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Three out of four Republicans think Bush has actually done a good job. That compares with 28% of independents and only 6% of Democrats. Bush and Cheney have been on a Rove-orchestrated “legacy” tour of all the major media, trying to convince the country that the worst terrorist attack in US history, torture, secret prisons, two unpopular wars, the loss of a major American city, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, environmental degradation, and global distain — just to hit on a few highlights — were all good things. daggatt ☀

I think those who assert that bankruptcy would be the best course for the US auto industry don’t understand the bankruptcy process very well. It can be a years-long process with every major decision requiring court approval. For example, United Airlines entered bankruptcy in December 2002 and finally exited in February 2006. But United was able to get “debtor-in-possession” (DIP) financing. In a typical bankruptcy, some party puts up the money to keep the company operating during bankruptcy and that debtor has first claim on the assets of the company. But DIP financing is not an option for the auto makers given the current state of credit markets. If the auto companies (and we’re talking here GM and Chrysler) entered Chapter 11 now without government backing, they would very quickly find themselves in a Chapter 7 liquidation. The US government is, in effect, the DIP lender of last resort. If the US government is the DIP lender, what’s the value of reorganizing the companies through a years-long adversarial litigation process with lawyers filing mountains of paper on behalf of all the various stakeholders in reaction to every proposed action? A bailout doesn’t mean the companies don’t have to reorganize. The current plan requires that the companies and their various stakeholders come up with viable plans of reorganization by March 31 – a timetable much faster than anything that could be produced through a Chapter 11 proceeding. Even if the plans that emerge only delay the demise of the auto makers by a few years, the bailout funds would be a wise investment to avoid the full hit to the economy at a time when it is teetering on the edge of the abyss. daggatt ☀

…during the campaign Obama proposed spending $150 billion over ten years to help wean our economy from fossil fuels. That sounds like a lot of money, but it is the equivalent of a mere “five sentence notice” providing the financial industry with yet another tax massive break. “How are we going to PAY for all of Obama’s proposals?” reasonable people ask. Another financial industry tax break … not so much. Another way of thinking of Obama’s decade-long transformation of America’s energy economy: The cost of bailing out ONE insurance company that is not even subject to federal regulation. It was reported yesterday that the cost of bailing out one company – ONE COMPANY – AIG has now reached $150 billion. daggatt ☀

Ask yourself this: Who would you rather have advising the next president of the United States, Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan (McCain’s economic heroes – both of whom pushed for deregulation of financial markets) or Warren Buffett and Paul Volcker (both of whom warned against it)? daggatt ☀

People tend to evaluate political pundits based not on the accuracy of their observations but rather on their agreement with one’s own views. (How else can anyone explain the fact that Bill Kristol – who has been wrong about absolutely everything over the past decade – is still able to command an audience on a street corner, let alone a regular column in the New York Times.) The fact that the pundit is ultimately proven correct does not necessarily increase his credibility among his detractors – indeed, it might only inflame their hostility. That seems to be the case with Krugman. It would be hard to go back over his hundreds of columns over the last eight years and find almost anything of substance he has gotten wrong. It’s a truly extraordinary track record. It is even more impressive when you see those columns collected by subject, as was done in his book The Great Unraveling. In a short column he can generally address only one small aspect of a larger issue or set of issues. His columns often build on each other and illuminate a more complex subject or more general truth when read in sequence by subject. Alas, this is irrelevant to the radical right, which is becoming further unhinged as its grip on power is lost. Krugman’s Nobel Prize, as with anything that challenges their world view, is the object of scorn and rage – evidence of a broader liberal conspiracy rather than intellectual merit. But as Stephen Colbert famously observed (courageously in the presence of Bush), “reality has a well-known liberal bias. daggatt ☀

As it turns out, the Queen of Earmarks is Sarah Palin. According to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, Palin hired a Washington lobbyist to secure earmarks for tiny Wasilla, Alaska when she was mayor. The town of 6,715 received nearly $27 million in federal dollars from 2000 to 2003. Alaska has the highest amount of earmarks per capita of any state in the country. As governor of Alaska, Palin requested $198 million in earmarks in next year’s federal budget. She’s good at this stuff. But, then, she should be. She learned from the master himself, the former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee when Republicans controlled the Senate, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). She ran his 527 group “Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.” (this is the “independent” political entity that Stevens used to raise unlimited funds from corporate donors). daggatt ☀

All the positive ads have been pulled. McCain is going all negative from here on out. It’s all he has left of his “honorable” campaign of HEROIC LEADERSHIP. Smear. That’s all the Rove junior varsity knows how to do. That’s what they learned at the foot of the master. And McCain will do whatever it takes. One last Hail Mary. One more throw of the craps. Honor be damned. daggatt ☀

…McCain announced that he was “suspending his campaign” (although he continues to run attack ads in key battleground states, his campaign surrogates continue to fill the airwaves, his fundraising operations and campaign offices are all still up and operational, and he spent the day with his campaign manager – so it is not really clear what he has “suspended”). He also proposed that tomorrow’s debate with Obama be postponed so that they could together solve the country’s financial crisis (more on that below). He tried to portray all of this as rising about partisan politics, but it was anything but. By pulling this stunt unilaterally rather than in concert with Obama, McCain was seeking to shift the agenda from a focus on the financial mess created by Republican antipathy to regulation to McCain’s own HEROIC LEADERSHIP in forging a political consensus behind a bailout plan. Bush became an accomplice in McCain’s ploy by inviting him and Obama to the White House today – an offer Obama, of course, couldn’t refuse. daggatt ☀

