Superb looking drama of Guadacanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the Peleui invasions by the responsible Hollywood duo of Spielberg and Hanks. The Pacific War against the Japanese is rich with doubts.  A burning Bunker Hill off Okinawa is the least of the irony.  The Imperial aggression was fed in 1905 by the TR imposed peace treaty that enslaved Korea to Tokyo and at the same time alienated Tokyo from both Washington and Petersburg. At war with the Triple Entente, Berlin invited Tokyo to its side during the First War, and the failed effort produced the strange alliance of Berlin and Tokyo predators in 1941. Why did we smash Japan? Because it attacked Pearl Harbor. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Because we cut off its commodities, especially oil, and threatened more? Why? Puzzle continues. The Pacific was a massively brutal and merciless war between two peoples who do not have anything in common and barely want what the other guy has. Sad, blunt ironies.  Iwo Jima and Okinawa proved little and destroyed many, and to what end?  The bombs which we used against helpless civilians after industrial mass murder with incendiaries in Tokyo.

From yesteryear, a clip from the 2004 John Edwards campaign, managed by media consultant David Axelrod. "The politics of hope" in the first draft for the Junior Senator from North Carolina. In 2006, Axelrod moved the hope trope to Deval Patrick's successful campaign in Massachusetts, and then in 2008, David Axelrod moved the hope trope to the successful candidacy of Senator Barrack Obama. Hope by any name is the same creative cynicism that moves partisans looking for a meaningless thrill in a national campaign. David Axelrod is the common theme, a pudgy, 1980 hirsute, parochial newspaperman who turned himself into a hope trope franchiser. Clever. Without a pay-off. Edwards is now a pariah. Patrick is helplessly disdained for re-election. POTUS Obama faces a Dien Bien Phu of policy with healthcare. The hope trope idles, like a Harry Potter spell, waiting for the new new thing.

Karl Rove's detailed and tedious explanation of the timeline on the Valerie Plame affair during the Bush years makes it is more clear than ever before that this was a witch hunt that amused the media and thrilled the lowly Democrats but that served no purpose of national security or civi order. It was gotcha, and from the first it was directed at the White House just because George Bush had won re-election and this bedeviled him. Rove's enemies were self-promoting partisans, and good for them (so is Rove); but to pretend there was anything but animal spirits and sniper fire is to pretend that Washington is modest about its obsessions. Witch hunts are diverting in a city of overpriced eateries and bad weather.

Speaking Greg Zuckerman, WSJ, on Wednesday 10P EST re the trouble in Greece and the euro, and how the lords of Europe have settled on blaming the speculators and bear raiders for the mess we're in. Actually, the mess they're in. The fun part is that they will now try to ban speculative credit default swaps, or CDSs, the genius derivatives that caused the small dust-up called the Panic of 2008. Memory serves that when the pols get to blaming the traders, or blaming the gods, and most especially blaming the big boss Zeus, we are getting back to the new normal of shakedowns, blame-shifts, NIMBY and bloviating. "Money goes where it is treated best" is the acorn that signifies. Ban the CDSs and you create conditions for another derivative creature to eat lunch under a new oak tree.

Meg Whitman continues to rewrite how to win votes and influence Jerry Brown by staging a presser in Jerry Brown's Oakland and then refusing to answer the predictably snarky and gossipy questions by the San Francisco media, such as, "How do you feel about . . .?" The strangeness of California politics is that a billionaire is running for a job that guarantees frustration and inadequacy -- and she describes herself as the "Un-Schwarzenegger."  The Sacramento legislature makes the Bolsheviks in Petersburg 1918 look decorous and rational. Meg Whitman, now tossing aside the game Steve Poizner, takes on the deeply ironic and unconvincing Jerry "Pull-Up" Brown. The GOP has the edge in the argument, as Brown represents the antique Democratic Party of 1980, and Meg Whitman may very well blunder into the job. What is worth watching from now on is how she treats the media. This may set a trend. Who is less popular -- the media or the pols or the Bolshies or . . .  ?

POTUS is standing pat with a script that cannot change from the SOTU, and he must pursue his healthcare neverland as if the ambition is a policy.  Same arguments; same disdain; same arranged crowd of well-wishers behind him; same inattention to the polls and the demoralized Democrats.  The best House whip count anyone can find this news cycle is fewer than 200. Financial Times political correspondent Anna Fifield tells me that the FT hears that Bart Stupak has 12 negative votes. I have not heard movement from the 37 Blue Dogs. Jason Altimire, a Democratic freshman of 4th Pennsylvania, was feted at the White House last week but is reported (by Salena Zito, Pittsburgh T-R) to be unmoved from his "No" vote. Spoke John Fund, WSJ, who continues to hear fewer than 200.  The March 18 date is likely to slip; and Anna Fifield mentions Easter break as the drop-dead date.  After that, the Tea Parties own the argument again.  The best case for POTUS is to get the bill signed and change the subject.  John Fund raises the scenario that the whip count will not move, and that when POTUS returns from Southeast Asia he will change the subject.  What healthcare?

Deep irony that the Obama administration can correctly claim that Iraq is a shining policy success for POTUS, who took time this news cycle to remind his fervent supporters among the progressives that he is continuing to withdraw American combat troops from the theater.  John Fund observed Sunday 7 that Iraq is a credit to the continuity of the Bush/Obama policy.  John Avlon observed that foreign policy wins POTUS high marks from the critical independent voters.  Still, it is unlikely that POTUS will travel to Iraq to celebrate this administration's deserved credit -- under a banner that dryly reads, "Mission accomplished."

What I've learned from several correspondents over the last two weeks is that the trouble with Greece is well understood and is a product of at least a decade of sham Eurozone manipulation of state budget deficits. The EU is 16 countries, up from the original 11 in '97-98; however they have all, save Germany, played accounting games since the first years in order to comply with an impossible mandate to keep annual deficits at 3% of GDP. The US is currently at 11%; Britain is near to same.  (No deeper irony than that the People's Republic of California is much a talking point in Athens as an example of a flagrant profligate.)  Only Germany has the moxie to live within its means and still make money. Germany is the dominator. Also part of the ongoing crisis is that Nicholas Sarkozy is running against IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn for the French presidency, and Strauss-Kahn is ahead in the polls. Therefore France keeps the IMF out of the center stage. The Greeks must now suffer for the other EU creative accountants, such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy -- and even France. What does this mean for the US? The smart guys have bet a ton that the euro goes down to parity with the US dollar. Spoke to Katherine Burton, Bloomberg, of a now most romantic and suspicious sit-down private dinner in Manhattan on February 8 in which 23 hedge fund gurus discussed shorting the euro. The US Justice Department now seeks answers from the 23 geniuses, and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde cries "speculators!" whenever she is asked about the falling euro. Delightful. Cry havoc. Next big bear bet is the yuan. And what does this do for the Obama administration? Nada. POTUS is sidelined with an obsession about healthcare. Nero fiddles. Lisbon, Madrid and Rome burn next. Berlin rules 65 years after the Soviets launched on Berlin.

Grand fun to report from Andy Pazstor, WSJ, and Bob Zimmerman, author, Universe in a Mirror, that the ground troops at NASA Big Space have joined up with the staffers on Capitol Hill on the Science and Technology posses to throw off the Obama administration ambition to close down the Constellation program, the shutte program, the Moon and Mars colonies planning. The Obama administration did not consult Congress and was handed its severed head when it tried to plead poverty and priority. Congress loves Big Space. NASA is Big Space. Michael Coats at Johnson Manned Space Center has now drawn up a plan B that will continue the Orion and Ares programs.  The coup is done.  NASA, ten years to the moon; Obama administration, zero.

Spoke to Taegan Goddard, Political Wire of CQ, re the scandal breaking late in the news cycle that Upstate New York Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) has announced his retirement based upon a whiff of scandal involving a male staffer and inappropriate language or intent.  Sexual harassment is the loud whisper.  Majority Leader Steny Hoyer commented by using the name "Mark Foley" in the tale.  Massa was elected in 2008 from the 29th CD along the Pennsylvania border in Western New York.  The district includes heavily Roman Catholic Reagan Democrats as well as a sizeable Republican voter base.  Commented an unnamed Democratic congressman (likely Steny Hoyer)  to the NY Daily News, "Massa just killed us."  I am told there is much more to this tale, including cover-up by the leadership.  Mention that Massa says that he is retiring.  He was a "No" vote for the first healthcare bill in the House, not because he is conservative, but because he wanted single-payer.  Am told he is likely to be a "Yes" vote now.  If he survives the scandal; if he can bear up under the Republican assault.  Replay the Mark Foley brouhaha of 2006.