Colleague Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal, measures the healthcare package on the Hill as troubled to mysterious. The month of August will be dominated by targetted advertisements to undermine support or to intimidate those who oppose the various packages. The public has tuned out. The market moved to a new high in 2009, finally recovered from the sell-off that started New Year's Day. The cash-for-clunkers program is such a hit that it already ran out of $1 billion in cash and will need more from the Hill.  What happens next is that the foreclosures in California and Florida will peak.  There is little or no patience for healthcare.  We did not get into trouble because of the uninsured or the under-insured.  The crisis atmosphere of the market plunge of March is gone with the winter.  Bull market back.  Obamacare on the shelf.

Colleague Simon Constable writes and performs a stealth satire of the beer party at the White House between POTUS and his captives. Both Professor Gates and Officer Crowley must be on best behavior for the second and perhaps not last time they will be unable to avoid each other.  POTUS fancies the role of Solomon Lite.  The Boston media has ratcheted up the event to resemble the opening game of a fantasy Series between the Sox and the Nationals.  Happily, Simon Constable finds a way to conduct a magical 2 minutes of vastly clever political commentary in the spacious and deluxe new corridor of the WSJ.  The whole WSJ operation is now more accurately the News Corp Journal, as it occupies several operatically rebuilt floors in the same building as Fox News and the You Bet Oz Rules Society.  To my knowledge, Simon is a sturdy, sober English journalist, though he did graduate St. Andrews, the highest concentration of funky, cozy pubs in Europe.  Cheers.

Fresh information from Tehran is that the usurper Ahmadinejad is consolidating power after the victory in Damascus. The Obama administration appeasement to the stooge Assad means that Tehran is now confident that its surrogates Hizballah and Hamas will also be appeased. This rings Israel and moves the flashpoint from the turmoil in Tehran to the imminent shooting war over the Golan. The resistance in Tehran is operating against the weight of UN inertness, Russian and Chinese intrigues, and American backstairs collaboration with the mullahs. In sum, the partisans of Iran are outnumbered, outgunned, cornered, and as fiercely illogical as every other partisan cause during the long ordeal to bring down tyranny.  The struggle for succession in Tehran, with the Supreme Leader dying and the mullahs in Qom divided, points to severe turmoil in a nuclear state with a  desperately self-destructive predator regime.  The sole weapon that works against the not insignificant probability of world war is partisan song-singing.  Neatly, the folk who can see this are themselves inadvertently ideological, overly read, romantical, unusually attractive young dreamers. Same as it ever was. 

The ubiquitous and delightfully hambone Bill Shatner provides a superb example on the O'Brien "Tonight Show" of how Sarah Palin has moved into the iconic landscape and looks more important to Hollywood than to Washington. The Alaska trope must have magical powers for it to appeal so deeply to the creatures who must ride around on the 5 and the 10. Is it a Sunset Boulevard fantasy vacation? I read the William F. Buckley delicious tale today that in 1964, when Buckley and other insiders were preparing to boost Barry Goldwater to the nomination, they met in secret session in Florida and planned how to separate the GOP right-wing from the John Birchers. The Bircher belief that flouridation of the water was sapping our national strength, more than the Bircher belief that Ike was a Communist agent, compelled the Goldwaterites they they must go forward without the deeply delusional Birchers vote. Shrewd decision.  The conservatives won the nomination, lost the election, shepherded Ronald Reagan, dominated 1981-1988, fostered a new generation unstained by the Birchers loonies.  At the time, they joked they should send all Birchers to Alaska.

Thaddeus McCotter demonstrates a sturdy coolness in support of his resolution to the House that POTUS be directed to apologize directly to a private citizen, in this case Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge Police, for hastily speaking negatively of Citizen Crowley's conduct during a POTUS policy presentation on 22 July and again during official POTUS remarks to the media on 24 July.  Simple enough formula. The heart of the matter is a Consitutional inquiry, "What is a POTUS and what is a private citizen?"    Also, Thaddeus McCotter tucks in the inarguable point that Congress is a separate and equal and perhaps premier branch of government -- the first article of the Constitution -- and that it is Congress's duty to respond to irregularities by the other two branches of government in Congress's opinion. A government of laws, not a government of big creatures such as POTUS. There are many shoes to fall in this centipede of dialogues. The so-called beer night at the White House, Thursday 30 July, is the next known theatrical turn when, as McCotter notes, POTUS will again have an opportunity to correct his unhelpful, self-restricting decisions.

