Dear America:

"I just cannot possibly begin to fathom how any rational, thinking, human being can possibly even consider supporting the horribly failed, fascist, socialist Obama empire. After seven entire weeks of the worst Presidential administration in American history (and possibly any President of anything anywhere), this whole Chas Freeman thing just underscores how much I hate, hate, hate HATE, HATE, HATE Barack Hussein Obama. MY GOD, JUST IMPEACH HIM ALREADY!"

--Jennifer Rubin, Commentary

Bonus Verbatim Stupidity: "We know the Far Left is where the “cabal” resides and that their regard for human rights is nonexistent."

I defer to Zandardad for the psych assessment of this woman.

New tag: Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Freeman Gets The Freeway

If you have any questions about who is running Obama's Middle East policy, the answer came down this afternoon as National Intelligence czar Dennis Blair withdrew Chas Freeman's nomination as chair of the President's National Intelligence Council.

Charles W. Freeman Jr. asked today that his name be withdrawn as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced.

The withdrawal came hours after Blair gave a spirited defense of the outspoken former ambassador to a dubious senator, and a day after all seven Republican members of the Senate intelligence committee criticized the appointment over his views on Israel and his past relationships with Saudi and Chinese interests.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) questioned Blair about the appointment today when the intelligence chief came before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Lieberman cited Freeman's past associations and statements which, the senator said, "appear either inclined to lean against Israel or too much in favor of China."

The National Intelligence Council oversees production of national intelligence estimates and shorter assessments on specific issues, tapping experts from among the 16 intelligence agencies. The chairman's position does not require Senate confirmation.

The answer to who controls Obama's Middle East policy is simple: Israel.

Israel didn't like Freeman. Ergo, Freeman was forced to withdraw. Game, set, match, Tel Aviv. That's all you need to know about Obama's "change" as far as the Middle East goes: we're still Israel's vassal state.

[UPDATE] Double G has more:

Does anyone doubt that it's far more permissible in American political culture to criticize actions of the American government than it is the actions of the Israeli Government? Isn't that rather odd, and quite self-evidently destructive?

And thus, nothing has truly changed. The depressing, maddening thing is the number of people on both sides of the aisle who are actually taking credit for Freeman's defeat. Both Democrats and Republicans are in fact crowing about how they stopped Chas Freeman, as if he was the most despised man in the United States.

But that's the power of Israel in the US. You cross them, you're done in Washington.

Zandar's Thought Of The Day

If 4 inches of snow in Las Vegas, the most in three decades, is proof that global warming is a hoax, then what about the fact it's 77 degrees here in Cincy today -- a record high that was four degrees warmer than the previous mark for March 10 that stood for 36 years?

I mean, I guess that proves it's real by that logic, huh? By the same token, today's 380 point gain on the Dow is therefore proof that Wall Street has wholeheartedly embraced the Obama administration's economic plan, yes?

An Issue Of Choice

The Employee Free Choice Act is in trouble. Democrats are wavering on the bill in the Senate because big business is bringing massive pressure to bear. Starbucks, Burger King, and Wal-Mart are all strongly against the measure, and the GOP is closing in.

But the question isn't will the bill pass, but how watered down the bill will be as Jonathan Tasini explains.

First, a bit about my view of the state of play. The math has always been pretty simple: EFCA will easily pass the House. The fight will be to get to 60 votes in the Senate. I've always suspected the conventional thinking on this was off--conventional, meaning, once Al Franken is seated, bringing the Democratic Senate caucus to 59, it would be easy to recruit one more Republican, more than likely, Arlen Specter, to support EFCA.

The problem is that there are a handful of Democratic Senators who are, at best, weak on labor, and, at best, just outright shills for corporate interests in the Congress. Here is my list: Max Baucus, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln; it's not clear to me what the replacement Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet will do on the bill, nor do I entirely trust Bill Nelson or Mark Pryor (on Pryor, maybe it's a family thing: his father was one of two Democratic Senators who would not vote in the 1990s to break a filibuster on the legislation that would have banned striker replacements, dooming the bill and giving corporations even more power to intimidate workers). That's seven Senators who, in my opinion, you cannot count as passionate champions of EFCA.

