Comments (0) E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post writes,
For President Obama, the battle lines will be drawn on investments in – or, as Republicans would say, spending on – education, energy, infrastructure and innovation, thus E2I2.
The Republicans have it about right.
Slate’s John Dickerson weighs in on Obama’s performance in the events leading up to Mubarak’s ouster, and he rips a page out of Thomas Friedman’s playbook.
As Dickerson writes in a piece titled Was Obama Too Indecisive on Egypt?
Or did his refusal to meddle actually speed Mubarak’s fall?,
Whether by design or dithering, U.S. policy makers didn’t get in the way of events in Cairo. That strategy appears to have been successful. That may mean that in a world where developments can move so quickly, TBD is the new SOP.
Dickerson’s piece is more nuanced than the conclusion, and he does take some shots at the administration’s handling of the crisis; nevertheless, he comes off as making excuses for the President’s handling of the matter. I just hope he didn’t feel a tingle running up his leg as events unfolded.
Summer 2009, I wrote a series of posts about the coup (or not to coup) in Honduras. I’ve kind of lost track of whether the Obama administration finally declared that what happened down there was a coup or not.
That said, I have not forgotten that the administration opposed what happened and actively campaigned for the return of Manuel Zelaya to power, even though that country’s Congress and Supreme Court approved his approval. In short, what appeared, at least to me, to be a constitutional transfer of power by constitutionally constituted bodies–a transfer necessitated by the fear that Zelaya was attempting to become the region’s next Chavez–was some sort of coup to our administration.
With this in mind, consider the news of the last few days out of Egypt: Mubarak surrendered power to the Egyptian military, which today dissolved parliament, suspended the nation’s constitution, and promised elections in 6 months–in what The New York Times reports the military called “a democratic transition.”
Now I support what is happening in Egypt. It appears at this point that the military is acting in harmony with the public’s will, justifying, in the military’s mind at least, its claim of a democratic transition. What I’m waiting for now is for the Obama administration to call this a coup.
What? They’re not going to do that?
Then why all the fuss over Honduras, where a democratically elected congress and the supreme court transferred power?
Critics of the Obama administration have questioned why he didn’t offer similar support for those who protested in Iran in 2009-2010. They should add Honduras to the list of inconsistencies.
Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers writes,
The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.
That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.
Critics say the legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that were supposed to have been stopped in 2006.
The controversy over the telephone records is a legacy of the Bush administration’s war on terror. Critics say the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.
I’ll go with the meme: Change? I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about this.
Thomas Friedman offers some hopeful comments on Egypt in general and to those who suffer at the hands of “a lot of worried kings and autocrats . . . from North Africa to Burma to Beijing.” And, he continues,
it is not simply because a dictator has been brought down by his people. That has happened before. It is because the way it was done is so easy to emulate. What made this Egyptian democracy movement so powerful is its legitimacy.
It was started by youth and enabled by Facebook and Twitter. It was completely non-violent and only resorted to stone-throwing when faced with attacks by regime thugs. It drew on every segment of the Egyptian population. There was a huge flag in Tahrir Square today with a Muslim crescent moon and a Christian cross inside it. And most of all, it had no outside help.
Now, I agree with Friedman. And I, too, am hopeful. But I was hopeful for Iraq, and I’m worried that experiment tells us too much about what might happen in Egypt after the jubilation subsides and the work begins. Nevertheless, today I’m hopeful.
That said, I didn’t come to Friedman’s column expecting to agree with him. I came expecting to find something Friedmanesque. I was not disappointed. Immediately after the paragraphs I just quoted, Mr.Friedman lets loose this little gem of a paragraph:
In some ways, President Barack Obama did the Egyptian revolution a great favor by never fully endorsing it and never even getting his act together for how to deal with it. This meant in the end that Egyptians know they did this for themselves by themselves – with nothing but their own willpower, unity and creativity.
It’s good to know that some continue to think that our President Walks on water even when he’s in over his head.
And cedes power to the military. My wife thinks chaos will ensue. I’m more hopeful. Let’s pray I’m right, for Egypt’s sake. For Israel’s.
For the longest time, supporters of Obamacare in general and the individual mandate in particular have criticized constitutional arguments against the law as unserious. Declares Edwin Chemerinsky, dean and distinguished professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law,
Those opposing health care reform are increasingly relying on an argument that has no legal merit: that the health care reform legislation would be unconstitutional.
That’s changed, as Josh Marshall noted in December.
