What's News Tonight: June 2010 Archives

What's Breaking News Tonight?

Putin Frowns

By John Batchelor on June 30, 2010 12:09 PM | 8 Comments

Moscow Center Stage.

The FBI sweep of the Russian spy ring is a political gesture by POTUS and his frustrated and overwhelmed Attorney General, Eric Holder. No other purpose is served by rounding up a feckless posse of connivers. Are they KGB illegals from the SVR? Not the first question to answer. What is the purpose of bringing them in from the cold is the first question? My information is that POTUS has no explanation at this time. We are re-introduced to Moscow Center as a threat when it is not a major threat. Cybercrime, yes. Deep-cover spooks hanging out in Cambridge? Nyet. Even the facts about the New York agents add up to clumsy, passive, inert game-playing. Something wrong with this picture? Scott Shane, NYT, tells me that the reason they were not charged with espionage was that in ten years there is no evidence they ever handled classified documents or information, nor even sought such a thing. Strange spying? Or is it that they were hustling Moscow Center? Ten years of paychecks from the SVR and no work product that you cannot get from Facebook. A redhead who calls herself Anna Chapman (right) is a KGB spook? Cannot make this stuff up, unless it is all concocted as a scam on the SVR and the FBI. And how much did it cost the FBI in manpower to follow around Chapman?

Moscow-Berlin Axis.

The major story is that Moscow and Berlin have moved to construct an alliance that is potent, dynamic and ambitious. The alliance does include connection to Paris, London, Warsaw, but not Washington. Moscow promotes a new European security protocol that looks like NATO without Washington. Witty. The security arrangement between Berlin and Moscow can read as if the Non-Aggression PAct of 1939 has been updated to account for the oil and gas pipelines from Russia and the German banks paying for the development in Russia. Cozy and smart.

Putin Disregards POTUS.

Russian P.M. Putin measured POTUS as an ill-prepared and cranky adversary when they met for so-called breakfast in summer of 2009. Putin's measure has not changed, and he has not endeavored to meet with POTUS since. Putin leaves Medvedev the chore of conversing through translators with the young POTUS at various meaningless events. There is no credible relationship between Moscow and Washington. Not on Iran. Not on Kyrgyzstan. Not on Georgia. Not on NATO. Putin has yet to show his hand on the spy ring brouhaha; however, my expectation is that the retaliation will be measured. Putin disregards POTUS so completely that he does not need to show it more than once a year. Putin's hand is strong and swift and chauvinistic. There will be blood. Meanwhile, Putin chooses to speak very softly.

"In connection with the accusations issued by the US against a group of individuals in suspicion of intelligence-gathering activity on behalf of Russia, we state that we are dealing with Russian citizens that at varying times ended up on the territory of the United States, and did not commit any actions directed against the interest of the United States," Putin said. "We assume that they will be granted normal treatment in their places of detention, and that American authorities will guarantee them access to Russian consuls and attorney. We count on the American side's due understanding in this question, based among other things on the positive character of the present stage in development of the Russian-American relations."

Putin and Clinton.

No easy interpretation of the irony that Putin was meeting with Bill Clinton in Moscow when Putin gave out his frowning statement of disdain for the "US police" actions against the spy ring. Bill Clinton did not protest. Imagine another former president sitting by while the Russian boss slapped at the current administration's national security operations against Russian spies? Clinton's chuckling passivity at the moment of maximum disregard is a quiet puzzle.

"You came to Moscow at a right time. Your police got out of control and grabbed some people," Putin said, elciting a laugh from Clinton. "But this is just their job. I really expect that the positive that has been accumulated in the recent time in our international relations will not suffer, and I also hope that those people who value the Russian-American relations understand this in today's situation as well."

Harry Reid Agonistes

By John Batchelor on June 29, 2010 12:34 PM | 4 Comments

The Crisis of the Selfish.

Harry Reid's fierce, shrewd, noisy tenure as majority leader has not helped him back home in Searchlight, Nevada, nor has it improved his chance even a nickel for re-election. Harry Reid is guilty of ignoring the facts and enjoying the self-slackerhood of a Hill prince. One-third of Nevada voters are new to the state since 2004, so they have never been asked for their vote by Harry Reid. The real estate and commercial real estate in Nevada is a nightmare of foreclosures, short sales, abandonment, fraud and the transparent buildings associated with severe depression. Parts of Neveda look like parts of Ireland after the Troubles. Other parts look as if the joke is on the people who live there -- empty streets, burnt-out landscaping, vehicles abandoned in the wilderness.

Sharron Angle to the Rescue.

The Tea Party choice of Sharron Angle seems at first glance to have been an empty gesture. Angle is as far from a pro as you can find. There is something of the Mad Housewife about her, tightly wound and just about to relate her tale of abduction by the flying saucer crew of large, brainy felines. Then again, Angle's severe distance from Washington and Washington's savvy makes her an attractive alternative. Her votes in the Senate will be an unlikely adventure, while Harry Reid's votes are extreme utility; and eventually Angle will settle to being one of the posse of Western Republicans. The next years for Nevada promise to be dire and futile, and Angle represents a better version of personal and public discipline than Reid. Fun is over, money is gone, everyone is gone, let's jump into Lake Las Vegas and swim to the moon!

Twilight Byrd

By John Batchelor on June 28, 2010 2:15 PM | 12 Comments

Frontal Assault.

Rick Barber performs superbly in this campaign video that calls the healthcare bill the same as slavery. It is a reminder that the healthcare vote is still potent. The Democrats remain as vulnerable today as they were in March, and the summer season brings more gloom -- not only the oil spill, the hurricanes coming, the failure of the McChrystal appointment in ISAF, but now also the slowdown of the FinReg bill with the loss of the Byrd vote.

Byrd Exits.

Spoke Salena Zito, PTR, re the empty West Virginian Senate seat. The West Virginia governor, Dan Machin, a popular conservative Democrat in a GOP-leaning state, will wait until after July 3 to appoint a placeholder Democrat to serve out Senator Byrd's term until 2012. Machin wants the job for himself in the election of 2012. The challenge for Harry Reid is that he needs Byrd's vote to move the FinReg bill back from conference. Unlikely to get the seat quickly. And with Feingold and Cantwell still "no" votes, and with Scott Brown a "no" vote, the Democrats do not enjoy 60 votes. The White House believes it is buffeted by unpredictable events. I think of POTUS as unlucky. John Fund mentions that the White House may think it is in the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling for President.

Since January, the White House has endured a run of bad luck. Scott Brown. Healthcare reconciliation. BP. Times Square bomber. Stanley McChrystal. Robert Byrd. POTUS desires a reliable calender to work his magic, but the presidency is not about legislation; it is also about crisis management. Does POTUS know American history? Sign post up ahead . . .

Dream Again of Rome

By John Batchelor on June 27, 2010 12:59 AM | 13 Comments

Banks Eat Earth.

