Moon Shot (Down)

The most depressing thing about Obama's budget proposal is that he's killing NASA's Constellation program to return to the moon.

The space agency's budget would grow to $19 billion in 2011 under the proposed budget released on Monday, with an emphasis on science and less spent on space exploration.

It "adds $6 billion to NASA's budget over five years and draws upon American ingenuity to enable us to embark on an ambitious 21st Century program of human space exploration," the budget proposal reads.

But the plan ends the Constellation program "which was planning to use an approach similar to the Apollo program to return astronauts back to the Moon 50 years after that program's triumphs."

The budget notes that an independent panel found the moon program was years behind schedule.

"Instead, we are launching a bold new effort that invests in American ingenuity for developing more capable and innovative technologies for future space exploration," it reads.

The new budget, which is subject to change by Congress, also extends operations at the International Space Station past its planned retirement date of 2016, suggesting such potential additions as inflatable space habitats.

Obama's proposal hands over more space operations to the commercial sector, saying it will create thousands of new jobs and hold costs down.

Now, the new commercial spaceflight jobs are a bonus for sure, but there's just not a lot of direct quarterly profit in flying to the moon on your own dime.  Still, commercial space flight opportunities are gaining speed and investment.

We'll see how it goes.  Space flight is something China, Russia, and India are looking into as well.

The Post-Obama Era

The WSJ's Fouad Ajami declares the Obama presidency over and straps on the autopsy apron, past tense and all.

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.

Americans don't deify their leaders or hang on their utterances, but Mr. Obama succumbed to what the devotees said of him: He was the Awaited One. A measure of reticence could have served him. But the flight had been heady, and in the manner of Icarus, Mr. Obama flew too close to the sun.

We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the "remoteness and detachment" of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness. 

It's an impressive piece of work in its sheer mendacity.  In the space of a few paragraphs here, Ajami manages to hit all the GOP talking points:  Obama's "arrogance", his "misread mandate" despite being an overwhelming majority in Congress, the "failure" of his first year in office despite the truly productive passage of legislation, his "overexposure" as the "Awaited One" and all the hubristic messiah complex bullshit that goes with it, how a "liberal agenda" was rammed down America's throat against its wishes, etc.

Ajami hits all the boxes on the Obama Derangement Syndrome checklist, and adds a few new ones, particularly referring to Obama in the past tense, like the President's remaining three years are irrelevant and only the GOP matters now.  Obama has already been written off in Ajami's view as an unfortunate blip in the 30-year reign of the GOP, an aberration that must only be recognized for the depth of its apparent and total collapse.

Thus the piece demonstrates pretty much everything wrong with the Village media today, substituting and even expanding on GOP talking points repeated wholesale in the opinion columns of papers like the WSJ.  The piece doesn't even make sense either, it ignores basic fact and spins wholesale a mirror universe where Obama and the Democrats won in 2008 but never should have been able to even try their agenda, whereas Bush's approval numbers were far lower than Obama's are now and he was allowed to rule by fiat as a President should.

It's maddening stuff, really.  But it's par for the course. Talking about the President as if he is a ghost of the distant past instead of in office for another three years is not just disingenuous, it's outright disrespectful.

The Hoffman Effect Rolls On

This time in Illinois.  In the GOP primary to decide the Republican candidate for Governor, the lesson that's coming forth is that nobody's safe...not even Republicans. Steve M.:

Not sure what to make of this, but Lech Walesa -- yes that Lech Walesa -- has endorsed Adam Andrzejewski, a tea party favorite, in the Illinois governor's race. (Andrzejewski has been praised as "politically numinous" and "a Rubio" by Erick Erickson of RedState; he's also loved in Breitbart Land.)

Walesa spoke on Andrzejewski's behalf at a tea party event in Chicago on Friday; the event was sparsely attended ... but Andrzejewski is allegedly surging in the race for the GOP nomination, according to some conservative organization or other's internal poll.

Indeed, Andrzejewski is the new Teabagger darling.  What does he want to do with a state facing billions in budget holes?  Guess.

Andrzejewski, who lives in Hinsdale, would launch his administration with two far-reaching executive orders.

