween 2007, she became the first analyst to call out Citibank on their toxic mortgage derivatives, claiming that the bank was under-capitalized and would be forced to cut its dividend. She downgraded its stock to "market underperform," setting off a firestorm.

Who tried to screw her: She received death threats in the days after her Citibank call, and thousands of hate e-mails.

The result: While Citi declined to specifically comment on Whitney’s analysis, four days later, Citibank’s CEO Chuck Prince resigned. The bank maintained that it could rebuild its capital ratio by the middle of 2008 without a dividend cut. In late November 2008, Citibank was the latest bank to seek a government bailout, the terms of which slashed its dividend to a penny a share. The stock price slid from $41.90 on 10/31/07 to $7.40 on 12/5/08. As a result, Whitney has been hailed as the most prescient and influential financial analyst to emerge in the meltdown.

Quote to set your teeth on edge: Thomas Brown, blogger, BankStocks.com, called Whitney "incredibly arrogant" and in his August 2008 post states: "Every cycle there’s one analyst who races to be the most bearish, and this time it’s her. Honestly, I think we’ll look back and see that Meredith Whitney’s credibility peaked on July 15 (2008)," a date he believed "financials had made their bottom." Two months later, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the current financial emergency was on.
Horsewoman #4: Tanta, the screen name for the prescient commentator Doris Dungey, on Bill McBride’s influential financial blog, Calculated Risk

What she said: In December 2006, Tanta, with no prior journalistic experience and having just quit her 20-year career in the mortgage business after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, began her bitingly humorous and exquisitely literate blog postings that presaged the sub-prime mortgage debacle and the crashing housing and equities markets. In her first post, she gained wide notice by sharply criticizing a Citibank report that predicted that the mortgage market would improve in 2007 to the benefit of highly leveraged banks such as Citi. Tanta was one of the first to suggest that Citibank, the country’s largest bank, was at fundamental risk because of mortgage-backed derivatives.

The result: Tanta became one of the most influential financial writers online and off, and one of the first to see the impending financial storm. While banks continued to make risky loans and Wall Street continued to trade derivatives, and politicians such as George Bush and regulators such as Henry Paulson continued to say the economy was "fundamentally sound," Tanta fearlessly used her deep understanding of mortgages, a fearless turn of phrase and the power of new media to warn others of the coming storm.

Condé Nast Portfolio called her "one of the best financial writers in the world." She was quoted by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman in his New York Times blog. According to The Wall Street Journal, hers was "one of the smartest and most influential blogs on the mortgage meltdown and resulting financial crisis."

Quote to set your teeth on edge: "You must understand that someday, quite possibly sooner than you’d expect, you will just not get an answer from an e-mail to me, and that might mean I’m in the hospital, it might mean I’m in the hospice and it might mean that God is my mail drop from now on."

Doris Dungey, Tanta, succumbed to ovarian cancer on November 30, 2008 at the age of 47.

_________________________________

Does Obama get it, or does he not?

PROBABLY NOT

The Chicago sitdown might reignite the American labor movement. But it probably won't.

Labor destroyed itself in 1981 when Reagan challenged the air traffic controllers and other unions refused to support the controllers because "they earned too much." Now, recognizing that the times are theoretically perfect for a labor revival, business is using the same tactic against the auto workers.

Reagan recognized in 1981 that America had turned away from the consciousness of collective action to individualism, with all the cross-resentments that breeds. He knew labor would eat itself alive, as did most forms of collective action then. Business may be aware of the propensities of current times, but whether Americans who would normally form the other side are similarly aware is open to question. Right now they hate CEO's, tomorrow they may hate banks, but whether they get from there to the realization that solidarity is necessary ... that will require a large change in perspective and understanding.

As The Nation writes, such a movement will be required if there is to be a new New Deal. Obama won't get there on his own, even if his background is in community organizing. It's significant that, as part of his economic team, he did not name his new Secretary of Labor - someone who will be critical in any new effort to redirect the government toward pro-union positions.

On the other hand, the strike is in his own backyard. So, once again, we'll see.

UPDATE: Maybe, maybe.

JEEZ IS IS

Over the past few years I've noticed a growing grammatical disaster, and it's not nucular. It's: the thing is is. Or the problem is is. As in "the thing is" is. The noun being "thing is", the verb being "is."

Last week I caught Obama doing it.

