Unforced. 

The year ends with a screeching and surprising unforced error by the Chicago genius David Axelrod and his stunningly deaf and off-kilter POTUS, as Axelrod, doing his master's bidding, uses the dutiful scribe Jonathan Alter to launch spitballs at Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, and President Bill Clinton, and to explain the last two years of living clumsily by faulting the now-departed trio for letting down the country on jobs.  What? Blame, blame, blame, without evidence, without multiple sources, without rejoinder by the defamed and disdained. Is this not much the madness of rejection?  How wounded is he? Is this Axelrod throwing a frag back into the limo? If this is retreat, does he realize what happens next is that Washington counterattacks with Predators of the airwaves:  The Axelrod attack on Summers uses Emanuel as a foil:

And the Axelrod attack, at the bidding of his master, on Bill Clinton is part trivial metaphor and part self-immolation.  Does Axelrod expect to hide in Chicago the rest of his days?  Does he expect never to walk in a room that embraces POTUS Clinton again?  Is this all a charade for martydom? 

"An old friend compared him [Clinton] to a big puppy dog who just needed some attention to be happy and helpful." 

And the Axelrod rude slap at Bill Clinton's sense of proportion back in 1993: odd, very odd and uncalled for:

HRC will not campaign again.   (HRC could beat O easily, but she will not run.) Here is the equation for now, until new information arrives: Axelrod's aim is to suppress all contenders who seek money to challenge POTUS.  The major party donors are waiting, waiting, waiting.  The opinion is that POTUS Obama can be defeated by the spirited GOP.  The major donors watch Bill Clinton: he sets the theme.  The major donors will go to HRC when and if Axelrod fails to block the challenges.  There is much more.

Wonderful to consider that it is burning hot in Brazil, where the nuts come from, while we are stuck in the freezer in North America. Brazil is surging ahead with its oligarchical expansion into energy -- a mainstay of the BRICs that will drive the growth in the 21st Century.  Wonderful to hear that La Pampa Province heat grows sunflower fields as far as the eye can see, though I am told that Buenos Aires is where the young gather like eiderdown ducks.  Also consider that a new measure of the future indicates that the success of the BRICs means that English will decline as the lingua franca of the globe.  This may mean that "Wha'sup!" falls into disuse.  Endorse.  Below find President "Lula" da Silva's sweaty farewell in the heat wave of Pernambuco state as he steps aside for his chosen successor.

Neatly served transitional moment by Anwar al-Maliki, who has the stuffing of a statesman and shadow dictator. It is five years since Maliki supervised and signed off on the hanging execution of the final dictator of the 20th Century, the demon seed Saddam Hussein (below in a reality TV show, "Saddam Swings at Dawn").  Now Maliki announces that this year he will cut loose the apparent military strings of the US and reorganize the gangs and neighborhoods: "The militias are now part of the government and have entered the political process." Maliki also prattles about how he is independent of Iran: "For Iraq to be dragged into an axis or an orbit, that's impossible, and we reject it whether this comes from Iran, Turkey or the Arabs." Sure. The detail is that al-Maliki's majority depends upon the votes of the Sadr gang, which is a client of Tehran Twelvers and the IRGC.  Baghdad becomes the new Berlin?  Cold War East?  I will check.  Game on.  I especially like the way Maliki tells the fairy tale of Tehran fretfulness: this is tidy, rehearsed, comforting to the control agents in Moscow, in Riyadh, in the other Axis capitals who watch all that oil ranged under American Predators:

Vladimir Putin is unfinished business from the 20th Century, and this Kremlin tale will not end happily ever after. The State Security apparatus took over the Duma after 1991. Putin is unable to name a successor who can protect his assets and gang; and therefore Putin cannot go. Mikhail Khodorkovsky knows this, and the depth and breadth of his support are the critical unknown. Putin continues to persecute Khodorkovsky in order to hold off the lesser wolves in his retinue. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the persecution of the tribes of the Caucasus, the naked thievery at the Kremlin, the bludgeoning poverty of the masses, all add up and up to a collision. How much has Putin stolen? There is an estimate that Putin possesses $40 billions. Putin is tsar, and the tsar cannot be trusted.  What will beat State Security is State Security.  What will defeat Putin is Khodorkovsky liberated by the Duma or the ghosts of Stalin unleashed by predation.

