Zandar's Thought Of The Day

Depending on A) how bad the economy is going to be and B) how obstructionist the GOP is going to be (and I think both will fall pretty deep into the "a hell of a lot worse than you think" level of badness) we could actually be talking about almost the same exact topics that we're talking about now this time next year.

As in "Where the bottom is in the markets, how bad unemployment numbers are going to be for this month, how bad will holiday retail sales really be, who Obama will get to fill his empty cabinet positions, when universal health care will finally get passed, when will we start to actually get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, when will we get Bin Laden, and who is going to run in 2012" stuff, just like now...only the lack of answers would be pretty depressing then.

The fact that I can come up with an entirely plausible scenario where we still don't have answers to any of those eight questions by November 12, 2009 is enough to make me go to bed now.

The Economic Ruin Ahead

Regardless of what President Obama does in 2009, the US is going to be facing a terrible economic situation. The happy-face economic press is expecting a short recession to be over soon. Nothing could be further from the truth: we're looking at five, possibly six quarters of recession at the minumum and much worse news is on the way.

US markets lost another 5% across the board today, the Dow alone having lost 1,400 points in six sessions.

Roubini's outlook is nothing short of catastrophic:

• The U.S. will experience its most severe recession since WWII, much worse and longer and deeper than even the 1974-75 and 1980-82 recessions. The recession will continue until at least the end of 2009 for a cumulative GDP drop of over 4%; the unemployment rate will likely reach 9%. The US consumer is shopped out saving less and debt burdened and now faltering: this will be the worst consumer recession in decades.
• The prospect of a short and shallow 6-8 months V-shaped recession is out of the window; a U-shaped 18-24 months recession is now a certainty and the probability of a worse multi-year L-shaped recession (as in Japan in the 1990s) is still small but rising. Even if the economy were to exit a recession by the end of 2009 the recovery could be so weak because of the impairment of the financial system and of the credit mechanism (i.e. a growth rate of 1-1.5% for a while well below the potential of 2.5-2.75%) that it may feel like a recession even if the economy is technically out of the recession.
• Obama will inherit and economic and financial mess worse than anything the U.S. has faced in decades: the most severe recession in 50 years; the worst financial and banking crisis since the Great Depression; a ballooning fiscal deficit that may be as high as a trillion dollar in 2009 and 2010; a huge current account deficit; a financial system that is in a severe crisis and where deleveraging is still occurring at a very rapid pace, thus causing a worsening of the credit crunch; a household sector where millions of households are insolvent, into negative equity territory and on the verge of losing their homes; a serious risk of deflation as the slack in goods, labor and commodity markets becomes deeper; the risk that we will end in a deflationary liquidity trap as the Fed is fast approaching the zero-bound constraint for the Fed Funds rate; the risk of a severe debt deflation as the real value of nominal liabilities will rise given price deflation while the value of financial assets is still plunging.
• The world economy will experience a severe recession: output will sharply contract in the Eurozone, UK and the rest of Europe, in Canada, Japan, and Australia/New Zealand; there is also a risk of a hard landing in emerging market economies. Expect global growth – at market prices – to be close to zero in Q3 and negative by Q4. Leaving aside the effects of the fiscal stimulus China could face a hard landing growth rate of 6% in 2009. The global recession will continue through most of 2009.

That's just leading off. It gets worse: predictions of stag-deflation (a nasty combination of stagnating GDP and deflation), Fed rates hitting zero basis points, the S&P 500 going at low as 500, Credit market losses approaching $2 trillion, more deleveraging and downgrading of long-term corporate bonds, the collapse of the commercial real-estate market, a $1 trillion deficit in 2009 and 2010, the dollar dropping off the cliff, and the markets crumbling as the year-end rally that the economic press is betting on failing to materialize.

General Growth Properties, the second largest US mall operator, saw their stock hit 33 cents today. Bankruptcy is all but certain for this company as it's already looking for a deal.