Here is what should concern us. I doubt any Democratic Senator will say "I oppose EFCA". What you will hear is something along the lines, "I think unions are good but there needs to be a balance between the interests of workers and business and the following amendment makes sure there is a balance..." and, not publicly, "thank you, Chamber of Commerce, you can now write out the PAC check for my next campaign..."

So we'll see. The legislation should be introduced today, and where it goes and what form the final bill will take is anyone's guess.

Opposite Man

When your party's ranking member on the House Budget committee tells the world the real problem with the economic crisis is that banking rules "were too Liberal" then you have officially exhausted any and all remaining credibility you have on the issue.

When you have mark-to-market accounting in a downward economy, in a spiraling balance sheet economy, that means those reserves have to grow, that means you can't lend as much.

So we need to fix the mark-to-market rules, either suspend them, go to a six- or a one-year rolling average. It's these mark-to-market rules that are taking these balance seats of these banks downward and preventing them from lending.

So rather than changing the capital requirements, which were too liberal in the last, you know, 10 or so years, let's fix the rule that caused it in the first place, and that's mark-to-market.

Yes, the accounting rules that allow you have fair and real numbers for your assets rather than making complete bullshit up are the problem according to the GOP, not the fact that banks have been habitually lying about their assets since the repeal of Glass-Stegall ten years ago.

The problem isn't your car is on fire, the problem is the mechanic has to honestly tell you your car is on fire, and that you can't play pretend anymore.

But I Dunno Man, They Have Chuck Norris

So, yeah. The forces of Glenn Beck's War Bunker Attack Zone or whatever have a new avatar of asskickery: Chuck F'ckin Norris (h/t BooMan Tribune).

The call by some right wing leaders for rebellion and for the military to refuse the commander in chief’s orders is joined by Chuck Norris who claims that thousands of right wing cell groups have organized and are ready for a second American Revolution. During an appearance on the Glen Beck radio show he promised that if things get any worse from his point of view he may “run for president of Texas.” The martial artist/actor/activist claims that Texas was never formally a part of the United States in the first place and that if rebellion is to come through secession Texas would lead the way.

Today in his syndicated column on WorldNetDaily Norris reiterates the point: “That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.”

He continues; calling on a second American Revolution; “…we've bastardized the First Amendment, reinterpreted America's religious history and secularized our society until we ooze skepticism and circumvent religion on every level of public and private life.

How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history need to record a second American Revolution? We the people have the authority according to America's Declaration of Independence, which states: That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”

Norris claims that; “Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation.” The right wing cells will meet during a live telecast, "We Surround Them," on Friday March 13 at 5 p.m.

This is pretty dangerous stuff here, talking about secession from the US because, you know, they don't like the guy in charge. Last time this happened, well, a whole hell of a lot of Americans died.

Now, Chuck Norris is a trained martial artist and could whip my fat ass like a lemon meringue, but the guy is certifiable if he thinks he's going to be Sam Houston. Abolishing the Obama administration? Thousands of cell groups? C'mon. Can you imagine the outcry from the right if George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Michael Moore said a state should secede from the union and that there were thousands of cell groups out there? We'd have calls for McCarthy-style hearings into Hollywood in a heartbeat.

And yet Glenn Beck's "We Surround Them" movement is calling for Americans to do just that, to resist the notion of prior consent and that the family is the ultimate authority, not the government. Beck is rolling this movement out on FOX as a call for open resistance to the Obama government.

Once again, can you imagine how quickly the right would have Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow's jobs (and heads) if they called for this type of thing? How they would openly be called traitors? How they would call for their incarceration or even execution for mentioning something like this against the Bush administration?

But I suppose national TV/radio hosts and Hollywood TV personalities openly calling for secession from the union are 100% acceptable now that Hussein X, Scourge of Whitey is in power.

Go figure.

Nothing Can Stop The Power Of Helicopter Ben

Helicopter Ben says the POWAH OF REGULATION will prevent the next global depression 80 years from now!

"We must have a strategy that regulates the financial system as a whole, in a holistic way, not just its individual components," Bernanke said in prepared remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Fed chief's speech come as the Obama administration and Congress are starting to crafting their overhaul strategies. For the administration, critical work on that front will be carried out among global finance officials this weekend in London. That will help set the stage for a meeting of leaders from the world's 20 major economic powers in April.

Revamping the U.S. financial rule book -- a patchwork that dates to the Civil War -- is a complex task. Congress, the administration and the Fed are involved because they want to strengthen the system to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis -- the worst since the 1930s-- that has plunged the U.S. and many other countries' economies into painful recessions.

