Krugman: China is a 'rogue economic power'

As if more than enough evidence weren't enough, there's this:

Last month a Chinese trawler operating in Japanese-controlled waters collided with two vessels of Japan’s Coast Guard. Japan detained the trawler’s captain; China responded by cutting off Japan’s access to crucial raw materials.

And there was nowhere else to turn: China accounts for 97 percent of the world’s supply of rare earths, minerals that play an essential role in many high-technology products, including military equipment. Sure enough, Japan soon let the captain go.

I don’t know about you, but I find this story deeply disturbing, both for what it says about China and what it says about us. On one side, the affair highlights the fecklessness of U.S. policy makers, who did nothing while an unreliable regime acquired a stranglehold on key materials. On the other side, the incident shows a Chinese government that is dangerously trigger-happy, willing to wage economic warfare on the slightest provocation.

He goes on to talk about how, starting in the 1990s, the Chinese were allowed to take over the world's rare earth production industry, necessarily killing off our own industry in the process. About the Bush II era response, when we were supposedly doing everything and then some to protect our national security:

[P]olicy makers simply stood by as the U.S. rare earth industry shut down.

Seems like the Barons of the New America (and their political retainers and gophers) are willing to do anything for money.

As to lessons, the Professor suggests three, including:

China’s response to the trawler incident is, I’m sorry to say, further evidence that the world’s newest economic superpower isn’t prepared to assume the responsibilities that go with that status.

Let's put that a little differently. As the Republicans are to the Democrats, China is to all U.S. policy-makers — facing a self-neutered opponent, relentless, and willing to do anything to win. It's a match made in heaven — if you're a Republican, or the Chinese government.

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Congressional report criticizes Bush/Paulson bank bailout

This article fails enormously to address who specifically was in power during this troubled process. In the comments below the article you have the usual bashing of Democrats for being socialist which is amusing since the last time I checked, Bush and Paulson were in charge of this process in 2008. If the Teabaggers want to label Bush and Paulson socialists, that's fine (and indeed warranted) but don't blame Obama, Geithner and the Democrats for a disaster that they inherited from the Republicans. As critical as I may be about Geithner's term, this report is about Paulson. Other than for political purposes, it's not clear why the AP failed to mention that key point.

Unless O'Donnell waved her wand and cast a spell to put Obama in office at this time, this is a Bush/Paulson failure.

The bailed-out mortgage companies hired by the Treasury Department to manage its main program designed to prevent foreclosures probably weren't up to the job, and tapping them may have increased taxpayer losses, a new watchdog report says.

Failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac relied heavily on subcontractors to manage a program aimed at lowering borrowers' monthly payments, according to a report Thursday from the Congressional Oversight Panel monitoring the $700 billion financial bailout. The job probably detracted from their efforts to right themselves financially and minimize the size of their bailouts, which total $148 billion and are likely to grow, the report says.

Treasury hired them despite their history of mismanagement, the report adds. It says they have misreported key data and missed important deadlines.

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Portrait of the Bush economy

Continuing our swirl through the land of the Rich and the devastation left behind them, here's our friend David Cay Johnston with an exclusive peek at a new report on the Bush economy.

We knew it wasn't pretty; these are the gruesome details:



Notice Bush's list at about 1:05 of the clip — the cuts will help "businesses that create jobs," those at the "low end of the economic ladder," and "small businesses."

The first isn't true unless you replace jobs with profits. The second is just a lie. And the third isn't true unless you replace small businesses with billionaires. ("Replacement phrases" that make Movement Conservative nonsense make sense are discussed here.) The facts are these:

Income for the average worker (adjusted for inflation):

2000 average income — $61,500
2008 average income — $58,000

"Jobs":

Bush created 3.5 million jobs over 8 years. Recall that one of our magic numbers is 150,000 new jobs/month — that's what it takes to break even with population growth. 96 Bush months x 150,000 = 14.4 million jobs needed to break even. He missed by a factor of four.

But true to form, profits were way up. The number of people making $200,000/year or more increased almost ten-fold.

And finally "small businesses" (i.e. billionaires):

30% or more of the tax savings in 2007 (the height of the "boom") went to those with incomes over $1 million/year.

12.5% of the savings went to the top .1% — those with $2 million/year income or more. (Johnston misspoke; "one in a thousand" is the top .1%, not the top .01%, as Table 7 here shows.)

Johnston's summary: "Clearly this was focused on helping a narrow group of people at the very top." Note also Keith's implication that Bush was deliberately "starving the beast" — deliberately strangling government of revenue.

