Which Means It Did

Headline in the NY Times tonight:

Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release

D'you think?

The vessel had appeared to be the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive materials from that reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be.

The announcement came after Japanese broadcasters showed live footage of thick plumes of steam rising above the plant.

We're making toxic radiation holes in the Earth. Are we living in The Simpsons?

Only fifty committed workers are bravely standing between us and total nuclear meltdown:

They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.

They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.

They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.

If that's not insanity, that's courage.

Meltdown Approaching

On another day it would make sense to write about the the economic injustice in Michigan, where newly elected Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has given his corporate buddies an 86% tax cut and is making it up with, I kid you not, a 31% middle class tax hike. You know, class warfare.

Or maybe I'd write about newly elected Gov. Scott Walker (R) being heckled by large crowds everywhere he goes in Wisconsin. Or about newly elected Gov. John Kasich (R) in Ohio whose approval ratings are now completely upside down. Get ready for another seesaw election in 2012.

I wanted to write about the wussy National Rifle Association, who's Chief Executive, Wayne LaPierre, declined to meet with President Obama to discuss a sensible approach to gun control. He's probably a birther.

Then there's the news that the king of all LSD makers, Owsley Stanley, just died in an auto accident in Australia. Flashback while driving, perhaps?

But all that news is dwarfed by the nightmare of multiple nuclear reactor failure in Japan, radiation leaks, plant evacuations and impending meltdown:

Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and a fire at a fourth reactor spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.

...

They initially suggested that the damage was limited and that emergency operations aimed at cooling the nuclear fuel at three stricken reactors with seawater would continue. But industry executives said that in fact the situation had spiraled out of control and that all plant workers needed to leave the plant to avoid excessive exposure to radioactive leaks.

If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.

...

“It’s way past Three Mile Island already,” said Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton. “The biggest risk now is that the core really melts down and you have a steam explosion.”

And expect that radiation to travel - around the world...to us:

We’re all exposed to a certain amount of radioactivity from natural background sources. Americans old enough to have lived during the era of atmospheric nuclear tests have some amount of radioactive residue from those tests. Today, tiny amounts of radioactivity from Chinese nuclear tests can still travel to the US on the wind.

“The question is not can it reach us. The question is, in what concentration,” says Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer in nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit that works to expose what it says are the dangers of nuclear power.

Prevailing winds in Japan blow west to east, notes Mr. Hirsch. Radioactive materials released by the current crisis would take about four days to reach Alaska and another day or so to reach the continental US.

Prayers welcome.

Meltdown. Meow!

I thought the Rand Paul story would have subsided but he appeared on ABC's Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos and had even more of a meltdown than with Rachel Maddow last night. As one of our readers has commented, when pure Libertarian ideas are brought to light and the proponents forced to explain them outside of their own self-supporting echo chamber, the carefully constructed ideological house of cards collapses -- and in this case with it, the candidate and the man:



Starting with the victimized whining about not getting a honeymoon -- because he actually had to explain his views the day after calling out President Obama like a hot young punk -- through his complaint that it is somehow un-American to blame BP (i.e. British Petroleum) for the largest environmental disaster in U.S.A. history, he comes off like a not ready for primetime l-o-s-e-r. Sure, Rand, "accidents happen." Especially when you skip all the safety procedures and testing put in place to keep them from happening.

The upshot is that someone has pulling Rand Paul back inside for re-grooving -- he's now become only the third guest in Meet the Press history to cancel on an appearance (sharing the honor with -- ah the irony -- Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar bin Khaled al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia. I expect that the GOP establishment is sending in some of their top consultants to teach Rand how to be exactly the kind of politician he and his partiers abhor.

Media attention is already starting to turn to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway who's appeared of sound mind and body on Wolf Blitzer tonight, a clear responsible alternative to the loony loose cannon who can no longer be relied upon to know where he stands on any real world issue. He even accepted Wolf's on-the-spot debate request -- Conway said he'd be happy to come back on the show to debate Paul. Not shying away.

No meowwww-owie.