The carefully gifted Simon Johnson opines that Jamie Dimon and other Global Geniuses are conspiring to reorganize the banks too big to fail so that each of the behemoths is out of reach of the Volcker Rules and anything else that wears a badge. A macropractical way to accomplish Mr. Johnson's scenario is for Citi and JP Morgan Chase to merge with a Chinese bank, and then two more of them to pick up a partner in Brazil or India. A more modest ploy would be to form a coalition with a German bank. In any event, no more national banks. Globalization is the thing this year (decade). It is fresh thinking that the global credit catastrophe of 2008 would form the basis for a transformation of all finances into a stateless, faceless, ruthless cash machine. The Banks Too Big to Fail borrow at 0% from the Treasury du Jour and then lend at any rate they can manage -- like schools of Moby Dicks cruising the oceans for advantage and profit. What is the downside? Spoke Michael Vlahos, Huffington Post, re the fresh turmoil in the American Empire -- that the American Empire no longer commands the respect and loyalty of the American clients. Now there is a surprise in the wind. Banks Bigger than States. The Big Bankers look to be thinking post-sovereignty. Could this be the end of the Westphalian System of States? Is the 22nd Century the Age of the Credit Proconsuls? Are we to return to the dream that was Rome? "Two hundred years ago, the Gauls were our enemies," says Marcus Aurelius ("The Fall of the Roman Empire," film, 1964) "Now, we greet them as friends... Rome, Rome everywhere, a family of equal nations. That is what lies ahead..." "And when I say Rome, I mean the world." It would appear that the Romans are back -- with ATMs and CDOs. Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy -- all under the boot of the Banks Too Big to Fail. Soon, California, then the Bank of England? -- then, the US Treasury? Has Larry Summers signed on with the Credit Proconsuls? POTUS?

Barn Door Florida Horse Glue

By John Batchelor on June 26, 2010 11:47 AM | 1 Comment

POTUS Plugs Something.

The Wall Street reform bill meanders and chugs through the minds of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd -- two geniuses without whom we would not be blessed with delisted Fannie and Freddie and their collective $12 trillion mortgage market -- as POTUS sashays to the White House lawn to read stale remarks. We are protected. We are saved. We are reformed. The barn door long ago was stolen. The horse is glue; it is even dried-up glue. The game of piracy in banking and trading continues, with new navigation charts of how to avoid the bloody English Navy and the other foolish raiders along this Barbary Shore of finance. POTUS and the Democrats are following through on a plan that long ago lost an audience. The jobless number is the plan. The Gulf is the plan. The McChrystal brouhaha is the plan. POTUS carries on as if he is a legislator. Credit card reform? Too big to fail reform? The credit is gone. The banks stole all the money. There is no credit. Housing is cliff-diving. The consumers are hiding. The markets stare at the deficits. The new Congress must fight the tax battles. POTUS is POTUS. Note that even Kendrick Meek of 17th Florida, as loyal and sturdy a congressional supporter as POTUS has ever enjoyed, now running for Democratic gubernatorial nominee in Florida, does not speak of POTUS, nor does he want POTUS to go to Florida to raise money or speak. Meek has the black vote. That is pretty much all he has. The fact that he voted straight POTUS ticket for stimulus and budget and cap-and-trade and healthcare and so forth visions of sugar plums since January 2009 means that Meek has no audience outside of his own Miami CD. POTUS is unwanted by a Florida Liberal Democrat from the Miami area -- with four months to Election Day, with the oil slick swimming toward the Keys in hurricane season.

•Treasury Two-Year Yields Drop to 2010 Low as Fed Warns of Moderate Growth

•Recovery Is `Fragile;' Nations Must Resist Protectionism, G-8 Leaders Say

•Obama Says Financial Regulation Bill to Help Boost Growth, Prevent Crises

Alex Hearts BP.

The storm track for Alex shows a five percent chance that BP must evacuate the recovery zone. We will learn in the next two days what protocol the Coast Guard and BP will establish for the slick and the Macondo well. Alex is the first of many storms headed into the region over the next ninety days. Alex makes BP suddenly important again, since only the skill of the BP fleet captains, and the experience of the relief well drillers, can answer the unpredictable threats this summer of winds, slick, recovery, clean-up, and PR. Alex is a training session. How long will they wait until they start to evacuate? What will they do at the critical moment when Alex could still turn north? Brian Sullivan tells me that the high pressure center over the US is breaking up because of the cooler air from Canada. This high acts as a buffer to keep the warmer currents away from Louisiana. If it breaks up too quickly, Alex will head for the cool air and right down on the slick.

J.D. Klingon Pitch

By John Batchelor on June 25, 2010 2:16 PM | 4 Comments

Bizarrely.

J.D. Hayworth of Arizona discovers a fresh and thrilling way to illustrate the general observation that the best way you can tell a politican is lying is if his lips are moving. The McCain camp followers, following a sluggish, limp, vague stumping campaign that continued the genius of banality of the late presidential canvas, are more lucky than good, which is the only way to go to the polls these days. Hayworth has been a consistent clown since his defeat in 2008, and it is hard to fault him for false-footedness. I do not find Hayworth off-putting and do enjoy his (suspect) Klingon roots; at the same time, it is good to recall when listening to Hayworth that all politicians are closer to Hayworth than they are to something unusually trustworthy, like a third-grade teacher. That Hayworth accepted cash to promote a too-good-to-be-true scam is not proof that he would not be a good senator since, we can agree, the US Senate does take cash (from PACs) in order to promote too-good-to-be-true scams (healthcare, social security, the post office) with our tax dollars. McCain's victory over Hayworth will not prove that McCain is not himself a nimble huckster -- rather, that McCain is a successful nimble huckster.

The Pitch.

In case you missed it, below is the original. It is fun to consider how Ben Bernanke or Chris Dodd or even Jamie Dimon would do in the Hayworth chair. Or (soon to need a job) McChrystal. Love the tie, J.D. And let me be the first to say, nothing wrong with a fairy tale. States attorneys general are self-serving scolds. A man has to do what a man has to do when the Democrats connive to throw him off FNC and out of the firing line.

Taliban 2 - US 0

By John Batchelor on June 24, 2010 12:46 PM | 3 Comments

Victory in Afghanistan.

The Taliban follows the news as carefully as we do, and the Taliban understands that McChrystal's sacking -- for the mildly sophomoric remarks of his aides -- is another stop along the road to jihad victory. Taliban 2, US 0. The Obama administration is wedded to the July 2011 withdrawal date. This certainty limits what ISAF can do and points to a future without the US in Central Asia. POTUS Obama does not concern himself with winning overseas. POTUS and his political brains are focused entirely on victory in 2012. The ambition is to construct a Pakistan-controlled effort to prop up the the Afghan army (of Potemkin soldiers) (Army by day, Taliban at night) so that Kabul will become Islamabad's problem.

Forty Minutes.

Am told that Petraeus was not on the short list for ISAF that was handed to POTUS on Wednesday morning 23 June. Am told that POTUS introduced Petraeus's name. Am told that Petraeus was in conference with POTUS for forty minutes before he saluted and accepted the role -- the demotion. Spoke Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, re the deep irony that the three senators who mocked Petraeus during the Iraq surge hearings on the Hill in '07 are now calling upon Petraeus to solve the Afpak troubles -- Obama, Biden and Clinton. The left of the Democratic Party still regards the general as "Betray Us." Am told that despite the fact that Petraeus will now continue in his ISAF role for two years, POTUS fears the general as a political opponent. Ike II is much current. Remind that Petraeus may not be the man to answer Obama in '12. But Petraeus is at stage center, and he will be called upon to bless whomever the GOP chooses the winter and spring of '12. Heroes create other heroes.

McChrystal on Mars

By John Batchelor on June 23, 2010 1:07 PM | 16 Comments

No Billet.

McChrystal is relieved of duty and will likely choose to retire pronto. Bill Roggio tells me, "No billet for a four-star; he retires." The politics of the McChrystal firing (and it will be turned into a firing, no matter the detail of the resignation letter) will expand according to the needs of the partisan posses. The Democrats are eager to move on and refuse comment. The Republicans are eager to dig in and comment. All parties, including the witty Tea Party, will make remarks that are divorced from the facts but that sound the right theme. POTUS is unloved by the military in the field. POTUS is untrusted by the military at home. The talking points are well established this last century: Democrats want to start wars but then nearly as quickly want to quit the war they helped start (Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq); Republicans start wars just as quickly as Democrats but then are too simple-minded to do anything but bash and muddle ahead to victory.