A BETTER WAY

I've got an even better way to stop layoffs:

Pay laid off workers unemployment benefits indefinitely at their full wage. Benefits terminate only when the worker finds another job, or is rehired, or somehow disqualifies himself from fair consideration. Then lien the employer for the full amount of benefits, the lien to be not dischargeable in bankruptcy. If the company folds, the lien attaches to top management personally.

If the employer contends it has good cause to terminate, or can make an economic argument which outweighs the national interest in full employment, a hearing will be provided, similar to current hearings. If the employer prevails, the government will release the lien and absorb the benefits paid.

That ought to keep people employed.

TEXAS

There are many ways in which Texas has yet to enter the civilized world. Here's one of them. Another is its politics. Another is its religion.

Considering what Texas is, I can just imagine what Alaska must be like.

No, actually, I probably can't.

But I do think it's bizarre that when Republicans abandon a Texan they flock to an Alaskan. Republicans are addicted to the wild frontier. No law except the gun. And the scam. Just look at the way they ran the economy.

MY PLAN

Over the last few posts, I've been struggling with Economics 101. But I think I've got it now.

Companies and banks go under? Who cares? What makes a company too big to fail?

What makes a recession - and turns it into a depression - is people's unwillingness or inability to spend.

Unwillingness to spend is a function of fear. The blame for that currently lies across the board - with the media, Congress, all politicians who have terrified people (and companies) into locking their wallets shut. No one - not even Obama - has been combatting the fear. Even Obama has been playing into it.

Inability to spend is due to two things: loss of credit, and loss of jobs.

Congress bailed out the banks for the specific purpose of opening the credit spigot. But they forgot to require that the banks use the money in that way. The banks didn't. For that, Congress ought to be shot. (Some times I wonder if the reason Paulson suddenly came out with his terrifying predictions of disaster was to scare the public - and particularly Congress - into giving the banks their last handout before the end of the Bush administration. The banks are certainly acting as if that were the case.)

Congress is going to bail out the Big 3 for the specific purpose of keeping millions of people employed. But so far Congress has not imposed an obligation on those companies not to fire. These companies see success in this environment as staying alive until things get better. In order to do that, they say they are going to fire workers. Great for stockholders, but not what Congress had in mind, or what is necessary now. It's just another part of the corporate mentality, which Congress has signed onto: that it's the corporation, not the human being, which needs to be kept alive. And that is simply sick. And does nothing for the economy, except to give shareholders some protection.

If we're not going to require companies to keep workers on, then the government is going to have to hire them. But to do what?

Obama is talking infrastructure. Great for construction workers, but what does that do for the trader Wall Street just terminated? (Congress should have required the banks not to fire, too.)

But why have the government create new jobs at all? Why not simply require companies not to fire? Why not pay bailout money out in the form of workers' salaries? At a fixed wage of $40,000 per year, the $700 billion bank bailout would have paid the salaries of 17,500,000 workers.

I would suggest giving the money to companies for that specific use, but they can't be trusted. So why does the government not just pay their salaries directly? The alternative is paying them unemployment benefits - which is essentially the same thing, except you get no return, and which is actually another form of corporate bailout anyway.

Those companies which take Federal bailout money can easily be required not to fire. In those cases, the companies would be required to pay wages out of the bailout cash. For those companies which don't get in on the bailout, a law under the authority of the Interstate Commerce Clause can simply state that, for x period of time, no employee can be fired except for cause or poor performance, and that the Federal government will pay for that employee. And to the extent a corporation takes advantage of this, the government gets an equity stake in the company. And/or the wages can be considered a form of loan which the company must later pay back.

Now you have people earning, with a government guarantee. There goes fear, and there goes inability to spend.

In the long term, we have to switch from a consumer-based to a producer-based economy. That means we can't depend on people buying TV's to keep the economy healthy. We have been operating under a policy which actively discourages saving - in fact, the economy is dependent on people not saving. That's why we have a credit crisis in the first place.

That's where the government should get involved in rebuilding - not infrastructure, but new sources of wealth production. The government should fund research in new technologies, and should act as a venture capitalist in getting companies producing new technologies off the ground. They will provide jobs in manufacturing, clerical, management, advertising and media, etc. - much better than any roadbuilding project could do.

Government used to do this as a matter of course, until we decided that corporations could do it better. That's fine, and some venture capitalists have done it very well - but always with their own interests, and not the nation's, in mind. Somebody has to focus on the health of all of us. Only the government can do that.

So that's my very oversimplified plan. What ya think?

