The Canada Hockey Team vs. Canada Hockey Cult closing contest at the Vancouver Olympics on Sunday 28, with the USA team was allowed on the ice as a designated loser, is a treat to anticipate and a smile when it is done. Reed Albergotti, WSJ, has told me several times over the last two weeks that he fears for his life if Canada loses. The Canada hockey cult includes suicides, berserkers, mystics and a collective trance state. One country breathes as one mesmerized worshipper until Canada delivers the gold on home ice. All other metrics for Canada must wait -- the strong loonie, the booming natural resource economy, the cautious and sound banking system, the assertive wonderland of Nunavut, all must wait for that third period horn and Canada wins. Final score? Canada Hockey Team 5, Canada Hockey Cult 14,000,000. USA nowhere. Unless? Nah. Too awful to imagine, and Reed Albergotti must escape with his wits, and the destined Martin Brodeur must join the gods on Olympus. 

POTUS unloads the first of the Chicago mob with the sudden and unimportant departure of the clotheshorse and media star Desiree Rogers, who has managed to transform White House social secretary into a national security post by refusing to testify to Congress because of executive privilege. Hilarious. Rogers's departure follows her inability and unwillingness to explain the crashing boors and Vegas barflies, the Salahis. Why did Rogers go now? No one cares. The critical question is if the other Chicago groupies follow.  Adriel Bettelheim, CQ, reminds that Rogers has limited employment opportunity in Washington because of the mother-may-I rules of the Obama administration about lobbying after a White House job.  

Eric Cantor stunted the 2,400-page document, and POTUS scolded him for using a prop. Not consequential except for the detail that these two are the same age. This is showmanship. Cantor did use a prop. POTUS did show temper and a kind of maternal imperiousness. Peculiar behavior by both and fairly far from mature. It would look right at a UN face-off, the US stunting, the Russians stunting, everyone listening in on translation.  Back to the future with RX?  The Cold War, POTUS vs Congress.  Now we go to nukes.

What is especially creepy about the appearance of the Youngs on Oprah is that it was the Edwards campaign that blocked Hillary Clinton in Iowa and made room for the boom of Barack Obama.  Young made it possible for the phony John Edwards and the shrew Mrs. Edwards to fake their electability.  The Youngs are self-destructive fools.  Oprah was not a bystander.  Oprah pushed a lightweight unknown with attitude and a smile who was in the right place at the right time for the house to fall on him.  The gimmick in the machine was the the vulgarian Edwards, who disgraced himself in public with an unearned sense of destiny. 

The cranky youth Robert Gibbs struggled and failed to explain the extravagant concoction of the Obamacare posting on the White House website. The Democratic caucus is less organized on Day 2 of the posting than  Day 1. The Republican leadership is confused and lame and cowardly (why attend anything that is run by the Democrats for the Democrats?) but that ist not the issue this time. The Democrats are at each other's throats. Healthcare is the Titanic. No lifeboats left to launch as the White House has already filled them up.

FNC personality and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee represents no one and speaks a pleasant drawl that suits a GM dealer or a school superintendent from 1967. CPAC is libertarian? Nope. It is college boys and their former adult supervisors. No one is credible in Washington or on TV. The alienation is pointing to a future where they will hold an election and no one will pay mind. Washington now holds two parties who compete for our attention with facile or aimless clowning and blame-shifting. Huckabee is perfect. Doesn't even need a red nose.  He's talking, but there are no words.  

The creative zombie Newt Gingrich speaks predictably, condescendingly, woozily, at the fraternity bake-off called CPAC. Gingrich uses the words "left," "socialist," "destructive," "American values," as if he is trying to remember how to get the attention of the unwashed.  Gingrich is a mossy statue talking about the days when he was a wannabee statue.  One explanation for why the Republican Party cannot recover.  ". . . we are now in a struggle over whether or not we are going to save America . . . I believe the most decisive way to defeat this secular socialist machine is to slow the debate down . . ."  Incoherent, delusional, unconvincing, harmless, impotent.  More inspiration from the Living Dead GOP, rehearsing for a new-built wax museum annex.