Sarah Palin is a full-time candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012, free to raise money, travel and most importantly campaign for Republican candidates in the 2010 cycle. Also to give money from her imminently swollen PACs to other candidates. First business is for Mrs. Palin to complete her book and launch her book tour this fall. The book platform will send Mrs. Palin to all fifty states, if she wishes, and ensure financial security for her family. Also, Sarah Palin is a rock star in an age without rock stars under 60, and we can expect to see her on major news shows and entertainment shows indefinitely. Richard Nixon, after his 1960 disappointment, pursued the nomination for eight years until his victory in 1968. Same for John McCain after the defeat in 2000. Sarah Palin is a candidate for the Republican nomination easily till 2016, and she does not need to do more than cheer and smile through the next three cycles. Palin, with Potomac Fever, is now iconic on the American landscape for the next four or five or six decades.

Manuel Zelaya, well-known wandering Hugo Chavez stooge, staged a media frenzy on the Nicaraguan Honduran border last news cycle (above) that created more grins in five minutes than Hugo Chavez has enjoyed for weeks.   Zelaya best be mindful he doesn't more upstage his stooge-clown-shaman- jihad-friendly, needy, anti-American bloviator boss. The ten-gallon hat is the give-away. Zelaya feels bad and wears his crown to make the day go cocky. All Honduras is laughing at him except the clowns who are paid to cheer him. Paid by? Chavez. Recall Mary O'Grady's story last Sunday 19 that Chavez had called State's Latin Desk officer on a Friday night at 11:15 pm to complain and whine about Honduras being mean to his lackey Zelaya?  What Chavez discovered was that the Obama administration is as clueless to help him as it is to help itself.  State has now complained to Zelaya that stunting is not statecraft.  It is a guess that HRC has no patience for Zelaya's lament and introduced him to professional blowhard (Nobel Peace Prize winner) Arias of Costa Rica just to get rid of him.  Mary O'Grady will join again on Sunday 26 for an update on Presidente Bananas in his borrowed hotel room/official residence in Nicaragua.  Viva Honduras.

The Basiji are frightened of the night and do not come out to beat on the protesters. The police are overtaxed and distracted.   Each evening the young people gather at arranged spots, organized on cellphones just beforehand, and chant and sing.  Yes, it is too dark to see faces.  That is the point.  These are brave and reckless people. The regime is cracking. Khatami's call for a referendum is not trivial. The silence of POTUS is trite. Translation: "Sohrab, Peace upon you. Translation: after yare dabestani song, Down with dictator, Free speech, Brave neighbours support us, support us Last song is towards Khamneie"

Best Tehran resistance source sends me to this new clip on Youtube from the resistance. There are many groups in rebellion against the urusper Ahmadinejad, and no one group has te lead on media, leaks, tactics, massage. Tehran does more and more resemble Paris 1968, whcih I saw at first and used to come to a weak conclusion. DeGaulle managed the assembly elections soonafter dismissing the Cabinet, following the student protests in Paris, and then was able to demonstrate how he maintained support of all France. Ahmadinejad is not able to use Majlis, since it is already understood as made up of illegitimate stooges. The Islamic Republic hooey means that the Supreme Leader Khamenei is a spiritual thug (now hiding in a  secure location, same as his four doomed sons)  and can be held responsible for each and every Basiji crime. The burning Tehran street vehicles in the video (above) illustrate that the night belongs to the resistance, not the Basiji. The smoke and smell of the fires penetrate the city even more than the web, and the message is, resist.

Andy Jordan, WSJ, produces a horror story of Iceland after the financial crash. This cautionary grimness looks like California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida with glaciers. And the collapse of the Iceland krona currency describes the pending collapse of the collapse of the American dollar. When Dollarland becomes Iceland. I do not hear from my professionals that we can turn the ship of state soon enough to avoid sailing off the edge of the world. John Tamny routinely reminds me that the price of oil does not go up, the dollar sinks against other critical currensices, such as the Euor and the Yen and especially the Yuan (Renmimbi). The Bush adminstration was reckless, stupid, unteachable on the dollar, yet they look like cautious cronies compared to the Obama team. Source tells me that the future is very sound for Asian currencies, specially Japan and China, and it is not unrosy for the Euro. But buying in dollars will be rough. Iceland is our future, or our nightmare of a future, can't decide now.

