The Bush advisers decided in December that bankruptcy without preparation would be a disaster. They decided what all administrations decide — that the best time for a bankruptcy filing is a few months from now, and it always will be. In the meantime, restructuring would continue, federally subsidized.
Today, G.M. and Chrysler have once again come up with restructuring plans. By an amazing coincidence, the plans are again insufficient. In an extremely precedented move, the Obama administration has decided that the best time for possible bankruptcy is — a few months from now. The restructuring will continue.
But, no surprise either, Brooks' take on the matter is incomplete. Read Tom Maguire to find out why GM has been so busy restructuring; Brooks completely whiffs on that part.
And the point? Obama is trying to extract concessions from General Motors bondholders, all of whom know that the free riders will pick up a windfall after Obama shocks everyone by deciding not to take GM into bankruptcy. The free riders could be controlled in bankruptcy, of course, but that won't be happening. However, a lot of huffing and puffing has to take place over the next few months to scare some bond holders into submission somehow. Clearly, the ordinary Washington Kabuki won't be enough - look for Super Kabuki!
Let me say here too that I have been sorely tested by Brooks this year. I know most of my readers probably consider me a squishy moderate, but compared to David I'm the Rock of Gibraltar.
Some people, as I understand it, just don’t think inequality is a problem. But for the egalitarians among us, I’ve never really understood the view that obscene executive compensation is an issue that absolutely positively certainly must only be addressed through the indirect Rube Goldberg-esque method of changing corporate governance rules. What if we had a 95 percent marginal tax rate on income over $10 million?
As I recall, Matty mentioned recently that he was making comfortably more than $60 grand (and he gripes about his workload). I suggest that we put the 95% tax bracket on all income over that $60,000 marker; then Matt might suddenly "get it". And listen to this hilarious suggestion about what will happen:
But my strong suspicion is that at the end of the day most of the super-rich would ultimately find it a relief to get off the treadmill of status-competition and the not-quite-so-rich would be thrilled to see their betters cut down to size.
I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the Right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the “Bush Is Hitler” crowd on the Left.
Speaking of this crowd, have you seen any “I am so sorry” postings from that quarter as Obama continues and even escalates the former president's war policy in Afghanistan and attempts to consolidate his military occupation of Iraq?
And:
Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn has been swept up in the tide that thinks Obama is a “transformative” radical. But look again at his approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, as noted, he is carrying out the Bush policies – the same that he once joined his fellow Democrats in condemning. And that should be reassuring to anyone concerned about where he is heading as commander-in-chief.
Indeed, one of my major concerns about Obama coming in was that he was going to blow the success in Iraq. He has reassured me tremendously on that score. However, he has also alarmed greatly on the "tax and spend" front. Horowitz does note that Obama has by now fully alienated conservative and moderate Republicans, some of whom clearly crossed over and voted for him:
Through a combination of ineptitude and zeal, Obama has in two short months locked down the conservative and Republican base. On fetal stem-cell research, on borders (e-verification), on spending, on unions, on shutting down talk radio, Obama has flexed the leftist muscle so nakedly and unmistakably that there isn’t a conservative left who will vote Democratic in the next election (and there were many who did so in the last).
Much of Mr. Obama's vaunted online strategy involved utilizing "Internet trolls" to invade enemy lines under false names and trying to derail discussion. In the real world, that's called "vandalism." But in a political movement that embraces "graffiti" as avant-garde art , that's business as usual. It relishes the ability to destroy other people's property in pursuit of electoral victory.
Hugh Hewitt's popular site shut off its comments section because of the success of these obnoxious invaders. Breitbart.com polices nonpartisan newswire stories for such obviously coordinated attacks. Other right-leaning sites such as Instapundit and National Review Online refuse to allow comments, knowing better than to flirt with the online activist left.
During the Clinton impeachment scandal, a new group out of California called MoveOn.org employed a plan to get its members to dial into right-leaning talk radio shows with scripted talking points falsely claiming that they were Republicans. They said they would never vote for the GOP again if the case against Bill Clinton was pursued.
Commenters who pretend to be conservative but spend their time bashing conservative bloggers? What will Soros and his minions think of next?
But that doesn't make Joe a hypocrite, since he's never been a guy to pursue anti-drug legislation or mandatory minimums.
A "friend" of Vice President Joseph Biden's daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.
