Crossover

Today marks a special day, as Obama's presidential approval shows a negative spread for the first time since the Gallup organisation started taking his pulse. The pale green thumbs down line has broken through the dark green thumbs up curve, evincing the first negative week since polling began. The result reflects a rolling average of three-day polls.

In my inauguration special I wrote

Obama's initial rating is unprecedented. This means that he'll lose points during the first year. A twenty point drop will bring him into the mid 60's, which is an attractive rating anywhere in the world. When he breaches 50-something, he has cause for concern, as no full-term president other than Regan and Johnson has managed a V-shaped rating curve. And Johnon had victory in the World War II to help him.

Foolishly, I read his 68% rating as an 86% (I won't divulge what I was smashed on at the time.) I then went on to extrapolate a twenty percent decline taking him back into the sixties. Eish! Nevertheless, the substance of what I stood stands.

I omitted to say that the shape-shifting precedents I quoted came from Gallup. You would have guessed it though, given their monopoly on polling history. I also omitted to mention what Reagan did to make a V. You (seriously) don't want to contemplate that.

As of today, according to Gallup, 45% of Americans think that Obama is doing a commendable job, while 48% believe that he isn't. The difference falls close to the poll's (3%) margin of error, so should not be interpreted with too much foreboding. It's consistent with other polls.

That this ante-blip comes hot on the heels of Healthcare reform, Start III and the unveiling of the nuclear posture is no surprise. Expect him to remain range-bound between 46% and 52% until November. This'll have the predictable effect on his involvement in marginal races.

China, old and new

Ok, so here's a response to the recent request for me to update my predictions.

In my 2009 prediction I warned of an implosion of the Chinese bubble. I know it's next year already, but hey...

Back then I warned that "Initially, there'll be firesale attempts at prolonging the implosion." What I didn't think about was the timing of the long-awaited Renminbi de-float.

So much for old predictions, roll in the new:

1. We now know that in March China ran a trade deficit for the first time in six years. If (and only if) there are three more months of this, then China will weaken the Renminbi. The weakening may happen before the deficit reportage, as the Chinese may act on the basis of forecasts.
2. If this happens, it will be credited to the diplomatic savvy of Geithner and Obama, rather than Chinese competitiveness.

RIP(ped) ET

An email extract follows... best read from the bottom-up

Greetings

Yes, I've been running around so frantically, that I've neglected our little secret partnership. And then ET gets it in the neck, and then I'm like shiiiiiiiiiit... if only Name2 Withheld and I had done our doing, then surely the land would be all rainbow hugs instead of nazi rebirth, and then Name1 Withheld shared some thoughts with me.

When our theory was confirmed in the Saturday press, I had to drop the newspaper, and could only read it after a five-minute cool-off period. Then I was filled with regret that we didn't publish it (turning ourselves into instant rock stars), even though Name1 Withheld had off-handedly remarked about "Calling Deborah Patta." But given that, in spite off all the supervening nazism, the background story was still about some guy who gets discovered in the comfort of his own home with his face slashed, I think our near-silence was the write decision.

The reaction to this whole thing has been very revealing, and more grizzly than the murder itself. The way I see it (and partly argued last week) there are five candidate reasons why ET got it in the neck (or slightly north):

1. He was murdered on the orders of Julius Malema.
2. He was murdered as a consequence of his own brutal history.
3. He was murdered when an innocent burglary violently cascaded in typical Mzantsi fashion.
4. He was murdered in the heat of a mismanaged labour dispute.
5. He was murdered in the heat of a mismanaged sexual tryst.

In my view, I've arranged these options in increasing order of likelihood. But White South Africans latch onto the least likely explanation, largely because it melds into stereotypes of Black agency, and also because of intellectual sloth (the Malema theory is easy.)
If Juju himself were found face-down in a bowl of broth in his Sandton residence, and a pair of Afrikaans gentleman surrendered on account of it, my guess is that nobody would link it to the mobilisation of Steve Hofmeyer - even though he's been rather more pointed that JM.

tee hee
me

---

Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:05:05 +0200
Subject: ET se bumhole
From: Address Withheld
To: Address Withheld

Hi Neil

I've been grooving for the last few days on the utter genius of Name1 Withheld's theory of Eugene the Paedophile, and now I discover that you are the co-creator of said theory, so I just wished to say..... high five!