McChrystal on Mars.

Stanley McChrystal is the son of an Army two-star; he is also West Point 1972, at the bottom of the morale crater caused by the Vietnam War defeat. McChrystal will survive the disgrace and reorganize his career on TV and in Washington. A highly desirable hire by think-tanks, PR firms, law firms, even by the Republican or Democratic Party. (McChrystal wanted us to know that he voted for POTUS Obama.) The chat last eve in Washington was that this is the MacArthur Moment. Since POTUS is known to follow a stale protocol of meetings and recommendations in order to make a decision appear collective, he will likely follow the protocol established by Truman. After consulting with StateSec Acheson and SecDef Marshall, Truman fired MacArthur. Sixty years later, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the sneak attack in Korea, McChrystal is gone. Can't make this stuff up. Political future for McChrystal? Unlikely. Also unlikely that he will address Congress like MacArthur. McChrystal does have a future on Mars, the War Planet. No unemployment on Mars.

Petraeus in Afghanistan.

Appointing David Petraeus to take command of ISAF is another twist. POTUS Obama and his political team fear Petraeus as a political actor. The ambition for the White House is to paint Petraeus as a loser in Afghanistan, so that he cannot run on the Iraq surge success. This is all smart politics in a back-stairs at the palace kind of way. There is a whiff of political coup here. The uniforms are unhappy. POTUS Obama is now identified as a fearful commander-in-chief. POTUS fears his own cadre. The curtain goes down on the first act. Scenery moves around. Intermission. How do you like it so far?

Wimps in the White House

By John Batchelor on June 22, 2010 8:42 PM | 2 Comments

Disgrace.

Stanley McChrystal and his crew know their fate is determined in Afghanistan, and the steps in the next days will be routine. The march. The decision. The change of mission. My best information now is that McChrystal will endeavor to do what is best for the US Army, which is to resign in disgrace for his loud mouth and then to keep it shut for the balance of his career until he retires, which could be soon. McChrystal is West Point '72 (Petraeus is West Point '74), so McChrystal is well set to step down immediately. What is next is television. McChrystal's remarks, and those of his subordinates whom he tolerated as a raucous, high-flying gang called Team America, will find support generally. Jim Jones is a potted plant from the 20th Century and has been ill-used as a frontman by the Obama Team. The "wimps in the White House" are part of the problem. But the true threat is that the Afghanistan COIN policy does not work, that the Marja Offensive in Helmand is a failure, that the Kandahar Cooperation is futile, that the Karzai Cartel is already cooperating with the Pakistani ISI and the Afghan Taliban, that the whole of AfPak is a lost cause.

Helmand Province, Marja District.

Spoke Carlotta Gall re how we pay the farmers by day so that they can afford to be Taliban at night. The guerrillas are the fish and the people are the water. In Helmand, and in neighboring Kandahar, the fish and the water are the same families. COIN is meaningless when everyone is united, when the very notion of improvement is about killing the invaders and driving out the Crusaders. Carlotta Gall tells that the farmers believe America has come to AfPak to steal the land and the wealth. Or to fight Iran. Or to stop the opium. Or to prepare for the Apocalypse. Anything at all but for what ISAF claims, to stabilize the region for central authority form Kabul. A fool's errand. McChrystal can blame POTUS for not giving him enough time. POTUS can blame McChrystal for his big mouth and for failing to deliver a victory in time. And the war continues, out of sight, with the Karzai cartel supreme and supple.

After Harry

By John Batchelor on June 21, 2010 1:29 PM | 5 Comments

Bailing Out Harry.

The Sharron Angle team release a caricature of an attack ad that has the unintended consequence of being accurate and funny. Harry Reid's re-elect numbers are dreadful. John Fund has long maintained that Harry Reid will retire rather than face defeat; however, the word from the Senate upon Sharron Angle's nomination was that Harry Reid was feeling revived. Angle is a novice who is the star of the ingenue Tea Party of Nevada. An amateur in an amateur club going up against a pro's pro with a brutal Democratic machine nationwide to call upon. On the other hand, the expectations for Sharron Angle are modest, minimal, almost none at all, so it is hard to imagine how she could fail to achieve status by just showing up to debate with the Majority Leader.

Chuck Schumer, Majority Leader.

Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, re Senator Charles Schumer's campaign to replace Hary Reid in the event that Mr. Reid loses in the midterm to Sharron Angle. The Beijing decision to make a small concession on the currency revalutation just prior to the G-20, and in the face of Mr. Schumer's trade-war threat, considearbly strengthens Schumer's candidacy. David Drucker, who was in studio with me, said he did not want to go too far in speaking in favor of Senator Schumer because he would hear from Senator Dick Durbin's aides on the morrow. Schumer and Durbin are allies, comrades, and housemates, but they are also direct competitors for Majority (or Minority) Leader in the event of a disaster in Nevada.

POTUS Gravity

By John Batchelor on June 20, 2010 12:50 AM | 8 Comments

Lower Point.

The warning for the Obama administration was to move effectively so that public opinion did not get fixed on only the negative of the Gulf spill. It looks to be too late already. CNN reports that six in ten disapprove of POTUS's handling of the crisis. POTUS compares well only to BP itself. There is no maneuvering room. The Oval Office speech of Tuesday 15 June looks to be the low point for POTUS, unless there is lower.

Hayward Is in Charge.

White House Chief of Staff and wisenheimer Rahm Emanuel says of Tony Hayward's decision to go yachting on his day off in England that "Tony Heyward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting." This is struggling for wit on a stage that is crumbling. The Oval Office appears out of ideas and helpless, and it is never good for the Oval Office to lack resolution and an action plan. The drift begins. It was not wise for POTUS to be on the links while Tony Heyward was yachting. Heyward is in charge of what? BP delayed recovery for part of a day because of errors in the recovery ship. This is planning? Where are the back-ups? Did the White House know that Heyward was going yachting with his son? Does BP coordinate its PR with the Department of the Interior? Is there more chaos underneath the Heyward fiasco? The details are joyfully loony. It was a JP Morgan Asset Management Round. Tony and his son watched their yacht, Bob, in the competition. The English media snapped photographs that may show Tony Hayward on board Bob (right and below). Nightmare for the Democrats. GOP Richard Shelby has already attacked: "I believe it's the height of arrogance. He is the chief executive of BP, he was testifying in Washington and now he's going out on his yacht in England. That yacht should be here, skimming and cleaning up the oil." Haley Barbour of Mississippi flatters POTUS with comparable condescension when he says that POTUS has "done more right than wrong."

Frank Rich Wants the House Cleaned.

The breakdown of the court media is widespread and rapid. Now the articulate, passionate, partisan Frank Rich has lost confidence in the POTUS Obama response. It is no longer just the BP dithering and blame-shifting. Rich also points to the dithering in Afghanistan:

The president must come clean and clean house not just because it's right. He must rebuild confidence in his government for that inevitable day when the next crisis hits the fan. That would be Afghanistan, and the day is rapidly arriving. Already Obama's chosen executive there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is calling the much-heralded test case for administration counterinsurgency policy -- the de-Talibanization and stabilization of the Marja district -- "a bleeding ulcer." And that, relatively speaking, is the good news from this war.

POTUS has a long way to fall to disappoint his observers; however, gravity is matter-of-fact.

Mort Zuckerman Judges.

