We are doomed, but at least we are not doomed alone.

After looking at a string of weak economic reports and Europe’s growing fear of debt meltdown and contagion, JPMorgan – led by Obama pal Jamie Dimon – has just come out with a politically poisonous forecast.

The megabank now thinks the economy won’t grow much faster over the next 12 months than it did during the first half of this year — and that’s assuming Europe doesn’t go all pear shaped. It sees GDP growth at just 1.5 percent this year, 1.3 percent next year with unemployment at … 9.5 percent heading into the final days of the election season. “The risks of recession are clearly elevated,” the bank said...

No president in the modern era has been reelected with the unemployment rate higher than 7.4 percent, much less two percentage points higher.

Obama already announced his campaign plan on his supposedly non-campaign Magical Misery Tour. He announced this publicly. He does that a lot -- he talks about his actual political strategy, without really making any effort to convince anyone he's thinking of the public good.

I've said before that could be attributed to unusual candor, but I suspect the explanation does less credit to Obama: It's that he's so narcissistic and solipsistic he mistakes his own fortunes for the country's.

So here is the plan: He will "challenge" the Republican House to pass a new "stimulus" plan which is (this is my gloss; this he did not say) unpalatable by design to the GOP. That is, his challenge is designed to be rejected.

He's already announced (or his aides did) the sort of Brand New Ideas which will be contained in this new "stimulus:" an extension of unemployment insurance (which famously creates jobs), an extension of the payroll tax cut for low-income workers, and of course "infrastructure spending," such as on roads and, I assume... high speed rail.

Those, um, shovel-ready projects which Obama claims to have discovered belatedly do not exist. (Whether he was so jejune and ill-educated to have not known this, or was simply cynically lying, I do not know; either is plausible.)

I believe they're also thinking about Schumer's old suggestion of some payroll tax break for new hires only, but that seems like a very stingy sort of tax-cut-based stimulus. Seems like window dressing.

Now, a White House source already talked to the press and told them the three possible outcomes from this scheme, all of which would favor Obama politically and only one of which would aid the country:

1. The Republicans cave, and give him his new stimulus, and the economy improves, in which case Obama wins. (Note this is listed first -- I take this as a throwaway line, then, something they don't even expect will happen, but have to mention in order to rigorously list all possible outcomes.)

2. The Republicans cave, and give him the new stimulus, but the economy does not improve, in which case Obama wins because the Republicans joined him in this newest of his many miserable failures and so co-own the result.

3. The Republicans refuse to do the New Improved Stimulus, in which case Obama simply blames them for the stagnant economy, in which case Obama wins because now he's got a sharp differentiating line of attack against the Do Nothing Congress.

You might ask "How on earth could Obama even ask for a new injection of additional spending when we just had a two month battle over the debt ceiling?" Simple. Spend now, pay later. He will ask for some sum of money (how much I don't know-- say, $400 billion at a minimum for anyone to even notice) but promise $400 billion in spending cuts in the out-years of a ten-year window, say, kicking in in six or seven years. So, in theory, it's deficit neutral, at least over time, and if you believe these cuts will ever occur.

Which programs will he suggest cutting? Oh, I know. He didn't say, but I know. A mix of new defense cuts and Medicare cuts.

This is the funny thing -- The Democrats are running on a Mediscare platform while their President and titular leader proposes and propose $500 billion, $1 trillion, and likely a new $400 billion in cuts to Medicare.

The media never reports this. They just tell you how scary the Medicare reform of Paul Ryan is. But they never seem to mention that Obama is simply cutting Medicare, without reforms that might make those cuts less painful, left and right.

So that will be his pitch: Let me spend more and cut Medicare and defense somewhere down the road.

The President will not, of course, offer Republicans the sort of stimulus they could conceivably support, such as a much wider, deeper temporary tax cut. Oddly enough, our supposedly Keynesian president always forgets that deficit spending via temporary tax cuts is a Keynesian response to a recession, too.

Odd, that he only focuses laser-like on the spending side of things, as if he has some overwhelming obsession with increasing the size and power of the State.

So there you go. There's your next three months.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (133)
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On June 5th, Letterman made some kind of joke about a drone strike which killed an Islmaist leader in Pakistan. (Note it wasn't bin Ladin.)

Now comes the threat.

It's not really a threat so much as an impotent zealot calling for violence.