Here are some more magic numbers, by the way — easy-to-remember breakpoints for income distribution (not wealth distribution). Sources for this include the excellent Slate multi-part series, Emmanuel Saez's academic site, plus the google. There's a mix of years and methodologies here, so this isn't gospel; but it's good enough:

Top 20%   = $100,000 per year
Top 10%   = $150,000 per year
Top  5%   = $200,000 per year
Top  2%   = $250,000 per year (tax cut point)
Top  1%   = $400,000 per year
Top  .5%  = $600,000 per year
Top  .1%  = $2 million per year
Top  .01% = $10 million per year

Check the Slate article for changes in the ratios over time. The highest income I'm aware of is David Tepper, Appaloosa Management — $4 billion in 2009. I'm sure he's piker compared to some.

Welcome to Bush-world, the real one, and Blue Dog–world as well. There's a movement afoot in parts of our ever-helpful press to rehabilitate the ex. Resist, guys.

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Rachel Maddow on Obama ending Bush's war

The Obama Iraq–pullout speech received mixed reviews.

Martin Wolf called it "too cautious" in the Financial Times. The NY Times editors were more positive ("There was no victory to declare last night, and Mr. Obama was right not to try") but then wondered "why he talks to Americans directly so rarely and with seeming reluctance." The Post's Dan Balz wrote about the "tension inherent in his Oval Office address." Bill Kristol liked it; that's a mixed review all by itself, in my opinion.

But I think the best evaluation belongs to Rachel Maddow. During MSNBC's post-speech chat, Rachel Maddow went easy on Obama's Team Looking Forward act and offers this interesting thought:



Then on her own show she clearly tweaks Obama for not looking back, by showing what he's not looking back at. Here's Rachel, refusing to "go down the memory hole" with some other unnamed person. Nice work:



"On the day the war ends, what the war was for is sort of the elephant in the room."

Thanks, Rachel.

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The Shock Doctrine in New Orleans

Five years ago there were reports that New Orleans, black and destroyed, would be rebuilt to white-guy specs.

In a way, it was kind of obvious; a great opportunity for Bush and his friends to race-swap a city just asking to be a white theme park.

Opportunity, say Hello to power and money. Here's Rachel Maddow talking about New Orleans housing, rebuilt to ... white-guy specs. She doesn't say "shock doctrine" but she could have. The phrases "George Bush" and "by design" come up around the 7:00 mark. (Sadly, Obama's name comes up too.)



Thanks, Rachel, for shining the light. Note that this doesn't happen without corrupt local politicians, blacks included.

Race-swapping in New Orleans is a long-term project; these guys will take two decades to do it. We're just seeing the score at the end of the first quarter. Looks like 14–3 to me.

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More on Dems' anti-Bush message

Chicago Trib:

Democrats are putting cash behind their anti-Bush message, taking to the airwaves today with an ad that frames the election as one of "big choices."

Timed to coincide with the end of its summer meeting in St. Louis, the Democrat National Committee is launching a new television ad that "amplifies the choice voters are going to face this fall," a senior party spokesman said.

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Did former First Lady Laura Bush hype a stomach flu (or some other virus) into a mythical assassination attempt in order to sell books?

Yahoo News:

Did former First Lady Laura Bush hype a stomach flu (or some other virus) into a mythical assassination attempt in order to sell books? When Bush's memoir, "Spoken From the Heart," was released last month, dozens of headlines blasted out its most tantalizing tidbit: Bush suspected that a mysterious illness that befell her, her husband and their staff during the 2007 G8 summit in Germany may have been the result of an attempt to kill or incapacitate the 43rd president.

"Exceedingly alarmed" by the illness, Bush wrote, "the Secret Service went on full alert, combing the resort for potential poisons. In the past year, there had been several high-profile poisonings, including one with suspected nuclear material, in and around Europe. The overriding fear was that terrorists had gotten control of a dangerous substance and planted it at the resort. [W]e never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one."

That's the sort of shadowy intrigue that's landed many a book on the bestseller list — just ask Dan Brown. However, there's no record of the episode ever happening, at least according to the Secret Service. Yahoo! News filed a Freedom of Information Act request looking for any documents — e-mails, investigation reports, incident reports, etc. — related to the alleged incident. In reply, the Secret Service informed us Monday that its review of records "indicates that there are no records or documents pertaining to your request in [our] files."