Pitchforks

It looks like England and France want their "master of the universe" bankers to pay for their crimes, by forking over 50% of their bonuses to the government:

On Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France plans to announce a windfall tax “equivalent” to the 50 percent levy just unveiled in London by the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, in an interview Thursday in Paris.

“We have been advocating this for a long time, and we are delighted to see that Gordon Brown is taking that stand,” Ms. Lagarde said. “The president,” she added, “thinks he is brave to take on the City.”

Mr. Brown and Mr. Sarkozy — whose relations have been strained in recent weeks — held a 30-minute meeting at the start of the European Union summit meeting here Thursday and buried other differences to agree a joint approach over bonuses.

Both countries say their stand should increase pressure on other nations to follow suit.

Maybe that's why Goldman Sachs made this announcement:

Moving to quell the uproar over the return of big paydays on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs announced on Thursday that its top executives would forgo cash bonuses this year and that it would give shareholders a say in determining compensation.

With a resurgent Goldman set to award billions of dollars in bonuses — a trove that could rival the record payouts of the bubble years — the bank said that its 30 most-senior executives would be paid in the form of a special stock, rather than in cash. Goldman said that it would also let its shareholders vote on its executives’ pay, although the decision would be nonbinding.

Knowing these weaselly bankers, they're some way they're overcompensating themselves again, and here after we bailed their asses out.

Criticism still coming from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, calling out the President as well:

What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we've been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

And it looks like the Dems are having trouble coming up with rules to keep the collapse from happening again:

As the House took up a sweeping measure that would put new controls on businesses and financial institutions, a bloc of business-oriented Democrats threatened to withhold support because of their concerns about its impact on financial institutions.

To address those concerns, Representative Melissa Bean, Democrat of Illinois, a leader of the group called the New Democrat Coalition, offered a proposal to limit a state’s ability to impose tougher rules on national banks already judged to meet federal standards.

But liberal lawmakers, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were not eager to make concessions to banks given their role at the center of the economic crisis. The dispute stalled the beginning of a debate scheduled to run through Friday.

Bean there, done that, Melissa.

Big Stuff

None of these items may eventually play out exactly as I'd like, but all are potentially big news:

• The Senate is moving ahead with a healthcare reform bill resulting from merging with the House version. On the face of it, it appears that key Dem concerns have been addressed, and full steam ahead to the floor. Any filibuster, hello reconciliation.

• A House panel has approved curbs on "Too Big to Fail" banking firms. About time.

• China appears to be ready to cooperate with President Obama and the U.S. on curbing global-warming emissions.

• Attorney General Eric Holder goes before Congress to reiterate and explain the decision to try the 9/11 masterminds in NYC where the crime was committed, showing more spine than all the conservative fear-infected detractors put together.

And meanwhile, in the alt reality that is The Sarah Palin Network a.k.a. FNC, her book-signing crowd sizes are being inflated, once again, by using footage from other events...a.k.a. bald-faced lying.

Greedy Greedy Greedy

So AIG wants to reward themselves for deep-sixing the economy:

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.

I'd say, I've got your blessing right here.

The greed of Wall Street predates Gordon Gekko, as Matt Taibbi hilariously and pointedly nails Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, who claims that it "has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression," and lays out:

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But there's three greedies in the title of the post, and the last one for tonight is a couple, Doug and Cindy Hampton, which is increasingly looking like an Indecent Proposal variation where the reveal is looking like Doug pimping out his wife to Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) for a long period of time in hopes of the big score:

Senator John Ensign’s wealthy parents gave almost $100,000 to his former lover and her family, ostensibly out of concern for their welfare and as part of a “pattern of generosity,” his lawyer disclosed Thursday...

...“After the senator told his parents about the affair,” the statement issued by Mr. Coggins said, “his parents decided to make the gifts out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time. The gifts are consistent with a pattern of generosity by the Ensign family to the Hamptons and others...

...The disclosure of the $96,000 gift came a day after Doug Hampton said on a Las Vegas television program that Mr. Ensign had paid Mrs. Hampton more than $25,000 in severance pay.

Y'know, a good couple is a good team. Working together towards common goals. And not too possessive -- his wife was bending the marital contract for nine months (December 2007 - August 2008).