Spoke Bob Zimmerman, author, "Universe in a Mirror," Sunday 19 on the 40th anniversary eve of the moon landing, and the likelihood of another American landing on the moon in the next two decades is slight to none. The prospect of an American led manned Mars mission is delusional. Even putting together US with Russia, Japan, India and China with the ESA lending weight does not identify a Mars base before 2050. The robot probes will continue because they are cheaper, surer and can be multi tasked with programs that attract quick results. A moon base near the South Pole is credible, yet a China moon base, perhaps a China base with the irony of a Japan co-development (irony plus) is imaginable. NASA is not now a credible player for 2020 and beyond.   The Obama administration is a NASA caretaker regime, a museum talkfest of what-ifs, and some spectacular bots like Kepler.

The sweetest remembered moment on this montage is when Walter Cronkite, whose death at 92 was announced within this news cycle, takes off his glasses to announce the Eagle has landed.  Later, "...Neil Armstrong, 38 year-old American, standing on the surface of the moon on this July 20th, Nineteen hundred and Sixty-Nine."   Walter Cronkite's death, coming at the 40th anniversary of the landing, underscores for me how much history has packed itself in the last four decades.   I was curious about what history was when I watched Walter Cronkite take off his glasses and react with glee and relief.  Now I take mine off and think, history is the part where something happens.   "Like the high desert of the United States.  It's different but it's very pretty out here..."   I do enjoy watching the lift-off from Earth, the lost magic of Saturn V,  and then from the moon in the LEM lifeboat: "Roger, understand we're number one on the runway."  Nice wit from Buzz Aldrin.

We were all much, much younger, July, 1969, and so many of us were not here yet, when we watched the black and white images again and again on CBS News with Walter Cronkite. I was spending the summer living on the Princeton campus, working in the Psychology Department on a very early computer program -- so ancient that it was written in punched cards that were to be fed into an underground center where an IBM computer complex took up thousands of square feet -- and my days were spent in frustration with the program. I never did solve it. I did hang out with the other boys at the old Princeton Tower Club. The moon landing was on a Sunday, I do believe, and we were very distracted. Someone had cooked up a vat of green vodka punch. Ghastly. The only news that we cared about at the time was how to get a ticket to this cool music festival coming up in August, someplace in upstate New York near Woodstock. Forty years. Nixon and Kissinger were starting the China deal. Bill Clinton was at Oxford. Hillary Rodham had just graduated Wellesley. Men on the moon. Maybe not again until I am in the Earth. Unless Nixon's China deal turns into a moon landing of Chinese astronauts.

Simon Constable, Dow Jones video star, sits with Liam Denning, WSJ, of the dynamic Heard on the Street team. These are sensible, long-term investor thinkers. Unlike the stock-picking flippers who loiter on CNBC for thirty-hour trades.  Liam Denning likes Ford because it avoided bankruptcy and has put money in its product line going forward (see Ford Airstream electric hydrogen).   I follow his advice happily.  F does need to build better machines.  If F tries Volvo for a bench mark, then Ford (which still owns Volvo) will prosper. Try GM as a bench mark, and Ford is poison. At 6 bucks you can lose 6 bucks. For those of you who understand hedging, you sell the January 11 in the money puts, such as the 25s, the 20s. It is cautious gambling, but easier than buying the stock now. I like Ford as a recovery story. Like the narrative. Just build Volvo-like cars, guys, and don't take the Obama administration's hand-outs.