Ford, GM, and Chrysler will not survive as independent companies. The Big Three Automakers are almost dead and if they all go under, unemployment in this country will double overnight. We're talking the cascading losses of eight to ten million jobs, that would devastate the country for a decade.

Throw in the airlines falling apart and retail stores crumbling across the country, and you have an idea of just how bad the worst case scenario is.

A recession...a bad one lasting into 2010...is assured. A depression is still very possible. A lot will depend on what Obama does. If he and his administration recognize that we're facing a second Great Depression, we have a chance.

If not...we'll all find out just how likely the depression scenario is.

Democrats Won, Folks

So can we finally retire the Village argument for letting the GOP run Congress?

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, 59 percent of those questioned think that Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, with 38 percent saying that such one-party control will be bad.

Get that? Fifty-nine percent.

The Village is full of crap. America is ready for Obama and the Democrats to try it their way.

One Term Obama

My least favorite blogger, US News wrongmaster Jim Pethokoukis is at it again, saying the economy will doom Obama to one-term ignominy.

Just "one and done" for Barack Obama's presidency? Recall an ominous passage in his otherwise joyous election-night speech: "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term." Maybe the tone was suggested by one of Obama's economic advisers like Jason Furman or Austan Goolsbee. It's the battered economy, after all, that will be President Obama's greatest domestic policy challenge. As such, it will also be his greatest political challenge, too -- but one where failure may already be baked into the cake.

That's right, the "O" in "Obama" may stand for "One Term." For starters, there's a strong chance that when voters head to the polls on Nov. 2, 2010, they likely will still think the economy is awful. Not much debate about that. (Good chance the Democrats' two-election winning streak comes to an end.) And while voters may be somewhat patient for two years, patient for four years? Really unlikely. If history is any guide at all, voters may still be terribly cranky about the economy when they cast their ballots on Nov. 6, 2012 and thus likely choose the 45th president of the United States -- be it Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal or some other Republican without "Bush" for a last name. Once again a "change" election for an impatient America. The same bad economy that doomed John McCain in 2008 will have sunk Obama, as well.

Now, Jim is right when he assumes the economy is going to be bad for the next four years. He's dead right about that. He is wrong however in assuming that Obama will be kicked out of office because of it.

If Obama is able to convince voters that he's actively doing something about the economic disaster, and that he can say "Look, I'm doing everything I possibly can to fix this" and he has a specific plan ready to go on January 20, the public will work with him.

It was GOP's insistence that the economy was fine that killed John McCain's chances, not the economy itself. Bush made the same mistake, as did his father.

The Left Has Teh Stupid Too

Plenty of folks on the Left need to face the music for being, I don't know, 100% wrong on this election, mainly the die hard "Hillary Or Hell" folks on the Left that said that a black man could and would never win a Presidential election in America. Larry Johnson of No Quarter went from one of the best sources of behind the scenes intel community analysis to going completely off the reservation and turned into a wingnut with a severe case of Obama Derangement Syndrome, but almost as bad was TalkLeft's "Big Tent Democrat", Armando.

John Cole of Balloon Juice (himself a reformed wingnut turned Stupid Fighter) takes BTD to task and names his many crimes against reason, logic, and his fellow bloggers.

With Democrats like this, who needs Red State? If there was anyone who was more tedious during this last election cycle than Armando, aka Big Tent Democrat, let me know. Besides turning one of my favorite sites, TalkLeft, into a pseudo-Puma cess-pool during the primaries (But he supports Obama, dont’cha know- speaking for him only!), BTD’s bigger sin was dispensing bad advice to the Obama campaign on an almost daily basis. If concern trolling was an art form, BTD would be Michelangelo and the 2008 Democratic primary his Sistine Chapel.