On the Ensign side, isn't he getting a little old for his folks to be bailing out his adultery?

Grifters, grifters everywhere. Wall Street and Washington.

Who could have predicted that?

What You Need

If you want to know why our not-so-new-anymore President is making the decisions he is about our economy, The New York Times Magazine has a lightly edited 50-minute interview transcript, Obama alone with David Leonhardt. It's all fast, fascinating, smart stuff that fills in the gaps of how he's working with his advisers on the inside:

I think that one of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can’t just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.

I also think that there’s very little disagreement that there are lessons to be learned from this crisis in terms of the importance of regulation in the financial markets. And I think that this notion that there is somehow resistance to that — to those lessons within my economic team — just isn’t borne out by the discussions that I have every day.

If anything, the only thing I notice, I think, that I do think is something of a carry-over from Bob Rubin — I see it in Larry, I see it in Tim — is a great appreciation of complexity.

The stuff on health care is very, very important -- Obama talking about the high cost of terminal care, up to 80% of all health cost, and the difficulty of society makings decisions on end of life care via public health policy. And the closer is, well, night and day from what we've endured for eight whole years:

I knew even before the election that this was going to be a very difficult journey and that the economy had gone through a sufficient shock and that it wasn’t going to recover right away.

In some ways it’s liberating, though, in the sense that whether I’m a one-termer or a two-termer, the problems are big enough and fundamental enough that I can’t sort of game it out. It’s not one of these things where I can say, Oh, you know what, if I time it just right, then the market is going to be going up and unemployment will be going down right before re-election. These are much bigger, much more systemic problems. And so in some ways you just kind of set aside the politics.

What I’m very confident about is that given the difficult options before us, we are making good, thoughtful decisions. I have enormous confidence that we are weighing all our options and we are making the best choices. That doesn’t mean that every choice is going to be right, is going to work exactly the way we want it to. But I wake up in the morning and go to bed at night feeling that the direction we are trying to move the economy toward is the right one and that the decisions we make are sound.

Here's this week's address, President Flu Advisor.



Obama is the new normal.

Bank Shot

So now that some banks have stabilized and maybe, according to Time magazine, the Banking Crisis of 2008 is over, all that's left is the clean-up:

The banking crisis may be over, but what is left is a reclamation job that will probably take years to complete, will still have a taxpayer price tag of over $1 trillion, and will leave America's largest financial firms as institutions of modest power and a regulated scope which will prevent them from looking anything like what they did two years ago.

There's some bumps ahead on that road to clean-up, per The New York Times:

As the Obama administration completes its examinations of the nation’s largest banks, industry executives are bracing for fights with the government over repayment of bailout money and forced sales of bad mortgages...

...Some of the healthier banks want to pay back their bailout loans to avoid executive pay and other restrictions that come with the money. But the banks are balking at the hefty premium they agreed to pay when they took the money.

It's like teenage boys -- begging for dough when they need it for a car or a prom, but acting all haughtily independent once there's gas in the tank.

While I've had my questions -- not exactly disagreements -- with Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman as he's heavily criticized Obama Administration economic policy from the Left, I'm in deep agreement with his op-ed today calling for regulations returning to the days when banking was considered as square as can be:

Before 1930, banking was an exciting industry featuring a number of larger-than-life figures, who built giant financial empires (some of which later turned out to have been based on fraud). This highflying finance sector presided over a rapid increase in debt: Household debt as a percentage of G.D.P. almost doubled between World War I and 1929.

During this first era of high finance, bankers were, on average, paid much more than their counterparts in other industries. But finance lost its glamour when the banking system collapsed during the Great Depression.

The banking industry that emerged from that collapse was tightly regulated, far less colorful than it had been before the Depression, and far less lucrative for those who ran it. Banking became boring, partly because bankers were so conservative about lending: Household debt, which had fallen sharply as a percentage of G.D.P. during the Depression and World War II, stayed far below pre-1930s levels.

Strange to say, this era of boring banking was also an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans.