The anonymous male acquaintance of Ashley took the video, said Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer representing the seller.
Ooops:
Biden has been an outspoken crusader against drugs, coining the term "drug czar" in 1982 while campaigning for a more forceful "war on drugs."
I'm sorry, but I have a hard time believing this kid has ascended to the top of the liberal blogosphere with tripe like this. He presents two different designs for a suburban area:
Obviously the second development pattern is more desirable (as Matt illustrates) from a gas consumption or bicycling standpoint. But who the heck would want to live there? You'd have to deal with lots of drive-through traffic. Second, it looks like a lot more streets in that tiny area which means more pavement to absorb the head during the day and release it at night; the well-known "heat island" effect.
Some of Matt's commenters point out some of the other problems. Lots of intersections in the second grid; that means lots of four-way stop signs, so there's more stopping and starting. All the greenery is gone in favor of small strips of land; there is no provision for wildlife.
Although Matthews dismisses Bachmann as a lunatic for her concern, there has been talk of a North American currency, the Amero.
So, okay, she's not a lunatic. She believes in the Amero.
American Power says she's saving America. Along with Glenn Beck. I can't tell you how comforting it is to know that those two geniuses are in charge of the resistance. Truly we are safe from the predations of the Obamessiah.
I asked McCain what might happen if Obama and Orszag get their way. First, the U.S. could have to print a lot of new money, "running the huge risk of inflation and returning to the situation of the 1970s, only far worse," McCain said. The second option is to raise taxes.
Just this week, former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin conceded that Obama's budget could present a "scary scenario" that would "raise deficits to unsustainable levels well after the economy recovers." The solution, she wrote, is higher taxes, and not just for the richest of the rich.
Of course, that's what McCain said during the campaign. And it's what the much-maligned Joe the Plumber said, too. Remember when he took so much flak for objecting to Obama's plan to raise taxes only on those Americans making more than $250,000 a year? Joe didn't make anything near that, the critics said, so why was he worrying?
But I'm sure Bob will tell me that McCain was wrong and Obama was right. He certainly seems to be quite the Obama fan.
Update: Quoth the Bob: "Nope McCain is wrong about nearly everything but when it comes to talking of printing money and raising taxes he takes a backseat to no one."
Some of the detainees, deemed non-threatening, may be released into the United States as free men, Blair confirmed.
That would happen when they can't be returned to their home countries, because the governments either won't take them or the U.S. fears they will be abused or tortured. That is the case with 17 Uighurs (WEE'-gurz), Chinese Muslim separatists who were cleared for release from the jail long ago. The U.S. can't find a country willing to take them, and it will not turn them over to China.
Blair said the former prisoners would have [to] get some sort of assistance to start their new lives in the United States.
“We can't put them out on the street,” he said.
They get cited over and over as "innocent" but Tom Joscelyn points out that this is a new meaning for the word:
None of the 17 Uighurs are master terrorists on par with the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They were mostly new recruits at the time of their capture. However, as I have argued before, they are all affiliated with and/or members of a designated terrorist organization, received training at a training camp in the al Qaeda/Taliban stronghold of Tora Bora, and have admitted that they were trained by two known terrorists. And, on top of that, the group that trained them threatened to attack the Olympic Games in China last year.
Even if you don’t think that we should lock them up and throw away the key, do we really want to pay them to live on U.S. soil?
Perhaps we could give them a small stipend so they could buy tools of the trade (boxcutters) and perhaps a one-way ticket to Los Angeles?
Realistically, Bush should have sent them back to China. Yes, they'd probably have been treated pretty harshly, given that their objective was to terrorize the Olympics. But better them at risk from the Chinese, than us at risk from them.
I've kind of been ignoring the initial fumbles of the Obama Administration, but it is getting to the point that you gotta wonder if these guys are ever going to get their act together. USA Today lays out the stark reality of the budgets:
This brings us to Wednesday's start of budget season on Capitol Hill, which featured an underwhelming display of short-term tinkering to whittle down the cost of President Obama's $3.7 trillion spending plan for 2010, coupled with some of the same old backsliding on the long-term problem.
Among other things, the Senate Budget Committee abandoned the useful discipline of laying out budget numbers for the next 10 years, opting instead for a five-year display that conveniently masks the fact that deficits are projected to rise after 2013.