Spoke Mort Zuckerman, US News, re the Obama administration's policies in the ummah, and he was disconsolate. A year after the Istanbul and Cairo speeches, the ummah is in deeper turmoil, Iran and its new crony Turkey are on the march, and the UN is hapless on its best days. Mort Zuckerman observes that the diplomatic soft-speaking that POTUS Obama prefers has strengthened the enemy and confused the allies. Mort Zuckerman publishes his thoughts at length and points to worse ahead:

The end result is that a critical mass of influential people in world affairs who once held high hopes for the president have begun to wonder whether they misjudged the man. They are no longer dazzled by his rock star personality and there is a sense that there is something amateurish and even incompetent about how Obama is managing U.S. power. For example, Obama has asserted that America is not at war with the Muslim world. The problem is that parts of the Muslim world are at war with America and the West. Obama feels, fairly enough, that America must be contrite in its dealings with the Muslim world. But he has failed to address the religious intolerance, failing economies, tribalism, and gender apartheid that together contribute to jihadist extremism. This was startling and clear when he chose not to publicly support the Iranians who went to the streets in opposition to their oppressive government, based on a judgment that our support might be counterproductive. Yet, he reaches out instead to the likes of Bashar Assad of Syria, Iran's agent in the Arab world, sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it continues to rearm Hezbollah in Lebanon and expands its role in the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance.

Narco-Jihad

By John Batchelor on June 19, 2010 1:28 PM | 7 Comments

Great Game Surge.

The failed state of Kyrgyzstan in remote Central Asia is the next target of the narco-jihad that has already taken control of AfPak and is aiming to plant its savagery in the heart of the old Soviet state. My information is that the Bakiyevs (ex-dictator and son) have made a Faustian deal with the jihadists. In exchange for the jihad securing a sharia state in the south of Kyrgyzstan among the ethnic Uzbeks, the narco-jihad will deliver the capital Bishkek back to the Bakiyevs. Moscow and Beijing are alarmed and alert. Uzkebekistan has mobilized along the border region (see below, the red eagle of Uzbekistan) in the fertile breadbasket of the Ferghana Valley. Washington, including State, is helpless and just planning to stay clear as long as we can hold onto a sliver of our airbase, Manas, for an air bridge into Afghanistan. The UNHCR and Red Cross are directing airlifts of supplies into the hasty refugee camps. Osh and Jalalabad are in the hands of gangs and warlords. There will be more blood. Central Asia is unstable. The narco-jihadists are rising to throw off the remains of the Soviet state and to surge into the Xinjiang region, which is now under the imperial Beijing boot. The energy fields of Central Asia and Siberia are the prize. The Great Game, jihad version, into the 22nd Century. Not to Bow and Scrape to the (Kremlin) Crusaders, that is the Law! Are we not Ghazi?

Edge of Rightness

By John Batchelor on June 18, 2010 2:14 PM | 8 Comments

Wrong Direction.

Colleague John Fund, WSJ, speaks with Jason Riley, WSJ, re the strikingly positive prospects for the Republicans to win control. The polling by Stan Greenberg is overwhelmingly convincing: in the 70 battleground CDs, the dominant voters are enthusiastic conservatives who think the country is headed in the wrong direction and are eager to vote. The polling shows that the Democratic control of Congress has convinced voters that their policies are too far to the left and must be corrected by right-leaning Republicans. The polling is not just about specific policies; it is about the overall impression of the Obama administration's actions of the last 18 months. No amount of explaining of healthcare or energy or stimulus can rebut this impression. The mold is cast. Next stop for the Republic is, Rightness, U.S.A.

POTUS Leftness.

POTUS Obama is temperamentally left of center (Edge of Leftness) and recently unable to balance himself, even when he is aware that a fudged policy would serve him well. The Gulf crisis illustrates POTUS's dilemma. Even when POTUS knew that the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service was badly in need of renovation, POTUS still named a Harvard College/Harvard Law District of Columbia mouthpiece to manage hardhats and engineers and lawyers much smarter at energy than Michael Bromwich. To stop a wildfire, POTUS sets a campfire on K Street. Why does POTUS trust regulation to manage what only the market can manage (profit and motive)? Spoke Charles Lane WaPo, re the irony that liberal policies since the New Deal are a paradox of ambitions. Once upon a time in the Golden Kingdom of the Great Depression, FDR and his gifted social welfare op Harry Hopkins created the CWA out of thin air and reduced the jobless from 13 million to 9 million in months (see below). The liberal policy of big government (spending, e.g, the stimulus package) crashes into the liberal policy of reform (regulation, e.g., Harvard Law to the drillers) and the contradictions can often grind to a standstill or an unimaginable fog (Department of the Interior MMS). Lane uses the example of the stimulus package mandating window weatherization to create jobs. It didn't work. Unions blocked the wage scale unless it met standards that no one could much decide until six months after arguing. Result, no stimulus jobs created, and money unspent. Nature provides a right hand and a left hand. Is that a clue?

End of the Beginning

By John Batchelor on June 17, 2010 11:34 AM | 4 Comments

BP RIP?

BP is not a buy, not an investment, not a trustworthy vehicle. BP is now in the hands of traders and their bots, and that means they are trading on the volatility -- the swings in price -- that follow any news whatsoever. The company is reduced to a commodity that will be picked apart by the strong and that is the way of capitalism. Creative destruction.

Obama Administration RIP?

It is too early to declare that the Obama administration is not a buy, not an investment, not a trustworthy vehicle. It is not too early to measure how the court media are responding to the Gulf crisis. First observation is that the court media have seen their number reduced. The journalists still willing to rationalize POTUS Obama are under several hundred now, not the previous thousands, and the smart folk have switched over to describing the process of how Obama is not doing well rather than talk about how things are getting worse for the White House. The midterm story is buried under the oil slick. Spoke Salena Zito, PRT, to learn that nine of the twelve Democratic reps in Pennsylvania will not hold townhalls this summer, fearful of episodes; while six of the seven GOP reps will hold townhalls. Democrats in secure districts will skip the meetings just like Democrats in purple districts, such as Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3). Spoke Joe Garafoli, SFC, to learn that Joe Biden travels to California for two events to raise money for Barbara Boxer, who cannot get enough in her treasury to prepare for the Fiorina surge in the fall. Boxer is the Cemetery Ridge of the Democratic Senate. If and when Boxer falls, the Obama administration enters the two years to 2012. The White House is minimal help to the Democrats on the Hill, and the Hill knows it. Court media in retreat; the Democratic Hill in retreat; the White House in a fog of oil. All this does not add up to defeat. It does describe the end of the Obama beginning. What happens next is the surprises of August -- and then the rollicking fall elections. Bumpy for POTUS. Great entertainment for opera fans. Music! Below find the most entertaining moment of the Gulf crisis on this fine late Spring day in the Republic. Trim and iconoclastic Charlie Crist finds baby oil.

Green Is Green

By John Batchelor on June 16, 2010 11:36 AM | 2 Comments

Clean Energy Is the New Black.

Democrats look to be following POTUS's lead to chant the notion of "clean energy jobs" each time the thought comes up that there is trouble in River City and it starts with T for "Ten percent jobless rate as far as the eye can see." Andy Dillon, the Democratic Speaker of the Michigan House, is running for governor on the Clean Energy bandwagon, and he makes a rookie mistake of outsourcing his advert to a non-Michigan firm of smart and clean guys. Ooops. The critical detail is the cleaner and greener trope. POTUS has committed his Party to a midterm fought on the utopian vision of a US economy dominated by surging green jobs as it cleans up its oil-addict ways and finds a new hope. Fairy tale music now brightens, fade to landcape of pristine purple mountains and flowing wheat fields with cookie-cutter hamlets of singing children and barbecue posses. Tears for the American beauty of it all. Clean and green is cool. Green is the new black.