OBLIGATIONS & CONDITIONS

So we're going to give the auto industry 25 billion, which Congress had earlier provided to help them improve the quality of their products, just to stay afloat - not to improve the products.

Why are we doing this? Because Congress is afraid of cascading unemployment among car dealers, parts suppliers and manufacturers, ad agencies etc. if the Big 3 go under.

Well, here's my prediction: as long as people are afraid to spend on cars or can't get loans to do so, the Big 3 is going to cut jobs, and so are the suppliers and the dealers. This bailout is not going to accomplish what it's intended to.

How do we accomplish what's intended? I still like nationalization, as I said - but if we can't get that, Congress must impose on the Big 3 an obligation not to fire anyone until they've paid our money back. And any supplier who is the ultimate recipient of our money via the Big 3 must agree to the same as a condition of getting paid, or even getting a contract.

There's nothing new about this. Congress has for a long time imposed various requirements on people receiving Federal funds - like hiring minorities, etc. This is standard stuff.

It's pathetic that we have to force people to be good to the middle class.

DIRECTLY

At $40,000 apiece, the 700 billion bank bailout could have paid the salaries of 17,500,000 Americans for a year.

The whole thing seems simple to me. Any company in danger of going under or which plans to shed substantial jobs should be nationalized - not necessarily put under government management, but owned by the government, with no payment either to the company or its shareholders. We pay the salaries of the workers - and, by the way, management gets the same salary - and they stay in production, short term, even if they don't produce anything anyone wants.

We need people working and spending? We need people to stay in their houses? Then cut out the middleman and address the problem directly.

When things improve, we give the companies back to their shareholders and they can resume destroying the economy all over again.

NO WATER

One of the points made against letting the auto companies go bankrupt is that people won't be able to find parts for their current cars. This is delusional.

First of all, how many of their parts are actually made in-house? Their suppliers will still be around to provide parts for repairs. As for those parts which are made in-house, anyone with an old car knows there are plenty of manufacturers of after-market parts. They'll still be around, too.

Argument holds no water.

ONE OF TWO THINGS

Here's the first real sign that Obama may not be who we think he is:

Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for U.S. Treasury Secretary, is seeking to push Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair out of office. He says she isn't a team player and is too focused on protecting her agency rather than the financial system as a whole.

That any Obama appointee - not even sworn in yet - is taking action against another government official because he thinks she isn't a team player is the height of arrogance at this point. Who does Geithner think he is? Unfortunately, we know who he thimks he is.

Geither has been heavily tied to Robert Rubin, who has yet to admit he screwed up Citigroup. He is also heavily tied up in the recent Paulson bailouts, particularly of Citigroup.

Bair, on the other hand, as Wikipedia puts it, has played a key role in the management of the 2008 financial crisis. She was one of the first government officials to recognize the problem of subprime loans. At a conference in October 2007, she told investors: "More needs to be done, and done sooner rather than later," to restructure mortgages for troubled homeowners. Bair assumed a prominent role in the Bush administration's response to the crisis, including successfully pressing for a provision in the federal government's financial rescue bill that temporarily raised the cap on FDIC insured deposits to $250,000 per account. She also used regulatory powers to temporarily guarantee bank debt and insure all non-interest bearing deposits to an unlimited amount. On July 14, 2008, Bair temporarily halted all of the foreclosures on bank-owned loans in the portfolio of IndyMac Bank, which failed on July 11, 2008 and was taken over by the FDIC. Ms. Bair said FDIC officials were looking at all of the other homes in the foreclosure process serviced by IndyMac to see if there is a way to help homeowners avoid losing their home. The move was consistent with Ms. Bair’s longstanding push to have mortgage servicers cut a break for struggling homeowners.

She also oversaw: (1) the attempted acquisition of Wachovia by Citigroup, which was later nullified by the acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo and (2) the actual acquisition of Washington Mutual, the largest failed bank in history, by JP Morgan Chase[5] As to the aborted Wachovia-Citigroup acquisition, on October 2, 2008, Wachovia President and CEO Robert Steel received an unexpected call from Bair indicating that Wells Fargo was prepared to make a buy-out offer for Wachovia. Bair encouraged Steel to “give serious consideration to (the) offer,” despite the fact that Wachovia had only days earlier entered into a nonbinding agreement in principle to sell its banking operations to Citigroup for $2.2 billion. Could this possibly be why Geithner doesn't consider her a team player?