A frequent contributor to a jihadist website has threatened David Letterman, urging Muslim followers to "cut the tongue" of the late-night host because of a joke the comic made on his CBS show.

The Site Monitoring Service, a private intelligence organization that watches online activity, said Wednesday that the threat was posted a day earlier on the Shumuka al-Islam forum, a popular Internet destination for radical Muslims.
The contributor, who identified himself as Umar al-Basrawi, was reacting to what he said Letterman did after the U.S. military announced on June 5 that a drone strike in Pakistan had killed al-Qaida leader Ilyas Kashmiri.

Al-Basrawi wrote that Letterman had made reference to both Osama bin Laden and Kashmiri and said that Letterman had "put his hand on his neck and demonstrated the way of slaughter."

"Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi ... to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?" Al-Basrawi wrote, referring to El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of the 1990 killing of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane. Letterman is not Jewish.

CBS isn't releasing the transcript of the June 5 show, so we can know the joke, and oddly, I don't see it on the internet, although in theory at least a million people saw it.

And... Speaking of vermin who enjoy political terrorism, two men arrested for harassing Palin and her family.

Posted by: Ace at 08:24 AM | Comments (138)
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While we're waiting for news to happen, consider that somebody got paid for this column:

I know it may be upsetting for many of you to discover the animal you cherish is of the opposite political party.

Would former President Bill Clinton ever be able to admit to himself that the late Socks was a Republican? Could Democrats ever bring themselves to forgive Checkers, the dog – and a Democrat – who belonged to Richard M. Nixon and whose mention in the famous 1952 “Checkers speech” helped save Nixon’s political career?

Discuss.

All other (appropriate) topics are also up for grabs.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:02 AM | Comments (206)
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FRIDAY!!! more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (699)
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Welcome to the Eighth Day of Blogging After America.

After yesterday's doomfest we have the shortest chapter in the book. But don't relax, it's concentrated Doom!

Previously in the series - Day One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven.

This chapter's theme is International Relations - Fallen America will be treated like Israel is now.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:59 AM | Comments (30)
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Over at Hot Air -- although we've heard this before, quite a few times -- word is Qadaffy may be ready to evacuate to Tunisia. Tripoli's surrounded, and a siege may bring the city down.

If so, this is a vindication of something I've been saying for months.

The Bush model of war -- go in heavy, attempt to win the war on the backs of American (and allied) soldiers, attempt to establish a monopoly on the use of violence, and then continue that monopoly on the use of violence by acting as the nation's law enforcement/army for five, six, ten years -- doesn't work, or at least does not work at costs the American public is willing to pay.

I see no point agitating for a Full War Model against Iran, for example -- to urge such a thing is futile. I do not believe the American public has the appetite for such an endeavor. (At least-- not unless Iran uses its soon-to-be-built nukes.)

We didn't use to take care of these countries in this fashion. We used to arm and train rebels within those countries (they've all got them), fund them, provide intelligence, spread some bribe money around, and, when necessary, bring in the sort of Word of God that our air and naval forces issue from the air or sea.

Such wars were messy and bloody and often very very dirty, with guerrilla tactics that often looked like "terrorism" being employed by both sides. This is only a problem when the forces on our side employ such tactics, because that's the only time such tactics get condemned in the press.

They are, however, effective, much of the time at least, and with a light American involvement as far as troops on the ground.

Colin Powell's ludicrous statement -- "You break it, you buy it" -- is a formula for nonstop, decades-long nation-building of exactly the same type that George W. Bush campaigned against in 2000, albeit on a much longer and much bloodier scale than we saw in, say, Haiti.

Why do we "buy" it if we break it?

Broken societies reassemble themselves. In fact, they seem to do so more quickly than people expect, even when faced with great devastation.

There is no need for American troops to hand-hold them through this process.

If a country thwarts or threatens the US enough to invite a decapitating military strike, one that takes out the ruling regime and renders the state without any force to impose order -- they broke it themselves.

And they can reassemble it themselves.

And the thing is -- they will.

It will not be a clean thing. There will be assassinations. There will be ethnic cleansing. Sometimes there will be mass killings, and sometimes there will be terrorism.

But what there won't be in the model of warfare I am endorsing is a large body of American troops in the crossfire.

Yes, our troops are the best in the world, and not just the best at destroying the enemy -- they are the best at destroying the enemy while sparing noncombatants' lives. They are the most disciplined and most precise forces the world have ever seen, in addition to being the most lethal.