Money Is the New Green.

Word from the Showdown at the Roosevelt Room shows that POTUS brought along his Cabinet Earp Brothers Posse of Napolitano, Holder, Salazar, Emanuel, and the usual suspects, in order to convince BP's chairman Carl-Henry Svenburg and CEO Tony Hayward to hand over $20 billion to Ken Feinberg to distribute to the plaintiffs. Green power is green money, same as it ever was. Of note, the lawyers are doing well in Washington, also, with the choice of another Harvard College/Harvard Law fellow, Michael Bromwich, to run the chastised Mineral Management Service. Does Bromwich have oil and gas experience? No. Does Bromwich have any energy experience? No. Bromwich is a Beltway Rat. Bromwich understands that Green is the New Money.

Scott Brown at the White House.

Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, to learn that Scott Brown was summoned to the White House today to pow-wow with POTUS re the cap and trade bill. Afterward, Scott Brown told Drucker that the POTUS wants Brown's cooperation. Brown refused. Respectfully. Two State senators, now the big-timers, glamorous, quick, smart, and refusing each other's notions. Brown recommended that POTUS start with a small bill. POTUS did not agree. Wants the Big Bill. POTUS is at turns naive, grandiose, deaf, stubborn, isolated. Drucker repeated what members of the Senate have said before. POTUS seems cut off and isolated from common-sensical information, such as that the public and the Hill do not believe in a cap and trade bill, and that no one has interest in spending more money.

Gao to the Point.

Below find the Vietnamese member of Congress with a common-sense approach to BP's culpability. Priceless. The Vietnam War continues.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

War on Oil, Green Front

By John Batchelor on June 15, 2010 1:39 PM | 11 Comments

Malaise Again.

POTUS climbs into the Oval Office TV stage set to restate again his frustration with the Gulf crisis and to announce the new political offensive on Big Oil on the Green Front. The email from POTUS, via the DNC, is comprehensive, ambitious, unsubtle and bloody-minded in its aim to tax Big Oil in order to move to what POTUS calls "clean energy." POTUS also says that he will direct, order, command, BP to create a $20 billion escrow account to pay claims. There is also noise that POTUS wants BP to suspend its dividend. POTUS holds over BP the possibility of forcing it from the US and stripping its rights to natural gas and oil drilling. Fear, despair, threat, demands, taxes. Spoke Larry Kudlow, Steve Moore, Evan Newmark, Aaron Task, Brendan Miniter, re POTUS speech in the Oval Office, and I heard themes that are consistent with a lack of energy in the Obama speech. POTUS appeals to the American people to move against Big Oil by approving rollbacks of what he calls "tax breaks." This is pol talk for raising taxes on the rich to pay their fair share. POTUS also appeals to the American people to pay the "transition costs" that will be required to become a clean energy nation, independent of oil, filled with millions of green jobs. This is the sort of utopianism that borders on arch triteness. It reminds of the POTUS speech about imagining a world without nuclear weapons. POTUS on occasion seems both naive and limited. It can be confusing to decide if POTUS believes his own daydream wishes. Does he think we believe a world without oil is credible in this century, in next century? Unknown. There is a mood in the POTUS remarks that reminds of the malaise tone of the Carter years, when we were told to run the thermostat down and to drive our cars less. At the time, POTUS Carter was regarded as defensive and fatalistic. Does POTUS Obama recognize the similarities between his BP speech and the Carter speeches on the oil price manipulation by the once-upon-a-time-powerful OPEC? Brendan Miniter reminded me, POTUS Obama doesn't recommend sweaters in winter, yet.

Victories in the First War on Oil

By John Batchelor on June 14, 2010 12:51 PM | 5 Comments

Shock Army Advances on BP.

The US-launched War on Oil continues with the destruction of BP value and the bullying of Big Oil worldwide. Faced with the prospect of curing America from its addled dependence upon oil and gas, the Obama administration has chosen wisely to destroy Big Oil so that there is no more supply. Like destroying cocaine crops and the Mexican border cartels -- a lavish, futile, violent ambition that cannot succeed but will attract voters to the crusade of it all. The Shock Army at the White House is throwing out so much rhetoric that it resembles a preparatory barrage for an advance on the BP Salient. Coast demands action. POTUS demands an Oil Spill Fund. POTUS summons BP's bosses. Interior weighs cutting off BP's oil and gas rights in the US. Boom, bang, pow! The US media is rolling along, embedded with the White House Shock Troops, and the BP forces are thrown back along all fronts but especially at the Salient of Deepwater Horizon.

POTUS Victorious.

Reports that BP will retreat to its bankers and borrow the $20 billion required to the Oil Spill fund, borrow whatever it takes to blunt the White House offensive. BP brings in $40 billion a year. It is the largest holder of drilling rights in the Gulf. It is happy to move into that treasured status of Too Big to Fail that earns special status in the Democratic Congress. The story will not improve for the Obama team. The news reports now start to document the disorder and lack of command for the first weeks of the crisis, and the lack of overall incident command at the well, on the coast, on the beaches. POTUS's claims of "Day 1" are turning into legend. The Oval Office address will mark a turn in the road for the Obama team. Not a good direction. The woods grow thick and dark. POTUS victorious in battle, and what does it signify? The gusher continues. The hurricanes approach.

Bots That Cannot

By John Batchelor on June 13, 2010 1:51 PM | 1 Comment

Australia Touchdown.

Hayabusa, the little bot that could, re-enters Earth's atmosphere at 1:39 of the amateur live stream of the event. Very cool. Hayabusa, launched in 2003, was not ever expected to return after it either crashed into or in some fashion damaged itself during its 2005 rendezvous. Using the ion engine propulsion system, JAXA has brought Hayabusa home after five years on the long fall to Earth from the asteroid belt. The capsule touched down in Australia and is now to be examined for asteroid dust that may have splashed into the capsule container at the collision in 2005. Hayabusa is the little bot that could and is a deep credit to JAXA and the perseverance of the engineers.

Bots That Cannot.

The BP bots continue to work industriously at the bottom of the Gulf to vacuum up the spillage, but there is no celebration of their work and will never be a thank you or a storybook about perseverance and ingenuity. The estimates for the gusher now reach toward 50k barrels a day, only a slender portion of which is being recovered. The White House declares war on BP starting Tuesday 15 with an Oval Office address in prime time. This bullying will be followed by the half-meeting in the West Wing with the BP chairman and then more bashing with quips and reviews and possible suspension of BP's lincesnes to natural gas and oil on US territory. Spoke my professionals Sunday 13, and no one asserts that demonizing BP is good for the markets, or for Big Energy, or for the political discourse. POTUS makes a rough calculation that he can change the story by repudiating in public and demanding a $20 billion spill fund. Unknown but unlikely. Also, the Obama administration is moving to an anti-corporate template that cannot help in the mid-terms. Spoke Salena Zito, PTR, who reminds that the vulnerable Rust Belt pols are all committed to their Coal Counties and cannot waver. POTUS may swerve to pitching Climate and Energy in the John Kerry bill; and POTUS may try the bi-partisan pitch that the NYT calls naive; but POTUS will keep his rhetorical gunsight on BP and all things Big Oil. The polling the next morning will show that 70-80% of the respondents believe that BP is to blame, and this will satisfy the White House ambition for taking control. Still, the gusher will continue.

POTUS and the Bulldog

By John Batchelor on June 12, 2010 10:48 PM | 9 Comments

"Dave" the PM.