Spotted this Reuters clip on the WSJ site, re a small Christian congregation on Taiwan that is holding a candlelight vigil for the victims of the turmoil in Xinjiang (East Turkistan is the proper name for the independent republic that was invaded and crushed by Mao). This is a clever video to put out worldwide. It is agitprop from the cagey, capitalist democracy of Taiwan, yes, and aimed directly at the unelected Beijing cadre. My professionals on Sunday 12 pointed to the weakness at the Politburo level of the CCP. When the Emperor speaks with two voices (Hu faction, Wen faction, PLA faction, Wannabee faction), the Emperor is weak. Taipei knows the Emperor is weak. So does Lhasa. So does Urumqi. So does Hong Kong. This Emperor (the Politburo) lacks legitimacy. Weaker still. What is holding the Emperor up right now is the obesiance of the G8, especially the Obama administration. We fear what the Emperor can do to the dollar if the Emperor turns from Treasury. The Emperor is weak. Why fear?

The most threatening report on the Urumqi crisis that I heard Sunday 12 was from Nury Turkel, former direction of Uyghur American Association, from Washington, who told me that he had not been able to reach his parents in Kashgar for six days. This means that telephone communication with Xinjiang (East Turkistan) is down on purpose, and that it is not just Urumqi that is cut off by the party boss Wang. This resembles the way the Beijing cadre cut off Lhasa and all of Tibet after the Lhasa uprising in winter 2008. It points to the likelihood that there are extreme measures coming against the Uyghur people. PM Erdogan of Turkey called the Beijing actions in Urumqi "genocide."  The police and military presence in Urumqi is said to be dominating.  Thousands are in jail.  I asked my professional panel if the Han Chinese men pictured with clubs in their hands on the street in last week's Reuters video would be arrested.  No one could be certain.  Watching for reports.

Spoke Sunday 12 with Johnny Rico, author, "Border Crossers: One Gringo's Illicit Passage from Mexico into America," re his journeys back and forth along the US/Mexico border in an exploration of immigration and its discontents.  What I learned is that the Mexican border in Arizona and New Mexico has become an open crime wave for the so-called cartels of drug smugglers and druglord outlaws who profit from American addictions.  The US has a major problem with the Mexican and Central American immigrants who forced their way across the border.  But Mexico has a problem with the fact that the US consumer feeds the Mexican gangsters.  The Mexican Army is fighting  a civil war.  The Border Patrol is fighting a civil war.  Same war.  Whose losing?  And what is the Obama administration response to this unhappiness down Mexico way?  Nada.

Bananas Split comedy continues with the Hugo Chavez stooge Manuel Zelaya rushing about making speeches on TV about how criminals have tossed him out of his beleaguered Honduras. Those criminals turn out to have acted with measured collegiality and with a deal of constitutional sobriety. Robert Micheletti, the acting president in Tegulcigapas, is confidently insisting that, if and when Zelaya returns, he will be arrested as a pompous criminal. Zelaya failed to land his plane at his former capital last Sunday and no longer receives serious attention. After POTUS stumbled the first hours by claiming the flapdoodle was a "coup," the White House has been silent. State saved POTUS's face by handing off the negotiation to the heroic blowhard Arias of Costa Rica.  No result after a week of fat-chewing. Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, a ringing voice of liberty on the Honduran crisis since the start, will join me Sunday 12 to update the shenanigans.

Another of the compelling Twilight Zone political dramas, Season One, Episode 22, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," from Spring, 1960, and it stands the test of time for how political paranoia works on a neighborhood of the like-minded. The commonplace people of Maple Street see a meteor flash overhead; all the electricity goes out; a small boy tells the story of how the monsters landed just like this; and soon everyone suspects everyone else as being the invaders. Glorious. "I know who the monster is!" shouts the accused. And then the leap of faith into total hysteria and the twist. The question is, how does this not carefully describe the wireless national security state we live in with an affection for gold, survivalism, scapegoating, alien-mongering and fear of Dick Cheney.

Sunday 12 will speak to many voices re the rising of the oppressed and ransacked Uyghurs of East Turkistan (China calls it Xinjiang), such as Nury Turkel, former director Uyghur American Association now director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, a colleague of Rebiya Kadeer in Washington.   Also Leslie Hook, Asia Wall Street Journal, at Hong Kong, re the politics of the suppression of the Ughurs a year after the suppression of the Tibetans in Lhasa.  The Uyghurs are 45% of the Xinjiang population, while the Han Chinese are only 40, very different than in Tibet where the Han overwhelm the Tibetans.   Will call B. Raman, Indian Intelligence, at Chennai, re the crisis in the CCP, and why panicky Hu rushed home form the G8 (loss of face) to Beijing.  Rivalry in unelected leadership cadre?   Also will speak to Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, who was in Urumqi during and after the riots.  Mary Kissel, Asia Wall Street Journal, will comment on China, on Indonesia, and the sluggish attention to the critical East Asia by Obama administration.

Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, embeds this wondrously pretentious video from South Waziristan in Bill's rich resource of Long War Journal, showing the Jihad lads chanting and churning in the summer dust, with live-fire demonstrations of their prowess fighting the Martians or whoever else shows up.  What did show up at this rudimentary training camp (needs a clubhouse, a screening room), called Karwan Manza, was a flight of Predators.  Wildly inexact reports of casualty numbers, perhaps 8, perhaps 8 million.  Back in Vietnam they called this kind of military after-battle report SWAG, for Stupid Wild Ass Guess.  Am gathering an AfPakia Roundable Panel on Sunday 12, with Bill Roggio, Ann Marlowe, who is on her way back to Afghanistan for an embed, Larry Johnson, No Quarter, and Nicholas Schmidle, author, who was thrown out of Pakistan back in 2008 for asking the right questions and who is a fertile Pakistan commentator now, with his new book on his experiences in Karachi, Peshawar, with the ironic Pashtuns, in the Northwest Territories, To Live or Perish Forever.

Spoke Sunday 5 with Yukari Itawani Kane, Wall Street Journal-- who produced the happy (above) video vignette on a Proto IBillionaire --  re the wonderful world of Apple that has become, early in the century, a cult, the Icult. I am a hearty consumer of Apple products plus the ITunes monster is always with me.   The new IPhone contains the open secret for the future of publishing, the App. Colleague Craig Unger, Vanity Fair, is moving to become an App publisher.  (Think of Charles Dickens as an App, and consider releases of chapters of "Hard Times" for $.99 per month as publishing.)  Unger joined Yukari Itawani Kane to comment on the astonishing behemoth potential of the Apple App store.

Mention that IPhones and Macs are not readily available on Mainland China.  Why this is significant is that, according to colleague Leslie Hook, Asia Wall Street Journal, the Beijing digital censors working to shutdown web access to the billion consumers in China are so flummoxed by the holes in their (allegedly pirated) Green Dam Youth Escort software for PCs that they are not even ready to dream about how to block Apple software.  The IPhone is the perfect tool to subvert the Beijing bully boy cadre and their shabby Battle Star of Shopworn, Disgraced, Grotesque and Stupid 20th Century Communism.  The IPhone is like a secret radio in Occupied France of the Mind, or right for the genuine Sons of Liberty on the run in Occupied Tibet and Xinjiang.  No statement from POTUS in support of rebels for freedom required (none expected).

The Uyghurs of East Turkistan have launched a wave of protest against the bullying, greedy, ineffective Beijing leadership, this time in the East Turkistan (called by the Beijing cadre Xinjiang Province) capital of Urumqi.   Over the last year, we have reported a deal on the Uyghur protests and the Uyghur yearning for liberty. Uyghurs in exile are based out of Washington with Rebiya Kadeer.   The Beijing cadre is blaming the Washington based group for the riots. We expect to speak to correspondents at Urumqi on Sunday 12, and we aim to open show with voices from the Washington Uyghurs. This is a profound threat to the unelected leadership in Beijing, because it encourages the other dissident groups in the Chinese empire, such as Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Falun Dafa and the democratic advocates.  Tibet liberty was crushed last year.  Expect the same brutality in East Turkistan.  Bejing is losing control of the narrative.  It may be the financial turmoil; it may be the bald courage of those who demand democracy and freedom.  Do we expect to hear a statement from the Obama administration in support of the valorous, resourceful Uyghurs?  Shrug.