Krugman goes on to talk about how the high-flying, deregulated bankers who went on to massive personal wealth thought themselves especially deserving, in nauseating hubris made ridiculous by the crash of the system. These are the guys Matt Taibbi was talking about, bald fat men who looked in the mirror as they overleveraged America and saw superheroes staring back at themselves.

Well, bankers are supposed to be boring.

How else can we be expected to trust them with our money?

Circuses of Bread

Concerning the AIG bonus tax, I agree with this Andrew Sullivan reader:

It's stupid, and probably unconstitutional, sure. But it's great because it gets us past what is, in the big picture, a trivial issue. If the bill becomes law, Americans can feel like the government did something to get their money back and we can move on to dealing with real problems. A lawsuit challenging the bill will follow, and in a year or two, it will get struck down, and no one will care, because we'll either be on our way to a recovery, or so deep in shit that we'll have much bigger problems on our mind.

I'm glad people have gotten angry, and it's good for the powers that run this country -- both Wall Street and Washington -- to remember that class war starts with them.

But the thing to remember is that fascism starts at home and it's based solely on populist rage, always borne of fear. Those who harness that rage in America can get pretty far -- Huey Long, Joe McCarthy.

Currently Governor Sarah Palin and whoever that guy is who's playing Joe the Plumber appear to be top contenders, vying for it. She's having her political action committee, Sara PAC, determine policy in Alaska, turning down Obama's stimulus (like education) money so she can run against him and for the GOP nomination on it. Endlessly. And as for Joe, with his soft-spoken dogwhistle to the rage, I contend he could be our next face in the crowd:



The fact is that there is ample reason to be angry with the capitalist class of money manipulators who take such a high percentage of our nation's wealth but diminishing responsibility there at the top of the food chain. But these banks are going to take a lot of dollars -- much or most of which will be in reserve so they can legally open their doors every day -- and it'll take at least a year to winnow through all the bad instruments. And maybe eight years until it's all cleaned up -- if Obama gets to enact enough controls.

John McCain is right: lay off of Geithner. Especially on the left. He's a regulatory guy who's finally working for an honest President, and he's working on the biggest economic meltdown since 1929 without a full staff yet. Schwarzenegger is right:

Schwarzenegger, along with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent, met with President Barack Obama today in a closed meeting to discuss how to shore up federal spending on transit systems and renewable energy projects.

After the meeting, Schwarzenegger said the trio let the president know that "we are 100 percent behind him on this, to go out and to sell this to the American people.

" I think there is a tremendous demand out there for this,'' he said. "Not only does it help us make our economy function better, but also it helps us in creating jobs."

Every time you think of a bank getting bailed out, think about all the pension funds and municipalities that can't afford for our banking system to collapse. That's the gun those behind the derivative business grafted onto AIG's good name are holding to our nation's head.

It's going to be a rough ride, but I can't imagine anyone better equipped than our current President to navigate us through it.

Can you?

60 / 6

At the end of President Barack Obama's appearance on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno thanked him for "one of the best nights of my life." It's extraordinary -- a sitting President at time of shocking economic crisis gets on a late night talk show and explains exactly what happened with AIG that got us here, enacting common sense regulation, and what kind of technological change is already happening that America is getting behind with his recently enacted stimulus package. All while seeming calm like a movie star with Jay:

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The fact that he can convincingly state that things will get better -- provided we get back to a less selfish society -- speaks volumes over what we've endured these past eight years.

Or eight years as of sixty days ago because we've just hit two months officially on the job. Change is still happening, and not only on late nite. Obama sent out a viral video message to the Iranian people, and their leadership, an olive branch at a time of their national holiday:



Eid-eh Shoma Mabarak, baby.

Nice change from that one.

Happy 6th Anniversary.

P.I.G.

So AIG, the massive insurance company our nation has just bailed out, is using our tax money to pay bonuses to the least deserving -- the pigs that got us into this mess:

"This is a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed," Mr. Obama said Monday, his voice rising in anger. "Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay."

At issue are retention bonuses for employees of AIG's financial-products division, whose credit default swaps brought AIG to the brink of collapse. The government controls AIG through an 80% equity stake and as a major lender and doesn't have legal authority to freeze payments on its own. The U.S. has committed $173.3 billion to AIG, including $70 billion from Treasury's rescue fund.