Spoke Edward Luce, FT Washington bureau chief, re the sharp sudden breakdown of relations between the Obama administration and the new CAmeron/Clegg government in London. POTUS bashing "Briitsh Petroleum" these last weeks has wrecked what little remained of diplomatic comity. POTUS calculates that by blame-shifting the the villains of BP, he can satisfy the public and media while waiting out the relief wells and the clean-up. Time is not listening to the POTUS palaver. The English media is on fire with the contest and is pushing "Dave" Cameron hard to bash back. The rhetoric has no retreat. The gifted Telegraph pundit Simon Heffer writes,

"Dave should ask the president what he thinks the effect of his coarse, infantile and aggressive behaviour towards a trusted ally - an ally whose brave solders, sailors and airmen have died and been wounded in large numbers in America's wars in recent years - will have here. Most of us remain unimpressed by America's own environmental disaster in the world economy - the sub-prime slick that spread so easily across the Atlantic; but I do not recall our acting in the petulant way about that disaster that Mr Obama and his hand-picked crew of Chicago bigots are about BP."

and this is the polite, measured, quiet, articulate stuff. "Chicago bigots." Smile.

Awake Bulldog.

Spoke Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg White House correspondent, who identifies the clear strains that have developed in the White House. There is no solution to the Gulf leak that can be solved by POTUS speechifying. The decision to blame-shift onto BP makes the court media most anxious. The complaint I hear in the sub-paragraphs is "what else can they do?" The opera has reached the second act. Lots of drama coming soon. And who cannot love the ultimatums from the Coast Guard to BP, 48 hours or else! Are we circling Predators over BP? POTUS has awakened the sleeping Bulldog, and it ain't feelin' like a poodle. Recall that POTUS ordered Churchill's bust be stowed at the Smithsonian? And that he gave Gordon Brown some "Star Wars" CDs? POTUS has a fresh contempt for all things British Empire. Perhaps it is romantic of POTUS, inheriting his unknown father's rage toward the Colonial Office that vivisected and beggared Kenya. POTUS has no known memory of Kenya in rebellion, the Mau-Mau rising of 1952-1960. But it was POTUS father Barrack Obama's memory. Another mystery.

Jerry Tourette's

By John Batchelor on June 11, 2010 1:44 PM | 13 Comments

Jobs, Jobs, Jerry.

Meg Whitman begins the general campaign with a jobs, jobs, jobs video that aims to define the campaign as about private enterprise and growing the California economy -- as opposed to Jerry Brown's choice of manage the given and live within our means. Meg is for acquiring. Jerry is for surviving. On the first day, Jerry Brown demonstrates that he might have trouble surviving his own campaign style and loose lips. Brown commits an unforced error when he speaks peculiarly to a KCBS reporter when they met on a jog in Oakland in the Redwood Regional Park There is no audio or video, so Brown is not DOA yet, but the reporter Doug Sovern's notes point to the expectation that Jerry Brown cannot help himself. He has what sounds like Nazi Tourette's Disease: I have cut out the Severn explanations. Just Jerry Brown speak.

"I've only spent $200,000 so far. I have 20 million in the bank. I'm saving up for her."

"You know, by the time she's done with me, two months from now, I'll be a child-molesting..."

"She'll have people believing whatever she wants about me."

"It's like Goebbels. Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about."

"Sure, sure he [Gavin Newsom] does. But they can't control it. Look at Barack Obama, he got in and it's all out of his control. I wanted to be president. I ran for president three times, you know."

"No, no one ever wants to talk to me. You're the oddball. You're the only one."

"...I used to be your mayor. I was the last Mayor of Oakland. Oakland could use a mayor, it hasn't had one since I left office."

"You know, we've got to do something about energy in this country. I just looked it up on the Internet. We only produce five million barrels of oil a day, but we consume 20 million. There's no balance there. We need a balance. People need to ride bikes, or walk more."

"Then that's subsistence. You believe in subsistence. But most people, they want exchange value, they want something in return for their goods."

"She [Whitman] looks like an athlete. You think she's an athlete? Yeah, she could probably outrun me."

"What do you think, should I keep running? Should I go a little farther?"

"You've given me a nice little break here."

"I feel recharged. I think I'll get back on the trail and run a little farther. Let's see how far I can get."

Jerry Brown the Cartoon.

Little about the above comments needs review to make the summary that Jerry Brown is no longer in the game of political expectations or conversational relevancy. Brown is isolated in speech, metaphors, observations, anachronisms and a willingness to speak as if he is persecuted by ghosts. Does the California Democratic Party realize that it is burdedned by a man who speaks as if his paranoia is a rational response? Does the Party know that Jerry Brown is so far from respectful that he plunges casually into class warfare by painting himself as doomed to be ruined by money and conflict? Brown looks to be a cartoon, and now he sounds to be a cartoon. "I looked it up on the Internet..."

Bots Rule

By John Batchelor on June 10, 2010 1:25 PM | 2 Comments

The New Rome.

The report of the security breach at AT&T with regard iPad registration and email addresses is a blunt demonstration that the bots now rule our progress and we likely have long since lost a desire to hit the off switch. What is rich is that the iPad cachet was immediately exciting to the elite chattering class, and so the emails and other data of the usual Names all popped up first on the hacker posse screens. Delightful. From Bloomberg to Rahm to Diane Swayer to (guessing) Kim Jong-nam (Kim Jong Il's number one son), all the critical information, including iPad identification numbers, flowed right into the hands of the gangsters in Russia and China. It takes a strong man not to break out laughing at our folly to build a better cage for ourselves. Prisoners of broadband. Slaves to bots. Spoke to Nick Bilton, NYT on the Bits Blog, and he reports that AT&T has moved to correct its error and prevent more access via the ICC-ID communication address that caused the breach. Because government officials and addresses are on the list of the known 100,000-plus ICC-IDs acquired, the FBI is getting involved. No plans yet to publish the list of who is exposed by the hack. The New Rome is Virtual.

Bots of BP.

The bots that are holding together the BP vacuum hose at one mile deep are not sweeping up fast enough to save Mother BP. New estmates by a government-collected panel double the amount from the gusher since April 20 to up to 40k barrels per day, some caught up in the reverse funnel since June 3. The total so far is 100 million gallons of crude in the Gulf. There is no good news. The Coast Guard's Mary Landry is now tasked with prep for hurricane season and the 40% chance of a Category III storm surge in the Gulf before the relief wells cut the flow. BP's destruction is under way as the storms gather off the coast of Africa. Those storms are not headed for Louisiana alone. The surge will carry through the White House and on to November.

BP Doom

By John Batchelor on June 9, 2010 10:07 PM | 10 Comments

Timeline.

The bear raid on BP that drives it to $29 is the next phase in the destruction of BP as an independent enterprise. The bears see the weakness and attack as they must to make the market and clean out the failures. The BP doom started last week when I spoke with Joe Caroll about BP shopping its 26 per cent holding on Prudhoe Bay of the North Slope, the crown jewel of the BP proven reserves. BP will now disappear into the maw of a nimbler predator, such as Shell or CNOOC or even Gazprom. BP has been as dishonest and non-transparent as it can manage since the April 20 explosion. The White House has matched BP in its oafishness. But the story is not about character. It is about the timeline. The question remains what did BP and the Coast Guard know about the scale of the leak and when? The White House response was not fully in place and at battle stations until the 26th and 27th. Spoke with Jennifer Resnick-Ault, Bloomberg, and she reminded me that the early days of reports asserted that the gusher was 1,000 barrels per day. However, I reviewed the conversation I had with Russell Gold, WSJ, at the Gulf on April 22, and he states that the Coast Guard has told him, on the day that the rig sank, that the rate was 300 barrels per hour. That's more than 7,000 per day.

What Does Doom Sound Like?