Here's a start, kids: Repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Bring back the separation of insurance, banking, and brokerages under Glass-Steagall. In the space of less than ten years, GLB has all but destroyed the global financial system.

Get that law passed. These companies are costing us trillions and trillions of dollars to save. They should be downsized and broken up to the point where they are no longer systemic threats to the world financial fabric if even one of them fails. You want to reform the system there, Ben? Start there.

No real, meaningful reform to the financial system can start without first putting back the bank regulations that were enacted after the *last* depression, and that means restoring Glass-Steagall's firewalls between the financial, brokerage, and insurance industries. These corrupt companies only exist now thanks to trillions in bailouts and loan guarantees backed up by taxpayer dollars, and they have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that corporate greed and shoddy enforcement will invariably lead to disaster. I have no sympathy left for them, and neither does anyone else.

The time has come. If Helicopter Ben is serious about reform, start with Nancy and Harry putting back Glass-Steagall.

Also The Sun Is Hot And Burns Stuff

New frontiers in hard-hitting journalism:

With the unemployment rate at a 25-year high, employers indicate that hiring isn't likely to pick up anytime soon, according to a staffing firm survey released Tuesday.

Well no shit, Sherlock.

The Strange Case Of Chas Freeman

You'd think Poppy Bush's choice as Saudi Ambassador would be acceptable to all sides as a bipartisan foreign policy expert and as Obama's nomination as National Intelligence Council chair. You would however be screamingly incorrect.

The GOP is attacking Freeman on his "lack of experience" but the real reason is that the neocons believe Freeman is too close to the Saudis in particular, and not close enough to Israel, not to mention the larger goal of derailing Hillary Clinton as SecState. The Israel lobby in the US has targeted Chas Freeman for destruction as a result and are bringing enormous pressure to bear from the right.

But the stroke that may end Chas Freeman's career is coming from, of all places, the Left.

One new development, revealed here for the first time, which is likely to further damage Freeman's already battered standing is that the former ambassador advocated creating a national identity system in the US as a part of the war on terror. During a 9/11 Commission interview, Freeman remarked that of three major changes the US government should make to effectively combat terror, one was that "the United States should implement a national identity system, so we better know who is who."

This development could raise fresh objections to Freeman from both Republicans advocating leaner and less involved approaches to government and Democrats pushing for more robust civil liberty protections. Additionally, revelation that Freeman advocated putting a national identity system in place might also raise questions from the few remaining left-of-center commentators and outlets which support Freeman's appointment.

Now, that's a hit job if I've ever seen one, and for the HuffPo to go along says to me that the Israel lobby has plenty of neocon friends on the Left, too.

And it seems nobody in Washington is willing to come to Freeman's defense, either. The rancor against Freeman shouldn't be surprising, as far as the Israel lobby is concerned, he doesn't past the loyalty test and might actually tell Obama things about Tel Aviv that could almost be considered the truth.

But with the coming Netanyahu administration in Israel, Freeman will almost immediately become a point of contention. They don't like him, and the irony is apparently lost on everyone that an American foreign policy adviser is being accused of being under undue foreign influence by another foreign country who clearly means to bring undue foreign influence to bear on his appointment.

StupidiNews!

• A study of homelessness shows that 1 in 50 kids are without a home in the US.
• President Obama has asked all Federal agencies to review any signing statements by Bush.
• The five largest US banks could face hundreds of billions in additional derivatives losses.
• Ultra-right wing racists are gaining political power in Britain with the economic crisis.
• Homeland Security's top cybersecurity expert has resigned, stating a lack of funding and NSA interference.

The GOP Plan, Con't

The Plan is not to save the country. The Plan is to bring down the Democrats. And we have confirmation of that by none other than my favorite GOP person ever, The Odious Patrick McHenry.

McHenry’s description is buried in this new article from National Journal (sub. only):

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

McHenry’s spokesperson, Brock McCleary, tells me his boss is standing by the quote.

So yes, the Republican Party has no intention of working with the administration in order to solve any of the problems we all face together as Americans. The Odious Patrick McHenry would in fact rather attack the Democrats over and over and over and over and over again until the next mid-term election.