Obama's pissed, per the above quote from this appearance today:



What's to be done? For one, New York State Attorney General (and frontrunner for next NYS Governor) Andrew Cuomo is getting strapped:

The attorney general is seeking the list of employees who will receive these bonuses, as well as their job information and performances. Mr. Cuomo said that the company had failed to heed a previous request for this list.

Mr. Cuomo is also demanding the contracts guaranteeing these bonuses and the names of individuals who developed and negotiated the agreements.

A spokeswoman for A.I.G. told DealBook in an e-mailed statement: “We are in ongoing contact with the Attorney General and will respond appropriately to the subpoena.”

One wonders what the government can do -- especially for the money that's already in the hands of the scumbags who built the derivatives business and live in a different America than 99% of us. If we own the company, can we abrogate our own contracts? Or, per these very smart guys:

Firstly, the US trustees in charge of the firm must immediately instruct the corporate treasurer to make no payments of any bonuses. They also need to order him to issue stop payment orders on any checks that fly out the door at the last minute, as with Merrill Lynch. Then the trustees need to split off the derivatives unit from the rest of the firm and separately incorporate it. This step leaves AIG's other businesses free to operate as usual. If the recipients of the bonuses refuse to waive them, then the derivatives unit should at once be thrown into bankruptcy, terminating all obligations to pay them. Right now, press reports suggest that the firm's top management waited until the last minute to inform the government of what was happening. AIG CEO Edward Liddy, accordingly, should be asked to resign at once, for the sake of public confidence and to send a clear signal that gaming the system is unacceptable. It is also past time for an investigation of the validity of AIG's past accounting and securities disclosures and its executive compensation program by the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the FBI.

Here's my theory: if you investigate deeply enough into anyone at this level of securities trading and manipulation, there is sure to be something prosecutable that comes up.

Squeeze these piggies. Until they squeal.

Knockovers

You want to just say fuck 'em all, but there is the credit issue, the oil that lubricates the whole system all the way down to the guy with the local bank loan. And maybe that's what it has to get back to. Because the hell with every one of those obscenely wealthy corporate bankers and everyone else feeding off their feudal system if they're doing shit like this:

The 20 largest banks that received government rescue funds slightly reduced their lending to consumers and businesses in the last three months of 2008, the government said Tuesday.

The Treasury Department said the banks reduced their mortgage and business loans by a median of 1 percent each, while credit card lending rose by a median of 2 percent. The median is the point halfway between the banks that lent the most and those that lent the least.

And the White House, the Obama Administration, wants to water down the bank executive bonus restrictions in the the stimulus package?

Read my lips, you guys who got us into this: Step Off.

Maybe it's all grand kabuki, make the bankers think this before you nationalize the whole thing, with the guy who presided blithely over this meltdown, Alan Greenspan as your cover. Maybe Geitner's only just figured out his strategy (not necessarily a bad thing to deliberate for your first week in the job) and all will go well. But the massive greed of the money class is lying low there, like flames ready to slip around wall or through a crevice, just give it even a whiff of oxygen.

That said, the stimulus transparency website, Recovery.gov, features the boss putting his face on it, YouTube style, the first cyberbuck stops here Presidential moment ever in history, a model for all time. What's so striking is the overview graph where I first saw that the #1 largest element of the stimulus package is tax relief -- $228 billion, as seen in proportion to the other categories.

(Second is State and Local Fiscal Relief -- similar to tax relief, not a pure spending measure -- at a distant $144 billion, Third is $111 billion for Infrastructure and Science, again more of our money coming back to us.)

The auto makers are next, America's post-industrial horror show, and that's going to hurt no matter what happens, but look at where we're at compared to just a month ago. Our President is strong, he is implementing the agenda the American people voted for, on the side of transparency for the people, the year is still young.