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Bush at energy conference: 'It's in our economic interests that we diversify away from oil'

The end of the world may be near. Somehow if Obama said the same I don't think the response would be the same.

As the U.S. Gulf Coast battled a massive oil spill, former President George W. Bush told the American Wind Energy Association conference here today, "It's in our economic interests that we diversify away from oil."

"It's in our environmental interest," the onetime Midland oilman added. "And, finally, it's in our national security interest."

Bush, speaking at the Dallas Convention Center, said he believes that his grandchildren "will be driving electric cars, powered primarily by renewable sources of energy."

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Rumors about Obama more likely to be false than rumors about Bush

From Jed at DailyKos:

J.L. Bell runs the numbers on Snopes.com's database of internet rumors and finds out that President Obama has been the target of many more rumors than President Bush -- and that rumors about Obama are far more likely to be false than rumors about Bush:

After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.

Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).

In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.

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House GOPers having jobs summit with architects of the failed Bush economic policy

Can't make this stuff up. The economy is in a shambles because of the mess created by the failed policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney. Democrats have been trying to dig out of this disaster for the past year. Today, Obama is holding a jobs summit at the White House. The House Republicans are having one of their own:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has scheduled an "economic roundtable" today, to compete with the White House's job summit. Roll Call reported, "A spokesman for Boehner said the purpose of the meeting is to give a platform for economists who have a different perspective on how Obama's agenda has affected the economy."

And who are these experts? Apparently, House Republicans have turned to "former Bush administration and McCain campaign staffers, who have advocated disastrous tax and budget policies."

So, to summarize, less than a year from the last administration, congressional Republicans believe it's time to re-embrace the Bush/Cheney agenda that didn't work, and listen to the architects of the Bush/Cheney agenda that didn't work.

The thing that really sucks is that if Democrats don't fix the economy and create more jobs by next fall, the elections could be a disaster. That will empower the same Republicans who destroyed the economy in the first place. It's as if the GOP economic plan is also their 2010 campaign plan: Ruin the economy in order to defeat Democrats. Read More......

Only .125% of Republicans say Dick Cheney best reflects GOP core values

Via the Plum Line:

Just 1 percent pick George W. Bush as the best reflection of the party’s principles, and only a single person in the poll cites former vice president Richard B. Cheney. About seven in 10 say Bush bears at least “some” of the blame for the party’s problems

First off, I wonder if Bush and Cheney did so poorly because, in a ranking of all GOP officials, Palin outranks them - and if you can only vote for one person, the conservative fringe that now makes up today's GOP would vote for Palin. Secondly, conservatives never trusted Bush in the first place, so now that they make up most of the GOP - moderate Rs walked a long time ago - it's no wonder that they don't give Bush high marks. Still, a good deal of schadenfreude to be gleaned from the poll. Read More......

Bush wanted to invade Iraq even before he was elected

Wouldn't it make sense for the US to also schedule a serious inquiry into the Iraq war? It's even more obvious that the Bush administration had early plans to invade Iraq and simply manufactured problems to trigger the invasion. Then PM Tony Blair initially rejected the idea because it was unlawful, though he eventually folded. The Guardian:

Evidence given at the opening day of the inquiry, chaired by the former top civil servant Sir John Chilcot, painted a picture of a Whitehall slowly realising the significance of George Bush's election in November 2000 on US policy towards Iraq.

Even before Bush's administration came to power an article written by his then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, warned that "nothing will change" in Iraq until Saddam was gone, Sir Peter Ricketts, a former chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC) and now the Foreign Office's top official, told the inquiry.

"We were aware of these drumbeats from Washington and internally we discussed it. Our policy was to stay away from that part of the spectrum," added Sir William Patey, then head of the Middle East department at the Foreign Office.

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George Bush: Terrorists should be tried in U.S. Courts.

Via Greg Sargent:

With Republicans hammering the Obama administration for trying suspected 9/11 terrorists in a New York court, a Democrat points out that in 2006, George W. Bush seemed to say outright that terrorists should be “tried in courts here in the United States.”

There was no outcry at the time.

Bush's line was: "I believe they ought to be tried in courts here in the United States." Huh. Now, as Markos noted in his recent column in The Hill (titled appropriately, "Conservative Cowards"), Republicans are fretting, trembling and wailing. Read More......