First, he would use the Internet to open the state's books "down to the subcontractor level, where the checks are cut and the corruption exists."

Second, Andrzejewski would do a top-to-bottom forensic audit of spending. He argues Illinois could save $3 billion to $5 billion a year.

"Dollars in Illinois need to start following people in need, people without political power," he said.

Despite calling for transparency, Andrzejewski did not provide his net worth, saying he is a multimillionaire in the "low eight figures."

Yep, massive spending cuts made by the guy with the eight-figure net worth.  Guess what government programs he considers to be wasteful?  Local Illinois governments:

Hinsdale businessman Adam Andrzejewski said if elected governor he would reduce or eliminate "revenue sharing to local municipalities," which could include the state withholding local government's portion of the state's income tax. The state currently shares one-tenth of income tax revenue with local governments, which totaled nearly $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2009.

"If you look at it and peel back the layers on it, that would be the single largest property tax increase in the state's history. You're going to push the state's problems on municipalities and local taxpayers," said Mark Fowler, executive director Northwest Municipal Conference, which represents area governments. "This isn't money that creates a slush fund for municipalities."

Force city and county governments to slash spending by simply refusing to give them the money to spend.  That'll help people in need.  Looks like the "dollars flowing to people in need" will be flowing to this guy's administration, and not the people of Illinois. Hit the people least likely to be able to afford it to save your own skin:  that's the Teabagger way.  I got mine, screw the rest of you assholes.

The Kroog Versus Canadian-Style Boring Banking

This morning Paul Krugman argues if we had a banking system like our practical and erstwhile northern neighbor Canada, our economy would be in much better shape.

Canada’s experience also seems to refute the view, forcefully pushed by Paul Volcker, the formidable former Fed chairman, that the roots of our crisis lay in the scale and scope of our financial institutions — in the existence of banks that were “too big to fail.” For in Canada essentially all the banks are too big to fail: just five banking groups dominate the financial scene.

On the other hand, Canada’s experience does seem to support the views of people like Elizabeth Warren, the head of the Congressional panel overseeing the bank bailout, who place much of the blame for the crisis on failure to protect consumers from deceptive lending. Canada has an independent Financial Consumer Agency, and it has sharply restricted subprime-type lending.

Above all, Canada’s experience seems to support those who say that the way to keep banking safe is to keep it boring — that is, to limit the extent to which banks can take on risk. The United States used to have a boring banking system, but Reagan-era deregulation made things dangerously interesting. Canada, by contrast, has maintained a happy tedium.

More specifically, Canada has been much stricter about limiting banks’ leverage, the extent to which they can rely on borrowed funds. It has also limited the process of securitization, in which banks package and resell claims on their loans outstanding — a process that was supposed to help banks reduce their risk by spreading it, but has turned out in practice to be a way for banks to make ever-bigger wagers with other people’s money.

There’s no question that in recent years these restrictions meant fewer opportunities for bankers to come up with clever ideas than would have been available if Canada had emulated America’s deregulatory zeal. But that, it turns out, was all to the good.

Limiting risk that banks can take and educating consumers against subprime scams with an agency designed to protect consumers:  two things Republicans refuse to have any part of.  The House bill by Democrats does include both of these items, but Republicans in the Senate vow to block the bill.

My question is actually pretty simple for the Teabaggers out there: why are your Republican buddies defending the banks that cost us trillions of taxpayer dollars and refusing to take any action to stop another bailout from happening again?

Which party is for the American people, again?

Blackwater Runs Still, Runs Deep Part 2

While the argument still rages over whether or not to go after Blackwater on the Nisour square massacre in Iraq, the Justice Department is now looking into if the company bribed Iraqi officials to be allowed to stay in the aftermath of the shootings.

The investigation, which was confirmed by three current and former officials speaking on condition of anonymity, follows a report in The New York Times in November that top executives at Blackwater had authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials to buy their support after the shooting. The newspaper account said it could not determine whether any bribes were actually paid or identify Iraqi officials who might have received the money.

The Justice Department has obtained two documents from the State Department, which had security contracts with the company, that have raised questions about Blackwater’s efforts to influence Iraqi government officials after the Nisour Square shootings, according to two American officials familiar with the inquiry.