And here, after three weeks on the job, is our new, young President signing the largest non-military spending bill in our nation's history:

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"It is great to be back in Denver. I was here last summer to -- we had a good time -- to accept the nomination of my party and to make a promise to people of all parties that I would do all that I could to give every American the chance to make of their lives what they will. To see their children climb higher than they do. And I'm back today to say that we've have begun the difficult work of keeping that promise. We have begun the essential work of keeping the American Dream alive in our time and that's what we're doing here today."

Obama's gaining strength, every day. It's like his Barack powers are zapped up by Presidential booster beams. He's not losing strength at all -- that the Republicans.

He's still growing.

WTF, CA?

California, the state that I immigrated to a long time ago, which at one time boasted (and may still) an economy larger than that of France, is in a deep financial hole. We recalled one Governor (Gray Davis) for not balancing the budget, and the current one is about to lay off 20,000 state employees due to a legislative impasse:

The roots of California’s inability to address its budget woes are statutory and political. The state, unlike most others, requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Legislature to pass budgets and tax increases. And its process for creating voter initiatives hamstrings the budget process by directing money for some programs while depriving others of cash...

...Furthermore, Republican leaders in the Senate and the Assembly who have agreed to get on board with a plan have been unable to persuade a few key lawmakers to join them. The package needs at least three Republican votes in each house, to join with the 51 Democrats in the Assembly and the 24 Democrats in the Senate.

For months Republicans have vowed not to raise taxes, which in California means no increase in either the sales, gas or personal income tax.

Is it any wonder that the only Republicans wholeheartedly supporting President Obama's new stimulus plans are, in fact, the Republican Governors?

Because they're living in the real world, and right now the real world is potentially very, very grim.

Stimulus

I'm not an expert on economics, so I can't say what might be good or bad about the stimulus package for sure. But I do believe in Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, in large part because he was right these past eight years while every single Republican was wrong:

I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts...

...My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years.

The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.

Now, the next step is for the bill to actually pass the Senate, then it goes into conference with the House where Speaker Pelosi is talking a hard line about getting it back where it was. There is some thinking that enough Republicans in Congress may end up voting for the bill -- i.e., not filibuster -- because they can claim they tried to have it their way already and failed, but I wouldn't put it past them to stonewall, particularly Old Man McCain, the final loser from last year's election marathon. And while he may think he's repositioning himself as the true-blue Republican, I believe it will only cement his reputation as a man who stayed at the party way too long.

The President is going into a renewed form of campaign mode this upcoming week, and I wonder if that news has some GOPers rethinking their position, a little quake in their loafers. Those of us who supported Obama over the long haul have gotten used to his kindly mode followed by slaps from the opposition, followed by Obama going tough and, having followed this strategic procedure, winning.

Here's this week's address, setting the stage:



After the GOP noise storm of a week ago, you'd have thought they'd won. But with Obama moving forcefully now against a rapidly growing backdrop of 7.6% unemployment, which in reality is closer to 14%, crazy, crazy numbers, one has to ask, even should the Republicans win, wouldn't that be tantamount to Party suicide?

Bring. It. On.

Hammer

Oh, did you think Obama would stop being the world's most compelling public speaker just because he got sworn in? At the House Democratic Retreat in Williamsburg, VA Thursday night he reminded us why we elected him:

Look, I value the constructive criticism and healthy debate that is a foundation of American democracy. I don't think any of us have cornered the market on wisdom, or that good ideas are the province of any party. The American people know that our challenges are great. They're not expecting Democratic solutions or Republican solutions - they want American solutions. And I have said that to those who have criticized the plan.

But what I have also said is - don't come to table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped create this crisis.

Or imagine that last President leveling with us like this:

This isn't some abstract debate. Last week, we learned that many of America's largest corporations are planning to layoff tens off tens of thousands of workers. Today, we learned that last week, the number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. And tomorrow, we're expecting another dismal jobs report on top of the 2.6 million jobs we lost last year.

For you, those aren't statistics. They are constituents you know and families that you care about. Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude deserves the scrutiny that it's received, and you will get another chance to vote for this bill in the days to come. But I urge all of us to not make the perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary. The scale and scope of this plan is right.

Is he succeeding in turning the tide of cable anti-Recovery Act noise? Showdown on Friday.

In It

Gobama, back in the fray:

This plan is more than a prescription for short-term spending -- it's a strategy for America's long-term growth and opportunity in areas such as renewable energy, health care and education. And it's a strategy that will be implemented with unprecedented transparency and accountability, so Americans know where their tax dollars are going and how they are being spent.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.

I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.

Back in it to win it.

Obobble

I pretty much feel about Tom Daschle exactly as DeRosaWorld put it here. So another distraction gone. On the Republican side, it's distraction grande: meet Joe the Not-Really-Plumber, paid political strategist.

Obama does something extraordinary: he admits a mistake. He hires a Republican as Commerce Secretary. His bill gets another two hundred billion in the Senate.

Obama's built a long reputation as a great finisher. Does he have his endgame in place for the first major legislative initiative of his Presidency?

Hoovers

A Hoover is a British vacuum cleaner. And the last name of the last President, before Bush, who's economic philosophy and policies, and those of his Party, collapsed under him, sending the nation into spiraling unemployment, last called The Great Depression. Last time, Hoover stayed President for three worsening years. This time Bush left after three cheap-ass months. It's Harken II as much as Hoover.

Thankfully, we have a productive, strategic, fresh new President coming in with a stimulus plan that will cost less than the Iraq War and be about creating new jobs, particularly in the renewable energy sector, rather than killing a lot of people who never attacked us.

And the Party of Hoover = No Change:

The latest from RNC Chair Michael Steele: "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job."

And there's the confusion: of course a stimulus bill is a spending bill. It is when it's money spent on the military, and it is when it is spent creating public works programs. More Josh Marshall:

"Not a Stimulus bill. It's just a spending bill." That was Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) just a few moments ago on Fox...

...Can someone point out to me any case where an interviewer presses DeMint on the point that stimulus bills are by definition spending bills. Please someone send me this link or a time when it happens on TV. You're trying to counter the drop off in the demand that is causing the recession.

And, as if the last eight years never happened, they're lying again.

You may recall how, the week before last, Republicans were up in arms over a CBO report showing that under 40 percent of the estimated $350 billion in stimulus spending projects would hit the economy in the first two years...Which just goes to show: Don't mess with a White House budget director who's a former head of the CBO. This afternoon, the CBO released its official scoring of the overall stimulus package. And, wouldn't you know, the agency says slightly north of 78 percent of it will pay out over the first two fiscal years.

Where does this leave us? Obama's taking heat for not getting out ahead of this bill fast enough -- he's been working on substance, not media. But now that the other team has shown their cards, he's making his play:

Barack Obama is slated to sit down with the five major television news networks tomorrow, a media play that is almost certain to be part of a broader effort to sell his stimulus package to the American public.

The president will conduct interviews in the Oval Office with ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX News on Tuesday afternoon, according to the official White House schedule. The sitdowns come at a delicate time for the president, with concern mounting in Democratic circles that much of the debate over the stimulus has been dominated by the GOP.

But I still wonder, if Obama resists caving, if he can return to the fray and once again seize the momentum, his impeccable sense of timing, and keep his Party in line, then will the Republicans really make good on threats of a Senate filibuster? Against news like this:

Macy's Inc. announced Monday that it will eliminate 7,000 jobs nationwide, including 1,400 at its West Coast headquarters in San Francisco — which amounts to almost 4 percent of its total work force.

In addition, Macy's plans to cut capital spending, reduce its contributions to its employees' retirement funds and slash its dividend to preserve cash amid a severe pullback in consumer spending.

It's all about the framing from here on out. Is this a spending bill or a jobs bill? I mean...everyone knows we need jobs.

Like, yesterday.

Bully Pulpit

At 3:00 in, the President gives it to the Wall Street bonus gang:



Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) goes all the way to offering a bill capping their salaries. If that doesn't scare the high capitalist class, I'm not sure what will. Yes, regulating prices, wages and productivity is what the GOP would call Socialism. But at an average of $2,600,000 in executive pay for the execs at banks bailed out by taxpayers -- $18 billion worth -- they deserve nothing less. In fact, I'd like to see if any of it is actionable. Like, prison actionable.