Because I am short on patience, and, at heart, a compassionate person, I am not going to go through the TalkLeft archives and dig up where BTD gravely intones that Obama can not win the white vote, can not win the Jewish vote, can not win the Hispanic vote, and on and on. I will not dig up all the stupid god damned advice he gave to the Obama campaign (which they, thank GOD, ignored). I will not look up the umpteen posts where the left’s own pompous village idiot warned that Obama could not win without Hillary on the ticket. I will not dig up the polling data that he consistently misread and always curiously interpreted as showing a need for Hillary on the ticket. I will let you do that for yourself, and you can enjoy your own historical retrospective into BTD’s idiocy. Yes, I voted for Bush twice, but I proudly state I am not as stupid as BTD. Period.

Not proud of some of the folks on the Left, but Teh Stupid plays all sides of the political spectrum, and it's about time somebody called BTD out on the most egregious of his wrongnosity.

It won't be the last time, either.

StupidiNews!

• President Bush says he has a few regrets about what he said over the course of his two terms.
• HBO releases the entire Sopranos series on DVD in one huge box set.
• Treasury's vaunted plan to rescue homeowners facing foreclosure will only help less than ten percent of them.
• The world's first ovary transplant is a success as a healthy baby is born to the recipient.
• With the real estate crash now hitting retail properties, America's second-largest mall operator is facing bankruptcy.

Wingnut Stopped Clock Is Still Right Twice A Day Alert

It's amazing what getting your ass kicked in the race for the White House and in both houses of Congress will do for wingnut perspective. Today's penitent petitioner? Cap'n Ed Morrissey of Malkinvania's scream site, Hot Air, talking about today's earlier douchebag, Rep. Paul Broun's
"Obama Gestapo" comments.

Nothing in that speech hints at a Gestapo-like organization at all. I’d agree that we have to remain vigilant at all times to ensure that the government doesn’t try to impose such a regime upon us, but this is an extremely thin reed to grasp for such a conclusion. Although I supported a freer hand at the NSA in monitoring communications with one end in the US for possible terrorist activities given the dangers we face in this era, it’s far easier for the government to turn that into a Gestapo than what Obama proposed. That’s why I understood the Left’s opposition to it (as well as a small minority of conservatives) and thought reasonable safeguards against potential abuse were appropriate, as the eventual compromise in Congress provided.

If we plan to offer a rational alternative to the coming debacle of the next two years, then we’d better stick to facts and eschew hyperbole. We need to oppose the reality of the radical agenda proposed by Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress, not fantasies spun out of context-free snippets of speeches. The more critics invoke Hitler and Stalin instead of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, the better the reality of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will seem in 2010.

Well no duh, Ed.

You might want to talk to your boss about this whole "Obama is not Hitler" thing first, however.

Why Obamacare Might Actually Happen

Jon Cohn over at TNR has a pretty good article explaining how and why Obamacare might actually get passed in 2009.

But it's more than new money these groups are bringing to the table. It's also a new attitude. It's easy to forget now, but in the run-up to the Clinton fight most of Washington--indeed, most of the United States--thought health care reform was inevitable. Pro-reform interest groups approached the debate in the same way, focusing relentlessly on their narrow interests. This time around, nobody takes reform for granted. "Groups are coming in with less of an attitude that it's our way or no way," says one staffer who's been present for some of the discussions. "What we're getting from these stakeholders is, we want something to happen, we know you won't do it just the way we recommend, but we want to be positive and we to be there with you."

Not coincidentally, the same attitude seems to be prevailing among members of Congress. In 1994, reformers were fervent but seemed unable to agree on what reform should be. A sizable block wanted to create a single-payer, government- run system; another group favored a system based on private insurance, like the Clintons were proposing; a third group didn't even want to pursue universal coverage. This time around, many traditional single-payer proponents have indicated they could get behind a proposal like Obama's because it would at least offer people the option of a government-run plan and, perhaps, evolve into a single-payer system someday. Meanwhile, the bill attracting centrist interest, Wyden's, is far more ambitious than its 1994 counterparts. Among other things, it would cover virtually everybody right away, something even Obama's own proposal wouldn't accomplish.