That's his idea of representing NC District 10. Not solving the double-digit unemployment problem in Catawba, Lincoln, Gaston, and surrounding counties in the greater Hickory area (where Zandarparents live and work and where I grew up). No, his goal is attacking Nancy Pelosi's approval ratings while the furniture plants and cable mills lay off more and more people.

My god, there has to be somebody who can run against this idiot.

Defending Timmy The Invisible Boy

Over at The New Yorker, James Surowiecki defends Timmy.

Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner’s job is not getting any easier. Geithner has yet to have any of his seventeen deputies confirmed, and yesterday two expected nominees for Treasury positions withdrew themselves from consideration. The withdrawals seem to have been in part because of frustration with the elaborate vetting process that the Obama Administration has put in place, as well as concern over anticipated attacks from Congressional Republicans. But I have to wonder also whether the withdrawals, and the difficulty Obama is having filling these jobs, aren’t also the result of the endless and vituperative stream of attacks on Treasury in general and Geithner in particular, attacks that are coming from both the left and the right.

Point there. The GOP is indeed trying to sabotage Timmy as much as they can so they can say Obama failed. Part of that is refusing to allow any deputies to be nominated at a time where Timmy is sailing the ship by himself. Would you want to work for Geithner right now?

On the other hand, the rest of Jim's thesis is pure bullshit:

Geithner has been Treasury Secretary for little more than a month, yet the calls for his resignation are already coming fast and furious. More important, the attacks on him don’t, for the most part, take the form of reasoned disagreement. Instead, they assume, and assert, that if, say, Geithner is against nationalizing the banks, he is either stupid or corrupt, when it seems more likely that he’s just reached a different conclusion about the risks and rewards of nationalization. (Henry Blodget’s call, today, for Geithner’s resignation ultimately boils down to saying that Geithner should go because he doesn’t agree with Blodget about the virtues of nationalization.) Treating disagreements over policy issues as prima facie evidence of evil intentions, or as a reason for firing, creates an environment for policymaking that’s toxic, and makes it harder to get good people to work in the public sector. And at a time when we need government more than ever, that’s just not a good thing.

The reasons I'm calling for Timmy to go away is that we don't know what his conclusions about anything are. He keeps trying the same exact plan over and over again, which is attempt to magically remove all the bad debt from banks without sticking the taxpayer with it, and somehow allowing the banks and stockholders to keep all the good assets for themselves, and he can't do it. The reason he can't do it is because he's trying to do something impossible and he keeps wasting America's time trying to come up with new and exciting ways to give the banks all their money and fuck the taxpayer over, and he's hoping nobody will notice.

People then actually notice that whatever plan he pops out every couple of weeks looks suspiciously like allowing the banks to keep all their assets and the taxpayer getting stuck with mountains of toxic debt. Then they call him out on it. Then he says "We're working on it" and floats a new trial balloon that then manages to once again look suspiciously like allowing the banks to keep all their assets and the taxpayer getting stuck with mountains of toxic debt.

It's ludicrous. It's like a teenager coming up with plan after plan to convince Dad to let him borrow the Audi A8 to go to Vegas. It's not going to happen, but the teenager plugs along anyway, operating on the theory that if he just hits the right balance, he can get Dad to totally go along with it.

We don't have time for this bullshit. If Geithner can't come up with a better plan, then replace him with somebody who can. And the person who needs to ultimately make that call is Barack Obama.

Otherwise, yeah, it really will be the Obama Depression. Dig?

The Costs On Plan N

Matt Yglesias theorizes the reason why Obama and Timmy The Invisible Boy haven't pulled the trigger on Plan N yet is because they know it'll cost trillions of dollars, and Congress isn't about to give that to them.

Nationalizing banks would mean nationalizing the banks’ losses. That would cost a ton of money. Money that congress would need to authorize. If I were a member of congress, I would gladly vote to appropriate the funds. But would the actual members of congress? You can see where doubts might creep in. Indeed, where I giving the president advice on legislative matters I would say, at a minimum, that if it’s at all possible it would be better to just keep delaying on the bank issue until the 2009 appropriations bill and the 2010 budget have both passed, lest the price tag of the banking fix drag the rest of the administration’s agenda down with it.

Which is a good point. The problem is the "keep delaying on the bank issue" part, which is rapidly becoming a non-viable option. At some point the clock becomes the enemy in this game (and increasingly becomes the friend of the GOP). Obama's got one last real shot at this before Congress tells him no more money, and he has to make it count. I appreciate the situation. But if he doesn't act soon, he'll no longer have the luxury of choice.