As for the Republicans trying to win by standing in the way of Obama's stimulus package or maybe twisting it into another tax giveaway to the wealthy, Frank Rich has the goods:

If anything, the Republican Congressional leadership seems to be emulating John McCain’s September stunt of “suspending” his campaign to “fix” the Wall Street meltdown. For all his bluster, McCain in the end had no fixes to offer and sat like a pet rock at the White House meeting on the crisis before capitulating to the bailout. His imitators likewise posture in public about their determination to take action, then do nothing while more and more Americans cry for help.

The problem is not that House Republicans gave the stimulus bill zero votes last week. That’s transitory political symbolism, and it had no effect on the outcome. Some of the naysayers will vote for the revised final bill anyway (and claim, Kerry-style, that they were against it before they were for it). The more disturbing problem is that the party has zero leaders and zero ideas. It is as AWOL in this disaster as the Bush administration was during Katrina.

While the GOP likes to complain about "class warfare" the fact is that they have brought it on and it is plain for every American to see. The plutocratic class in this country has derivative-ized the financial assets of the masses to the point that the Middle Class are losing their homes, their jobs, their life savings all in one fell swoop -- while those at the top reward themselves with taxpayer money, i.e. more dollar from the very classes they have shat upon. They're lucky there aren't guillotines on Wall Street, but then again this ain't over yet.

The face of the 2009 Republican Party isn't Michael Steele, it's Rush Limbaugh. If an elected Republican criticizes him he is forced to turn around and grovel for forgiveness. Rush is the voice of the GOP in openly articulating the desire for Obama to fail -- and, hence, for this economic meltdown to metastasize all the way into a second, even more devastating Great Depression. But they'll still have their radio contract money, their bonuses, their Oxycontin.

But the ads using Rush are coming now, being used against the GOP by progressive interest groups:

That face, I've seen it somewhere before...on HBO Sunday nights for almost a decade.

And maybe, like Tony himself, he won't see what's coming.

Winner

Andrew Sullivan nails the difference, evident in just one week on the job, between new President Obama and ex-President Bushie:

At times, Bush's indifference to the system around him bordered on a kind of political autism. And so one of the oddest aspects of Bush's presidency was his tendency to declare things as if merely saying them as president could make them so...

...Now look at Obama. What the critics misread in his Inaugural was its classical structure. He was not running any more. He was presiding. His job was not to rally vast crowds, but to set the scene for the broader constitutional tableau to come to life. Hence the obvious shock of some Republican Congressman at debating with a president who seemed interested in actual conversation, as opposed to pure politics...

...If Bush was about the presidency as power, Obama is about the presidency as authority.

What has that self-restraint wrought so far? Obama's stimulus bill passed the House today -- with every single Republican Representative voting against it. The Asian markets have, in immediate response, rallied. Obama has just hosted a cocktail party of GOP and Dem Senate and House members. Who's going to turn down that invite? He walks into the Capitol to negotiate, unimaginable for George W. Bush, and rather than diminishing his stature, he seizes the spotlight -- cool and at the helm.

What does the GOP have to show for its collective strategic genius? Only 5 states out of 50 are solid or lean Republican now. And they can't even agree on a new leader.

Of course they voted against the stimulus. It was essentially their abstention, no longer a critical element of the discourse -- to a Representative.

How it will go in the Senate, I don't know. McCain says he'll vote against, which is essentially the endorsement of that position by the definitive loser of the entire political scene. I'm not sure if it will happen in the Senate this time around, but my prediction is that as Obama's program goes through, he keeps the Dems in Congress fairly in line, markets start to rally on confidence of investment and leadership, and some of these GOoPers start to break free. Especially in states where Obama's approval rating is way above where he polled on Election Day, states he might have lost back then but could be on track to win for the Party in 2010 or himself again in 2012.

And when that happens, if it happens enough, the Republican Party will hit maximum chaos. If they're smart, they'll redefine themselves in relation to The Presider's vision rather than in opposition to it.

Because Obama is, as a community organizer, part teacher. But the Republicans still haven't learned their lesson.

They will.