One document, a handwritten note, shows that a Blackwater representative told a senior official at the American Embassy in Baghdad that the company had hired a prominent Iraqi lawyer to help the firm make compensation payments to Iraqi victims of the shootings, a practice encouraged by the State Department.

According to the document, as described by the two government officials, the Blackwater official said the firm had hired the lawyer hoping that the lawyer’s close ties to top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, would help Blackwater obtain a license to continue operating in Iraq.

Several officials identified the Iraqi lawyer as Jaafar al-Mousawi, who had earlier served as the chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein.

The second document is a response from a senior Embassy official, an e-mail message warning Blackwater officials not to bribe the Iraqi government, the officials said. In an interview in Baghdad on Friday, Mr. Mousawi said that in February 2008 he worked with top Blackwater officials to spend up to $1 million to compensate the families of the Nisour Square victims. He said he consulted with Mr. Maliki about the payments. 

Blackwater certainly knew who to contact to get the ear of Iraq's top officials, and who to pay the money to in order to get this case to go away.  The criminal case may have gone away for the shootings, but as a result Blackwater may have dug their own hole on the bribery charges.  We'll see if the Holder DoJ has any guts to follow through on this one.

My guess is no.

StupidiNews!

• Toyota now has a plan to fix millions of sticky gas pedals, but fixing damaged customer relations may take far longer.
• Miami is facing a $45 million budget shortfall for 2010 that could force the city to take drastic action.
• President Obama's 2011 budget forsees a $1.5 trillion deficit plus another $6.3 trillion in debt over the next decade.
• CitiGroup plans to sell its private equity unit to raise $10 billion in cash.
• Is a 55" TV violating the NFL's copyright law on the biggest game of the year?

Last Call Plus

It's worth reading Bob Cesca tonight on the way out.

I wrote a Huffington Post column about this a while back, so I'm glad to see today that I'm not the only writer who thinks a Republican Congress would impeach the president. DougJ from Balloon Juice sees the writing on the wall (or on Glenn Beck's chalkboard as the case may be):

It seems worth asking: what would Republicans do if they gained control of the House? [...] My guess is that politically, the biggest thing would do is start lots of investigations. What do you think they would investigate? Anita Dunn and Van Jones, probably, but what else? Would they delve into Obama’s pre-presidential years? Would they hold hearings on his birth certificate? Would they impeach him? Would the press go along with all of this the way they did with Whitewater and Travelgate and Socksgate? My gut feeling is that the answer to the last three questions is “yes”.

I hate to be so grim, but these are the stakes. And I couldn't be more deadly serious.
In terms of the politics, it's what makes the soft-pedaling on healthcare seem all the more puzzling. Abandoning healthcare creates a snowball that will eventually grow to mammoth proportions and roll right over the White House. They have to pass this bill -- obviously because it will save lives and the economy -- but also to preserve Congress and the Obama White House.

And he's right.  Clinton was impeached on bullshit and nearly convicted.  They've already accused Obama of far, far worse.  A Republican-controlled Congress will be used to impeach Obama if they get into power in 2010.  The Teabaggers will start demanding it November 3rd.  They will say "He's not even a citizen."

It's going to be insanity.

Last Call

We're already up to 15 bank failures in January, on pace to break even last year's 140 bank failures, and looking down the road one of those banks may be Swiss giant UBS.

Switzerland's justice minister warned in an interview on Sunday that top bank UBS could collapse if sensitive talks with the United States over a high-profile tax fraud investigation fall through. 

"The actions of UBS in the United States are very problematic. Not just because they are punishable but also because they threaten all of the bank's activities," Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Le Matin Dimanche newspaper.

"The Swiss economy and the job market would suffer on a major scale if UBS fails as a result of its licence being revoked in the United States," she said.

Switzerland and the United States have negotiated an agreement under which UBS would hand over information on some 4,500 account holders to US tax police.

But a Swiss court ruling earlier this month put the deal in doubt. 

In other words, the Swiss are warning that if the US plays hardball with UBS, it'll go under.  The problem is, UBS most likely broke the law and defrauded US taxpayers out of millions.  If they go under because we got that money back...is that a bad thing?