At week's end, Beijing speaks up and rejects the carbon tax based tariffs included in the House version of the cap and trade bill passed on Friday 26. Beijing points correctly to the fact that the tax is a WTO illegal international trade restriction.  "It has always been China's position that the international society should fight climate change together, but..."  What happens next is the graybeards in the U.S. Senate explore the irony that the unelected crony leadership in Beijing is more common sensical than the Obama administration on the policy of climate change.  Meanwhile, also in the category of ya-can't-make-this-stuff-up, the Kim regime releases a beer commercial on Pyongyang TV (above).   This is for stress management while the rocketeers light up the Korean peninsula with Scuds.  Speaking Sunday 5 to my North Korean panel, Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, Mary Kissel, Asia Wall Street Journal at Hong Kong, and Evan Ramstad, Wall Street Journal at Seoul.  So far, Team Obama responds with plans for more multi-national consultations on the sorry, beer-soaked frat boys around the wine-sipping Kim.

There are consistent reports of the continuing resistance of the Honduras Supreme Court to the demands of the OAS and the Obama administration to restore the disgraced stooge Manuel Zelaya. The OAS issued an ultimatum for Saturday July 4. On Sunday 5, the OAS claims its director Miguel Insulza will escort Zelaya back to Tegulisigapla. The new interim President Roberto Micheletti asserts that he will serve arrest papers on Zelaya when and if he comes into the country. Meantime, POTUS is silent after his first reaction to insist upon Zelaya be restored. The Michael Jackson news helped Honduras get through the week without much attention, and now the Palin excitement will dominate the news cycle through the weekend. There is no evidence that the Honduras apparatus intends to climb down from its certainty that Zelaya is an outlaw.  Hugo Chavez, Zelaya's sponsor, does not have a Plan B.  Nor does POTUS.  I will speak to old Central America hand Larry Johnson, No Quarter, for an update on Honduras on Sunday 5, and I expect no change.

Intrigue swirls around Sarah Palin's sudden resignation.  CNN and FOX go wall-to-wall Palin after days of Jackson mania.  Theories include graft scandal with family manse, quitting politics altogether, presidential boondoggle, even a TV reality show.  My first and last guess is always to follow the money.   The melodrama is vintage TR and Huey Long.  Palin is the biggest footprint in American politics (Bigfoot excluded).  Mitt Romney, call your planners and bankers.  POTUS listens closely.  What next, Sarah?  The book tour!  Jim Carlton, Wall Street Journal, will be in Alaska on Sunday 5, and we will have fun with the rumor mill.

Above a time line from 2000-2009 showing North Pole sea ice advancing and retreating with the seasons. Nothing remarkable. In the winter months, the ice cap is huge and thick; in the summer months, it is small and thin. This is a recreation by Germans: Satellite Observation of Arctic Sea Ice Concentration, Sensor: SSM/I 85 GHz. Visualized on the visualization server of the German Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) by Carmen Ulmen/Klima Campus Hamburg.   Puzzling. Perhaps it is necessary to recreate several hundred years of Arctic sea ice concentration. It is not immediately reassuring to see no discernible change in the northern sea ice cycle that would seem logically to be the most immediately affected by the CO2 belching North America and its sister polluters in East Asia and Northern Europe. Colleague Marc Morano, Climate Depot, continues to pepper me with links to statements by men of science who have deep doubts about the assumptions supporting the climate change Waxman-Markey bill in the House.  The only reliable posture may be to stand by dubiously at the Obama administration claims of catastrophe.  Perhaps it will come.  Not yet.

Colleague Bob Zimmerman sighs at this so-called Shannon plan (by NASA shuttle program director John Shannon and team) to build a cheaper version of a manned moon landing system to go back to the moon in the 20s.  Bob Zimmerman writes that it is a rehash of the shuttle program and is a start-over of the whole project after $8 billion has already been spent on developing the Ares rocket and Orion capsule combination for the moon mission.   Bob Zimmerman frets with savvy that the Obama administration is seeking to slow down the manned moon mission to the point of aimlessness.  Also, Bob Zimmerman reasons that the Shannon plan is low-balling the Shuttle II at $6.6 billion.  There is an artless lack of vigor in the way the Obama administration has treated NASA (vividly in its indifference to the skillful NASA boss Mike Griffin) that points back to the candidate's original indifference to the whole program, from manned to robot to long term development.  Bluntly, there is some evidence that, though candiate Obama talked of endorsing and empowering science, his first overall science budget is barely changed from the Bush administration's last.  The excuse is the financial crisis.  NASA is strangling.  Yet that was $1 trillion stimulus package passed last March.  Is POTUS blind to the Moon Base?