So yes, the presence of our troops can in fact spare any number of noncombatants in such a bloody civil war.

But... I have to say: Who gives a shit? How many foreign citizens in an country we've gone to war with do I need to save in fair exchange for one American soldier's life?

I think that number must be more than 100. Actually, I think it must be more than 1000 before I really start to think that maybe that's a good exchange.

These basket-case, broken, violent rogue countries have their own growing up to do. They have to go through their own spasms. They have to shed their own blood, and inflict their own massacres.

Yes, we can spare them some of this; but why should we? Someone is going to die in a war. I nominate foreign nationals.

American troops' heavy engagement is better for all parties in a war, except for the American troops themselves, and while they might be selfless enough to nobly volunteer for such missions, I'm a little too selfish to want to use them for such purposes any longer.

In some cases, we may need to fight a WWII style total war. Fine. In all other cases, we should go back to the 70s/80s model of backing indigenous fighters with the 90s/2000s addition of devastating airstrikes.

This style of warfare isn't perfect. Libya will (as Allah suggests) probably descend into revenge bloodletting. Ask me how much I really care.

But the advantage of this style of warfare is that it is politically possible, which I no longer thing the Bush style is.

And The Hell With John McCain: Colin Powell's "you break it you bought it" exhortation was pernicious.

But so was John McCain's constant agitation during the Clinton years that only "boots on the ground" would suffice in any armed conflict, and doing less than inserting ground troops was somehow cowardly and dishonorable.

He was always agitating for that in Kosovo, for example. Why? I didn't give a shit about Kosovo in the first place; if we have to go to war there, then I suggest we keep it in the skies.

Not inject ground troops into a very marginal war just to demonstrate we have the guts (? -- who's guts?) to do so.

We have a strong interest in disarming Iran.

Do we have that strong an interest in rebuilding it and pacifying it? No, I don't think we do.

Let's prioritize what we actually care most about, and have the courage (to use a favorite word of McCain's) to make distinctions about what we will and won't risk our troops' lives for.

Posted by: Ace at 06:03 PM | Comments (346)
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Some worthwhile reading for you, any one of which is worth a full post...

VDH: Atlas Is Sorta Shrugging
Read the whole thing - this is but a taste...

[Obama] clearly does not like private businesses—except the super wealthy who are liberal and share his refined tastes and politics and have enough millions in “unneeded income” that they figure they will either die before or weather through our transition to European democratic socialism.

Of course, one Huey Long –like “fat cat”, an occasional adolescent “millionaires and billionaires”, a once in a while juvenile “corporate jet owners”, a few 1960s-like “spread the wealth” or “redistributive change” slips, a single petulant “unneeded income”, or a sole pop-philosophizing “at some point you’ve made enough money”, or even on occasion the old socialist boilerplate “those who make over $250,000 should pay their fair share” in isolation are tolerable. But string them together and even the tire store owner and pharmaceutical rep are aroused from their 70-hour weeks, and start to conclude, “Hmmm, this guy doesn’t like me or what I do, and I better make the necessary adjustments.” And, believe me, they are making the necessary adjustments.

Obama: The Affirmative Action President

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

The Real Racism in the Election

Now, look, I gave most African Americans a mulligan on the last election. I understood that after 400 some odd years of ugliness towards them that they were entitled to believe that the day had finally come where a black man 1) who was qualified to be president 2) might actually win the office. They were obviously right about the second part, and wrong about the first one. But that decision—to believe Obama was more ready for the job than he evidently was—was a deviation from Martin Luther King’s dream. They were judging him not by the content of his character—which demonstrated that he was not ready to be president—but by the color of his skin. It’s wrong, but it’s human.

But just how long is this going to go on?

...For instance, as much as liberals are freaking out about Perry’s religion, Obama sat in a racist church for twenty years and the media barely batted an eye. He took the title of one of his books from a racist sermon, and again barely a reaction. Blatant racism—or at least tolerance of blatant racism—was excused from Barack Obama, and yet Perry is defamed with selective editing in order for liberals to claim he is a racist.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:35 PM | Comments (558)
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When you say "That's a good picture of you," isn't that an insult?

You're not saying "You look good." You are instead saying "This artificial, limited representation of you makes you look good, or, at least, better than you actually do in reality."