Tim Burton's version of "Alice in Wonderland," with the ubiquitous and threatening Johnny Depp, looks smart and perhaps even the desired edgy.  Our children will adore it, though it looks way too scary for anyone under 11, and the parents will enjoy the self-mocking wit of the Red Queen (another Burton cast regular, Bonham-Carter). What I have here is the trailer, and I already like the unintended juxtaposition between the Red Queen's plush imperial whimsy (somewhere between the Wicked Witch of the East and Sauron) and the buttery and  trite Disney castle in the logo. The facts are that that Disney castle is a product of a sentimental, stupid-making longing for royalty that is gone with the 20th Century. Today we know what to make of kingship. We know to keep the frail throne of democracy ever evolving by using the trusted irony weapon on the current sitting monarch. Perhaps the Burton script borrows much from Oz, perhaps much from Snow White, perhaps too much from Burton, but the edginess is in the timing. What will the American imperial over-reach look to be when "Wonderland" hits the theaters in the Spring 2010? Will Alice best the Red Queen? Do we want the Red Queen to win?  Who is the Red Queen?  Hint?  Initials?  H.?  And who is Alice?  Hint? 

 

HH the Dalai Lama was at the White House to share his thoughts on the Tibetan people and to pause to play in the snow banks. The meeting was perfunctory for POTUS. The lost opportunity of the White House meeting with HH last fall is not easily recovered. The Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a twisted and ambiguous threat in response: "The US grossly violated the norms governing international relations and ... went against the repeated commitments by the US government that it recognises Tibet as part of China." What POTUS appeasement purchased was weakness. Beijing will now retaliate.  POTUS will quibble.

  

His Holiness the Dalai Lama meets POTUS Obama in the Roosevelt Room at the White House these hours, and the Standing Committee of the Politburo in Beijing loses face by the hour as well. Spoke Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, on Wed 17, re the delayed meeting between the Dalai Lama and POTUS. Gordon asserts that China will retaliate or risk losing face for the threats it has made these last weeks -- warning the White House to shun the Dalai Lama.  His Holiness is a secret weapon.  Where he goes, goes freedom of thought.  That the Beijing bullies cannot stop him or frighten him or cage him is a measure of their weakness and frail purchase on current events.  POTUS erred badly when he did not meet the Dalai Lama last fall prior to his hasty, incoherent, obsequious and mediocre visit to mainland China.  POTUS now must correct his error by standing up to Beijing's truculence.  Bending to tyrants makes them stronger.  Confronting tyrants weakens them.  POTUS George Bush understood.  POTUS Bill Clinton understood.  Lesson learned from the secret weapon in the Roosevelt Room.

Spoke Ianthe Jeanne Dugan, WSJ, at Port-au-Prince for her second visit, and she reported that the conditions remain primitive and fragile for the survivors. The rains are coming. The survivors cast their eyes at the thunderstorm clouds to sea and worry for the downpours they know are coming as soon as April. There is no substantial or organized tent city yet. There is no sign of major construction for the shelters that will be necessary when the rains create rivers of mud.  Dugan reported the missionaries released -- she was at the media mob scene -- though this story changes nothing for the survivors. There is a rudimentary program that will band together apparel manufacturers such as Gap to produce clothing in rebuilt factories. Ianthe Jeanne Dugan reports that the faces are brighter and happier, not gloomy and dire as in January -- the perpetual cheerfulness of the Haitian people. Still, the rains approach, and the mud seas, and there must be action to cobble together living conditions for hundreds of thousands who yet live in the open -- under tarps or plastic or whatever is at hand.

Jeff Bliss, BlissIndex, tells me that the Demo ops of California are despairing of the huge advantage Meg Whitman enjoys in California campaigning with her cash and personality for governor, and so the Dem ops have hired a plan to follow Meg Whitman by small plane as she drives home. The plane trails a banner that taunts Meg Whitman for not talking to nurses. This is a union ploy, based upon the detail that Meg Whitman does not often give press avails (much like POTUS Obama). The other concern for the Democrats is that Jerry Brown, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor, behaves so casually, aimlessly, that he is not much competition for 21st Century tactics.  This all hurts Barbara Boxer in the Senate race, because Democratic women, who disdain Jerry Brown's strangeness, are not going to vote at all -- which will cut into Boxer's female voter base in November.  The Bluest California is going deep purple.  The last shall be first; the Sacramento wolf will party with demon sheep.

Spoke John Fund, WSJ, and Salena Zito, PTR, on Monday 15, and they were clear that the Evan Bayh announcement was the start of a trend, not the end of one, as the Red State Democrats flee Congress and their own majorities in the Senate and the House.  Target Purple.  POTUS Obama has created climate change in Washington that is so dangerous to his own party that experienced, cocky, well-financed pols will not risk re-election even with their polls well ahead of challengers.  John Nichols, Nation, argues that the Democrats do not need 60 votes in the Senate, just 50 plus in Blue States, with a definite profile for the majority -- a common purpose for legislation rather than the sausage-making of today.  What is coming is a wave that will sweep like a tsunami.  New polls show Barbara Boxer in danger, and if Boxer can be beaten by a novice (Carly Demon Sheep Fiorina) in the Blue California, then there is no safe seat.  Target Blue?