Special Assistant to the President Valerie Jarrett is unusually central to the fate of the Obama administration. Watch her closely. She advances a small, banal case, and she repeats it on a national stage. Jarrett works for/manoeuvers around, embraces and persuades FLOTUS. Jarrett has no other purpose than to measure the political landscape for slights and insults. She is the chief of hurt feelings. She elbowed out Emanuel because he was indifferent to her genius, and now she dominates all other staffers.  No learning; no smarts, no quickness. Her skill set is a superb sense of resentment and a bottomless sense of entitlement. Magnificent.  Many reports that POTUS is fearful of her, because she reprents the eyes and ears of FLOTUS. Deeply comical. Many tough guys have seen it in action and dropped their jaws. What looks like her certainty is in fact a stubborn incuriosity of all things Washington.

 

POTUS seeking more political goodwill without breaking out of the golf and smoke routine that POTUS favors at the White House. Visiting enlisted personnel on Oahu is in the same league as kissing babies of old: no downside, simple, the graphics make for a positive narrative. Does not change the direction of the story in Washington: POTUS is a place-holder. The energy moves to the combat on the Hill, Pelosi vs. Boehner and Reid and McConnell. Pelosi's remaining ambition is to see POTUS and Reid and Boehner retired in disdain. Good luck, Mrs. P.

THREE BIG POLITICAL STORIES OF 2010 according to WSJ political desk in DC: the Tea Party; the 501(c)4s; the GOP surge in the midterms. All good. Harder to see is the underlying theme that the POTUS is weak, the White House is empty of senior counselors; the Chicago posse that arrived in January 2009 is beaten and in retreat. FLOTUS runs Valerie Jarrett to bird-dog POTUS and pass judgment on all credible decisions both domestic and foreign. POTUS relies on Jarrett, Rice and FLOTUS for interpretation of the political landscape. The biggest story of all is that POTUS hates his job. Hates it. Says so. Says so often.  No way this will end happily ever after.  Who knows?  Pelosi, Reid, Dean, McConnell, Daschle, Emanuel, the Clintons, and all the folk they talk to, especially the major Democratic donors.  Starting now, the Democrats will build 501(c)4s to match the candidate constructions put together by Karl Rove and the Koch brothers, et cetera.  Wall Street is betting on both sides, and especially making a big bet for the Republicans to take control of Congress in 2012.  The GOP presidential sweepstakes is less significant and more distracting for now.  POTUS Obama can be rolled.  POTUS Obama will sign anything that keeps him in the office where he dislikes like homework.  The prisoner of pretense, surrounded by the men he disdains (Harry Reid, below), no way out.

 

Is Santa Claus a materialist? Is this a problem? Smile when I hear that the ever-quick Bill Maher gets ink when he names Opraha Winfrey as a materialist. Nice detail.  Sure.  Me, too.  Without my MacBookPro and iPad and BlackBerry, I cannot do my once-upon-a-time job.  Materialist mouthpiece me.  I am too senior for the rest of it, the cars, diamonds, holidays, houses, Paris.  I do use coffee.  I did email Santa to bring me an iPhone from Verizon.  Answer came back via Facebook:  "Not available, check back next year, and do it yourself."  Roger, Nickie.  Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

New START is a backward looking document that does not address the China PLAN threat that is active, nor does it deal with the rogues Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and the hangers-on like Myanmar and Venezuela and Syria. It is a document for antique Cold Warriors. The 14 Republican votes are meaningless. POTUS Obama's interest in the treaty is peculiar and suggestive that he does not concern himself with history or defense, just trophies. There is little in the treaty that is useful or practical. The Russians are cheats who have no heart for an inspections regime. Putin understand nukes, though he does not plan to update his arsenal. POTUS Obama is incapable of updating our arsenal, because this means testing. This is the first and likely the only significant treaty ever approved in a Lame Duck session of Congress, with votes from defeated and retired and meaningless senators such as the cranky and petty Arlen Specter and the ridiculous George Voinovich.

Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role of True Grit remade by the Coen brothers suggests that the zeitgeist is reaching for the ornery macho champion, the war-weary knight errant, the don't-give-a-damn cowboy of yore.  Not the POTUS Obama model of cool hip slick.  Is this significant?  Could be.  There is a weight to the complaint of POTUS that he does not have grit.  No bottom.  No sand.  Not a fellow of substance.  Shall watch the progress of the movie in the culture.  The climax is a charge by the out-gunned Matty Ross side, with Jeff Bridges (John Wayne) blazing away with two horse pistols, his last and finest exit, to die in battle for righteousness against superior odds. This is the Hollywood script of my youth.  Jimmy Stewart or Charlton Heston or John Wayne won the day because of nobility of heart and what is safe to call the audienced expectations of true grit.  Not POTUS 2.0, no grit, no expectations, no formula whatsoever with the possible exception of seeking to improve his standing with the Independent voters by being pleasant, obtuse, passive, cosmopolitan and casually inert -- in sum, the opposite of gritty.