Oh Yeah, And On Top Of All This

Scientists are growing increasingly worried that carbon reduction efforts will have at best a "50/50 chance" of keeping global temperatures under the point of no return.(h/t BooMan Tribune)

The chilling forecast from the supercomputer climate model of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research will provide a sobering wake-up call for governments around the world, who will begin formally negotiating three weeks today the new international treaty on tackling global warming, which is due to be signed in Copenhagen in December.

The treaty, which is due to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, is widely seen as the Last Chance Saloon for the community of nations to take effective action against the greatest threat the world has ever faced. But the Met Office's new prediction hits directly at the principle guiding all those hoping for an effective agreement, with the European Union in the lead: that of stopping the warming at two degrees Centigrade above the "pre-industrial" level (the level of average world temperature pertaining two hundred years ago).

Today, world average temperatures stand at about 0.75C above the pre-industrial, and many scientists and politicians agree that further increases have to be stopped at 2C if catastrophic impacts from the warming are to be avoided, ranging from widespread agricultural failure and worldwide sea level rise, to countless species extinctions and irreversible melting of the world's great ice sheets.

But the Hadley Centre's simulation indicates that even if global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas causing the warming, were to be slashed at a very high rate the chances of holding the rise at the C threshold are no better than even. The scenario, prepared for Britain's Climate Change Committee, the body recommending the UK's future carbon "budgets", visualises world CO2 emissions peaking in 2015, and then falling at a top rate of 3 per cent a year, to reach emissions of 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

At the moment, global emissions are thought to be rising at nearly 3 per cent a year – so turning that into a 3 per cent annual cut would be a gigantic slashing of what the earth's factories and motor vehicles are pumping into the atmosphere. There is as yet nothing remotely like that on the table for potential agreement in Copenhagen, and if a deal of this ambition were to be done, it would be regarded as a triumph.

Yet even with that, the Hadley Centre research suggests, the chances of keeping the rise down to about 2C by 2100 would be only 50-50. Furthermore, the simulations suggest that there is a worst-case scenario – about a 10 per cent chance – of the rise by the end of the current century reaching, even with these drastic cuts, a level of 2.8C above the pre-industrial, which is well into disaster territory.

There's a cheery thought, eh? As Steven D points out, banks don't matter if they're underwater.

Literally.

The Next Tsunami

I've been talking about the coming commercial real estate disaster for some time now. It's no longer "coming" but very much here now.(emphasis me)

Cleveland and Detroit lead the U.S. in commercial mortgage delinquencies, a sign the housing crisis that brought down Wall Street is spreading beyond the residential market.

Office, retail, apartment and industrial properties with mortgage payments 60 days late or more rose to 3.93 percent as of March in the Cleveland area and to 3.75 percent in the Detroit area, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The North American commercial property delinquency rate is 1.1 percent, according to Standard & Poor’s.

“There is really no part of the country being spared,” said Robert Bach, chief economist at Santa Ana, California-based broker Grubb & Ellis Co. “Cleveland and Detroit are just the first to feel the stress. They’re the canaries in the coal mine.”

The second year of the U.S. recession is reducing demand for commercial real estate after prices hit a record in 2007. The slump in housing and rising unemployment will probably take a toll on retail and office landlords, Bach said.

Loans secured by properties that were written assuming rental growth have been unable to meet targets, leading to increased defaults. The delinquency rate for North American commercial real estate loans in mortgage backed securities may triple in 2009 as loans default, Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Eric Thompson said in a Feb. 17 statement.

Circuit City left behind 18 million square feet of empty retail space when it closed its doors for good yesterday, not to mention another 34,000 jobs lost. That will be repeated in empty malls, vacant strip storefronts, unused offices and hotels across the country at the retail-driven consumer economy grinds to a halt.

Space for rent signs will be popping up like weeds as the commercial real estate crashes and stores fold. Entire malls will go under as enough shops close to make the rest of the mall unprofitable as empty space goes unused. Millions of jobs will be lost as the retail sector disintegrates, causing more stores to close, etc.

In other words, the next stage of the recession/depression is upon us now. 10% U-3 and 20% U-6 by the end of the year are very, very conservative estimates.