 

The extravagantly premature and positive claims for Operation Moshtarak (Together) in Helmand Province are neither convincing nor worth debating.  Again, who is the audience for this demonstration of insincere cheerfulness alongside the Hamid Karzai appointed stooges?  The clue that all is not credible is the governor of Helmand Province, seated beside the American op in the tie.  I can hear the State Department memos, the AID power point, the cash transfers back in Kabul.  The opium trade in Helmand does not work unless Kandahar and Kabul are paid.  Now ISAF proposes to reduce the cash crop by scattering the Taliban guards and intimidating the farmers.  Fairy tales.  We could transfer every family in Helmand to Hawaii and replace them with actors and still the Karzai mob would find a way to their cut.   ISAF is in league with the wrong gangsters.  The Chinese have moved into Islamabad to control the pipeline route from Iran.  The Pashtuns work for their opium contacts in Quetta and Karachi.   The American military is way outside the wire, wandering around in the backyard of Chinese adventurism.  There is a way to survive this maelstrom in Central Asia.  The first smart move is to back off and reinforce India.  Instead, we are walking into video for the enemy.  Who is the enemy?  That is a fresh problem.  Too many to count.

The charm of this Old Blighty vignette about an algorithm that learns how you speak and anticipates what words you need for your texted message is not the gimmick itself, since that is fleeting, soon to be replaced by an algorithm that will write without you so you can respond to the environment that you need or should need (your week reduced to mandated scenarios); the charm is the four young people gathered around the chat chairs with their cheerful fascination for the new new new communication trick.  You cab sell these kids anything that's new new new and empowering. The ultimate toy will be the virtual friend that (who?) does all the stuff we don't care for and then runs our guest list when we want to sit out the segment.  Mention that an algorithm that can write ahead of your thinking is a mechanical explanation of the Obama administration.  These guys and gals inside the White House are slooooooowwww.  Trusted RBO sends me a note that Robert Gibbs is just now starting to use Twitter.  He is the Press Secretary?  "Press."  What "Press?"  Speaking soon to Robert McChesney and John Nichols, authors, "The Death and Life of American Journalism," re their proposal to make the media a subsidized colleague of the Federal Government.  You are surprised to learn that it is not now a colleague?  Only print journalism, and that in form of postal rates, tax breaks for the rich, and a four-year review of access by each new administration.  It is the digital media that seeks subsidies.  Laughing too hard?  Would I read what I write if I was paid by the Feds to write?  Nope.  Would Gibbs take money for his Twitter posts?  Yep.  Still, the new App (above) is desireable.  Gibbs can begin a media avail by saying a word such as, "Rosencranz."  All the rest would be obvious and would print out to our IPhones if we care to read it.  Then Chuck Todd and John King and Jake Tapper can begin their every ten minute report to the rapt TV audience of shut-ins and hired media spies by saying one word, "Yorick."  All the rest would be obvious to our IPhones and would print out if we care to read it.  We could all go back to work, having heard out their meaty disputations; and if we care to reply, we say back, "Fin."  I like it.  No less cogent than the present regime of the obvious questioned by the obligated and then repeated to the oblivious.  

Another healthcare vote gone from the House. Patrick Kennedy quits the quarrelsome House, and Nancy Pelosi has another expensive race to fight -- this time in Rhode Island, where a Republican candidate is well-financed and well-known.  The Republican retirement announcements, such as Lincoln Diaz-Bialart of Florida, appear less likely to create volatility.  It is a math of the two-party system that creates opportunity.  Mrs. Pelosi has a vast amount of territory to defend and a weak hand at the White House.  Spoke to Peter Brown, Quinnipiac Polling, on Thursday 11, and he reports that the number of respondents who think the Feds do the right thing almost all of the time is 2%.  Some of the time is only 16%.  The disapproval numbers of the Democrats and Republicans are also unhappy for Mrs. Pelosi, as the Democrats are now as unpopular as the GOP.  The only number that matters is the jobless number.  Between now an election day, there is minimal chance of the monthly number improving below 95, and it can easily climb again into the 10% and above number (the BLS survey is a gross guessing game of sixty thousand households, and it misses those who quit looking for work).  The picture doesn't get happier for Mrs. Pelosi now that Harry Reid is said to have drowned the bi-partisan jobs bill deal.  More quarrels is Snow City.  David Drucker, Roll Call, tells me Thursday 11 that the Democratic Senate Staff is preparing Plan B of a reconciliation concoction even as POTUS Obama waves the peace sign for his February 25 televised healthcare summit with the GOP.

There goes Joe Biden on his screenplay for the next terror attack. "Frightening."  "...or someone strappin' a backpack on them with explosives that are indigeneous..."   Would that be a backpack nuke weapon?  Indigenous?  Just as the White House is tongue-lashing the GOP ops, Bond and King, who challenge it's clumsy and tardy handling of Abdulmutallab, the VPOTUS decies it is time to warn America that the beasties who go bump int he night are coming. What is this strategy?  Deny, deny, understate, mumble, deny, withhold, mutter -- and then get Joe Biden to go bug-eyed with Larry King and scare those who have dozed off because John Brennan and POTUS and Biden are in charge of the nightwatch?

It is unacceptable that the Federal government has taken six days off in a row so far (no working on the weekend to make up for lost Fridays!) and that the staff and contractors are getting paid for their MIA. Would I get paid if I do no broadcast? Would you get paid if you did not make a sale or write a chapter or contact a customer? FNC estimates this all costs $100 m per day in loss productivity.  Even cut the number in half for the exuberance of a gnome, it is still, unacceptable.  Work must happen. The Federal workforce is overstaffed by as much as eighty percent. There are over a 1000 people at the White House.  Why?  Folly to pay them at all, but for six days of non-work? Why? Get to work and stay there or don't get paid. Fear of failure and poverty are adequate motivators. So is no cash for cigarettes and hash.  Outsource.  Telecommute.  Move the Treasury to Oahu to be closer to the bonds in Shanghai. Let the DC shirkers go get a real job in this job market.  Why are the Federals in Washington?  Because that's where they get paid for snow days.  Shrug.

Climate Hucksters.  

Science fiction theater opens in Washington when the peculiar posse in favor of the silly and meaningless cap and trade bill gather round the Senate to find votes for passage sometime before the next global ice age.  Hilarious. There is no science to support the loony conclusion in this video.  CO2 is a small part of greenhouse gases. There is no agreed upon peer-reviewed evidence of warming. Climate change is trendy propaganda, since there is always climate change, always has been. (Venice was a swamp, once upon a time; Britain was a peninsula of France, once upon a time.)  The Senate is earnest ignorance on climate.  Phil Jones threatens suicide for his despair.  James Hansen is a paranoid.  The IPCC is junk science, bad research, sloppy hucksterism, lazy glamor.  Game on for cap and trade.   A snowstorm in Washington prevents the Senate from starting debate in committee.  Deeply strange that this is now a national mania. 

Frosty the GOP.    

The snow that struck the Chesapeake River Valley is said to be the worst storm in 90 years. A perfectly dark storm for the easy, anxious, dreary metaphors at the D.C. Hilton on Saturday 6 where POTUS addressed the DNC: "Sometimes it may be against a blizzard, but we're going to live up to our responsibility to lead."  The DNC leadership is for clearing access to the exits.  The party is correct to be frightened. This is what George Bush looked like to the GOP in the winter of 2006 -- right after Tom Delay skeedaddled because of his Abramoff issues and the Al Quds force launched another version of the Shia civil war in Iraq. With POTUS, the Iraqi defeat analogy is the healthcare defeat and all the other legislation that he made his private vendetta against the Republicans and those villains who he calls "the lobbyists."   Shelby's gleeful blanket hold on nominees matched the three feet of snow with drifts outside. Capitol Hill is (once again) not functional, and the GOP has chosen to imitate snowmen and wait for springtime. When Frosty the GOP fades, the Republican recruiting will redouble and the Democratic retirements will accelerate. The only promise to the tearful DNC from the White House is that it might try a reconciliation trick with healthcare. This is difficult to believe.  Such a creative parliamentary maneuver by the Democratic majority would turn the 335 Democratic members of Congress into 335 Jack Nicolsons sitting in a maze in the 90-year storm of the Shining. 

Powerless, lackadaisical, aimless remarks by POTUS re the jobless report Friday 5. What is the "hot air" remark? POTUS tries defensive sarcasm at half-speed. And the claims that losing 22k jobs (January estimate) compares well to the losing of 800k jobs last January 2009 is both cynical and ignorant. The long term jobless stats (below) are discouraging and ominous. The confused media reporting of a jobless rate that appears to improve to 9.7% while the month shows a loss of jobs does not help the day's summary.  The economy is glum.  POTUS has been told by Axelrod that there is a storm building in the Democratic majority.  The professional campaign ops are telling their candidates to hold on.  What is the pay-off?  Have Axelrod and POTUS decided to throw the Democratic majorities under the bus?  Have they decided that POTUS improves as a candidate if he is running for re-election against a Republican House and a comatose and Harry-Reidless Senate?  Does POTUS welcome the victim of the villainous GOP scenario?  Strange, listless performance by POTUS on the weekend of the exuberant Tea Party Convention -- the After Obamatantion -- in Memphis.  Speaking to John Avlon, author, "Wingnuts," on Sunday 7, re the energy of the Tea Party.  Eight million jobless creates the energy for creative politics.  Who is Huey Long?  Who is Wendell Willkie?  Where is Fala?