There are limits to how much the government can borrow without consequence — a fact underscored Wednesday when the Treasury had unexpected trouble selling five-year notes to cover Washington's enormous borrowing. It might have been a hiccup, but it roiled the stock market and sent a worrying signal that Treasury might have to offer higher interest rates, which could throw a wrench into the recovery.
That's bad enough without the spectacle of the Secretary of the Treasury talking down the US dollar:
As if the dollar didn't have enough problems, Timothy Geithner took China's bait yesterday and said he was "quite open" to its suggestion this week to displace the greenback with an "international reserve currency." The dollar promptly fell and stocks followed, before the Treasury Secretary re-emerged to say "the dollar remains the world's dominant reserve currency. I think that's likely to continue for a long time."
Although Title 31, Sec. 5103 USC prohibits foreign currency from being recognized in the U.S., the President has the power to engage foreign governments in treaties, and the President is principally responsible for the interpretations and implementation of those treaties according to the Constitution. As a result, legislation prohibiting the President and Treasury from issuing or agreeing that the U.S. will adopt an international currency would need to come in the form of a Constitutional Amendment differentiating a treaty used to implement an international currency in the U.S. from other types of treaty agreements.
Of course Geithner was not talking about replacing the dollar, he was talking about changing the dollar's status as the reserve currency. It was a boneheaded mistake, but Bachmann's now trying to conflate that with replacing the greenback inside the United States.
The administration is in a fully fledged staffing crisis: having lost a record ten high-profile picks, it has scores of senior executive jobs unfilled—including every single treasury position below the department’s top job. The head of Britain’s civil service, Gus O’Donnell, has complained about the trouble he’s had finding key administration personnel ahead of the G20 conference in April. “There is nobody there,” he said. “You cannot believe how difficult it is.” Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner looks terrified before executives and television cameras alike. Five months after the election he has yet to deliver a plan for the banking system, much less restructure a single financial asset.
Update: Here's more of Bachmann's finest:
She's looking for constitutional provisions from Geithner? Look, Geithner's an amateur as has become clear to everybody. But Bachmann's grandstanding with her "where in the Constitution" nonsense and she deserves to be called out on it. And her performance with Bernanke is absolute conspiracy nuttery and I'm not going to apologize for slamming her for it.
Update II: No kidding, these are defenses of Bachmann from purportedly responsible conservative blogs:
However, Greg Sargent spoke with Debbee Keller, Bachmann's spokesperson, and she said that the resolution only applied to the introduction of a foreign currency unit inside the United States. The proposal has no implications for limiting the introduction of a new international reserve currency to replace the dollar as the premiere unit of global finance.
Oh, okay. Glad we've banned the use of Pesos or Ameros or Whateveros in America, but we're happy to have it as the reserve currency for the world? Remember, this is another conservative blog supporting Bachmann.
Yeah. It must be that old conspiracy theory that Mexico is going to take over the United States using NAFTA and impose the “Amero” as a currency replacement while also (gasp!) constructing roads!!!!
It appears Ron Paul finally has a fellow traveler in the loony wing of the U.S. Congress.
Michele Bachmann is the Republican Representative of Minnesota’s 6th congressional district. She really dislikes the ideal of a global currency! You can read her biography below, see photos and watch a video.
The point is that we should be fighting Obama about the obvious, which is the insane spending he's proposing, the carbon taxes, the universal health insurance. Idiots like Bachmann fighting Obama over a global currency are just diverting attention from the real battle, and making us look like idiots precisely at a time when we need to be disciplined.
Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann, standing strong against the Amero. Heck this one isn't even limited to North America, maybe we should call it the Eartho.
For any given insane freak-out, a majority of conservatives don’t happen to participate. But the non-participants don’t do anything to disavow their confrères doing the freaking-out.
These idiots need to be mocked with every bit of the fervor and anger that we typically reserve for 9-11 "Truthers".
Geithner was asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York about People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s call for a new international reserve currency. He said while he had not read Zhou’s proposal, he understood it as a plan “designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that.”
The dollar slid as much as 1.3 percent against the euro within 10 minutes of news accounts of Geithner’s remarks. It recouped much of the loss about 15 minutes later, when Geithner then predicted no change in the U.S. currency’s role. The dollar was down 0.9 percent at $1.3591 per euro as of 3:39 p.m. in New York.