Bair publicly criticized the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout package, saying it will not do enough to help Americans facing foreclosures. Bair told the Wall Street Journal "[W]e're attacking it at the [financial] institution level as opposed to the borrower level, and it's the borrowers defaulting. That is what's causing the distress at the institution level," she said. "So why not tackle the borrower problem?" [5] On Friday, November 14, 2008 Bair released details of her much more ambitious plan -- a $24.4-billion program aimed at preventing 1.5 million foreclosures -- even though Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson had told reporters earlier in the week that he would not pay for it.

Get the picture? Bair was the progressives' prime candidate for Treasury - for the obvious reason that she seems to be focused on helping homeowners as opposed to banks. The financial system Geithner says she isn't focused on protecting is the one that created this whole mess.

If Obama doesn't toss Geithner out, we can take it as a pretty good sign that the change candidate is only changing one of two things: his mind, or the lies he told us to get himself elected.

WHO?

THIS IS A LIST I POSTED ON NOVEMBER 1ST. I'VE CAPITALIZED THE NAMES OF THE ACTUAL APPOINTMENTS, SO WE CAN SEE HOW THE PREDICTORS DID. I'LL REPEAT THIS WHEN MORE NAMES ARE ANNOUNCED:

According to Politico, these are the people being considered for top positions in an Obama administration, with my comments:

White House chief of staff: Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.); REP. RAHM EMANUEL (D-Ill.); or dark horse candidate Bill Daley, Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and now an executive with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Emanuel is too tied to Wall Street. Daley is a Chicago connection - son of Richard Daley. According to Wikipedia, in 1993 he served as special counsel to Clinton on issues relating to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which would not endear him to labor. In 1997, Daley became Secretary of Commerce in the second administration of President Bill Clinton, and he remained at that post until July 2000, when he became chairman of Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign - not a good resume item. In May 2004, Daley was made Midwest Chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank One Corp. to oversee post-merger operations from Chicago. Daley currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Boeing, Merck & Co., Inc, Boston Properties, Inc., and Loyola University Chicago. He also sits on the Council on Foreign Relations. If he is selected, it will confirm my concern that Obama will not be a very progressive president.

Deputy chief of staff: Pete Rouse, chief of staff in Obama Senate office; Ron Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore; longtime Obama adviser VALERIE JARRETT; Jim Messina, campaign chief of staff. No opinion here.

Senior adviser: David Plouffe, DAVID AXELROD, Steve Hildebrand. To be expected.

Outside adviser: Abner Mikva. Another Chicago connection and long time adviser and friend. Where he stands on anything is not clear.

Ambassador at large on climate change: former Vice President Al Gore. A meaningless position.

National security adviser: Jim Steinberg, the deputy under Clinton; Gregory Craig, special counsel to Clinton; Susan Rice; retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni; Samantha Power of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Craig directed Clinton's impeachment defense and has been a foreign policy advisor to Kennedy and Albright. He's a high profile Washington lawyer but where his foreign policy cred comes from I have no idea. Rice reminds me of the other Rice, and her specialty seems to be African affairs, but she's got plenty of foreign policy cred (see Wikipedia). Power is particularly knowledgeable on human rights, genocide and AIDS and teaches at JFK School of Government. She quit Obama's team after calling Clinton a "monster."

White House counsel: Bob Bauer, campaign counsel; Chris Lu, Obama legislative director and member of transition staff; Heather Higginbottom, campaign senior policy strategist and longtime aide to Sen. John F. Kerry; Mike Strautmanis, congressional affairs for campaign and former chief counsel in Senate office

White House economic adviser: AUSTAN GOOLSBEE, senior policy adviser to campaign and University of Chicago economics professor; Jason Furman, director of economic policy for the campaign; Michael Froman, former Treasury chief of staff, Citigroup executive and Harvard Law classmate with Obama. I don't trust anyone in the economics department of the University of Chicago, but Goolsbee doesn't appear to be a Friedmanite. Furman worked closely with Robert Rubin, not a recommendation in my opinion, but his family leans left. Michael Froman doesn't have a Wikipedia page and I don't want anyone who's been at Citigroup anywhere near this administration.

Domestic policy adviser: Heather Higginbottom, Jason Furman, Neera Tanden. Higginbottom comes out of the Kerry campaign. Wow. Tanden was Hillary's campaign policy director. Wow again.

Political director: Erik Smith. No idea who this guy is. This is Rove's position.