Your colleague from the Group that So Secret that it Never Meets,
Name Withheld

The longest comment of my life

This is a reply to Lucretius's first response to my Birthday Wish. It was too long to make it into the 'comments' section.

Thanks for the comment Lu.

As for your a), I can't think of a single prediction that I've got to "update" (whatever that could mean.) In the interests of honesty, I leave my posts unedited, even at the risk of later face-egg. If you wanna know what I believed at the time, it's still there verbatim.

As for your b), regular Trucenteers will know that new remarks do arise in the foolness of time. Patience please.

I challenge you to pinpoint the shortcomings of my predictions. You haven't explicitly done this, so let's trawl through your hints:

1: "You... portrayed [Obama] as a useless sap".
Untrue. As far back as Jan 2009 I wrote "Obama won't be considered one of the worst." I presaged the triangulation we're now witnessing by writing that he'd pick his battles selectively, largely ditching his liberal base. You can read that on the blog post.

2: "Obama is now empowered by the biggest domestic policy coup of the past several decades". It's the biggest social security overhaul over that period, but I'm not sure that it's the biggest domestic policy coup. Bush's tax cuts and the domestic implications of his Iraq war probably are bigger (coup's don't always have happy consequences.) Nevertheless, in my inauguration special I wrote that "When Obama leaves office a remarkable number of Americans will have remarkably enhanced access to medical care. This will be the single biggest acheivement of his presidency." Following the Scott Brown coup I wrote that passage of the Senate Bill was the second likeliest path to healthcare reform. That happened. I gave failure only 5%. Failure didn't happen. I've nothing to revise. It's remarkable to see supposed progressives cheer at the federalisation of Mitt Romney's healthcare policy, but that's a good thing as it presages a move away from the contention that Republicans are inherently incapable of "progressive" reform.

3: "Obama is tough with Israel". Show me the tractor tracks. All the Israeli violations of international law that were in place in Jan 2009 still are. Settlement building (and the concomitant theft of land) continue apace. Obama's toughness (disregarding the finger wagging rhetoric) is measured by the fact that Israel still receives more US aid than the combined aid receipts to the rest of the world. Much of which finances the very settlement building that Obama supposedly is "getting tough" about. Meantime he continues to regard the despot Abbas (whose term of office expired years ago, and must therefor rank as a dictator.) The reason for that is that he's echoing Bush's view that a friendly and unaccountable despot is preferable to a democratically elected Hamas. Again, this is consistent with everything I've written before.


4: "Climate legislation in the mix". Dunno what you mean by that, but the legislation has been bogged down for a year now. I'd like to see it before I cheer it. Meanwhile, the arctic reserve is half-open for drilling. During the campaign this was a no-go area, but as has been pointed out before (not by me) it's okay for Barry to lie before elections.

5: "Nuclear weapons coup with Russia". Presumably the coup you refer to relates to the fact that he's renewed the expired SALT treaty four months after the expiry date. That's not some sort of revolutionary accomplishment. It's his job. As for the broader context, see my recent remarks about the posture.

6: "Financial legislation reform moving". You don't seem to care in what direction it's moving. Healthcare "reform" was really good for insurance companies. There's every indication that financial reform is gonna be great for Obama's Wall Street backers.

7: "Obama's an increasingly wily triangulator". Again, I predicted this not only after Scott Brown, but way back on inauguration day. It's funny how triangulation has now become a mark of progressive virtue.

It's also clear that there is (and always has been) a worrying conjunction between disregard for substance and outright double-standard. For the Obamaphiles, whatever the great man accomplishes is progress. If conservatives do the same things earlier (Romney on healthcare, Reagan on SALT, Bush/McCain on arctic drilling, Wall Street on Wall Street) it's regress.

A tale of two postures

One (and only one) of these gets a Nobel prize:

1: "We will develop nuclear capacity, but we'll use it only for energy generation. We'll develop neither offensive nor defensive military nuclear capacity, and (consequently) we won't engage either offensively or defensively with nuclear weapons, ever. And you have nothing but our word for that."

2: "We maintain and develop nuclear capacity, which we'll use partly for energy generation. We'll maintain both offensive and defensive military nuclear capacity, which we'll engage only defensively, and only in certain instances. And you have nothing but our word for that."

What would Alfred do?