"The market is saying BP's future is in doubt," said Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer and Co. "They think BP's CEO and chairman will be forced out, that it will suspend the dividend for an unknown period of time, and that it may even be forced to liquidate, and sell off its most strategic assets."

What Did the White House Know?

If my audience knew the 300 barrels per hour estimate on April 22, why didn't that number get to the administration bosses? Why did Napolitano delay days until she mobilized the resources? All these questions have answers, and incompetence isn't an answer. Why has BP given out such wildly various estimates of the flow from the gusher for more than seven weeks? Jessica Resnick-Ault reasons that we do not have good estimates from anyone right now. A professor at Florida estimates between 26.5k and 30k barrels per day. Could go higher. Since BP says it is now capturing 11-15k barrels per day, and we can still see leakage, the daily rate must be higher still. What signifies is that BP has been in denial from the first and is trying to shape the news while it tries to stay alive. But what is the White House motive to avoid the details? It has made it worse for the White House to fall behind. The inevitable investigation of the administration's response and palaver will rival Three Mile Island and Exxon Valdez with the note that the spill continues for another two months. The clean-up looks like years. 2012? Easy. And those petroleum-smeared pelicans will be the Obama administration's nightmare of a postage stamp illustration.

Inappropriate Physical Relationship Party

By John Batchelor on June 8, 2010 7:34 PM | 13 Comments

Hindenboxer Alert.

Carly and Meg now maneuver to confront the two Wiley Coyotes of California, Barbara Hindeboxer and Jerry Ashram Brown. The contest will be for grown-ups. Boxer is a solid, adventurous, grim-faced puncher; however, she has slowed with her 70 years and can no longer keep up the pace of her sharp tongue. Boxer's disdain for the GOP at all costs is her asset. Fiorina is an unknown on the TV circuit. Fiorina speaks well; she is measured and relaxed on the podium -- easy, conversational, warm. This is Boxer's to lose; still, I see why Boxer grabs for all the cash she can find. Meg Whitman's assault on Jerry Brown will be less subtle. This is raw cash power against a man who explains himself endlessly yet remains opaque and self-involved. Why does Jerry Brown want to be the governor of a state that he helped chant into the present wreck? Jerry Brown never explained in a convincng fashion why he was a two-term governor; why he left his modest digs in Sacramento to run for president several times without merit (the last time against the boyish Bill Clinton, who made Jerry Brown look especially awkward and unwashed, uncombed, unwanted.) Suspicion is that Jerry Brown still has Potomac Fever; he daydreams of selling off Air Force 1 and living in a DC hostel.

Blanche Forgets to Blink.

The Blanche Lincoln victory in Arkansas is a puzzle only because everyone really, really smart said she was a loser. The Democrats become excited by anyone who gets endorsed and funded by MoveOn.org and the public unions; but now their chosen candidate, Bill Halter, has failed. It seems to be a reverse cup of the Tea Party. Puzzle? And in Nevada, Sharron Angle, the Tea Party tyro, moves soundly victorious over Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian. I am noticing that a certain gender did some sweeping -- both parties, all directions and regions, high-profile stuff, and joyful.

Nikki Rules.

My favorite new party is the Inappropriate Physical Relationship Party, led by Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Tunku Varadarajan is correct about Indian-Americans rising. This is a striking new theme in American politics -- young, Southern lawmakers who are both Indian-American and Republican. Did the smears make Nikki Haley a winner? Certainly there must be a connection between her striking strength, the smears, and the success of the vigorrous, sympathetic Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. The IPR Party needs a platform and a few catchy tunes. Nah. IPR rules South Carolina and will soon sweep the South and North. I expect to see Nikki Haley on all the Sunday shows. Star is born. The Un-Sarah.

We're All AT&T Now

By John Batchelor on June 7, 2010 1:54 AM | 5 Comments

Blame AT&T.

Spoke Cris Valerio, Bloomberg, at San Francisco, who attended the Steve Jobs rollout of the new iPhone4, and she opined the most exciting moment was when Jobs asked everyone to turn off their connectivity so that he could find the bandwidth to run his demo iPhone4 on stage. Five thousand people laughed nervously. The Apple troops spread out and enforced the shutting down. Nervous snickers. Back to 1985, silent, solitary, looking for a phone booth. The iPhone delay puzzled the audience. The question was raised that it was AT&T, the terrible sole carrier. Shrug. We're all AT&T now.

iPhone4.

Yes, my aim is to acquire an iPhone4 so that I can complain about service and use the gimmicks. Am told that the iPhone4 has a superior HD video, much superior to my FlipHD. And the iPhone4 will construct a video that I should be able to email. Much superior to the jerryrig I now use. I will miss my BlackBerry, unless I keep it. The AT&T carrier is not the trouble. Already the iPad works okay. Look to 4G soon, but not yet.

Headless Sign from Heaven

By John Batchelor on June 6, 2010 11:42 AM | 13 Comments

Gravestone.

Tony Heyward lost his head for his conduct these last weeks and that is the way of the world. When the kingdom fails, the king fails. There are no records of unemployed, rootless kings wandering around the 12th century. Heyward's remarks on TV are fatuous and less than creative. "I would like my life back." This is the sentence that will be written on his gravestone -- and likely to be written on any gravestone of any Big Energy executive who confuses himself with his role. BP is finished as an independent operator. It has now joined the ranks of villains and knaves, and it cannot get its life back. But that is not the critical part. What happens next is that the Big Nation States (the Powers) that depend upon Big Energy will be pushed and dragged in to confronting the global energy companies and subduing them down to the level of utilities. Who will win this contest? Unknown, but it will be a brouhaha over the next century.

The End of BP.

The puzzle now for gamblers is to choose when is the moment to buy into the BP catastrophe? One likely outcome is that BP is eaten by Shell or Exxon or CNOOC or Gazprom, and then turned into a subsidiary to be cut up and parceled out for cash to lesser players in useful regions. The Chinese mandarins (CP) don't sell much, but they may learn to play the M&A game later in the century. Another likely outcome is that the Big Energy companies seek to buy the parts of the US government that they do not already lease and then reorganize the Congress to oblige the New World Order of nukes, coal, oil sands and natural gas -- with Big Oil marginalized by costs and insurance and nightmare environmental battalions for the next thirty years.

Cap and Trade and Blood.

Meanwhile, back in the last days of the Democratic majority on the Hill, the ambitious and clever are moving chairs around to face John Kerry when he takes to the podium to declare that the Gulf is actually a sign from the Heavens that energy legislation is critical and a jobs theme (shrug). And so forth palaver. Do the Democrats have the votes in the Senate? Not now. The Big Coal Democrats are already vulnerable. Will the Independents believe POTUS if he proposes legislation to defend the Gulf from Deepwater Horizon? Unknown. It will be entertaining to watch Mr. Kerry and his cap and trade companions twist the narrative to suit the purposes of the Obama administration to raise revenue (taxes) while disguising the effort as national security. There will be fake blood.

Back-Up Chaos

By John Batchelor on June 5, 2010 2:14 AM | 11 Comments

Erebus and Terror.

The good news is that BP and the bots have managed to drain some of the oil for the last hours using the reverse funnel option that was at the end of the choices starting the end of April. The report still leaves unanswered how much oil is in the gusher each day. The estimate is wide, from 19k to 60k. The 6700 BP reports was a solid start. And BP raised the estimate to 10k barrels a day on Day 48. More puzzlement is how this fragile construction is damaging the politics of the Gulf and the national belief in solutions. The scale of the problem after 48 days is more worrisome because it starts with the failure of just one BOP. Consider that since the 18th century, there are firm examples of how you do things with twos. Erebus and Terror explored the Southern Ocean together. Columbus sailed with two. NASA believes in back-ups on back-ups. Four engines are not too many on an aircraft. And my Mac and iPad are backed up and duplicated, and I have a separate system to go within an hour. All this is obvious. Yet one BOP failed and here we are.

Back-Up POTUS.

Frank Rich and Matt Bai, NYT, search for useful explanations of the struggles of POTUS since April 20. Frank Rich finds that POTUS is an elitist who defers to brainiacs rather than lead. Matt Bai find that Jimmy Carter was felled not by one crisis, for example the hostage drama, or Three Mile Island, but rather by the series of disasters that Carter did not master. The drip drip drip of chaos overwhelming control. Both these scenarios present worthy solutions. Can POTUS lead? Can POTUS manage? Yes. Right now, POTUS needs back-up luck. The worst-case scenario is that the relief wells do not strike the well until early August. Whatever BP can pull out of the well until then, an astonishing 45 more days, is better than standing back and waiting. The best case is that the engineers can figure how to tighten the reverse funnel and siphon 50%, perhaps higher, from the gusher. The national mania for solutions needs a sense of progress. POTUS needs a back-up plan for his own political fortunes.

Back-Up Recession.

Am told the storm clouds gather again in Europe after the duplicitous remarks by Hungary about its banks, sovereign debt and ambitions to solves its own failures. A lot of noise and doubt introduced into an already-faltering market scenario after the weak jobs picture on Friday 4. Speaking Joe Brusuelas, Bloomberg, about the probability of a Black Monday if the European smart guys don't build a credible argument that they can handle the Hungarian Lehman.

Day 45

By John Batchelor on June 3, 2010 7:46 PM | 2 Comments

Spoke Peter Baker, NYT, re the White House thinking about the BP spill and the ongoing, still unsolved gusher. Three other examples are under discussion in the White House media gaggle: Jimmy Carter's hostage crisis in Iran, 1979, when Mr. Carter was running for re-election; Bill Clinton's Lewinsky scandal in 1998, when Mr. Clinton was trying to build a consensus on domestic and foreign affairs; and George Bush's Iraq war in 2005-2007, when he was trying to turn to Social Security. Peter Baker observes that the White House ops who routinely speak to the media, especially the not-unfriendly NYT, point to how the Obama team has been in a crisis mode for 16 months, with the financial crisis, two wars, and the vicissitudes of the energy, healthcare and financial reform legislation. In sum, much rational discussion of how things could be worse. I asked if POTUS has adjusted his immediate calendar that calls for him to travel for a week to Indonesia and Australia during the BP mess. The answer is, unknown.

Day 45.

The count up on cable and TV is a nightmare for the White House, and now we learn (see above) that computer projects promise the ugliness will spread into Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina congressional races.

BP Jobless

By John Batchelor on June 2, 2010 9:08 AM | 3 Comments

Bot Speak.

Robot heroes at five thousand feet deep have been working continuously for weeks to solve the BP gusher. The new new worst case scenario is that the robots cannot solve the riser (pipe collapsed like a garden hose a mile long) and that the spill (at 19-60k barrels per day) will continue until the relief wells in August or (new new new scenario) until Christmas and a second round of relief wells. Robots are the thing this year.

BP Politics.

It is fair to say that the Obama administration has committed itself to taking responsibility for this mess despite the observation that this is unjust and inappropriate. POTUS injected himself into the PR tangle and is now all twisted up with the riser. Why did he do this? The easy answer is that POTUS spots a crisis and sees an opportunity to burnish the hero image. That seems inadequate here. POTUS is not an experienced crisis manager of any sort, and he has not staffed his cabinet with crisis managers. Mrs. Clinton knows crisis. Geithner knows something of crisis after Bear Sterns and Lehman. But Steven Chu, Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder do not know much about crisis; or, if they do, they are being too subtle about it. There is no center to the story, no narrator, no one representing the public interest to castigate the villains (BP and Big Oil) and to comfort the victims (the Gulf states, red and blue teams). Instead, POTUS has tried to Big Think the issue. POTUS sent in his Brain Trust of Chu and his pals, and that was the end of the White House enterprise. The Brains sat down in a Houston shop and started puzzling, and the result so far is that the bots do all the work, even if it is scut work, or (at present) the kind of work that makes it worse.

BP and Jobs.

Spoke Wednesday 2 to Brian Swint, Bloomberg at London, re the sharp decline in BP shares since April 20 and the rising possibility that BP will be a takeover target. For now, BP can manage the estimated $37 B solution and clean-up costs with its $10B annual cash flow. What it cannot handle is the threat of the US Justice Department. The announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder of a criminal and civil investigation has intimidated and confused investors and spooked takeover offers. The potential liabilities are astronomical. Also under pressure are the drillers, rig operations and oil services, such as Halliburton and Schlumberger, all of whom depend upon the industrious Gulf for daily bread and upon the deepwater projects for the high margins. POTUS decision to suspend Gulf deepwater drilling and to delay Shell in the Arctic do not contribute to job growth.

Day 44.

What does it mean that MSNBC, the glamorous Obama court cabal, now uses a brutal graphic that reads Crisis in the Gulf "Day 44" and so forth? Does MSNBC aim to collapse the administration like the riser? Is there a clever construction here? What is not obvious? "Day 44" is Jimmy Carter Tehran hostage theatricals. Is this a passive court coup?

Bayou in Space

By John Batchelor on June 1, 2010 12:46 PM | 8 Comments

Titan Tales.

With the Earth-bound troubles of the Gulf and the Gaza blockade-breaking (see that Egypt has opened Sinai/Gaza border to all the gun-runners in sight for a fee) and the rise of a sinister post-Ottoman state in Ankara and a proto-Shia state in Tehran, it makes me feel liberated to turn attention to the landscapes of Titan, the Earth twin in oribit of Saturn. Bold Cassini bot is headed to another fly-by of Titan just now, and the above computer-generated flyover of the surface shows the wonders of planet-making in our solar system. Titan, I am taught, has all the elements of a successful Earth save the orbit, and a remaking of the hydrocarbon soup by bombardment and consequent organics. This is what Earth looked like once upon a time in chemistry were it not for heat, luck and Bonaparte. Those hydrocarbons are the Devil to organics, which is why it took several billion years and the slightly unexplained accident of the Cambrian explosion to move our planet from the squiggly strange multicellular sea life of once upon a time to the shrewd hominids of the Yankees and Dodgers. Those berms in Louisiana cannot hold back the Earth's proto-soup. The contest in the Gulf is the Bayou vs Titan Lite (Earth) and the odds are with us as long as we are not in a hurry.

Hydrocarbon-Eating Engineered Bacteria.

Spoke Henry Miller, Hoover, Monday 31 to learn that the EPA has blocked for more than a decade the development of genetically engineered bacteria that can break down and eliminate oil and attendant pollutants from a spill. The Exxon Valdez catastrophe of 1989 showed damage to the biosphere decades after the event, because clean-up is incapable of reaching into the chain of events that change mortality rates and breeding of fish and birds. The likelihood of bacteria solving the challenge is very high, yet the EPA insists that it is not safe. Henry Miller opines that the EPA is a 20th century artifact of state control that rules out innovation as a threat to its authority and regulation skills.

BP Titan

Imagine someday putting wells into Titan? By then, we will be on gravity power from the post- quantum stuff that still lacks a glossary. Also, we will probably be after the methane for bio-engineering the cloud cities. Busy, busy. If we are the accident of the cosmos waiting to happen, then we have a solar system then a galaxy to colonize with busy Bayous and our engineered genome friends.

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