I'll Be Back
Between traveling and illness, I obviously haven't been blogging much. For the two or three regular readers: rest assured, I'll be back.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Right To Life
And Republicans want to leave health care to the private sector:
The Los Angeles Times leads locally with word that the state's largest for-profit health insurer, Blue Cross of California, is sending copies of health insurance applications to doctors and asking them to tell the company if they come across any pre-existing medical information that it can use to cancel a patient's coverage. Physicians say they've never seen anything like it before, while the company insists it's standard practice and emphasizes that it's a voluntary program.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Kingmaker
You just never know who will turn out to be decisive. Reprinted here in full, a salient post from Rising Hegemon:
It is not just going 4 for 4 plus the Virgin Islands, it's getting the "anti-Bush" endorsement.
If everything King Merde touches turns to shit, than the anti-touch has to be good news:
Talking to folks who know Bush well say he just doesn't believe Obama's earned it; that he's worthy. He has a lot more respect for Clinton and apparently would be more comfortable seeing her or McCain as his heir than Obama.
It's like Obama won a goddamned lottery. If I were them I'd be cranking out a commercial about this right frigging now.
Perfect Metaphor
If the Government is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributor cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk. And they do this so that they don't have to chip in on gas.
Disgusting News Of The Day
It's absolutely no surprise that now Gates is calling for a "slowdown" of the reduction in troops promised after the "surge".
I say no surprise because anyone who has watched this administration knows that it was inevitable. But in addition, it's not difficult to see that when you expand your occupation footprint, it's gets increasingly more difficult to back away. That will be the problem that the next President has to overcome .... a ego momentum of enormous proportions.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
McCained
Kevin Drum summarizes it well so I don't have to discussing the latest GOP caucus results:
Bottom line: this has been a disastrous night for McCain. Sure, he'll win the nomination eventually, but he looks like a goner in the general election. He's either going to be forced to spend so much time pandering to pissed-off conservatives that he loses the independent vote, or else he's going to beg for independents and wake up on November 5th to find out that half his base decided to stay home rather than vote for him. He's screwed either way. This is a mighty narrow tightrope he's walking, and it looks like he's going to be fighting gale-force crosswinds the whole way.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Kansas Loves Them Some Huckabee
Huckabee unexpectedly creamed John McCain in the Kansas caucuses. It won't make any difference to the ultimate outcome, but it does make a statement about the conditions in the Republican Party:
John McCain is the presumptive nominee, Huckabee is barely campaigning, and Kansas still went for the underdog? By a nearly 3-to-1 margin?There's going to be a whole lot of hand sitting come November by conservatives, particularly the religious fanatics.
McCain still has some work to do.
Jobs
I've been beating the table all year about the crappy jobs creation in the Bush administration. You certainly didn't hear anything about it in the media ... in fact quite the opposite. But here's the truth (which none of the big media outlets is reporting). Again, John Mauldin:
For the first time since August of 2003 we had a drop in the employment number. Employment fell 17,000 in January. The BLS also released its benchmark revision with the January report. The year ended with 376,000 fewer jobs than were reported a month ago, and 1.14 million net jobs were created December to December. Downward revisions were spread throughout the year. This translates into 95,000 new jobs per month, down from 175,000 in 2006. Remember, it takes 150,000 jobs per month (or so) simply to maintain the employment rate, due to growth in the population.So net, 2007 saw a loss of jobs in the U.S. Put together with the quality of jobs created which were mostly service sector jobs (Starbucks anyone?), the middle class took huge hit last year.
With the above info, this is no surprise:
And speaking of consumer debt, something happened in December that is quite unusual. This week the Federal Reserve announced that total credit card debt rose by just 2.7% annually in December, after rising 13.7% in November and 11% in October. In fact, new credit card debt was on a tear right up until December, which as I have previously written is the month I think we will look back on and see that a recession began. Notice that credit card debt rose by less than inflation.
Monolines
The biggest financial story you've not heard of is going on still. Without getting too far into the weeds on the story, the bottom line is that bond insurers are in big trouble, which means big trouble for all of us. John Mauldin:
In talking with friends in the credit markets, in order to return to more normal credit markets, the thing that has to happen first is that the monoline insurance problem MUST be resolved. I agree with Nouriel that $15 billion being written about in the papers will not be enough. I have no idea what the correct number is, but it needs to happen soon, before the rating agencies are forced to downgrade the monolines.There's a lot of information on this if you want details. I put it up for two reasons. First, there's a very real and genuine possibility that the insurers problem could cascade the U.S. economy into a full fledged depression. Of course no one wants that to happen and I agree with Mauldin that the government is going to have to step in to solve the problem. Period. Which brings me to my second point. Wall Street fat cats made this problem, and now they're going to get bailed out by the government. That's called welfare, plain and simple.
While Nouriel thinks the use of public funds is unlikely, I am not so sure. The failure of the monoline companies could trigger a very serious crisis, beyond what we have already seen. Of all the things on my worry list, this is at the top. It could trigger a counter-party credit risk in the credit default swap markets that might simply cascade to something hard to imagine. I don't want to sound too alarmist - but we should be alarmed. This needs to be settled, and soon, so we can go on to the next set of problems. I think if the monoline problem can be resolved, we would be a major step toward the solution of the crisis.
If you're some poor schmuck who loses a job due to an economic mess created by these bozo's, tough shit on getting any extra benefits to see you through. But if you're a Wall Street banker, all you have to do is go very far out on a limb (making a gazillion dollars along the way), and then when the limb snaps uncle sam will catch you in a sweet soft hug.
Friday, February 8, 2008
2012
Digby catches Tom DeLay mouthing the meme after the 2008 election:
Do you get the feeling that the conservatives are gaming this thing? I knew that you would.Yep.
They know they are going to lose. They will blame the loss on the fact that McCain wasn't a real conservative (just like Bush.) They know when to fall back and regroup. They're already playing for the next election.
Everybody sing: Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
I Rest My Case
A new Time magazine poll compares potential general election match ups:According to the poll director, the difference is that "independents tilt toward McCain when he is matched up against Clinton But they tilt toward Obama when he is matched up against the Illinois Senator."
- Obama 48%, McCain 41%
- Clinton 46%, McCain 46%
Interestingly, Democratic voters favor Clinton over Obama for the Democratic nomination by a margin of 48% to 42%.
Back To The Good Old Days
Read it and weep:
The Washington Post's Paul Kane: "We've done a bad job of explaining this, but it is now basically mathematically impossible for either Clinton or Obama to win the nomination through the regular voting process (meaning the super-delegates decide this one, baby!).
"Here's the math. There are 3,253 pledged delegates, those doled out based on actual voting in primaries and caucuses. And you need 2,025 to win the nomination. To date, about 55% of those 3,253 delegates have been pledged in the voting process -- with Clinton and Obamb roughly splitting them at about 900 delegates a piece. That means there are now only about 1,400 delegates left up for grabs in the remaining states and territories voting.
"So, do the math. If they both have about 900 pledged delegates so far, they need to win more than 1,100 of the remaining 1,400 delegates to win the nomination through actual voting.
"Ain't gonna happen, barring a stunning scandal or some new crazy revelation. So, they'll keep fighting this thing out, each accumulating their chunk of delegates, one of them holding a slight edge and bothing finishing the voting process with 1,600 or so delegates. And then the super delegates decide this thing. That's the math."
Oily CW
Oil prices have been modestly falling over the last month or so. The conventional wisdom is that if the U.S. goes into recession, petroleum usage will decline causing less demand.
I don't agree.
First off, the U.S. is a service economy driven by consumer spending, not manufacturing. The energy use profiles of those two economies are very different. For example, it costs just as much to light up a Macy's whether it's busy or not, while if you need to manufacture fewer cars, you close plants.
But there's another more important reason that I think a U.S. recession won't matter much:
My view is that people underestimate the seriousness of the energy situation. We are only finding oil at a rate equivalent to replacing the oil production that erodes every year as a result of the existing wells getting tired. In addition to that, China and India are consuming less than two barrels of oil per person per year while we consume 26 barrels, Western Europe consumes 13 to 15 barrels, and Japan, Korea the same amount.
As China and India increase their consumption, even if the two and a half billion people there only increase their consumption by a quarter of a barrel of oil per year, there’s no way the world can meet that demand. So I think the price of oil is going a lot higher.
Get It On
Speaking of a filibuster proof Senate, if Congress doesn't get off it's duff and approve a stimulus package, I think it will be very very bad for the Democrats.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat
We're doing a swell job of training Iraqi insurgents:
USA Today leads with a dispatch from Mosul, where U.S. troops will probably have more trouble rooting out al-Qaida in Iraq because the militants have apparently learned from their mistakes and are cultivating better relationships with regular citizens. In Mosul, al-Qaida militants warn civilians before bomb attacks and are not enforcing strict Islamic laws, which is a marked contrast with how they acted in other parts of the country. This makes it less likely that the residents of Iraq's third-largest city would want to join the U.S. military to fight the insurgents.Anyone who thinks the war will be over before American leave is delusional.
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