And with that, the goal posts move. Now the argument is that the recent Federal District Court rulings against the bill will move slowly through the appellate court system, allowing support for the bill to grow. In fact, that’s the government’s strategy at this point, according to the report. Will the stall work? It just might. The report in Bloomberg quotes Sidley Austin attorney Carter Phillips opining on the probability that the Supreme Court will fast track the cases (2 for, 2 against at this point). With certitude that would make Chemerinsky proud, Phillips, who has argued more than 60 cases before the Court, says the chances are “zero.” And why does he say that?
I do not think the court will be inclined to decide this question without the benefit of having the views of at least one and probably more than one court of appeals on a very difficult question of constitutional law. (emphasis mine)
So arguments that once had no merit are now “very difficult question[s].” Wonder what Chemerinsky thinks?
Mubarak is a bumbling fool, but his bumbling will–or should–help Obama out of his box. Mubarak’s jackboot on the neck of foreign press and human rights workers will–or should–give Present Obama reason to finally choose sides in this mess.
We’ll see.
I’ve been following the crisis in Egypt, and I realize that options are few. Nevertheless, there are options–three of them actually–that stand out: support the protestors, support Mubarak, or vote present.
Guess which one the President Obama chose?
This morning, as I drove to meet my brother and sister-in-law for breakfast, NPR’s Morning Edition treated me to a teaser lead-in to a story that taxpayers were soon going to get back all the money the government had invested in AIG during the bailout. The actual story (which I cannot find online) confirmed the headline, though it sort of hedged with words like “depending on stock performance” and such.
I own shares in AIG. Prior to the bailout, I owned 20 Xs more shares–but that’s another story. Point is, I watch the stock and news about the stock. And I watched recently as the share price climbed above $52 a share on January 7 (I bought those shares at the reverse split-adjusted price of $43.60 on 9/18/08). Since that high, the share price has fallen precipitously to just over $42.00 as I write, almost a 20% decline in two weeks. In other words, I’m worse off than when I bought the shares over three years ago. So exactly how are the taxpayers getting paid back–soon–if the market value of AIG has decreased? I understand that the government and/or AIG may sell off operating companies and repay the debt from the proceeds. Do the value of the parts exceed the value of the whole?
Or is this more Prava-like reporting of the sort that the Seattle Times debunked this morning? Referring to the White House’s recent announcement of $19 billion in new Boeing jet orders, an announcement timed to coincide with the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, reporter Dominic Gates writes,
The deal President Hu signed does not include any new jet orders.
Delivering the formal approval during Hu’s visit is designed to make the Chinese government appear responsive to U.S. concerns about the balance of trade.
However, all of the airplanes in the sale were announced and booked by Boeing as firm orders over the past four years. Chinese airlines had already paid nonrefundable deposits and signed contracts for the jets, most of them as far back as 2007.
Gates continues,
The White House announcement said the total value of the orders was $19 billion.
But that’s the list price, which airline customers never pay.
Based on market data from aircraft-valuation consultancy Avitas, the actual price for those 200 planes is about $11 billion.
To be fair, Gates points out that Boeing says that the Chinese government’s approval is important, but . . .
Summing up the deal, Gates closes with,
Our verdict: The Chinese orders are real and will help keep Boeing workers busy here through 2013. Still, the White House announcement, while technically true, left a completely false impression.
The orders weren’t new. They weren’t really worth $19 billion. And Boeing isn’t soaring ahead of its big global rival with this deal.
An accurate headline for the news might have said: Hu finally signs off on old orders for U.S. jets, but Boeing still lags Airbus in China.
Likewise, an accurate lead-in for the AIG story on NPR might have said: Taxpayers will recoup their investment in AIG if the stars align and the stock price ever gets high enough, but that’s far off in the future.
Update: I found a Reuters story that I think the NPR story was based on. The three nut paragraphs:
In its third report on the bailout of AIG, the GAO said U.S. taxpayers’ risk exposure to the insurer increasingly is expected to be tied to the success of AIG and its value as seen by investors in the company’s common stock.
“The government’s ability to fully recoup the federal assistance will be determined by the long-term health of AIG,” the report said.
A Treasury official said taxpayers were in a strong position to recover “every dollar put into AIG.” (emphasis supplied)
I’m virtually certain the two quotes appeared in the NPR story. The second quote resembles the NPR headline. Alert readers will notice that the first quote basically takes all the zing out of the second, and thus the headline of the NPR story.
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