Dragon's Teeth.  

Rahm Emanuel is reportedly apologizing for his abusiveness toward the disabled. This ceremony of false contrition by a creative lout is off-center of the problem; but it is instructive as to how poorly focused the White House has become since the Scott Brown win on January 19. Spoke to Ed Luce, FT, on Thursday 4, and he told me that Jarrett, Axelrod, Briggs are the inner circle with Rahm Emanuel. Of the four, only Emanuel was not the campaign. JArrett is head of the cult; Axelrod is head of the brand; Briggs is head of the spin; Rahm Emanuel is head of vulgarity. Emanuel is also a Washington insider who boasted to the Chicago team that he could deliver. As healthcare, cap and trade, financial regs, and now the jobs bill stagger and weaken, so too Rahm Emanuel. My best information is that Rahm Emanuel is less and less useful in the White House. The expectation is a replacement. The name used consistently is Tom Daschle. Going when?  I learned this evening that 5th and 10th Massachusetts are in play.  The Democrats are bleeding confidence and cash.  Why?  Rahm Emanuel is part of the problem, and his departure is part of the solution.  As for Rahm Emanuel, the remark I like best from a trusted informant, "He sows dragon's teeth."

Dominate.  

The Carly Fiorina team in California puts up the scene stealing video of the young campaign season, which the Fiorina team called FCINO, for Fiscally Conservative In Name Only, but which Joe Garofoli, SF Chronicle, dubs "Demon Sheep." It is humblingly funny, and it goes on for more than three minutes.  The sheep dominate.  Tom Campbell will not ever have a better three minutes, and, by the close, the resemblance is demonic.

1815 Again.  

Spoke February 2 to Pakistani Progressive and London pundit Dilip Hiro, author, "After Empire," re what he regards as a multi-polar world of the 21st century in which there are no superpowers who can stand alone, no contest between East and West or North and South. Instead Dilip Hiro argues we now enter into the strategic alliances of the 19th century, called balance of power.  The most memorable and useful quote is Lord Palmerston, re his British foreign policy: "Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests."  The Quadrennial Report coming from the DoD soon will present the case that the US must prepare for guerilla war fighting, not continental set-pieces.  In keeping, the US will fight these conflicts in alliance with other states that share immediate interests and do not share our values or our ambitions.  Balance of power will persuade adversaries to negotiate or climb down from confrontations, or so goes the theory.  Soon, there will be Triple Ententes and proxy wars and eventually adventurism.  Start the rewind to Metternich's Congress of Vienna, 1815.  Who is Napoleon III?  Who is Bismarck?  And what side will Europe and its pal the Whispering Demon take in the coming civil war in Asia? 

Spoke Charlie Pellegrino, author, "Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivor's Look Back," February 1 re the Amazon blacklisting of Macmillan books (Including his book) from Friday January 28 in a dispute between Amazon and its Kindle, on one hand, and Apple and its IPad on the other.  Learned that Amazon claims it has climbed down as of noon Sunday 31.  However, Charlie Pellegrino's book is not available from Amazon as of this writing.  Jeff Bezos and Amazon execs have disgraced themselves and wrecked the business model of a transparent and honest marketplace.  Punishing random arbitrary authors in order to threaten and intimidate New York and all publishing is folly.  Worse, it won't work.  The blacklisting continues.  Is Charlie Pellegrino being punished specially because he has come on radio to speak to me on this blacklisting on Saturday 30 January, Sunday 31 January, and Monday 1 February?  Unknown.  Also, Charlie Pellegrino tells me that the Kindle has major piracy vulnerabilities that are unsolved and unmentioned.  And that the iPad looks secure so far.  What is striking is that Amazon fears the iPad and Apple despite the fact that Apple will let publishers set the price for ebooks (likely $12.99 to $14.99) rather than have Amazon dictate the price at $9.99.  Amazon claims it will now raise its prices and permit Macmillan ebooks back for sale.  Not Charlie's yet.  Many more twists in this story.  Amazon is wrecking itself.   Charlie Pellegrino asks me late after the show if Steve Jobs has spoken out yet re the dispute.  Unknown.