It's a good read, and speaking of what Obama can do to get this issue passed fast, BooMan takes a smart look at what the Dems can do to shuffle chairmanships and to create a pair of special committees in Congress to get things done on the universal health care front.

All of the proposed members of these hypothetical special committees are experienced, high-ranking, members in the field of health care. The three biggest and longest advocates of universal health care (Dingell, Kennedy, and Clinton) would all be in a position to take credit. Waxman would be situated to take over energy issues, but Dingell would be well compensated. Clinton would get recognition for both her historic primary campaign and her willingness to campaign for Obama. Kennedy could live to see his greatest desire fulfilled and Baucus would not get unjustly cut out of the deal. Finally, Lieberman would have a prominent role and something to take home to his constituents, but he'd also be punished for siding with McCain.

Obama's very much like myself: a terribly pragmatic guy. I can see him going for this type of arrangement very early, and doing something even better than "spreading the wealth":

Spreading the credit.

Today's Sign Why The GOP Will Continue To Lose

If even David Brooks can figure this out:

In short, the Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and suffer more defeats.

...then the GOP is in serious trouble.

John McCain lost because of the economy showing up as the final proof that the GOP shouldn't be in charge of a lemonade stand, much less a country.

The response of the most inept, incompetent, foolhardy, partisan, rancorous, corrupt and racist group of sleazy politicians to ever ruin this country?

Double down.

The Spirit Of Bi-Partisanship

The GOP is clearly interested in burying the hatchet...

...in President-Elect Obama's forehead.

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

I'm glad to see that Obama's election has changed the face of the political spectrum so rapidly, and that the rancor and hatred of the campaign has been left behind.

Pro Tip, asshole. Accusing Obama of being a Marxist, Nazi-like dictator after what Bush did to this country for eight years just makes you look like a hypocritical moron. Also, you don't get to get away with statements like this:

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road."

So of course I'm now waiting for one of these gun-owning patriots to settle with Obama in "the American way" before he can revoke the Second Amendment...which of course he's never said he's going to try to do.

But that won't stop people like Paul Broun from sounding "crazy and way off base".

And it won't stop somebody from deciding the threat to gun ownership is worth exacting the ultimate price from Obama, either.

God I look forward to four more years of this, if only to marginalize the entire GOP. Remember Rep. Paul Broun when the Democrats are attacked for not being "bi-partisan" enough.

Let Them Burn

Here's the deal.

The GOP will continue to lose as long as they continue to drive off women, African-Americans, Hispanics, GLBT, and logical, intelligent voters. Many Republicans therefore believe that they should not only continue the same policies that drove off the "Big Tent" in the first place, but that they should actually make those divisive policies the cornerstone of their party going forward.

I say, let them. Ignore them as irrelevant.

StupidiNews, Veteran's Day Edition

Happy Veteran's Day to all. Your job is far tougher than mine. Come home safe.

• The Bush administration is under investigation again, this time for failing to apply full EPA penalties to corporate wrongdoers.
• Sarah Palin claims Bush is the reason the GOP lost.
• Nearly a third of Alaska's ballots remain uncounted.
• Citigroup says it's calling for a moratorium on foreclosures and wants to rework $20 billion in refinancing.
• MGM will be the first studio to put entire movies on YouTube.

Red October Surprise

TPM's Tom Hayden has an excellent article on the Russia/Georgia conflict and the relationship McCain campaign big shot Randy Scheunemann may have played in manipulating it as McCain's October Surprise.

New revelations about Georgia's August war with Russia should send a warning to president-elect Barack Obama about how a commander-in-chief can be manipulated into war.

It now appears that the same neo-conservatives who manipulated the US into the Iraq war on false evidence were directly involved in backing Georgia's ill-fated operation on August 7-8, which eyewitness military observers have described as indiscriminate attacks by Georgia on Russian and civilian positions. The observers reports, first made in August and then October to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, were disclosed in the New York Times three days after the presidential election. [NYT, Nov. 7]

The new evidence increases the likelihood that the August 7-8 clash between Georgia and Russia was an "October Surprise" that would highlight John McCain's greater foreign policy experience at the height of the presidential election.