Greenwald on the Difference Between "Progressives" and Conservatives
Like everybody, he sees the dissent on his own side and not the dissent on the other. Everybody rallied 'round Bush while progressives hold Obama's feet to the fire. In other words, progressives are good and noble and true to their beliefs while conservatives are mindless robots.
Even as Bush implemented one massive expansion of government power after the next -- the very "un-conservative" policies they long claimed to oppose -- there was nothing but (at best) the most token and muted objections from them. The handful of conservatives who did object were cast aside as traitors to the cause, and criticisms of the President became equated with an overt lack of patriotism. Uncritical support for the Leader was the overarching, defining attribute of conservatism, so much so that even Bill Kristol, in The New York Times, acknowledged: "Bush was the movement and the cause."
Hilariously, under the words "overt lack of patriotism", Greenwald links to a speech by that well-known conservative, Joe Lieberman. As far as I can see, this is the offending passage:
It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.
But of course Lieberman is no conservative. The American Conservative Union graded him an 8 in 2008, which made him less conservative than Hillary Clinton (11) or Barack Obama (17) that year. So where does Greenwald get off calling him a conservative? Oh, he supported Bush on the war, ergo he's conservative.
Our post — which never criticized the Alexa Foundation — highlighted the fact that in the past, O’Reilly has implied that women who dress in a certain way or consume too much alcohol should perhaps expect to be raped. Here is what he said on his radio show on Aug. 2 about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered:
Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She’s walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she’s out of her mind, drunk.
O’Reilly’s comments about Moore were part of a larger segment about the dangers of drunkenness. His other example was Mel Gibson going on a drunken tirade and yelling anti-Semitic comments. “I think it’s safe to say that if Mel Gibson didn’t get drunk, he wouldn’t be in this terrible situation he finds himself in,” said O’Reilly. “And if a young woman, 18-year-old Jennifer Moore of Harrington Park, NJ, didn’t get drunk, she’d be alive today.”
I don't know if Amanda Turkel, who wrote the piece, has a teenaged daughter, but if she does, I hope she's not telling her that she can get as drunk as she wants anywhere and anytime, with no fear of rape.
That said, the behavior of O'Reilly's producer seems a little out of line.
Update: Commenter Bob thinks I was slamming O'Reilly. I was agreeing essentially with what he said while thinking that he could have phrased it a little better. I think this "blaming the victim" backlash has gone a little too far. Sometimes the victims create their own misfortune; this does not remove the actual guilt for her rape and murder from her attacker, but it does acknowledge that people do have to use common sense.
And having seen the actual "stalking" video, I have to say that I don't think the producer was out of line.
A political coalition grounded in the social mores of the ethno-sectarian majority and the ideas of the business class has overwhelming intrinsic advantages against contrary movements grounded in the complaints of minority groups and the economic claims of the lower orders. It’s a little bit hard to even know what a permanent progressive governing majority would mean, and harder to know how you would sustain it.
Actually that's the sensible part of the post, but I needed to include it so I could highlight the goofy part. Forced to explain why the Democrats in fact ruled Congress for so many of those years and even had occasional occupants in the White House, he concludes:
The dominant position of the Democratic Party for much of the 20th Century was achieved through the strange method of the Democratic Party containing a lot of very very very very conservative politicians. The actual periods of major progressive legislation were brief—but they had lasting impact.
.
They certainly had some conservative Democrats in Congress from the South, but the "very very very very" bit is moronic. Were they more conservative than, say, Barry Goldwater, Matt? Because he's somebody you could call conservative, maybe even very conservative.
For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.
Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?
Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”
That's probably accurate, although due to the fact that everybody on the list is "left-leaning" there is almost certainly an echo chamber effect.
Look, Ma, no hands! Only one cool forehead and some extra-strength hairspray touch, and yet everything combusts in this Inauguration Night photo. Not since Doris Day and Rock Hudson split a pair of pajamas—also under intoxicating circumstances, if not in a freight elevator—has there been such chemistry in a shared outfit.
Let me tell you, darling, chemistry can be faked. Rock wasn't really interested in Doris Day.
I endorsed Megan McCain's comments about Ann Coulter last week, but Michelle Malkin notes a comment that Miss McCain made about comedian Russell Brand that I do not agree with:
What, exactly, does Ms. McCain find “freaking hilarious” about Russell Brand? If not his diatribes against social conservatives and mockery of 9/11, then what? Is it the photo of him urinating in the desert? The videos of him prancing around in his underwear? Or perhaps we’re just too old and too unhip to understand the humor and need to lighten up in order to broaden our base? Is that the takeaway?
Brand's an idiot and a vulgarian. As is Coulter, for that matter. And I'm certainly not endorsing Meghan as some sort of new breed of Republican; I just agreed with her on one issue.
More so than my ideological differences with Ann Coulter, I don’t like her demeanor. I have never been a person who was attracted to hate or negativity. I don’t believe in scare tactics and would never condone or encourage anyone calling President Obama a Muslim. But controversy sells and Coulter is nothing if not controversial. Everything about her is extreme: her voice, her interview tactics, and especially the public statements she makes about liberals. Maybe her popularity stems from the fact that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck.
Two soldiers have been shot dead during a gun attack at an army base in County Antrim, the Ministry of Defence says.
A spokesman said "four other personnel" were injured, one of them critically, in the attack at Massereene army base in Antrim, 16 miles north of Belfast.
Good lord. The Chas Freeman nomination looks like it's going to crash on the shoals of Freeman's rather absurd "realist" statements, so Steve Clemons gets a recommendation from... Freeman's son.
A cabal of ideological hardliners has orchestrated a remarkable, self-referential smear campaign against my Dad's appointment, dragging Congress and the political process into this non-political sphere. They are wrong to do it, and not just because my Dad is involved.
This brouhaha has come up in the last few days. To me, the Freeman defenders have had far the worst of it, which is why their argument is focusing on the motivations of his opponents and not on Freeman's statements. As Jonathan Chait (not my favorite pundit by a large margin) correctly notes:
And even if you suppose this entire world view is merely a construct to justify support for Israel, there are arguments to be dealt with. Walt refuses to defend Freeman on his ties to Saudi Arabia and extreme defense of China, thinking he can wave it all away by shouting "Israel-lover!" at the critics in the hopes that this will rally liberals to Freeman's side. The method of Walt's argument is vastly more distrurbing than the substance. Walt is arguing that any Jewish-American who does not roughly share his views on Israel (which, of course, disqualifies the vast majority) is presumptively acting out of dual loyalty, is probably coordinating their actions in secret, and should thus be dismissed out of hand. I think Walt has come to this conclusion on the basis of his foreign policy worldview rather than out of animus against Jewish people. But it's a paranoid analysis whose consequence is to make the debate about Israel much more stupid and mired in attacks on motive.
And indeed, that is precisely the argument Freedman's son offers up:
His appointment is being challenged these days by a small cabal of folks that believe first and foremost in the importance of allegiance to Israel as a core U.S. priority. Putting aside my natural instinct as a son to want to punch some of these guys in the face for some of the things they are saying about my father, for heaven's sake, I'm more deeply angry about the lack of guile some of these people have.
It is, as Chait rightly notes, a way of waving away all the other idiotic stuff Freedman's said on 9-11 and on China.
Maureen Dowd devotes today's column to fawning over John McCain's anti-pork crusade. There's merit, in general, to the idea of eliminating wasteful spending. But if ever there was a time when we should not care about wasteful spending, it is now, when the economy has a massive failure of demand and anything that circulates money into the economy helps. So the anti-pork crusade is just strangely out of place at this time, a wild missing of the bigger picture.
That's the meme the Democrats are going to be pushing over the next week or so.
"Rush is the bloated face and drug-addled voice of the Republican Party," said Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist who rose to prominence during Bill Clinton's presidency. "Along with lots of others, I intend to continue to turn up the heat until every alleged Republican either endorses or renounces Rush's statement that he hopes our President fails."
Look, he may be the face and voice of conservatism; but the last time I listened to Rush, he was frantically trying to prevent John McCain from becoming the Republican nominee. His face and voice didn't turn out to be as influential as advertised there.
Good interview. No sparks over the McCain nomination or the direction of the party, I'm surprised and pleased to note.
There are a lot of conservatives out there, probably most of them even, who believe that "America is in the midst of an irreversible moral decline." Would you disagree with that?
I do. In my book, The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation, that's the 10th big lie and in many ways, it's the most pernicious -- because if our moral decline is irreversible, then America's weakening and decline is irreversible. That goes against our national ethos. Part of what it means to be an American is that nothing is irreversible for this country. No challenge is too great.