Defense secretary : Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.); Richard Danzig, Navy secretary under Clinton; John Hamre, president and CEO of CSIS and former deputy secretary of Defense; President Bush’s incumbent, ROBERT GATES was involved in Iran/Contra while at CIA and does not have an impressive resume. Danzig is neither here nor there. I'd go with Hagel.

Attorney general: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; ERIC HOLDER, who was deputy AG under Clinton and is now with Covington & Burling and led Obama’s vice presidential search; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick; Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano. Let me be absolutely clear on this - we do not want to lose a governor in any of these states.

Supreme Court nominee: Washington superlawyer Robert Barnett; legal scholar Cass Sunstein; Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick; 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York; Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School. Barnett is a Washington hotshot, worked for Mondale. Not a Constitutional scholar, I suspect. Sotomayor is a Bush appointee but is hated as a judicial activist by the right. She's Puerto Rican and considered a centrist. Kagan is a New Yorker and clerked for Thurgood Marshall. She's a professor at the University of Chicago. My guess is it will be one of these women.

Secretary of State: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.); Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) Lugar's my choice.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations: SUSAN RICE, senior campaign national security adviser and State Department and National Security Council official under Clinton; Caroline Kennedy. Give it to Kennedy.

Treasury secretary: former Clinton treasury secretaries Larry Summers and Robert Rubin; FDIC Chairman Sheila C. Blair; New York Fed President TIMOTHY GEITHNER, former Treasury under secretary and Assistant Secretary; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. I don't like any of 'em. How about Paul Krugman?

Secretary of Health and Human Services: TOM DASCHLE; Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a physician; John Kitzhaber, medical doctor and former Oregon governor. Good God, what a waste of Dean!

Health care czar in White House: Tom Daschle.

Education secretary: David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma and former U.S. senator and former Sooner State governor; Former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean (R), who was chairman of the 9/11 commission; Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.)

Environmental Protection Agency administrator: Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.); Kathleen McGinty, former head of the Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Agency. Chafee would be great.

Commerce secretary: Penny Pritzker; Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius; Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Please don't take Sebelius out of Kansas.

Homeland Security secretary: Former Sen. Gary Hart (D-Col.); William Bratton, Los Angeles police chief and former New York police commissioner; former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the 9/11 Commission; Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.); Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) Gary Hart, please.

CIA director: Former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.); Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) Roemer, please. Harman is not to be trusted.

Director of National Intelligence: Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.)

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Longtime Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett; Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) Wow, Jackson would be such a kick in the teeth to Republicans!

Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.); Tammy Duckworth, the director of Illinois Veterans’ Affairs, Iraq veteran and former Democratic House candidate; Bush’s incumbent, James Peake. Absolutely Cleland.

Secretary of the Interior: Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.); Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Secretary of Energy: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R); Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). Schwarzenegger, if he'd take it - and Maria might make him.

Secretary of Transportation: Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.); Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.)

Secretary of Labor: Former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.); Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; Kay Hagan of North Carolina (if she loses her challenge to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole); Jeanne Shaheen, former New Hampshire governor (if she loses her challenge to U.S. Sen. John Sununu). Like 'em all.

Secretary of Agriculture: Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack; Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)

Director, Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (Obama's renamed faith-based office): Josh DuBois, campaign's director of religious affairs. Is this entirely necessary?

INFRASTRUCTURE?

So building infrastructure is going to save the economy? What infrastructure? And how? And why?

I get the feeling people have been studying Roosevelt's actions and seeking to imitate them - once again, fighting the last war. Much of America had no infrastructure whatsoever in Roosevelt's time. We needed highways, airports, schools, public buildings, dams. We don't need any of those now.

Sure, we need to fix some bridges, but how's that going to help? The point of this is to produce jobs, and no one is going to hire your Aunt Tillie who used to work in lingerie at the local department store to build a bridge anyone would want to drive over. Good for construction workers and engineers; not good for anyone else.

They're talking about building fast trains. Back in Roosevelt's time, Americans loved trains. Now they don't want to ride themm except in New York where the alternative is an automotive horror show.

Fast trains have been successful in Japan because their population thinks of obligations to others and doesn't think it's demeaning to ride them. They work in China because all of the people flocking into the cities don't have cars. Like the US in Roosevelt's time, China had no infrastructure at all until the recent binge. When China says they're going to spend big on infrastructure, there are some really good reasons. But not here.

We could build fast trains in the Northeast Corridor. But we've been trying to do that for years, and still haven't mastered the technology. Besides, do we really want to make it easier for lobbyists to get to Washington?