I don't think so.  I also think UBS fully expects the DoJ to drop the case or something.  That's up to Eric Holder, but given the new Volcker Rules stance by the Obama administration and the one thing both progressives and Teabaggers can agree on is that banks are ripping us off, I'm not a sure as I would have been a month ago that Obama would fold on this.

We'll see.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

After the beatdown Paul Krugman gave to Roger "Baron Harkonnen" Ailes today on ABC's This Week...


..should we just call him Paul Muad'Dib or what?

Just sayin'.

Chinese Fire Drill, Part 2

Hey guess what kids?  Now we see why China's playing hardball with us on military cooperation.  It's because they have no real intent on that whole cooperation thing at all, but competition worldwide instead.  From the India Times:

China has signaled it wants to go the US way and set up military bases in overseas locations that would possibly include Pakistan. The obvious purpose would be to exert pressure on India as well as counter US influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"(So) it is baseless to say that we will not set up any military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad," an article published on Thursday at a Chinese government website said. "It is our right," the article said and went on to suggest that it would be done in the neighborhood, possibly Pakistan.

"As for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct the retaliatory attack within the country or at the neighboring area of our potential enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the potential enemies' overseas interests," it said.

A military base in Pakistan will also help China keep a check on Muslim Uighur separatists fighting for an independent nation in its western region of Xingjian, which borders the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Beijing recently signed an agreement with the local government of NWFP in order to keep a close watch on the movement of Uighur ultras.

"I have personally felt for sometime that China might one day build a military base in India's neighborhood. China built the Gadwar port in Pakistan and is now broadening the Karokoram highway. These facilities can always be put to military use when the need arises," Ramesh V Phadke, former Air Commodore and advisor to the Institute of Defense Studies told TNN. 

How very interesting.  More on this here.

Hey, what better way to bankrupt the US than to start a new arms race and force us to borrow money from the very country we're competing against?    Should the GOP ever get back in charge our little tiff with China is going to become front burner real fast.  If you think the Republicans are going to prctice fiscal discipline in the face of this, you're mad.  We're going to be adding tens of trillions to our debt in this little game.  Hell, even with Obama we're going to be forced to play the Build-A-Base game.  Brilliant move from the Chinese:  they'll bury us without firing a shot.

The 21st Century will not belong to the United States, folks.

This Week In Bobblespeak

Baba Wawa on Scott Brown and Fluffy, The Axeman and Orange Julius.

Gregory: Obama said we should stop demonize
each other

Boehner: he’s a well-spoken Guinean Witch Doctor

Gregory: the debt isn’t even his fault!

Boehner: yes but it could be

Gregory: huh

Boehner: he’s a crazy leftist terrorist

Gregory: oh ok

Boehner: the people are saying ‘Stop! We don’t Washington to end the recession!’

Gregory: are you prepared to say yes to anything
at all?

Boehner: the government is going to take over health care!

Gregory: so nothing at all??

Boehner: more war, torture, and tort reform

Gregory: awesome

Boehner: what we won’t stand for is government providing health care

Gregory: if people buy health care across state lines then the federal government will regulate health care

Boehner: nonsense - the American people can regulate the whole industry by themselves

Gregory: that’s insane

Boehner: government is evil!

This whole obstructionist thing is starting to hurt, isn't it? You know, eventually somebody going to figure out the reason the Dems can't get some things done is because of the Republicans saying no.

The Kroog Versus FOX's Roger Ailes

And Paul Krugman jacks the mutha up.  Via Media Matters:

Krugman:  "On this health care thing, I am a little obsessed with it because it's a key issue for me, people did not know what was in the plan and some of that was just poor reporting, some of that was deliberate misinformation...I have here in front of when President Obama said, he says rhetorically "Why aren't we going to have a health care plan like the Europeans have" a government-run program and then proceeded to explain why it was different, on FOX News what appeared was a clipped quote (looks at Ailes) "Why do we have a European-style health care plan?"  Right?  Deliberate misinformation."  All this contributed to a situation where the public did...

Ailes:  Wait wait wait wait...

Krugman: I can show you the clip on Youtube if you want to see it.

Ailes:  ...The people are not stupid.

Krugman:  No, they're ill-informed.