Jerry Seib, WSJ, does heroic lifting to remake POTUS Obama into Ronald Reagan, and a hearty well-done to Mr. Seib. The fact is that POTUS Obama is a slapdash partisan from Springfield, Illinois, backroom poker games who has no skills as a negotiator or as a compromiser. POTUS found the best deal he could find in a Lame Duck. The 112th Congress will bring plenty of opportunity for his dogmatic skills.  POTUS is no more Ronald Reagan than the man in the moon.  The Democrats are stuck with him for another two years, and then they have to figure how to get out of the trap they built for themselves without voting for a POTUS they chose without testing. Obama shakes hands with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a man he does not value and does not consult.  More of this, and the Left will huddle back into daydreaming of True Righteousness while the Right cries croc tears in its dessert.

Impossible for me not to love the little orange multi-wheel bots that rule warehouses. Yes, botless Amazon still dominates, and Amazon does not use bots because its demands are so Christmas-seasonal (when Amazon quadruples its staffing), but still, the bot is the thing this year. A small little bot that tucks under a bookshelf-like unit and moves goods in order and wordlessly. One bot replaces six humans for Crate and Barrel. Cool. Can my job be done by a bot? Yep. In truth, I would like a bot co-host, and right now I do the best I know how to make my MacBookPro and IPad into my bot colleagues. Perfect recall, total command, the only drawback is me.  A HostBot responds to the question, "What was the Electoral College total for the Old Northwest vs the Old South in 1920?"  Bot replies with dates and totals, then breaks down by parties, candidates and even shifts from the 1910 census to the 1930 census.  Heaven.

Pleasure to see an animation of the WTC and environs once the build-out is complete and the park fills in with trees and water. New York is a constant dream of ambition and empire. The accident of the 9/11 attack, the ten years of strife against the gangsters, and now the rise of the Phoenix. What a delight to anticipate for our children. Bin Laden is a low creature who leaves no footprint, is disdained by the House of Saud as a Yemenite, is disdained by Tehran as a weak wolf. Tehran is the predator. The monsters of the casbah will fade. The empire's security will pass to our freshest faces. Regret that on my watch, the towers fell; but then again, on my watch, the towers rise.  In two centuries, the falls of the Tower footprints will be the Arizona and Trafalgar Square in one, for speechifying and foreshadowing.

Triangulation Obama-style means disdaining both the Republicans and the Democrats and then signing legislation that is forced upon you by a victorious Republican Party that is in ascendance for the next two years.  It is good to have this note of grace for POTUS to end a sloppy and futile year of partisanship and defeat.  Indications from the Federal courts that the healthcare bill will now be cut up for bait to the Supreme Court, and that the next year will show more trimming of the Obama legacy and mandate.  Only the palace media can like this game of retreat and call it success, retreat some more, and wait for the next shellacking in the polls.  The Left knows that Obama is now hostage to the GOP.  (Nice melodrama that Mrs. Pelosi and Harry Reid avoided the signing: Poison-Daggers-Я-Us in the 112th Congress.)  The economy shows signs that it will expand in the second and third quarters.  Housing will not much improve.  Jobs will remain above 9% for the year unless there is a miracle.  But the bond sell-off will provide humor, and the bulls will run through summer.  Easy money now is said to be shorting the belly of the bond curve, the 2-5 year stuff:  POTUS Obama is along for the ride: he has no skills to change the direction, but he can bob up now and again and claim credit:

Am following closely the Graham Greene novel script in Abijan, the largest city in Ivory Coast, which features two presidents and the United Nations peacekeepers from Lebanon (a treat) who are deployed on white-painted APCs around the Golf Hotel. Where the EU-blesssed winner of the recent election, Alassane Ouattara, is camped with his cabinet including Soro, head of the rebel forces, the Forces Novelles.   Gunfire and teargas and deaths on the fourteenth day after the flawed election.  Spoke Adam Nossiter, NYT, in Dakar, Senegal, and he remarked that he may be going back to Abijan soonest.  Will speak with Adam Nossiter next on Monday 20.  A formerly prosperous country of 20 million on the Gulf of Guinea, now fragile and aimless and exciting in between the pillars of burning tire smoke.  The Laurent Gbagbo forces are firmly in place at the palace and throughout the city.  Spoke Mark Schroeder, Stratfor.com, and he measured that the country remains divided on the North/South line. My measure is that Côte d'Ivoire is another failed state, another fertile ground for the weapons-traders of Tehran and Beijing and Caracas and Pyongyang.

