Monday Lunch

A few hours later and we're down 85,000 jobs for the day.

Mea Culpa. Closing Gitmo maybe more problematic than I wrote before. Physically closing it--no. But it seems that there are no comprehensive case files on the detainees, on some cases there exists no information at all and in other cases the information is strewn throughout different bureaucracies and no one has a clue as to where. For those of us who followed the decades long court case by the Indian nations against the US Government for back payments and royalties this is all so familiar. At first the Government claimed it was too complicated to keep records on royalties for each tribe and, finally, when the judge ordered it to produce the information, the Bush Administration claimed all the data were lost because of computer failure.

I don't see how the recent news that the U.S released one man from Gitmo and he bombed our embassy in Yemen or that the Administration released the men who blew up the U.S.S. Cole has any relevance on the Gitmo issue now. Obama didn't release them.

I'm still convinced that official Washington has yet to digest the fact of Obama's election. This goes for Democrats, too. Both sides think it was about having the first Black President--which is great but it's simply a bonus. Both sides are locked into age-old political debates on tax cuts versus government spending, when the economy is in a freefall. Having read the full economic plan last night, it strikes me that it seeks to transform our economy for the 21st Century and not just give us a bounce out of a deep, deep, long recession. That's why Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner both sound bonkers. Obama will have to go to the American public and lay out how all the parts fit together. He's on firm ground here: 71% of Americans believe Obama has a mandate for major new social and economic programs. He also starts his term with more political capital than JFK or Reagan.

It's important to remember media is neither conservative or liberal but corporate. All the talking heads and the commentariat are seriously wealthy people. The tip-off last year was when commentators kept obsessing on Obama's pledge to increase taxes on those who earned over $250,000. With the average American income at $46,000, who would care? Why,all those commentators on television. We receive all the talking points on the economy and politics from wealthy folks, who are relatively immune to cataclysmic events unless they put all their funds with Madoff. So the link in the stimulus plan between health insurance and increased Pell Grants for students simply escapes their limited world view.

A great example of this blindness was the exchange yesterday between Sam Donaldson and Paul Krugman over Sam proclaiming history shows it's fiscal policy that end recessions. Krugman had to point out that with interests rates at 0, the Fed has exhausted all its tools and that government spending becomes a tool.

A must read is today's piece in the New York Times by Paul Krugman called "Bad Faith Economics". Even though he's critical of the scale of Obama's plan (he wants a larger one), he machine-guns the various talking points Republicans are using to stall the Obama plan.

Coming off his desire that Obama fail, Rush Limbaugh has pointed out that the success of the New Deal doomed Republicans for fifty years in electoral politics. And he fears that something similar may happen if Obama succeeds. He's right. Meanwhile Republicans are smoking some strange stuff as they project their comeback for 2010. That's why they are putting obstacles in Obama's path. I'll go out on a limb now and say the Republicans will lose an additional five seats in the Senate in 2010. On the House side, I'm not willing to go because the large number of Democrats increase the probability of scandals.