Italy convicts 23 US CIA agents

You never quite know where Italy is going next. The down side to these convictions is that it's falling on some but not all of those involved in the disgraceful "extraordinary rendition" policy. What about those who gave the orders at the top? Why should the Bush administration get a free pass on this? The Guardian:

Twenty-three Americans were tonight convicted of kidnapping by an Italian court at the end of the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" programme for abducting terrorist suspects.

The former head of the CIA in Milan Robert Lady was given an eight-year jail sentence for his part in the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, who claimed that he was subsequently tortured in Egypt. Lady's superior, Jeff Castelli, the then head of the CIA in Italy, and two other Americans were acquitted on the grounds that they enjoyed diplomatic immunity.

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New Jersey's Chris Christie hearts George Bush

I don't think this is going to help in New Jersey:

Vice President Biden will be campaigning with Governor Jon Corzine today. Obama will campaign with Corzine in Hackensack on Wednesday. Read More......

More quotes from Latimer's tell-all book about the Bush years

Huff Post has more tidbits from Matt Lattimer's upcoming book about the Bush years, as an insider.

Bush on Jimmy Carter: "If I'm ever eighty-two years old and acting like that have someone put me away."

Laura Bush, says Latimer, "was secretly a Democrat for all intents and purposes, though it really wasn't much of a secret."

For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too "condemnatory" and said, "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married." (Of course, Bush ran his 2004 campaign telling that kid just that.)

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George Bush on Sarah Palin

An oddly lucid analysis from our former president. (As an aside, read this entire article - it's an excerpt from the book I link to below. It's written by a former White House speechwriter, and is the funniest, and saddest, thing you'll have read in a while. It's all about the economic crisis and the last few months in the Bush White House.)

I was about to be engulfed by a tidal wave of Palin euphoria when someone—someone I didn’t expect—planted my feet back on the ground. After Palin’s selection was announced, the same people who demanded I acknowledge the brilliance of McCain’s choice expected the president to join them in their high-fiving tizzy. It was clear, though, that the president, ever the skilled politician, had concerns about the choice of Palin, which he called “interesting.” That was the equivalent of calling a fireworks display “satisfactory.”

“I’m trying to remember if I’ve met her before. I’m sure I must have.” His eyes twinkled, then he asked, “What is she, the governor of Guam?”

Everyone in the room seemed to look at him in horror, their mouths agape. When Ed told him that conservatives were greeting the choice enthusiastically, he replied, “Look, I’m a team player, I’m on board.” He thought about it for a minute. “She’s interesting,” he said again. “You know, just wait a few days until the bloom is off the rose.” Then he made a very smart assessment.

“This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for,” he said. “She hasn’t spent one day on the national level. Neither has her family. Let’s wait and see how she looks five days out.” It was a rare dose of reality in a White House that liked to believe every decision was great, every Republican was a genius, and McCain was the hope of the world because, well, because he chose to be a member of our party.

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GOP candidate for Governor of New Jersey was groomed by Rove, "exhibited loyalty" to Bush

We're learning a lot from the House Judiciary Committee's investigation of the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. It's further confirmation that the Bush administration overly politicized everything. The Bush politicos actually ranked the U.S. Attorneys in terms of fealty to Bush and his agenda. Right at the top of the list was Chris Christie, who is this year's GOP candidate for Governor in New Jersey -- a post for which he was groomed by Karl Rove:

The ranking -- disclosed for the first time this week as part of a Congressional investigation into the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys in 2006 -- places Christie among prosecutors who "produced, managed well and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General."

Other categories included U.S. attorneys who "chafed against Administration initiatives" or "have not distinguished themselves," according to the documents.

The March 2005 list, sent to the White House by the Justice Department, was part of a trove of internal documents and Congressional testimony released on Tuesday. The documents also included testimony by Bush political advisor Karl Rove, who said he and Christie had discussed the possibility that Christie might run for governor. Those discussions occurred while Christie was still U.S. attorney, a non-political post.

Christie offers New Jersey a return to the Bush/Rove era. I really hope the voters in the Garden State are smarter than that. Read More......

Could the U.S. send Bush anywhere?

With Bill Clinton on a mission to North Korea (as a private citizen, but still), it got me thinking: Could the U.S. send George W. Bush on a mission anywhere in the world? I really don't think so.

One thing you can say about former Democratic presidents: They continue to serve their country.

It's best for all of us if Bush stays in Crawford. Read More......

Teen pregnancy and syphilis up sharply during Bush years

Oh those traditional family values. If only there were a few more purity balls, all of this could have been avoided. And some have the nerve to say the Bible was better than using science.

Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.

In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.

The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.

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