Spectacular video from Athens re the student protesters and other hangers-on outnumbering the ill-equipped police in the public square. The presenting troubles are the sharp budget reductions for services, including universities and the public sector. The police are being cut back as they are being fire-bombed, so there are fewer to man the barricades.  There will be blood: euro and the GBP.

 

Spoke Larry Kudlow, Joseph Rago, WSJ, and Richard Epstein, Hoover, the the Judge Henry Hudson Federal court 42-page ruling that the mandate requirement in the Obamacare law from last March is unconstitutional. Learn that the Democrats wrote the 2,700 pages deliberately to derive the power for the mandate from the Commerce Clause rulings since the Great Depression. That POTUS and others rejected the notion that the law derives its power to mandate participation and to enforce penalties for non-compliance on the basis of the tax power. That the Commerce Clause is the predicate. And that Judge Hudson follows the arguments of jurists such as Randy Barnett that this is a perversion of the Commerce Clause. That the state does not have the power to force a citizen to participate in interstate commerce when the citizen chooses not to. This is fast-tracked to the Supreme Court, where Justice Kennedy will render the fate of the mandate. Am told that if the mandate fails to pass, then the Obamacare package is shreds.  Richard Epstein remarks that in the 15-round prizefight, the oppo force is winning on rounds as the narrative heads to the Supreme Court.

Waiting for a brief on the Stockholm attack. For now, what I have from Stratfor is that it appears a jihadist op. It matches the type of op the Germans and French have watched for some months.  The added security.  The paranoia with packages.  The watch on the Rhineland.  The Predator/Reaper strikes since August are directed to disrupt the jihadist camps along the AfPak borderland. First response was to ask if the strike was Wiki-related. Negative. The working theory is that this was a murder raid on shoppers. Al Q lowers the bar again.  Merry Christmas, Q boys.

Deutschland security does not have a confident picture of how many German citizens (as well as Turkish immigrants to Germany) have travelled to AfPak, Yemen and the camps in Chechnya and Syria for the usual hand-holding with Satan's footman and mass-murder lessons from Uncle Al Quds Force.  Estimate over a thousand.  Assumption now is that half are returned to Europe.  Each with an EU passport and German language skills, punk attitudes, stolen cell phones and airport cash for the hop into Britain or Canada and the expected border-crossings.   How does Lord John Brennan of Obama Counterterrorism tell the difference between Hans of the Brown Eyes and Hans of the Blue Eyes?  Not by the names, which tend to sound like Horst or Wolfgang, not a convenient Mohammed.  Auf Wiedersehen, USA.  If you hear deutsche Sprache in a checkout line at Macy's or Saks, up your armor.

"I have reviewed this agreement..." remarks the savvy Bill Clinton.  The vital question in this unusual performance by the dynamic duo -- springing, late in the news cycle, on the White House media -- is to ask what is the relationship between POTUS Obama and POTUS Clinton? The answer is that there is no relationship. POTUS Obama disdains the Clintons. POTUS Obama does not speak to the Clintons outside of a structured and timely public setting. POTUS Obama is isolated far more than you see. POTUS Obama team is far more delusional than we can know. The revolt by the Democratic Party disgusts POTUS. The GOP defiance enrages POTUS. POTUS is in sharp retreat from the facts of the moment.  POTUS hears only the reassuring voices of Axelrod and Val Jarrett. POTUS does not hear the laughter.  There is more.  If you think this is a breakdown of the Obama administration, you are underestimating what you see.  Clinton rides to the rescue.  Obama departs for a holiday party ordered up by FLOTUS.  (The FLOTUS who derides Christmas presents of any kind.)  The end of the beginning of the Obama White House. Secondary question: What did Obama walk away from?  Answer, the job of the presidency.

 

More art of the ridiculous from the people who brought us the Ben Bernank. Silver is trading at an unusual high, and there is merit to the rumour in the SFGate.com.  Mostly there is the joy of smart guy humor.  The Ben Bernank is now so infamous that his "marriage" the Jamie Dimon is the stuff of Broadway shows.  I have lost many many dollars in the bubbles and have endeavored these last ten years not to get hooked again.  It is fetching.  Silver at $500/oz!