The Georgia fighting occurred immediately before the Democratic convention in Denver. McCain, the leading public advocate for Georgia, immediately declared "we are all Georgians now" and promised "to blast Russia." Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, at first called for greater diplomacy, but quickly fell in line with a bipartisan consensus of national security advisers and the mainstream media. Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, openly applauded the White House for its rapid response, including support for NATO's inclusion of Georgia and the Ukraine and a one billion dollar emergency appropriation.

The newly-released evidence for the "October Surprise" now deserves deeper reflection by Obama and his advisers, and greater investigation by the mainstream media.

Needless to say, read the whole article. It's pretty sobering even for a very sober news day like today.

The accusations are deadly serious against Scheunemann, but the evidence is compelling enough for a look.

The Bush Doctrine In Action

Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't weigh in on today's NY Times front page story detailing how Bush ordered secret raids in multiple countries since 2004 to go after suspected Al Qaeda terrorists.

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.

Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A., according to senior American officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations.

But as many as a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years, often to the dismay of military commanders, senior military officials said. They said senior administration officials had decided in these cases that the missions were too risky, were too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence.

More than a half-dozen officials, including current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers, described details of the 2004 military order on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature. Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the military declined to comment.

This is pretty disturbing on a number of levels: Bush ordered the CIA to invade other countries to go after high-value targets when it wasn't "diplomatically inconvenient" to do so, and the order is a tacit admission that anywhere on Earth was a valid target if the intel was right.

This is real Tom Clancy/"24" level stuff here. A secret program to attack anywhere, anytime, in order to hit "terrorists"? This is the kind of stuff you expect to see in video games or cable TV movies with Dean Cain, not actual US foreign policy. And the fact that several of these strikes had to be canceled because they were "too risky, were too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence" is ludicrous: the act of invading a sovereign country is an act of war ANYWAY. Since we have plenty of evidence we've done it and other people suspect Bush of doing it, it's kind of annoying to find out that there were strikes even Bush wouldn't authorize.

Does this explain why Bin Laden is still at large? Was he in a country even Bush wouldn't attack? Would President Obama do things differently? How much trouble is Bush in for all this? Where's the "elsewhere" that we did attack?

This raises far more disturbing questions than answers.

Getoutta Gitmo

Obama's first major policy break that will test my "Obama's honeymoon is already over" theory comes courtesy of Spencer Ackermann via Digby: The closing of Gitmo.

It takes guts to leak their plans to do this right out of the gate since I'm pretty sure the right is going to have a monumental hissy fit over it and it could color his relationship with the military and the CIA. And a "controversial new system of justice" sets off a lot of alarms among us civil liberties slags as well. If we get up in arms, we all know it would mean that Obama is being "dragged to the left" by his dirty hippie base. (I hope it turns out to be something that we can all live with.) But bringing the prisoners to the US and giving them a "fair trial" is an opportunity for the wingnuts to try to stage a "gays in the military" style distraction if it's not handled carefully. With the endless gasbag bloviating about Clinton's allegedly monumental leftwingnuttiness in 1992 I expect they are very well aware of this.

I agree. Obama will be ruthlessly hit on closing Gitmo by the new, ultra-galvanized GOP of the 21st century. They will be looking for anything to rally their decimated base and set the tone that Obama is the most dangerous human being on Earth. The only question is will the Village Idiots go along with it? If the Village portrays the Gitmo closing decision as something Obama cannot or dare not do, then he's in trouble. The GOP wants to make Obama 2008 into Clinton 1992 and doom any chance he has of changing any Bush policy whatsoever.

But it's good to see him lead off with something that A) most of the American people want and B) something that could easily backfire on the GOP if they attack Obama too hard on it.

We'll see how this shapes up.