Another major fact about the WPA, TVA, etc. is that back then most of the workforce was unskilled and not ashamed to say so. Women weren't working, and most of the men who needed jobs could handle heavy labor. Were, in fact, used to it. That was the beginning of the movement off the farms. It wasn't until labor unions had built the middle class that most people decided certain forms of work were beneath them, and therefore lost the physical capacity to do that work. Or is someone going to tell me that joggers and gym weight trainers really can swing a nine pound hammer for eight plus hours a day? Urban fitness training is mostly about how you look, not what you can do. Because you wouldn't do that stuff anyway. Are we going to start a program to support artists and writers - have the next Keith Haring painting murals in public buildings like Diego Rivera did? Give me a break. (Oh, I forgot, plenty of artists are doing murals these days. They just call them graffiti now.)

And here's the big thing: WPA, CCC, TVA all helped, but what took America out of depression was World War II. Even that wouldn't work these days. We're already fighting two wars and that hasn't helped. (Although soldiers are reupping because the job is steady and secure, and plenty of government money has gone to American war manufacturers. People tend to forget that when the government spends tax dollars on wars somebody gets to put that money into his own pocket. Now if we had a really really big war and hired everybody to fight it, who knows? Might work. But who are we going to fight with? Al Qaeda? Okay! Let's send 20,000,000 drafted soldiers into the Middle East to kill 50,000 Al Qaeda operatives.)

No. This is the right way to do it: the government becomes the venture capitalist of last resort, investing in NEW industries creating NEW technology that can be sold in places other than here, which will create manufacturing, clerical and financial jobs, as well as jobs for engineers, industrial designers, scientists, ad men ... you name it. You know, like the auto industry used to do.

Maybe bailouts are necessary in the immediate short term. But in the relative short term we need to get new industries up and running. And keep Wall Street's hands off them so they can't fuck them up (that means you, Henry Kravis.) What Obama needs to do is open a new office to which anyone with an idea and a business plan can report. Put it in Commerce, or Labor - they're not doing anything else. Give these people enough money to get off the ground fast. That's where broadbased employment is going to come from.

ANYTHING

Omigod. Jeb Bush has announced he might run for the Florida Senate seat Mel Martinez says he's giving up.

Just when you thought our long national nightmare was over.

Call me. I will do anything to stop this.

NOT THAT PART

Has anybody given any consideration to the idea that the solution to companies too big to fail is to break them up into pieces we can afford to lose?

I thought Republicans loved Teddy Roosevelt. I guess not THAT part of him.

UNBELIEVABLE

The U.S. Treasury Department has yet to announce whether it will require firms that receive capital injections to report on the use of the funds.

Holy shit. It's that bad.

CHARLIE WILSON LIVES

Here's what Ford says:

It will aggressively restructure to operate profitably at the current demand and changing model mix. It will accelerate the introduction of more high-quality, safe and fuel-efficient vehicles, including a broader range of hybrid-electric vehicles and the introduction of advanced plug-in hybrids and full electric vehicles. It made electric vehicles a centerpiece of a turnaround plan presented to Congress on Tuesday, saying that it will introduce an all-electric van for fleet use in 2010 and a sedan in 2011. It does not expect a liquidity crisis in 2009, except in the case that one of its domestic competitors goes bankrupt or a more severe economic downturn further cripples automotive sales and create additional cash challenges. It is asking the government to provide it access to up to $9 billion in bridge financing, though it hopes it will not need to tap the funds to lead its turnaround.

And GM? They're going to close plants and eliminate 30,000 jobs, close 2,000 dealerships and eliminate God knows how many more. And GM is also considering selling some of its brands, including Saab and Saturn, to focus its marketing efforts on the four core brands of Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC. Pontiac may continue as a specialty brand with fewer product options.

Cut jobs. That's real good right now. Get rid of marques that have quality reps and sell, and concentrate on ones that don't. Good thinking. Ford says it might sell Volvo, also not a good idea - but the Ford name isn't as garbage-laden as the Chevy.

What's the matter with GM? They only talk to themselves. Their solutions to their problems include only intra-company, bean-counter fixes. The humanity involved is irrelevant. The public reaction to their product doesn't matter either.

I question whether it will be enough just to get rid of the top execs, or whether this fool corporate culture - the same as the one that has brought us low - goes so deep into the company that it should be allowed to die.

It's the country we need to turn around - not idiot businesses. Ford gets it. GM doesn't. Charlie Wilson lives.

Here's a plan that makes sense.