 Matt Bai, NYT: "Meanwhile, in Iowa, a group known as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, originally founded to aid Democratic Congressional candidates in 2010, has started broadcasting an advertisement that shows Mr. Obama, in 2008, promising to reverse the tax cuts for the most affluent Americans. The group isn't advocating a primary challenge just yet -- but then, the choice of Iowa as a market seems intended to send a pretty clear warning to the White House."  For his part, Biden is spinning the Democrats to keep them from eating their ties.

The tax deal is all the buzz. The NYT signals the Obama retreat, and NBC's First Read, a vital piece of the court media in the first year of the administration, argues for the retreat on a campaign promise by stating that there are not enough votes for the POTUS position in the Senate. "Obvious" is the marching order of the day for the court media: it is the job of court media to report the reason for the obvious as well as the necessity of doing only the obvious.

An unusually distracted, robotic, hollow-voiced, insincere POTUS reads aloud a flimsy transition to the climb-down on the Bush tax cuts.   What do the court media do with this predictable retreat?  What do the Progressives do?  POTUS is manufacturing expedience.  There is no energy to it.  POTUS is half-paying attention; he is mostly sleep-walking through his turn.  What does POTUS represent?  The Democratic Party?  Unknown what part of it.  The Left?  Unknown what part of it.  POTUS agrees to an extension of the Bush tax cuts through the remainder of his term.  What is the tax policy difference between POTUS Obama and POTUS Bush? 

 

POTUS's sudden, surprise trip to Bagram, three hours on the ground in a controlled environment, was an odd sidebar to the big moment of the morning, the disappointing jobless print, 9.8%. Spoke Joe Brusuelas, Bloomberg, who says that the rate will climb over 10% in the new year, that it must. The recovery will manage 2.5% GDP and at best 3% in the fourth quarter. This means a monthly 150K jobs in all sectors -- not enough to get healthy, just enough to keep from going down worse. What does this mean for the politics of the new Congress? No room to maneuver or stall. Lots of room for sabotage. POTUS flies to Bagram for a minor photo-op. Does not even bother to visit the ridiculous Karzai at the empty-of-explanations palace. The Obama administration is suggestively off the trail. Either the negotiation for the Bush tax cuts is so far underground there is no sound, or else it doesn't exist. The GOP holds the answers. POTUS is not asking in public. John Fund figures December 10 is the drop-dead date for the taxes. Next week, what else goes wrong behind curtain Number 9.8%?

The Bush tax cut deal remains unfixed. The Democrats aim to trade a two-year extension of all tax cuts for the cover of extending the jobless benefits (now expired) for another year. Chump change compared to the tax cuts. Will POTUS sign on this deal? With what gun to his head?  Geithner, Lew, Baucus and Van Hollen have nothing to trade to Kyl and Camp.  The deal is whatever the GOP says it is.

Julian Assage is overwrought and overexposed. Speaking Thursday 2 John Burns, NYT re the arrest warrant issued two weeks ago on Assange for two sex-abuse cases in Sweden where Assange, the genius, tried to hide out using the Swedish journalism rules in his favor. Assange is said to have left London and to be living in an unknown, undisclosed location with friends outside London. Assange is foolish. WikiLeaks has given the US officials involved enough time to organize a defense. The first to cooperate was Amazon, which today denied WikiLeaks the use of its servers. More tricks to come. There is an amateurish sluggishness to the story. Assange warns that he will publish material on an American bank in January, and the rumor is Bank of America. Sure. What can he have that we don't know about a bank too big to fail that has already disgraced itself?  Love the notion that Assange thinks he is being persecuted.  Assange entertains, but he is at risk of becoming predictable  There is no journalism here.  There is just flinging laundry from an upper window.  Assange is a mad washerwoman.  There is the small risk that he has now flung Putin's shirts out the window.  Putin is not entertained, and his pal Medvedev is not entertained; and they both have wet-work resources to make Assange go far away.

  

 The Irish patch-up has failed, and the bond vigilantes are skipping past Spain and Portugal and attacking Italy (below) and Eastern Europe. The euro cannot stand the pressure. There must be reorganization. The GBP is holding up, a credit to the London bankers, but it too will sag soon enough.  Spoke Charles Penty, Bloomberg, at Madrid, and he says that Santander is okay so far.  Watch Santander, when it buckles and needs €50 billion for bail-out, the lights are dimming.  Euro RIP.  From the rosy scenario of the WSJ: