Not-so mighty shield...

While it was suspected at the time, President Obama's reason for offering to pull the proposed "missile shield" in Europe may be related to questions over its viability. The USA Today reports on some European doubts.

While there have been successful tests of the interceptor missile, and portions of the system have seen progress, a complete system is still some time off.

In other words, while it has moved from starry-eyed hope in the 1980's to a nuts-and-bolts project, the ballistic missile shield remains a political pawn than shield-wielding knight.

- Murphy

Colleen Campbel used her column this week to criticize President Obama for what she saw as "amateurism". Yet instead of scalpel-sharp analysis, she instead offered spitballs.

So what-in the wake of the passage of Obama's top legislative priority, the largest stimulus bill of its kind, ever-does she offer as evidence of this presumed amateurism? An overly verbose press conference and Obama's decision to accept responsibility for the mistakes of his staff.

Parker dutifully ignores the singular issue which has dominated the world of media talking heads, radio jocks and writers and bloggers everywhere.

President Obama asked that there be a stimulus bill on his desk by the first week of February. Instead the bill has arrived in the middle of February.

That's not a bad start considering it's nearly $800 billion price tag makes it the largest stimulus ever (the Wa Po calculated it a 5% of GDP versuss 2% for Roosevelt's New Deal).

Despite its sheer size, the bills passage is also remarkable for the lengths to which Obama reached out to try and draw Republican support. Nearly $300 billion in tax cuts were included, and cuts were made to social programs and relief funding for states in an effort to include Republican suggestions. An open hand which was smacked away by the Republican leadership and-minus three Senators (Collins, Snowe, Specter)-Congressional Republicans.

Ironically, in voting against

Akin: Stimulus Bill A "Hurricane Katrina"

Rep. Todd Akin has a news release on his website explaining his perspective of the bill.

""Watching this wasteful, spending bill come closer to passage is like watching a financial Hurricane Katrina head toward our shores."

Considering Akin supported making Bush's $2 trillion in tax cuts permanent, $800 billion should be a lesser squall.

- Murphy

Committed

Republican commitment to attacking the stimulus bill, regardless of both reality and necessity, is impressive. 

In today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri Representative Roy Blunt (R-Springfield) criticized the bill saying some of the spending wouldn't occur for a decade. Blunt, along with every other Republican in the House voted against the stimulus bill.

Blunt should have checked with the Congressional Budget Office, the office that provides estimates of spending, debt and other budget impacts. It released a report (pdf) on Saturday showing the majority of the stimulus would be released by 2010, about 18 months.

Update: It appears Blunt's office did see the report. A press release on his website adds a note confirming that the bill would provide the short-term stimulus sought by the President. It tosses in a caveat, however, saying the CBO determined there might be a potential for a negative impact beginning after 2014.

The negative impact the CBO estimates in this report (This is the only recent report referring to a 2014 turning point. Blunt's office declines to indicate which reports it is getting its information from) is a potential 0 to 0.2 percent negative impact after 2014. Meaning there could be no negative impact at all. The report only looks at the earlier proposal, not the final bill passed this weekend.

 The CBO attributes this to potential "crowding out" of private investment. It balances this prospect by noting that much of the government-financed investment in areas such as education and infrastructure could improve long-term output, thus the providing continued positive growth.

That said, the potential for a slight drag 5 years down the road is nothing compared to an imminent crash. 

- Murphy

When logic fails....

Representative John Boehner, chief Republican in the House, criticized the stimulus bill-which now awaits President Obama's signature-as "spending, spending and more spending." 

This sits neatly with other Republican criticisms of the bill that used visual aids to describe how large a stack of money this represents.

It was, perhaps, unintended comedy. Given that this was by definition a spending bill, and that the trillion-dollar plus shortfall in consumer spending expected by economists over the next year ($2.9 trillion over the next three years) necessitated the government stopgap in order to try and help keep business activity up, the Republican comments were less criticism than descriptions.

Local Republican Representative Todd Akin explained his no vote this way, "“This is spending beyond any we’ve ever seen. The question is: How far can we push ourselves into debt?”

While it is true that we should concern ourselves with how the country will eventually pay the debt, it is hard to see how we would be able to make any dent even in the existing debt (which at the end of the 1990's was on the decline, until the recent administration took office. Much of whose war-related spending remains off the books, so the debt figures are likely to end up far higher) with an economy that has completely crashed. With no business activity, there is no tax revenue and thus no debt payments.

To be fair, this is a lot of money, $787 billion is no small change. Yet in a country that had a $14 trillion dollar economy in 2008, but has just shed 3 million jobs in the last few months and seen businesses cutting back left and right as the recession deepens, it may be a small price to pay to keep us away from the tipping point.

- Murphy

An idea....

Opponents of fiscal stimulus in the form of government spending regularly point out that the U.S. wasn't pulled out of the Great Depression until the enormous ramp-up that was the U.S.'s involvement in World War II.

Leaving aside the point that during the war the U.S. Government laid out enormous sums of money and funded a massive expansion in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation and scientific research.

The much lauded post-war prosperity was possible because of the enormous growth in capacity and know-how driven by government funding. Add to that the return of millions of trained workers to the labor market and the-mistakenly but consistently-overlooked fact that the U.S. retained the only fully-functional industrial base for at least a decade.

Critics say the government shouldn't be pouring money into the economy, that it will only leave us burdened with debt in the future. Yet right now the U.S. is one of the few that has the ability to do so. While should be directing funds into the hands of consumers to spend, but perhaps more importantly, we should be directing the funds into rebuilding the U.S. infrastructure and subsidizing a boom in industrial and technological growth. 

Financial services have gotten all the glory when it comes to wealth creation, but they were also directly responsible for the bubble that has blown the global economy. Perhaps we should focus on areas where self-sustaining growth can be developed and once again return the U.S. to its leadership position in the world economy. 

- Murphy

Limbaugh: "I hope [Obama] fails."

 Rush Limbaugh wasted no time in reigniting the rancor that has distinguished conservative commentary since the mid 1990’s.

Rush said he doesn’t need a long statement to say what he means, merely four words. “I. Hope. He. Fails.”

The American people, however, may quibble with Rush’ hunger for the failure of the newly minted Obama administration. Pollster’s aggregate poll shows that Obama maintains a growing favorability rating, currently 71%.

Since the election, Obama’s favorability has gone nowhere but up; potentially related to the deepening crisis and the close of the Bush administration.

Rush's jumping off point was his insistence that the government should not control things; not the banks, not the auto industry and not health care. 

I am sure somewhere in his mind there's a little asterisk noting that all of the efforts to extend government into these areas were initiated by his favorite President, G. W. Bush.

- Murphy

Whiplash....

Jonah Golberg, editor of the National Review, was just on NPR's Talk of the Nation discussing the new role of conservative commentators during the Obama administration.

Goldberg started out saying that being "out in the wilderness" is actually "fun" and is the natural home of the Goldwater Conserervatives; that opposition is in their DNA.

After lauding the conservatives for their principled opposition, he then immediately went on to decry liberal critics of the Bush administration, referring to some of them as "warewolves" who "need to feed".

He contrasted that with his view of conservatives as the constructive critics-that none harbor any personal animus toward the new President; unlike his liberal opponents who apoplecticly decry anything Bush has done merely because they were done by Bush.

He apparently hasn't received notice from his friends in the Republican National Committee, who-in their principled opposition-giggle away at "Barack the Majic Negro" and pledge to become Obama's "worst nightmare".

- Murphy

U.S. Refused to Back Israeli Strike on Iran

In a piece in today's New York Times, David Sanger reports on some of the details behind the complicated balancing act between the United States and Israel, which teeters on attempts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program.

Some of the efforts have been circulating around for some time on different foreign policy blogs, but this piece-which comes ahead of a more detailed book by Sanger to be released this week-ties them together.

The bold-faced point, however, is that the U.S. not only refused to aid an Israeli attack, but took a number of steps to deter their action.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.

In essence, the release of a 2007 intelligence report stating that Iran was further behind in it's efforts to build and deploy a nuclear warhead than previously believed, prompted to different reactions by the U.S. and Israel.

Israel-which believed the report to be inaccurate-saw the it as a sign the U.S. would not take its own military action, and thus stepped up its efforts to plan an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The plans reached the point of attack exercises over the Mediteranian and requesting bunker-buster bombs and permission to fly over Iraq from the U.S. None of the Israeli efforts to prod the U.S. into aiding their efforts panned out.

In the U.S., efforts turned towards non-military options. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others believed the military effort would bear little fruit: it was unlikely to deal a decisive blow, drive the Iranian further underground, and could spark even greater destabilization in the region. Instead they continue to pursue covert efforts to disrupt the Iranians ability to keep their program running: including disrupting the electrical infrastructure, computer network attacks, and the sabotage of key parts.

Despite the bellicose nature of the Bush administration in the first administration, it appears that they have taken a more nuanced and deliberate approach in recent years; combining international diplomatic efforts and strong-arm sanctions, as well as low-level covert actions that may delay functional capability.

The Obama administration will have a number of major issues on its plate beginning on day one, but at least a third war isn't one of them.

- Murphy

Burris' Path

While Roland Burris' granite mausoleum (complete with footnoted resume) may point to a playful intellect, one must admit that he could have taken a slightly different tack when approaching his appointment. 

Perhaps he could have backed off claims that Blagojevich's decision was touched by the hand of God, or that the Democrats were barring the door to racial progress by denying him a seat in the Senate. 

Citing divine providence while surrogates accuse your own party of reclaiming the mantle of Bull Connor-a party which just months prior nominated and then elected the first African-American President-Likely inspires anger amongst your potential colleagues. Beyond that, the fact that your benefactor faces a long stint in prison for attempting to sell the seat you now hold, a seat just vacated by the now first African-American President-elect, tempts the fates in a way only Bill Murray could make funny.

Perhaps a more effective path could have been to take the turn of the statesman.

In a single stroke, Burris could have: satiated his ambition, cemented a sterling reputation, and maybe even earned the gratitude of a Democratic Party that sits on pins a needles.

To land this trifecta Burris could have begun by accepting the seat. Following his acceptance, Burris would announce that he has taken the seat despite the Governor's leaden touch, and he was accepting it as a place-holder and would not run for election in two years. 

In doing so, and assuming he found some way to cement people's trust that he would follow through on is promise, he could have reached his pinnacle position and perhaps even had the chance to leave his mark. And by bowing out in two years he would earn a measure of respect rare in this modern age.

Now, it's unlikely someone thinking along these lines would have landed on the Governor's radar. While Burris is roundly respected, his glaring ambition is unlikely to have lain quietly under a basket lo these many years. 

Yet, as a politician nearing the end of his career, what a coup he could have struck. Instead, Burris looks more a card-carrying member of a cynical, pay-for-play world of politics, the one Blagojevich typifies more than any other modern actor.

[This, of course, ignores the question of whether the appointment is legal or not. That will be left for the lawyers.]

- Murphy