You have just established that that picture either 1, is misleading in making the subject appear more attractive than in reality, or 2, even if not misleading per se, establishes the upper bound of the subject's possible attractiveness.

If a picture is "good," or, worse yet, "really good," that essentially fixes the uppermost possible level of attractiveness for a subject at that moment and in that light. It's all downhill from there.

You might as well hold up the picture and say, "For good or ill, this is as good as it conceivably gets for you. Deal with it."

This occurred to me because I noticed Joan Walsh's picture on Twitter makes her look average and not awful, as she actually is in reality, and I thought, "That's a good picture of her" in the bad way I mean above.

But it's always actually meant in a bad way.

"That's a horrible picture of you" is, counterintuitively, a more complimentary statement. If I'm in a contest between me myself an a picture, any statement that puts me above the picture is a positive statement. Any statement that puts me below that picture is negative.

Posted by: Ace at 02:32 PM | Comments (555)
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ArthurK. relinked this -- I have to relink it again.

It's a dramatic testament of how the Conventional Wisdom has shifted in just a couple of months. Sure, this was goofy even when it was time-stamped (July 12), but really a month earlier and this would have been almost standard liberal nonsense.

Now it's just maudlin and/or hilarious.

How Can We Not Love Obama?

Because like it or not, he is all of us

By Stephen Marche

Before the fall brings us down, before the election season begins in earnest with all its nastiness and vulgarity, before the next batch of stupid scandals and gaffes, before Sarah Palin tries to convert her movie into reality and Joe Biden resumes his imitation of an embarrassing uncle and Newt and Callista Gingrich [FIG.1] creep us all out, can we just enjoy Obama for a moment?
Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.

Due to the specific nature of his political calculus, possibly not a single person in the United States — not even Obama himself — agrees with all of his policies. But even if you disagree with him, even if you hate him, even if you are his enemy, at this point you must admire him. The turning point came that glorious week in the spring when, in the space of a few days, he released his long-form birth certificate, humiliated Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, and assassinated Osama bin Laden. The effortlessness of that political triptych — three linked masterpieces demonstrating his total command over intellectual argument, low comedy, and the spectacle of political violence — was so overwhelmingly impressive that it made political geniuses of the recent past like Reagan and Clinton [FIG.2] seem ham-fisted. Formed in the fire of other people's wars, other people's financial crises, Obama stepped out of Bush's shadow that week, almost three years after taking over the presidency.

But even that string of successes cannot fully explain the immensity of his appeal right now. Reagan was able to call upon the classic American mythology of frontiersmen and astronauts and movie stars; Obama has accessed a much wider narrative matrix: He's mixed and matched Jay-Z with geek with Hawaiian with Kansan with product of Middle America with product of a broken home with local Chicago churchgoer with internationally renowned memoirist with assassin.

Hm. Usually they deny that. This guy celebrates it.

"I am large, I contain multitudes," Walt Whitman [FIG.3] wrote, and Obama lives that lyrical prophecy. Christopher Booker's 2004 book The Seven Basic Plots, a wide-ranging study from the Epic of Gilgamesh on and a surprisingly convincing explanation for why we crave narrative, reduced all stories to a few plots, each with its own kind of hero. Amazingly, Barack Obama fulfills the role of hero in each of these ancient story forms.

While Obama's story is ancient, it is also utterly contemporary, perfectly of the moment. His gift — and it is a gift that makes him emblematic — is that he inhabits all these roles without being limited by them. He has managed, miraculously, to remain something of an outsider while being the president of the United States of America, the most inside man in the world....

We love Obama — even those who claim to despise him — because deep in our hearts and all over our lives, we're the same way — both inside and outside our jobs, our races, our cities, our countries, ourselves. With great artists, often the most irritating feature of their work is the source of their talent. Obama's gift is the same as his curse: He's somehow managed to be like the rest of us, only infinitely more so.

If I were President, I'd nominate this guy as Secretary for Completely Nailing It.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (181)
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Except those guilty of violent crimes.

I remember Schoolyard Rock telling me that the Congress was needed for such changes in the law. How they lied, and lied.

he Obama administration said Thursday it will allow many illegal immigrants facing deportation the chance to stay in this country and apply for a work permit, while focusing on removing from the U.S. convicted criminals and those who might be a national security or public safety threat.

That will mean a case-by-case review of approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants facing possible deportation in federal immigration courts, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in announcing the policy change.

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (271)
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