Ailes: In the Constitution, the Founding Fathers didn't need 2000 pages of lawyers to hide things...

Krugman: Oh come on.  Legislation is always long.

Ailes:  ...Then tell people, then tell people it's an emergency that we get it, but it won't go into effect for three years.  So you don't have time to read it...

Krugman: Again, deliberate misinformation.  It is...actually it is a Republican plan.  It was Mitt Romney's health care plan, people were led to believe it was Socialism.  And that was deliberate.  That wasn't just poor reporting.

And this is with FOX News head Roger Ailes sitting directly next to him. It's about time somebody told this douchebag to his face that his entire network is there to lie to the American people and do it on purpose.

Good for him.

In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Atrios tweets:

why is every male republican with a pulse thought to be a viable presidential candidate

Because Ronald Reagan is dead, and they hate women and minorities.

Duh.

Obama Picks Up Ten Points In Two Days At Rasmussen

President Obama has picked up ten points in two days in Rasmussen's daily tracking poll, going from -17 on Friday to -7 today, his best Rasmussen number since November 7th.

This is the first update based entirely upon interviews conducted since the State-of-the-Union Address and it reflects a bounce for the President. The number who Strongly Approve is the highest in more than four months (since September) and the overall Approval Index rating is the best in more than three months (since October).

The bounce comes almost entirely from those in the president’s party. Sixty-four percent (64%) of Democrats now Strongly Approve, up from 50% before the speech. However, the speech appears to have had the opposite impact on unaffiliated voters. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 50% now Strongly Disapprove. That’s up from 42% before the speech. The next few days should give an indication as to whether these changes will fade or if they signify the beginning of a new phase in the political environment. 

We'll see if this trend continues.  Right now that -7 is actually pretty damn close to Pollster.com's -2.5% bringing the ODI down to the lowest number I can remember seeing it at, -4.5%.  Still, as you can see, Rasmussen's doing everything they can to spin this as far down the GOP lanes as they can.

I will be very, very interested to see what effect Friday's Question Time had on the polls by mid-week.

Just A Reminder About Congressional Dems

I do complain about what they haven't accomplished so far.  But they have accomplished a massive amount.

The productivity began with the stimulus package, which was far more than an injection of $787 billion in government spending to jump-start the ailing economy. More than one-third of it -- $288 billion -- came in the form of tax cuts, making it one of the largest tax cuts in history, with sizable credits for energy conservation and renewable-energy production as well as home-buying and college tuition. The stimulus also promised $19 billion for the critical policy arena of health-information technology, and more than $1 billion to advance research on the effectiveness of health-care treatments.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has leveraged some of the stimulus money to encourage wide-ranging reform in school districts across the country. There were also massive investments in green technologies, clean water and a smart grid for electricity, while the $70 billion or more in energy and environmental programs was perhaps the most ambitious advancement in these areas in modern times. As a bonus, more than $7 billion was allotted to expand broadband and wireless Internet access, a step toward the goal of universal access.

Any Congress that passed all these items separately would be considered enormously productive. Instead, this Congress did it in one bill. Lawmakers then added to their record by expanding children's health insurance and providing stiff oversight of the TARP funds allocated by the previous Congress. Other accomplishments included a law to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco, the largest land conservation law in nearly two decades, a credit card holders' bill of rights and defense procurement reform.

The House, of course, did much more, including approving a historic cap-and-trade bill and sweeping financial regulatory changes. And both chambers passed their versions of a health-care overhaul. Financial regulation is working its way through the Senate, and even in this political environment it is on track for enactment in the first half of this year. It is likely that the package of job-creation programs the president showcased on Wednesday, most of which got through the House last year, will be signed into law early on as well.

Most of this has been accomplished without any support from Republicans in either the House or the Senate -- an especially striking fact, since many of the initiatives of the New Deal and the Great Society, including Social Security and Medicare, attracted significant backing from the minority Republicans. 

America, this Congress has managed to pass a lot of really, really good legislation in just 12 months.  Remember that when you decide to throw them under the bus and let the Republicans run things again to "teach them the lesson" that they aren't doing enough or that they are "just as corrupt as Bush was".

Patience and stamina, people.

Patience and stamina.