Worst. President. Ever. Some of us have been saying that for a while. But now it is indisputable. Based on the Worst Foreign Policy Disaster in the nation’s history. (And if your right-wing brother-in-law is now claiming that the Iraq war was a “success,” ask him this: “Then why have over two million Iraqis fled their homeland as destitute refugees since we launched our war? There was no Berlin Wall keeping them in during the Saddam era. People vote with their feet.”) And the destruction of New Orleans. And almost four billion dollars in additional federal government debt. And eight years of exacerbating rather than addressing the global climate crisis. And the undermining of our country’s moral standing in the world through torture, secret prisons and the denial of the most fundamental underpinning of the Rule of Law, habeas corpus. Add your favorites to the list. daggatt ☀

As Jay Leno said this week: “John McCain and Sarah Palin are talking about how they stood up to the Republican party, they fought the Republican establishment, and they battled Republicans. Their message: Vote Republican.” It’s amusing to watch Republicans seeking to distance themselves from Bush after being in lock-step partisan support of everything he has done for the past (almost) eight years – even while they embrace no change in those policies. It must take incredible mental filters and emotional defenses to reconcile all that cognitive dissonance. Daggatt ☀

Of course, they compare every nasty leader to Hitler and every act of aggression to the onset of World War III. Saddam was “Hitler” until we overthrew him. Then Iran’s Ahmadinejad became “Hitler.” Unfortunately, by overthrowing Iraq’s “Hitler”, we empowered Iran’s “Hitler” and then sought the help of Russia’s “Hitler” to contain Iran’s “Hitler. But to contain Russia’s “Hitler” we encouraged Georgia to assert itself which threw a wrench in things by attacking the friends of Russia’s “Hitler” and … oh, it’s all so confusing. Just tell me who is “good” and who is “evil” so we can threatened the evil people with military force unless they bow to our will. But, even spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined, as we do, there are limits to how many “Hitlers” we can take on at one time. daggatt blog ☀

Make no mistake about it, McCain is all about war. It is war that made him a national hero and that has served as the foundation of his political career to this day. He comes from a family of warriors – his father and grandfather were both four-star Admirals. And that raises another fear – that he shares with our current president an Oedipal problem. Bush and McCain were both underachieving screw-ups in their respective youths, bridling under the yoke of their super-achieving fathers. Like Bush, McCain was a “legacy” in his father’s alma mater. And like Bush, he performed poorly – in McCain’s case, finishing 894 out of his class of 899 at the Naval Academy (and he probably wouldn’t have graduated at all had he not been the son of a four-star admiral). Bush sought to finish what his dad started in Iraq, expressing the belief that war was necessary for a president to achieve true “greatness.” And can anyone doubt that McCain needs war to cap off his life story and ultimately surpass his father and grandfather as a military man? He very apparently is bored by things like economics, health care and the like. The one thing that really gets his juices flowing is war – or the prospect of war. daggatt blog ☀

According to Bush, Congress doesn’t have the power to condition its war funding on a directive to redeploy troops from Iraq. This is just a continuation of his practice of appending signing statements to legislation making it clear that he reserves the right to ignore any laws he doesn’t like. Lately, many Administration apologists have been yapping that Congress has no business involving itself in matters like oversight or Foreign Policy at all! In fact, and as a reminder, Article I of the US Constitution makes it pretty clear that Congress is the branch of government that sets war policy. Russ Daggatt
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What I find astounding is that the right-wing has chosen this president as the vehicle through which to push their notions of authoritarian government to their most radical lengths. Throughout the history of government there have been arguments about the merits of a strongman running the show versus representative government and the rule of law. But the advocates of the former often assume some kind of enlightened philosopher king up against the irresponsible rabble. It seems pretty hard to make the case that an obviously-incompetent, incurious ideologue should be given unchecked powers. Russ Daggatt
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One of the puzzling things about the US attorneys scandal is that the underlying actions were taken after Democrats regained control of Congress last fall. Didn’t it occur to Rove that he no longer had a Rubber Stamp Republican Congress and that some of these abuses might come to light as the Democrats began to investigate the administration? Didn’t it occur to him that the rules had changed? I thought Rove was supposed to be really smart. Wassup? Think about it for a minute. Without veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats are limited in what they can accomplish in the way of an affirmative agenda. We all knew that the real significance of the Democratic victories last fall was the investigative powers they gained. You can bet Rove understood that, too. And, sure enough, both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees have now voted to authorize subpoenas of Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in connection with the US attorneys matter. Bush (Rove), of course, has stated that he will refuse to comply. And these aren’t the last subpoenas Congress will issue. So Congress issues subpoenas and Bush (Rove) stonewalls. How does Congress enforce its subpoenas? US Attorneys. Russ Daggatt
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